OUR LONDON FLANEUR. SOCIAL, THEATRICAL, and LITERARY. [BY THE AUCKLAND "STAR's" LONDON CORRESPONDENT.] London, July 17.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 66, 6 September 1884, Page 5

OUR LONDON FLANEUR. SOCIAL, THEATRICAL, and LITERARY. [BY THE AUCKLAND " STAR's" LONDON CORRESPONDENT.] London, July 17.

After nearly a decade of cold wet Junes, and uncertain Julys, the splendid summer we are at present enjoying is indeed a treat. Day after day the sun blazes out of a cloudless sky ; and now Henley Regatta week has passed without the customary delugo— a meteorological phenomenon which — as a Sunday paper portentiously observes— ••finds no parallel in the memory of the oldest inhabitant." Londoners, from the highest to the lowest, are revelling in the long " spell "of fine weather. To the rich it offers opportunities for all sorts of novel entertainments, such as open-air balls, picnics by night, and al fresco concerts. To the poor it means cheap fruit, bathing in the Serpentine, and pleasant evenings listening to the people's band in the parks. In another fortnight the annual "society" exodus will commence, but till then the season promises to be at its gayest. The Prince and Princess of Wales have re-commenced going out, and the greatest balls of the year are fixed to ake place between now and "glorious Goodwood." Do you remember my mentioning the case of Lord St. Leonards, who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court sev eral weeks ago for indecently assaulting a servant girl ? Sentence was deferred in order to allow his lordship's solicitor to prepare certain affidavits in mitigation of punishment, the unfortunate peer meanwhile remaining in gaol. Well, last Saturday Lord St. Leonards was brought up before the Recorder and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment from the date of his conviction. This, of course, meant releasing him there and then, as he had already been that length of time in the House of Detension. Compared with the case of Valentine Baker, who got 12 months for much the same offence, this sounds like a miscarriage of justice, but it was not. Lord St. Leonards is now as bankrupt in reputation as he is in pocket. Moreover, he has been punished for an offence which he never committed. I believe this because I know men of his calibre seldom, if ever, lie about such matters to their intimate friends, and Lord St. Leonards swore to an old chum that he was innocent. " You may believe it or not, Charlie," he said, "but the whole thing was a trap, into which, being * squiffy,' I foolishly fell. The girl only wanted to extort a little money, but her master owed me a grudge for flirting with his soi disant wife, and egged on the girl to make assertions which, when a police information was laid, she daren't withdraw for fear of being charged with perjury. It should be a warning to you fellows never to stay in a room or a railway carriage with a strange woman." During the past fortnight London has been enjoying a subdued giggle at the expense of Miss Henrietta Miiller, one of the van-leaders of the " women's rights " movement. I know, or rather I knew, Miss Miiller slightly about six years ago. She was then an ascetic maiden, neither very young nor very beautiful, but extremely energetic and blessed with an amazingly fluent tongue. Miss Miiller was at that time running for a seat at the London School Board, which she eventually obtained, and had she confined her energies solely to matters educational, all would have been well. Unfortunately, the advocates of women's franchise aroused her dormant ambitions, and persuaded her to do all sorts of absurd things for the " cause." The other day, when the Female Franchise Bill again fell through, Miss Miiller (who is an independent householder in her own right) publicly announced her intention of henceforth refusing to pay the Queen's taxes. " If," she said, " I have no share in making the laws, or have no voice in the government of the country, I refuse to obey the one or support the other." Various legal processes supervened, the minions of the law eventually entering Miss Muller's drawing-room and carrying off certain articles of furniture under her very nose. This raid into the privacy of a mature maiden's boudoir was watched bjthe lady herself and a bevy of friends, who celebrated the occasion by making severe speeches about "tyrant men" and "the cause." Unfortunately, Miss Muller was not allowed to be a martyr after all. Next day, this female Hampden, who with dauntless breast defied the Queen's taxes, found that without her knowledge her furniture had been brought back, and again fitted up and decorated her boudoir. "Surely," says G. A. Sala, gossiping about the matter in his own characteristic style, "this is a lame and impotent conclusion to a heroic scene, so stirring in its incidents and powerful in its attractions that half the dramatists of London might have hurried to the spot, as some did, to catch ideas from the situation. Miss Muller stood upon her desolated hearth, her household goods shattered around her. The vile hands of the minions of male despotism were laid upon the pretty accessories of a lady's boudoir. Then arose not only from Miss Muller but from a faithful band of feminine auxiliaries— summoned in haste to resist the foe— a shrill storm of objurgation. The broker himself, though pale, was collected ; but the broker's man, less hardened, visibly winced under the shower of satire, and it is said that when well out of sight, he broke down and wept. No such scenes have occurred 'in English history since Hampden died in the field and Sidney on the scaffold. Yet now we are robbed of the romance. Imagination peeped in and pictured the heroic lady sitting on the bare floor, deprived by masculine brutality of all the comforts and ornaments of a home ; but ' friends' have intervened, and, without her knowledge, have bought back her 'things.' Friends? An enemy must have done it. Some monsters in human form calling themselves men, jealous of Miss Muller's present fame and coming glory, have interposed to take from her the crown of martyrdom. They have boiled the pease in her shoes ; and now her rooms are as bright, and she herself is as cosy, as before. Wul men never cease to interfere with woman's rights ? Why was not M iss Muller allowed to become the virgin proto-martyr of taxed womanhood ?" A Divorce Court scandal, in which three noble families (with names " familiar to our ears as household words") are said to be implicated, promises to be the sensation of the coming autumn. Great efforts have been made to keep the affair out of the papers, »o far with success j but all must come out ere long. This hot weather is "ruination (as Mrs Brown would say) to the theatres. Most of the West End houses are already closed, and very few will re-open again before September. At the Empire the magnificent epectacle of "Chilperic" (for which Tawhiao and his suite have shown such predilection) is coming to ths end of its run,

land Mr Farnie is busy touching up the ' " Cloches de Corneville "to take its place, Rumours relative to the vast scale and splendour of this revival are already rampant, and will probably turn out to be true. The Empire management hope to beat Mr Holland and the Alhambra directorate at their own gamo. The "Mascotte" was withdrawn from the Comedy last week, and this theatre is now closed. It will re-open in September with a revival of " Rip Van Winkle," after which a new opera by ' M. Audran, founded on " The Miller of the Dee," will be produced. M. Audran has undertaken to write four comic operas, 41 Libretti by Farnie " for tho London stage within the next two years. Let us hope thero'll be another "Olivette" amongst them. . On one of the hottest aiternoons of tho season, your old friend Ada Ward appeared as Pauline in the "Lady of Lyons" at a matinee at the Princes Theatre. A few professionals and old acquaintances looked in at the performance for ten minutes, but Robody stayed long. Most of tho critics seem to have been impressed by Miss Ward s dresses rather than her acting. The case of Finney v. Garmoylo has been settled out of Court. That much is now oevtain, but what amount of damages Lord Cairns agreed to pay no one can aver positively. The * ' Referee " says £14,000 only, the " Era " £17,000, and a law paper £13,000. , , All •'Twelfth Night" was produced at tho Lyceum on the Sth inst., in the presence of a not altogether friendly audience. The piece is lavishly mounted and capitally played, but somehow or other it didn't "go " with the spirit to which admirers of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry have grown accustomed. For one thing, the night was overpow eringly hot and the performance long. Considering the play had been illustrated with sixteen elaborate set scenes, half -past 11 was not very late for it to be over. The majority showed themselves satisfied with the entertainment, and applauded lustily, but amidst the cheers and clapping could be distinctly heard some clear, well - defined hisses. Most actors would have put down the display to a few ill-tempered gallery boys, and ignored it. With doubtful sagacity Irving rose to the bait, and when called on to the stage for his customary speech, demanded to know the meaning of the disturbance, candidly owning that he had been away some time from England, and was not quite accustomed to the°evidently altered attitude of first-night audiences. lie owned to feeling the existence of a strange element in the house which he did not understand. He was perplexed and puzzled at the possibility of any opposition in the face of what had been done and what had been seen. His company, he knew, was as good a one as could be got together, the scenes were of exceptional beauty, and the performance all round was above the average. What, then, did the hissing mean ? From some actors such a protest would have been bitterly resented, but Irving can do no wrong at pre a ent, and was warmly encouraged. G. W. Anson, for venturing on a similar step when one of Wilkie Collins's plays was damned, got himself howled off the stage, and has not to this day obtained full forgiveness from the Adelphi Theatre audience. Fortunately, London theatre-goers are capricious, or even Irving might have regretted his temerity. The success par excellence of "Twelfth Night "is Miss Ellen Terry's Viola. Sinco her sister Kate scored such a triumph in the part it has never been played as it is now. On this point all the authorities are agreed. Adelaide Neilson was a fair and Miss Wallis a passable Viola, but neither of them approached the Terry sisters. Irving's Malvolio seems to be estimated variously. Mr Clement Scott gushes ecstatically over its " quaint subtlety," but old theatre-goers shake their heads and mutter, " not to be mentioned with poor Compton's reading of the character." The revival of " Our Boys " at the Strand is a complete failure. It seems strange that a comedy which ran for more than 1,000 nights in London a few years ago can't fill a small theatre now for a month, but such i? the fact. David James has already put " She Stoops to Conquer " into rehearsal as a stop gap, and James Albeiy is busy translating the piece at present running at the Palais Royal, in Paris, to follow. "Feather-brain," the farcical comedy that very nearly came to grief when it was first played atthe Criterion, has been worked up into a positive success, and now seems likely to run till Christmas. " Princess Ida," on the other hand, languishes, so that a revival of " Pinafore " may be fallen back upon. Do you like weird, mystic ghost stories ? If so, go right away to the nearest bookseller's and order Sheridan Le Farm's " In a Glass Darkly," which has just been re issued by Mr Bentley at six shillings. It was this book, you may remember, which struck the ate Duke of Albany so strongly. He read it whilst atNice, and spoke of it to his doctor the night before he died. All Le Farm's novels are of a more or less blood-curdling description. As a boy I remembor shuddering over " Uncle Silas ;" indeed, it is not a book I should care to read even now last thing at night. About two years ago one of the burning sensations of the season was Mr Robert Louis Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights." This work can now be obtained for two shillings, and is well worth the money. The only other cheap editions that have come out since I last wrote are "Lady Sefton's Pride," by Dora Russell, and "A Heart's Problem," by Chas. Gibbon. Neither deserve favourable mention. Charles Reade's valedictory novel, " A Perilous Secret," was published yesterday. It is simply an amplified edition of *' Love or Money," the play of his that proved a semi-failure at the Adelphi last year. Rumour says Mr Bentley paid £5,000 for the copyright. If so, I fear he has got a bad bargain. The story is a common place one, and not to be compared with any of the author's earlier works Failing powers and a weakened intellect are everywhere evident. "My Ducats and My Daughter" is the title of a novel everybody is asking for at Mudie's just now. " I read it straight through without stopping, and I confess I was much interested. The hero comes into a fortune and loses his sweetheart simultaneously, the latter deliberately sacrificing herself in order to prevent her degenerate father plundering the rcan she loves. Camilla's reward for this highflown conduct is to lose her Arthur altogether. His anger at her supposed faithlessness kills his love, and when she reveals the truth, instead of being thanked for her self-immolation, she is informed that his heart is no longer hers. The situation is admirably led up to and effectively described. "Little Lady Lin ton," Frank Barrett's last and best novel, has a capital plot. A disagreeable mother has a disagreeable daughter, whom she has married well. The daughter misbehaves herself not a little, but disappears mys teriously and in a way opportunely. The mother makes up her mind that she has been murdered, and applies to a private inquiry office to trace the crime home. It is no injustice either to Mr Barrett or to

the probable reader to make the obvious statement that the daughter is not dead at a'l. She turns up again in a fashion discreditable, but not at all impossible, and the unlucky (but more unamiablo than unlucky) mother discovers the facts, with results equally unpleasant to herself and tho first Lady Linton. The baronet hero and his second wifo, " Little Lady Linton," are both well drawn and most interesting personages ; in fact, the work, as a whole, is a great advance on "Folly Morrison, and other of the samo author's earlier works.