Mrs Gordon Baillie.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 247, 17 March 1888, Page 8

Mrs Gordon Baillie.

The " Sydney Telegraph " says :— " The Melbourne papers do not make much comment on the misfortunes which awaited Mis Gordon-Baillic on her return to Scot land, of which we got the telegraphic announcement the other day. The subjecc is probably a very sore one to many in the Victorian capital, where the personal charms and the address and pretensions of this lady secured her a very favourable reception. When a susceptible Minister of Lands is interviewed in his office by a lady who i 3 described as "a splendid type of woman tall, of commanding 1 piesenee, and with fine features and endowed with a splendid head of hair," who tells him that her tender bosom is filled by a philanthropic desire to ameliorate the lot of 6he Skye crofters, of whom he pi obably knows as little as of a tribe in Cential Africa, what is the susceptible Minister to do ? Mr Dow seems to have capitulated at once, and the dashing lady, and her Laidily-produoed husband, Mr Frost, were in u fair way to get a block of 70,000 a. of land at Wilson's Promontory — all for the poor crofters— when unfavourable reports began to pet about and the scheme was inopportunely blocked. Negotiations were, }i'j»/ever, still maintained, chequered by the ucO'isional mention of Mrs Gordon-Baillie's ru;ue in connection with summonses for T-iaiesmen's debts in suburban Courts of Petty Sessions, vi hen suddenly Mrs GordonB.iiilie left for Sydney. It was at first anticipated that she meant to transfer her p'tvfonage to our Lands Department, but '.vhethei or not it was that the accounts .she heard of the ductility of Mr GarreU were unfavourable, at any rate she did not take up a very prominent position in Sydney either politically or socially, and *n fact disappeared quite unostentatiously from the country. We next heard of her in England affably reporting progress to a " Pall Mall Gazette "' interviewer, to whom she announced that she intended making rishing 1 settlements of from 100 fco 200 families on the coasts of Tasmania and Australia. She had, she confided to him, secured the pre-emptive right j of 70,000 acres of land on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria, and a largo quantity of rich land in Tasmania. Some of the particulars she gave were evidently coloured by a rather romantic imagination, or, to pub ifc another way, were extravagant fictions. Now come j the denunciations of the "Scotsman," the' unkindly references to pact police court experiences, fcho enumeration of tne different aliases, of which "Gordon-Baillie" weemg to be the one reserved for use in the boat society, and, unkindest - cub of all, the heartless a,Bsertisn that her mother was a washer - woman,' That will be felb most severely by her patrons and patronesses in the blue-blooded circles of Melbourne fashion. Let ■us hope that the lady will be able,'triumphantly to refute these cruel aspersions in the course of the proceedings which she threatens against the accusing journal. In fehe meantime, pending this happy issue from her adversities, we can only note fcho, case as one of another 'soi-ditant distinguished viiitor ' gone wrong."