OUR LONDON LETTER

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1926, Page 9

OUR LONDON LETTER

NEWS FROM THE HOMELAND. “JACKER.” (All Rights Reserved.) London, Oct. 7. Colonel F. S. Jackson, who is giving up his post as the Chief Government Whip in order to succeed Lord Lytton as Governor of Bengal, will be missed at the House of Commons. As Party Whip no one knew better how to disguise the Iron Hand beneath the Velvet Glove. He has always been a popular figure at St. Stephens, but I doubt whether he loves the place quite as well as the place loves him. His heart has always been in sport rather than in politics and between the two there is not very much that is akin! “Jaeker,” as everyone calls him, has had to give up active work on the cricket field now he is far advanced in the fifties, but in India he will have opportunity of fighting his battles o’er again with his old friend Ranjisinhji. Nowadays he plays golf instead, and plays it so well that jne has a shrewd suspicion he might have won the amateur championship if he had taken up the Royal and Ancient game a little earlier in life. FEARS OF THE FRANC. Another considerable fall in the value of the franc is regarded in the city as more than probable in the immediate future. Although the Government is making a great deal of the fact that the State revenue is larger for the first half of 1926 than for the same period in 192.5, this calculation does not take into account the enormous difference in the value of the franc during most of this period. The truth is that expenditure has increased even more. The franc is fairly steady at present round about 173 to the pound. If the Paris Treasury has to continue borrowing the quotation may fall away to below 200 without causing any great surprise. MR. MAXTON, M.P.

I hear that Mr. James Maxton, M.P., is now on the high road to recovery after his long and trying illness. The severe operation he underwent seems to have been completely successful. He is. still living in the country, however, and is under strict orders to take things easily for some time. It is unfortunate that he should have been laid r.side at present, for it has put him out of action during a great part of his year’s chairmanship of the Independent Labour Party. He had looked forward to his duties and so had his friends, for they believe that a spell of official responsibility would be good for him. His House of Commons colleagues will be glad to welcome him back to Westminster next session, for he has nothing npopular about him except his views, ..nd these he states with a combination of earnestness and humour which is highly attractive. MAKING HISTORY. Londoners made it quite clear that they felt themselves part and parcel of great history merely as spectators of Mr. (now Sir) Alan Cobham’s homecoming from his 28,000 mile flight to the Antipodes and back. A tremendous multiude swarmed round Westminster Bridge, and down both banks of the Thames as far as Hammersmith. It was like a popular Boat Race afternoon, and, to keep the illusion alive, one of the pretty little White motor yachts in midstream, between St. Stephen’s and St. Thomas’s, played loud-speaker music while we waited. There was, just as on Boat Race days, the usual frantic efforts by all sorts of queer craft, from barges to motor launches, to crawl unobserved into the picture, but vigilant police boats always headed or towed them away in good time. About a quarter past two someone yelled “There he is.'’ And all faces were turned to the southeastern sky, above the County Hall, where a tiny speck showed against the background of sunlit cloud. In a few seconds that speck took shape as a seaplane. And amid a terrific burst of cheering, Sir Alan Cobham, his mechanic waving over - the side with a handkerchief, swooped down towards the Thames. It was a beautiful landing in a rather awkward spot. As it was he almost reached Lambeth Bridge before pulling up against even the tide. He was promptly brought along in a launch to the terrace steps, and, while London cheered, he shook hands with the reception notabilities, and, as though just back from a trip to Margate, asked conventionally, “How are you?’’ THE SQUIRE.

The old friends of Lord Chaplin will be delighted with the memoir which his daughter, the Marchioness of Londonderry, has prepared. Personally, I found this story of the private life of the Squire of Blankney of fascinating interest. His political career is treated as quite a sudsidiary thing, though there is a pretty story of how he made a big speech from the Treasury Bench and turned and asked Arthur Balfour how he had done. “Splendidly, Harry, splendidly!” said the then Prime Minister. “Did you understand me, Arthur?” “Not a word, Harry, not a word.” It T s about his life as hunting man, country squire and something of a society lion that the book is mainly concerned. The story of how he was nearly sent down from Oxford because lie kept eighteen hunters and the Dean thought he regarded his College as his hunting box, is pleasantly told, though not with quite the delightful racy humour with which I heard it from Harry Chaplin's own lips. In connection with his Oxford days, the volume now published gives a quaint photograph of the Bullingdon Cricket Club of which Harry Chaplin and the then Prince of Wales were both members. The portrait of the late King Edward as a boy shows an extraordinary resemblance between his features and the features of the present Prince of Wales. “HE FED THE HOUNDS!” The story of the wedding day elopement of Mr. Chaplin's fiancee with the spendthrift Lord Hastings is told authoritatively for the first time in this book. Harry Chaplin seems to have forgiven the lady completely, and even backed horses for her and carried on a mild flirtation with her. But he backed horses for others besides, and wa~ frequently called in by Queen Victoria when her horses were ill—suffering from pink eyes through over-feeding! Queen Alexandra, too, sought his advice about

her purchases. He was even consulted by the late Sir Augustus Harris when he was presenting the sporting melodrama.

‘“A Run of Luck,” at Drury Lane. Harry Chaplin thought Harris had better come down to Blankney to get his “1 cal colour,” and he was in. a box by the side of the author on the night of the first performance. Sir Augustus Harris turned proudly to ask if everything was correct. Mr. Chaplin fixed his eye-glass in his eye and at once a look cf norrer overspread his face. “Good God, man!” he said, surveying the hounds as they contentedly licked themselves on the stage after a meal of porridge, “Good God, man, the hounds have been fed!” LONDON’S MOSQUE. It is an amazing tiling that London, the cosmopolitan centre of the world, with its close touch with the East, has until now been without a mosque. Twenty years ago Liverpool boasted one, where the high priest was the Sheik Abdullah Quilliam, a local solicitor, and, from a balcony' squeezed between a cinema palace and a public-house, in one of the city's shoddiest suburbs, the Muezzin’s chant mingled with the humdrum gongs of electric trams. London’s new Mosque, opened last week-end by Sheik Abdul Qadir, one of the Indian delegation to the League of Nations, is set awry, so as to face Mecca, on a lawn among trees in Southfields. In front of it is a fountain at which the faithful may purify' themselves before entering, and a ladder leads London’s Muezzin to the Cockney' minarets whence his call of “Al Salat” will echo forth upon London’s night. Apart from strangers within our gates, there are many Moslems in London, and they include at least two members of the peerage. THE POETS’ GATHERING.

The Poetry Bookshop has now opened its doors to the public and has started its new life in its new home. J?he house warming ceremony is over, and the commerce of poetry starts again. And for this same ceremony of housewarming there was such a gathering of poets as one rarely hopes to see. There were young ones and old ones, famous poets, and poets famous in the cliques but unknown to the rest of the world, and there' were a few poets unknown even in the cliques. I understand on good authority' that there were even one or two persons present who are satisfied with reading other men’s poetry' without making their own. And all of them wore ancient flannel bags—for your present-day' poet makes a point of looking unlike one. To all these poets Mr. Harold Munro told the history of the bookshop in its old home in Theobold’s Road. How it was literally a home for poets, and how even Epstein took a room above the shop, claiming that he was “a poet in stone.” Mr. Munro hoped that the bookish air of the new home would be good for the poets; and then Mr. T. S. Eliot read us some of his own poems, and, with fitting ceremony' the shop was opened.

STILL GROWING ORCHIDS. A successful grower of orchids, like a really good cook, is born, not made, because the orchid is a delicate ■ ’ng only brought to fullest beauty by the man who fully understands its coy temperament. It is interesting, therefore, to find that the old man who produced every one of the orchids which used to adorn the buttonhole of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain is still practising his craft. He is now employed in Surrey by one of the many' magnates who have made that part of Surrey round Godaiming such a fashionable countryside. He now produces orchids for Mr. Joicey with the same delicate care that he used to grow them for Mr. Chamberlain. £lOO MOTOR CARS. I mentioned recently the experiments that were being made in this country' with a motor car of Hungarian invention, which it is hoped to put on the market at a price of rather less than £lOO. Now I am old that at least two other types are being developed, one of them British and the other, I think. French. One trembles to think what the state of the roads will be when these and probably other vehicles are available. Already' the situation is bad enough, and in places like Dorking, Guildford and Leatherhead on a Saturday or a Sunday evening, there are traffic blocks compared with which those of Piccadilly Circus or Wellington Street are a mere trifle. There is a controversy at present as to whether men or women drivers are the most of a nuisance to their fellows. As an onlooker I should be dis posed to say' that the answer is “Both.” DOORN JARS.

The ex-Kaiser's devoted entourage at Doorn, where fallen Majesty' maintains rigid Royal etiquette and surrounds itself with all the possible atmosphere of former Court days, is having a bad time. First of all the ex-Kaiser’s equanimity, never very robust, was terribly upset by the return of MSS. No publisher in Europe or America would look at a volume of sermons he proposed to put in circulation. A deadlier blow at his megalomania could not be imagined. After the price paid by' a United States firm for his first book after the war, the ex-Kaiser firmly believed that Mr. Bernard Shaw was a back number. And’ now the Royal exile has been driven nearly' demented by reading proof sheets of Admiral von Tirpitz’s forthcoming book, in which the great advocate of “frightfulness” bitterly attacks his former Emperor, and reveals some very damaging secrets of the 1914-18 period. . EX-KAISER AND DICKENS. In “My Early' Life,” by the ex-Ger-man Emperor, to be published later in the year, there is by the way' an interesting chapter which deals with his favourite authors. It is scarcely surprising to learn that the work he places in the forefront of the favourite booxs of his youth is “The German Fleet,” by' Admiral Werner. Even in those early’ days it is evident that lie was imbued with the spirit of civis Germanus sum. Other favourite authors of his youth were George Ebers, Crube, Dickens aiid Scott. It is rather surprising to find Dickens ineluded, and one opines that the writings of the English humorist can have had little influence on the future life of their august reader. One wonders which of Dickens’ characters most attracted the All-Highest. If the question were put to him to-day' lie would probably' say’ without hesitation “Mr. Micawber.” Perhaps we should not. take William Hohenzollern's early literary' preferences too seriously, however. for he admits “For the rest 1 (gobbled everything that fell into n lands.”