TOPICS OF THE DAY. (FROM AUCKLAND STAR CORRESPONDENT.)

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 246, 14 March 1888, Page 9

TOPICS OF THE DAY. (FROM AUCKLAND STAR CORRESPONDENT.)

PiiKCis : Fkatuuks ok .Tumlkb Ykah Possiuly Unnotickd Intlik coloniks— deaths of many FAMILIAIt AuTOKS IN THE " COMICDY OKTjIKF." - Colossal Social Scandals— Unknown in '87— THK.Jl1BILl«MMUlM)ICltKn— TllK"LlOX8" ok '87— Thk Truth Auout Sullivan and H.R.lL— Ckntknauy ok thk "Timks" NewsvAviin—lts Inkluenuk ano Pkosimciuty Gknkkally Discussed — Still a Gitiovr Powkk'in Money and latku vitY Mattkks— IjOKD IlOW'l'ON JiHOUOHT TO J3oOK — TuX BICAOON&KIICLD iUotiUArHY— WIIEIIK IS IT I— Skvkn Ykaks 1 Dklay— Explanations— Thk "Jingo' Uokhkspondisnck : a Uikfici'i/iy, etc.— Drath ok " Old Chip" -An Actoh ok the Bkst School— Mauia Bastias ShockIno suic'idk— aiha in llkk and jduatji— Starved in llku Own Ciolt.ah.

Londox, January 12. Bkkokb finally closing tho record of Her Majesty's Jubilco year, it may bo well to glance biiefly over one or two features not likely to have boon touched on in the colonial pic-.;-, but still of considerable general interest. In the first place, then, 1887 has been a yea of many deaths. " Never bofoie in Liv,, century, 1 ' bays Lord Desart, writing 1 to " Vanity Fair," "havesomany distinguished and familiar actors been witluhav. n from the bills of tho Comudy of Life. ' Ho proceeds to give an appalling list, which is far too long to quote here. The following names will, however, indicate clearly enough the truth ot the allegation: — Lord Iddeslei , r h, Lord Lyons?, Lord Noi'thwick, Mr Berc&ford Hope, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Duke and Uueaevs of Leinstei, the Duchess ol Richmond, Lady March, Lady Brassey, Lord and Lady Da>housie, and thirteen other less known members of tho peerage. Also Jenny Lind, Mi'h lleniy Wood and Mn> Craik, bir Owen Lanyon, Sir Cluules Young, Sir Alex. Stuart, Sir J. Yon Hna-st, Sir FiancU Bollon, Sir William Miller, Goorgc Fordham, tho jockey, and Mis° Kate Alumoe. It will be noticed with some fruipn«»t}, pobbibly, tht»t the professionals who li\c the most wearing lives (artists, actors, vocalists and journalists) arc conspicuous by their absence from this fatal hc-t. Jen.iy Lind and Mis? Munroeare theo'Uy vocalUlJs named, and we have absolutely not lost a single actor, artist or journalist of no.o during the twelvemonth. Eighty-five and eighty-six were both memorable for colossal social scandal*. La<?t year there was not a single one. Murdeis, too, have, from a journalistic [joint of view, been curiously scarce. Ido not of cour.»o mean that there were fewer tcrri'ile tragedies in low life than usual during the past twelvemonth, but that we have not been startled or shocked or titillated or scandalised {as the case may be) by many causes celebrei. Till SurgeonMajor Cross made that little mistake with his wife's medicine at Hurlow Hall, for which he will (I sincerely hope) be hanged next week, Mr Stead's j.roUgc Lipski had tho honour of being our champion Jubilee murder. America supplied the two great social 11 lions " of '87 in " Buflulo Bill " and Sullivan, the prize-fighter. I may remanc here, ju&t by the way, that the stories going about relative to the Prince of Wales' interview with the beefy Yankee are purely apocryphal. H.R.H. merely put in a casual appearance at a semi-private fencing club of which he is a member, and at which Sullivan had been engaged to do a little " bparring."' He neither shook hands with the prize-fighter nor addressed a direct word to him. Those who knew H.R.H.'s rigid notions of etiquette disbelieved the story from the first. It has since been pretty thoroughly contradicthd. I believe, though, it is a fact that an early account ot the great encounter between Smith and Kilrain did by some mischance find its way over the Queen's private wire to Windsor. Whether sent as a joke or through a blunder no one seems to know, but the contretemps made endless mischief. The message was of course suppressed, but the truth reached the Queen's ears through Lady Ely, who practically "bosses" the Court when in residence. The Prince of Wales and her ladyship are not on terms. When John Brown died H.R.H. hoped that his mother would turn to the proper person (Sir Henry Ponsonby) for advice, etc., and j it was a bitter disappointment to him to see her give herself over body and soul to a meddlesome old woman. An interesting, if not very instructive, correspondence upon luck has been passing through the columns of the " Daily Telegraph " during the laeb few days, in the course of which a number of queer coincidences have been unearthed. Talking of unlucky days, for example, a correspondent points out that the 14th of December must certainly be a day of ill omen for our Royal Family. Ib was, you may remember, on the 14th of December the Prince Consort died ; the 14th of December when the Prince of Wales lay sick unto death (his worst day) of typhoid fever; the 14th of December when the Princess Alice died ; and, finally, the 14th of December when the worst possibility with regard to the Crown Prmce'sthroatdiseasewas discovered and disclosed by Morell Mackenzie. The late Captain Gray, of the old s.s. Great Britain, had an unlucky day in which he firmly believed. I was a passenger with him in 1872, when he told me about it. It was this way. One night at dinner I thought the old man looked uncharacteristically gloomy, and said so. " To-morrow," he explained, "is my unlucky day. Something more or lees unpleasant" (generally more) invariably happens upon it. One year I ran the old ship on the bar at Liverpool, and narrowly escaped wrecking her. Another, we encountered the worst storm I ever remember off tho Horn, and that was no joke. Another, I suffered a domestic bereavement, and so on. Sometimes it has only been a trifling disagreeable. But there is always something." We passengers laughed and chaffed the old fellow for being so Scotchly superstitious. Next morning, however, when the captain's favourite apprentice, a bright, clever lad, slipped or grew giddy whilst aloft, and fell upon the iron tank a mangled corpse almost at our own and the skipper's feet, a very different feeling prevailed. Thafc, at leasb, was a most unlucky day. The following year, I think, either on the same day or close upon it, ■ poor Captain Gray himself disappeared— shot overboard through a 1 large main deck scupper by a, heavy roll of the ship, it is generally believed. ■ * An event happened one day last week which is worth' taking # brief note of, - viz. } tne "Times" celebrated its'one hundredth birthday; • /Amotigab' journalist's of' the Stead type (of whom there are )ar f too #iahy*"at present)! it' is the fashionable thing to deery t the erstwhile'* 'thunderer df/Prinbihg'House •Square" and^pooh-pooh its influence. I was doing somebhingof the sorb the* other day- when an older" man (also a journalist) caught me up fchus-^-Thinkfdr a minute,'? he'saicl, "* attdtyoii will see you aW tatfcW ndnserige. Commei'eiaity,''; the >- 'Time's;, +has 'never bean a greatetfiueceiss'than'.it' is now, Its charges are prodigious, -yet 'its

advorfcisemenfc columns increase in numbers constantly and always overflow. Send an advertisement in on Monday, and it will not be published till Thursday unless by special arrangement at a stifF figure. Editorially, perhaps, the "Times"' is not what it was in John Delano's time. Yet it wakes? up occasionally (as in the impeachment of tho I'arnellitcs), and then what a stir it makes. The * J J a.ll Mall Gazette' might havo said tho s'miio things ten times over about the Parnollites without rousing a hundredth part a* the public feeling the ' Times ' did. Abuse ' the thunderer ' though we may, wo most of us feel Aye can rely upon it in essentials. 'Caution and ftt.ict vecacity' are the editorial watchwords. What other newspaper is there that can with a paiagrnph damn a book or shako the a edit of a public company ? Not one. Moreover, the 'Times' i:t the one journal universally read by the countiy squirearchy and landed gentry of the United Kingdom. Londoners are apt to forget this*. One seldom sees a penny paper in a small country house. The 'Times,' the ' Field,' and the ' Queen ' (for the ladies), aic the staple periodical literature. Pci&onallyl don't altogether agree with these \iews, but I thought them shrewd enough to be worth remembering." Home sensation has been caused in Con vervcitivo cot -vies by acrid leader in the "Standard," challenging Lord Rowton withiegard to tho long-promised biography of tho Earl of fieaconsfiekl. Seven years, it is stated, have rolled by since the great man died, and Lord Kowton undertook the ta4c of ai ranging his friend and patron's memoiis ; yet, as tar as anyone can ascertain, the work is not even in an advanced condition. Why? Can it be, asks Mis* Unmdy, th.it there are secrets which cannot be divulged, mysteries that cannot yet be solved, or scandals the handling of which must bo remitted (a fa (lievillo memoirs) to a more distant period ? Surely not. If Disiaeli was ior a time a Bohemian and an adventurer, his social life was at least eminently respectable. Even tho Kteadis of the period hesitated to a*so c\ite his name with social scandals, though they Hung every other soit of mud" at him. Unquestionably, Lord How ton will shortly have to givs some account of his stewardship. Since 1881 many of the dead Earl's warmest admhers havo followed him to the grave ; indeed, it now begins to look as if the generation which knew him best was not to have the pleasmo of reading his life. Lord Rowton, his friends declare, has good reasons for this strange diJatoriness. One is said to be tho j impossibility o' publishing the Beacon&field correspondence during the Jingo period (1870 to 1880) till tho Queen and Mr Gladstone have departed this life 1 doubt, however, if there is teally any difficulty about this. The more probable solution of the delay is that Lord Rowton finds the task he undertook beyond him, vet hesitates to confess the fact. Before next mail, however, an explanation from His Loidship himself will pretty certainly have solved the conundrum. The death is announced at an advanced age of Mr W. H. Chippendale ("Old Chip"), whose clever wife is so well known in your part of the world. He was a prominent member of the Hay market Company for upwards of twenty years, and associated with all Buckstonc's notable successes. He created numerous parts during this period, but the characteis in which he excelled were Sir Peter Teazle and Sir Anthony Absolute. So thoroughly were these two old gentlemen soaked into "Old Chip' 5 - " system, that when some years back his mind gave way, he became permanently sometimes one and sometimes the other. I .saw him last in Sheffield in 1876, playing old English comedy with his wife, Mr Howe, and others. He got through the ''School for Scandal" admhably, but the following night in the "Road to Ruin" memory played him so false, that but for others' help, the performance must have broken down. Maria Bastia's name will not sound familiar to your readers, but she was a notable prima donna in her own country (Italy), and believed by the Italians who knew not Adelina Patti or Marie Roze to be the best living representative of " Aida." She played this role so often and so successfully that, like poor old Mr Chippendale, she grew almost to live the part. Then came a terrible misfortune. Just as Mdme. Bastia had been engaged to sing in London she permanently lost her voice. Having amassed a large fortune, most women would not in her circumstances have been inconsolable. Unfortunately, poor Marie Bastia's heart was broken by the blow, and her mental balance completely overthrown. Dismissing her servants, she costumed herself as Aida, and then locked herself up in the cellar to die of hunger and cold, as Aida did in the opera. Most women would soon have tirei of such a scheme. Madness gave Marie Bastia the moral courage to persevere, so that when her relatives broke into the cellar on New Year's Eve they found her lying in Aidas well-known pote — quite dead ! _____