UNKNOWN Social, Theatrical, and Sportive. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 381, 3 July 1889, Page 4

UNKNOWN Social, Theatrical, and Sportive. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)

The Cycle ok Private Views— Profits of the Gambling Tables — Removals to , the Lords — The " Times " Scapegoat — ' Irving at Sandringham — Cost ok the Performance — Why Irving Isn't Sir Henry — A Threatened Infliction — . The Q.ukicn's -Wishes— Her Majesty.and Miss Terry — "Wealth" — A Complete Failure— to it Pinero-An Old Horsk Piece Under New Auspices— Mr Hare— GossipMr James Smith - The Goldsiseker Calamity— A Small Commission Executed — Tub Two , Thousand Surprise — How Donovan Was Defeated.

London, May 3. The cycle of smart private views to the picture shows of the seaeon which commenced on Tuesday at the (.'rosvenor Gallery, and was continued on Wednesday at the new " Halli-carnassus," will close this afternoon at the Royal Academy, when Society, the Arts, and the better 'part of Bohemia, meet for once en mas.se at Burlington House. The plain brown tickets for "R. A. l J rivate View" become more difficult to obtain every anniversary, in fact, are worth their weight i n gold. It is a fact that last year as Lady T) G was going up the steps to Burlington House with her little girl, she was stopped by an American acquaintance, who implored her not to waste a ticket on the child, adding, " I will give you anything you like for one. Mrs B. (naming an Academician's wife) premised to sell me hers for two guineas, but Mr B. wouldn't let her." This much was positively overheard in the vestibule. Though the Casino at Monte Carlo has had by no means afortunateseason, Captain Carlcton-Blyth and a wealthy Russian, having on several occasions " broken the bank," the profits of the tables — so a caU culating croupier told a travelling correspondent-— will exceed £500,000. Not bad business this for six months. Political flaneurs declare a whole batch of honours are on the verge of announcement. The Premier will, ,on dit, present himself with the inevitable dukedom (which was bound to come some time). Mr W. H. Smith will go to the House of Lords as the Earl of Greenlands or Surbiton, and Mr Balfour will also be promoted to a higher sphere, as Baron Balfour, of Somewhere — Mifcchelstown would be appropriate. Lord Hartington would also get a peerage but for the great age of his father, the Duke of Devonshire, who was 82 the other day, which makes ifc faiily certain his lordship will not be forced much longer to occupy his present anomalous and uncomfortable position in the Commons. When I prophesied that Mr MacDonald would be the " Times " scapegoat for the Pigott blunders, I was (vulgarly speaking) "on the spot." The " retirement" of the old man who has for forty years served the Walters faithfully and well was announced yesterday, Mr Alfred Walter, who is a shrewd, business-like youngster, taking his place. It is characteristic of "my old! friend Walter " that having, through his perverse obstinacy, got the "Times" into a tight place, he should make the worst of the situation. Mr Buckle believes that the Parnellism and crime Jiaico, beyond hitting the " Times " hard financially, will do little harm. He is only anxious to get rid of the tiresome subject and revert to the safe and legitimate policy of the " Times," which is, or was — " Be just a few hour? or days in advance of public opinion." Old John Walter, on the other hand, cannot bear to have to confess himself beaten, and still prays mournfully for come providential revelation of Parnellite villainy which shall again revolutionise public opinion and justify the "Times."

Dramatic. It was Punchinello's secret at the Clubs on Friday afternoon that Her Majesty meant to knight Irving at the conclusion of the performance at Sanciringham that eve, and great was the surprise of the flaneurs on opening their papers next morning to find that the " great event" hadn't come eflT. The fact, I believe, was two people objected to the proposed innovation, viz., Lord Salisbury and Irving himself. The Premier has no opinion o ( f " play-acting folk," and distrusts altogether the movement which has of late years raised certain mummers so materially in the social scale. Irving himself considers a leading actor has just as good a right to knighthood as a great artist, engineer or architect, but thinks th c honour should be reserved till the actor's professional career closes and he is about to retire. It would, he opines, be neither convenient nor coiirevable to have a number of " Sirs " aud " Ladys " strutting the boards. Ton years hence, when Henry Irving bids the stage farewell, and (like the Bancrofts) takes hi.s ea&e in society, he will be glad — as recognition -of hi* life's work — to accept the accolade from the Queen's plump hand. I'm awfully sorry, by-the-way, to notice that Irving has given over himself and his reminiscences to Joe Hatton, and is going to allow that fat fiend to make a book out of him. Why, oh ! why doesn't " our only tragedian" postpone his autobiographically, like the knighthood, till he retires a °d give "us something worth reading ? Irving can write if he chooses, and the plain, unadorned story of his life autobiographyly told would be far preferable to the olla podrida of interviews, newspaper scraps, stale " chesnuts,'' and forced conversations 1 which made up poor JToole's short-lived " Reminiscences." The cost of the Sandringham peiformanco to Irving was, 1 understand, about £700, or together with the loss of Friday evening's peformance (say, £300), £1,000. ' Loveday, the Lyceum manager, and a staff of men were in Norfolk preparing a week beforehand. Hawes Craven painted a set of entirely new scenery and a replica of the Lyceum drop to fit the small stage, and special trains conveyed the entire company backwards and forwards. H.R.H, sent the actor-manager a cheque for £'250, and the Queen gave him a pair of sleeve links worth perhaps £50. Altogether a " royal command," though gratifying, seems a somewhat expensive luxury. One can imagine, too, what poor Irving and Co. felt on Tuesday morning when a telegram came from Sir Dighton Probyn, asking whether it would be possible to re-con&truct the entire programme, as the Queen would much like to witness scenes from "Richelieu," "Macbeth," and "Louis XI." Fortunately, the Prince intervened here, and explained the difficulties in the way to Her Majesty, who at last gave way. The Queen was very cordial to Miss Terry, and has evi1 dently quite forgotten that yonng lady's matrimonial difficulties. One is glad to notice Her Majesty seems much less hard 1 now oh poor human nature than she used to be. Why,'it is nob so many years since she refused to " command " the Lyceum folks 1 to Windsor or visit the theatre because Miss Terry was acting there and Irving 1 lived separate from his wife. Mr Henry Arthur Jones had never much of a reputation as a dramatist, but he will 1 now have less than e r ver. J " Wealth," produced at the Haymarket on Saturday even- [ ing, proved a complete 'failure, and was, despite the frantic efforts of a well-packed 1 stalls, dress-circle and gallery, roundly- and soundly condemned. Here isthe plot :— Mr

JBeerbbluri Tree acts asJdneldet-ly speculator who has followed the pursuit ormoney//un'til he has grown, as the masher in the next stall to mine , said, "Dotty." Act", I,' V Dotty ;" acfc' ' U, " Dottier,;" act 111, " Dottiest •" act IV, Dying/ It is'all T^ee', toujqurs Beerbohm. "No one- else , has a. chance. In ttiethirda'ct', where Mr Tree, or Matbbew Ruddoqk, tliinks himself bankrupt, and tears down the curtain?, and piles up his securities on the floor, I couldn't help feeling "I've seen this before." "Shiel Barry in * Les Cloches do Corneville,' "said my neighbour, and so it was. But why waste time wiiting about " Wealth ?" The piece will never teach your part of the world. I remember Mr Pinero when people knew him only as " the lone nosed beggar who plays small parts in Irving's Company, don't you know." He is now the most popular and consistently successful of living playwrights, earning oat of fees for his pieces running in London, America, and the provinces not far short of £500 a week. A successful play pays better than ten successful novels, says Geo. R. Sims, and of all men he ought to know, as he has' " struck ile " both ways. The Savages' rolled up in force to the Grand Theatre, Islington, on Saturday to see Geoffrey Thorn's long-talkod-of burlesque on "Dandy Dick Turpin, or The Mas>hing Highwayman," facetiously described on the bills'"anoldhorse piece under new auspices. " I applauded manfully at all available opportunities. I fear, however, the piece is tod old-fashioned and Henry- J.Byronesque for modern tastes. It was written for Lydia Thompson years ago, when that lady's " blondes " were the sensation of the hour in the Statee. "Macbeth " and "That Dr. Cupid" have now been played 100 times oach in London, and so has " Paul Jones," whilst the " Yeomen of i/he Guard " on Saturday celebrated its 200 th repetition, and " Sweet Lavender " on Tuesday completed its fourth centenary. The last named looks like running on well through the year. Mr John Hare, whose real name is Fairs, and who has a number of relatives resident in Auckland, New Zealand, must now be a wealthy man, Before joining the Kendals at the St. James's, he had made quite a small " pile" out of the old Court Theatre, which he and they lea=ed for several seasone. There, his great successes were " New Men and Old Acres," in which Ellen Terry, at that time in her premiere jeunesse, took the town by storm, and which yielded the management a clear profit of £12,000, and " Olivia," which Hare made £9,000 by. The Royalty Theatre opens to-morrow with a new comic opei*a by Oswald Brand and Henry Parker entitled " Mignonette." the scene of which is laid in the Tyrol. Both author and composer are new to London, and the only member of the cast whom I recognise is Mr J. G. llobertson, the goodlooking tenor who acted Ralph Rackstraw in the Savoy revival of " Pinafore."

The Premikre of Celliek's " Doris. Ab the close of the first performance of "Doris" on Saturday night, Mr Alfred Cellier was called for and enthusiastically cheered by the packed house, there evidently being no two opinions as to the merits of the music of the new work. About the libretto, however, the audience differed considerably. A few of Mr B. C. ( Stephenson's friends in the stalls and dresscircle clapped con ainore, but from the pib and gallery came the unmistakeable sound cf hissing. Mr Stephenson having retired, there were loud ciies for " Leslie,'* to which that gentleman for some time remained prudently deaf. At length, however, a too zealous friend pu«hed the manager before the curtain, and then arose an angrier storm of hisses, hooting and cat-calls than I have ever before heard in a London theatre. The score of "Doris" is, to my mind, aggressively English. It teems with glees, madrigals and concerted pieces of all descriptions. Experts inform me most of these are very fine, but I confess 1 thought the general effect heavy, and pined for the more frivolous vocal waltz or an occasional catchy couplet. The solos nearly all pleased. " Tottie"' Coffin (looking "quite too utterly adorable 11 in Elizabethan doublet and hose) has a pretty ballad. *• Honour Bids Me Speed Away," in the second act, but the songs likely to be really most popular fall to Furneaux Cook and Ben Davies. The first-named has a rollicking jovial canticle in praise of "Beer," which was encored three times, pifc and gallery finally joining uproariously in the chorus ; whilst the latter made a big hit with a lovely ballad, " All the Wealth^ All the Worlds." The ladies, curiously enough, none of them scored. Your old friend, massive Alice Barnett, made her rcnfree in a small part, and tried hard to galvanise Stephenson's feeble lines into life. Miss J Amy Angarde (to everyone's surprise) proved a very poor substitute for Marie Tempest, who smiled radiant'y from a private box at her old "pals "on the stage, and Annette Albu was painfully nervous. As for Arthur Williams and Harriett Coveney, well — it weie kindest to draw a veil over their sad portions. Williams began light-heartedly enough, but as forced jokelet after forced jokelet fell flat he became despei aiely and deadly funny. For fully ten minutes at the beginning of the third act the unfortunate comedian had the stage to himself, and ought to have kept us all laughing ; bub he couldn't. 'Twas late, the Spanish masque had yet to come on, and poor Williams's fooling simply bored everyone to extinction. The libietto of "Doris " is so feeble that I misdoubt even Cellier's music, the splendid mounting of the piece, and the interesting Elizabethan processions pulling it through. What judicious compression and unscrupulous "gagging" may accomplish one cannot, of course, venture to prophesy. I understood that at the end of "Dorothy's " j run very little if any of the original dialogue remained. It had been improved out of recognition. This was so too with " Falka." ' Still both "Dorothy" and "Falka" rejoiced in plain straight-forward stories everyone could understand. The difficulty is to make head or tail of " Doris." In the first act we find Alderman Shelton, family and apprentice? picnicing merrily on Highgate Hill. Prominent among the gay crowd of lads and lasses are Martin Corder,'the chief apprentice (Ben Davies), and Doris Shelton, the Alderman's daughter. This couple love each other, and have just warbled as much in conventional operatic fashion when Sir Philip Shelton (Haydyn Coffin) rushes in and having intimated that — for some never-explained reason — he is a traitor with a price on his head, requests to be hid. Martin inserts the knight within a painfully-conspicuous hollow tree, and is over-seen doing so by Dunver, a wicked and dolorously comic scrivener (Arthur Williams), This person betrays Sir Philip to the Alderman, who goes-for the authorities, bub whilst the old man is away Martin explains 'the situation musically to the apprentices, who make : "Dunvev change clothes with Carey and i»- j sert Mm in the hollow tree. The consequence is, of course, Dunver is arrested in mistake for Carey, who escapes a's the curtain comes down on the first act. In the second act Sir Philip is still in full flight, and Doris and Martin are assisting him; Martin, however, becomes jealous, and a letter embroglio of the usual sort finally leads him to the conclusion Sir Philip and Doris are false. Thereupon the young man

Inconfcinei(tlyl b&fckysj /SirfMjlte Before; however, the latter's arrest can be effected, . Martin finds, out _ the incriminatory letter was' from the knight 1 a^Haiicie^ and ' thatiho. has blundered terribly. I* Anxious to repair; « his treachery at all, costs, he gives himself; ' up in ( the knight's, place, and, Sir Philip, is - a.'gain'seen escaping (this time on thVtiies) as the curtain'falls. •■»£;'£ In the third act Sir Philip continues in full .flight .till the Queen'a pardon to all political , prisoners, puts an ,end '-t0,.. Jus , troubles and the piece. t This sounds simple, but the piece_is_in.~ reality burdened with end less trivial complications which have no beai'ing on the main story, and seem merely created to puzzle people. If you ever see " Doris" in Australia, you will probably see a much amended version. Meanwhile, vocalists who like to be an fait with the times cannot do better than order 11 All the Wealth of All the Worlds 'and "The Alderman's Song" (as I expect it \\ill be called) in praise of beer. The moun finer of " Doris " (as I told you last week) has cost £6,000 odd, e'o that it will be a serious matter if, after re-arrange-ment, it fails to catch on. The best thing Mr Cellier could do then would be to have a new libretto written, ju?t as he did for "Nell Gwynne" (afterwards "Dorothy") when it started in Manchester.

Turf Talk. Mr James Smith, who is the manipulator of Galdseeker, was the first man to carry off the double event ot Cesarewifcch and Cambridgeshire with one horse (Rosebery), and the recollection of the blow he then dealt the Ring still makes Steele and oneor two others shudder. Smith erred in the matter of the City and Suburban through not remembering Goldseeker's near relationship to Hermit, whose stock have proved times oub of number that they run best when a little big. On the few gallops Goldseeker had taken before the race a son of Robert the Devil oould not possibly have stayed the distance. In the paddock, too, before the start, M r Laybourne's horse behaved like a veritable demon. Mr Smith is not the man to do things by halves. "Shall we send a small commission, pay to back Goldseeker for £500, starting price, up to town ?" his brother asked him. . " Do as you like, I don't care for any of it," replied Mr Smith, and on his return to the Ring refused 1,000 to 30. Mr E. Smith, however, sent a £200 commission up to the Victoria Club, which must have mitigated his affliction materially, as the s.p. was returned 50 to 1. Two of Mr J. A. Craven's horses, which had been badly beaten'in thehome trials, won tho principal races at Sandown on Thursday and Friday unbacked for'sixoence. In one of these events — the Walton Two-year-old Stakes of l,ooodovs — matters were aggravated by the stable followers to a man being on Tom Cannon's Cross Roads, whom their Charlottesville (by Fitzjames— Miss Fool) cleverly defeated in the last few strides by a neck Porlock, the hero of the Princesses' Cup of l,ooosovs, is a good-look-ing three-year-old, by Wenlock, and will certainly be heard of again, as he beat a big field. Melanion being a little off colour, the Duke of Portland had no option but to start Donovan for the Two Thousand Guineas, which seemed to be such a certainty for him that there was no betting worth the ( name on the race beforehand. Eight horses faced the starter, but of these, three alone — Mr Abington's Pioneer, Prince Salty - hoff's Gold, and Mr Bairds Enthusiast — seemed to have a remote chance of lowering the lucky Duke's colours. Donovan looked his best, and after seeing him in the paddock, the ring wanted 85 to 20, in fact, in many instances plungers laid 25 to 1 on the crack. Pioneer was second in demand, at 100 to 8 ; 100 to 6 being offered agaitiot Gold, 25t0l Enthusiast, and 100 to 1 any other. An outsider led to the distance, where the favourite came out, apparently full of running, and most people closed their glasses, remarking the race was over. This, howe v er, it certainly was not. Pioneer and Enthusiast challenged, simultaneously right and left, and in a moment of- so it became obvious they were holding Donovan. A scene of the wildest excitement ensued Pioneer was beaten opposite Tabtersall's ring, bub Enthusiast ran on with the utmost {fameness, and he and Donovan passed the post locked together. An awful moment of breathless silence followed, similar to that which ensued when Crafton beat Paradox for the Guineas of '86. This time, however, luck was ayciimt the punters, for Enthusiast's number went up, the outsider having (so the judge said) won by a head.