Romance and Beality.

Patea Mail, 12 January 1882, Page 3

Romance and Beality.

Alas, for the “Jersey Lily!” She who was the London beauty of more than one season, whose fashionable town-house was furnished as sumptuously as if Mrs Langtry had married Monte Christo, and whose “ small and early ” parties [often included H.R.H. the Heir Apparent, is now fallen like a butterfly in a shower, her gorgeous wings wet and draggled, and her bonny face sad with weeping for many unpaid creditors. The bright and beauteous Jersey Lily is now playing as an actress for her daily bread. She has made her stage debut at the Haymarket theatre in Goldsmith’s fine old comedy, “She Stoops to Conquer.” She has stooped, and has made new conquests; for the critics say of her that she was eminently successful in the part of Miss Hardcastle, the squire’s pretty daughter, who enters into the fun of disguising herself to receive two travellers at the hall, they mistaking it for a public inn ; she serving them with liquor to their royal order, laughing at their roistering jokes, getting kissed as serving-maids are wont to do; and reappearing in her proper character when the “ mistake ” is discovered. Thus the Jersey Lily has been playing the smirking part of a pretty servant-maid, and has stooped to conquer him who was on his way to court her as the squire’s daughterThese accidents used to happen in the old time, when poor Oliver Goldsmith lived in a garret somewhere in the purlieus of Long Acre, and borrowed a sovereign to lend to someone else, and the great Doctor Johnson had bachelor’s rooms in dingy Drury Lane, and adjacent Grub street was the home of penniless wits. The veteran Buckstone was the last manager who produced Goldsmith’s famous play at the Haymarket; and we remember seeing old Buckstone impersonate in that play the part of Tony Lumpkin, the rollicking alehouse frequenter—Buckstone being then over seventy, to represent a “ Lumpkin ” of twenty years. So the great London beauty, before whom princes smiled and great men bowed, has run her giddy course, and been sold up and banished from polite society, and is now “ on the stage.” It’s the way of the world.