STORIES OF "LABBY."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 179, 27 January 1912, Page 10

STORIES OF "LABBY."

Speaking of the late Mr. Labouchere, whose death at Florence was recently reported, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in a recent number of his weekly magazine, says:— The most constant smoker in my time in the House of Commons was Labby. He never had a cigarette out of his mouth if he could help it. It was, curiously enough, his one passion and one self-indulgence. This extraordinary maul always wealthy and always able to hav? anything he liked, had simpler tastes than most peasants. He rarely touched wine, and when he did it was a glass of claret and water, and this he took with palpable dislike, and usually either because he was ordered by his doctor to do so or because on the Continent "he thought wine less dangerous than water. As to food, he best described his feelings by this anecdote. He returned unexpectedly home to the charming riverside house he had on the Thames—Pope's famous villa—and found that there was no dinner ready for him. "Go to the nearest ham-and-beef shop," he said, quite serenely, to the affrighted butler, "and get me some slices of ham and beef." And then he said: "I enjoyed this so much that I seriously thought of dismissing my cook." I have seen him, when I stopped with them in Pope's villa, gulping down an egg and a cup of tea in two minutes, and then immediately put a cigarette in his mouth, and a cigarette was there every moment afterwards throughout the day. When he was a member of the House of Commons he never could remain in his geat more than a quarter of an hour; he had to rush off to the smoke rooms to have a whiff of his cigarette. It is his temperance in eating and drinking that accounts for the astounding fact that 'he is still- alive and well, and enjoying hinlself after his fashion in Florence, for he has buried two generations of hard livers.' It is ■difficult to realise, but it is true, that this man knew Daniel Webster intimately before the war, and gives some inside stories of that brilliant orator that do not figure in print. And it is also incredible, but true, that Labby knew Bismarck in the days when, as Prussian Minister in Frankfort, Bismarck was unknown outside the world of diplomacy, and Labby gives racy descriptions of Bismarck in those days when the obscure ! Prussian squire was chiefly remarkable , to his contemporaries by his love of alli night sittings and copious mugs of beer. It is perhaps even more incredible, but it is also true, that Labby knew the debauehe nobleman who stood for the portrait of the Marquis of Steyne in Thack- [ eray and Lord Monmouth in Disraeli's [ novels. Finally Labby was the employer, [ in the days when he was owner and mana ager of a theatre in London, of Henry " Irving, Charles Wyndham, Ellen Terry, and scores of others. "And to think," said Henry Irving to Labby one., night when, at the very top of his profession, Irving sat at the head of a banquet he was giving to all who were distinguished in London, "that I was once getting £5 e a week from you." "Three pounds, r Henry," said Labby.