The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-19 00:00:00

The Confederate Bazaar at Liverpool.

Yesterday a magnificent bazaar in aid of the Southern
Prisoners' Relief Fund was opened at St. George's Hall,
Liverpool. A number of aristocratic and fashionable ladies
of Southern birth or proclivities presided at stalls named
after the various Confederate States. The amount of pro-
perty on the stalls was of unusual vat iety, magnificence,
and value, and as the attendance of visitors almost impeded
locomoticn, the bazaar, which will last for four days longer,
will prove very profitable.
The committee of the Southern Club, by whom the un-
dertaking has been originated, and who have buckled to
their work with their wonted energy, especially disclaim
laving any political object in view. The motive which
has actuated them is one of a far higher and more philan •
thropic character; it is that of ministering to the bodily
wants of men who have been st uck down amid the shock
of contending armies, and who have been laid prostrate
while exhibiting the virtues of bravery and heroism.
Great have been the preparations to make the bazaar one
of the most attractive and magnificent ;ever witnessed, and
the issue bide fair to be a signal success.
Some months have elapsed since the announcement of
the intention of the organisation of the project was first
made public, and since then no effirt has been wanting to
realise the fondest hopes of its promoters. The members of
the Southern Club—numbering s )me of the leading men
not only in the busy port of Liverpool. but in the kingdom
—have entered right heartily into the spirit of the thing,
and many a fair and aristocratic hand has for some time
past been busily plying the needle in order to produce for
the stalls something rich and rare for the occasion. Ar-
ticles of every description have been poured upon the exe-
cutive committee in superabundance, and so far as fancy
work is concerned, perhaps the splendid hall never before
witnessed so motley and yet so choice an array, But while
the ornamental occupies a conspicuous place, the useful has
by no means been forgotten, for goods of every description
crowd the numerous stalls, not only from all parts of Eng-
land, but from Rome, Paris, Canada, the Southern States
of America, and even from New York itself contributions
have been received, the contributors feeling that the object
of the movement is in no respect political, but is strictly
confined to a purpose in which every benevolent mind may
well delight to share. The master mind of the undertaking
has undoubtedly been the hon. secretary, and the most able
champion of the Southern cause—Mr -James Spence ; and
that gentleman has shown himself as fruitful of resource,
and as ready at organising an undertaking of this sort, as
he is scathing and powerful with his pen. Mr Spence has,
too, had most zealous and willing coa :jutors, for Mr C. K.
Prioleau, the hon, treasurer, Mr Charles Stoese, Mr Older-
shaw, Mr Forwood, Mr F. Hull, and the members of the
executive committee generally have not been a whit less
indefatigable than he.

Towards the object for which the bazaar is to be held
upwards of £7,500 have been received in subscriptions;
and that sum is likely to be increased daily for some time
to come, and the presents of goods have, to say the least,
been on a scale of equal magnitude. Of the 1,500 season
tickets of 7e. 60. each issued, more than 1,400 were sold.
The names of the patronesses aro the following :—11.1.H.
the Princess Murat, the Marchioness of Lothian, the Mar-
chioness of Bath, Maria, Marchioness of Aylesbury, La
Marquis de Montmort, the Countess of Chesterfield, the
Countess of Tankerville, Lady Mildred Beresford-Hope,
Lady Rosa Greville, the Countess Bentivoglio, Lady
Georgiana Fano, Lady Eustace Cecil, Lady Wharncliffe,
Hoghton, Lady Anson, Lady Eardley, Mrs.
La Viscomtesso de Dampierre, La Baronne de Longueuil,
Lady de
Horsfall, Liverpool ; Mrs. Laird, Birkenhead ; Mrs.
Akroyd, Halifax; Mrs. J. It. Callender, Manchester; Mrs.
Collie,, Glasgow. Lord and
Lady w London
ncliffo and the Countess of Chesterfield are to
oanr ; and Mrs. B.annao
take part in the baz:►ar, and during their stay they will join
the
aEarinl Sand
a t heCoduennt, and the prlbiyo Hon, "INC-Pr 71a1ey. Lord Camp-
bellson, the Confe-
derate States Minister, aro here too, and the guests of Mr.
James Spence, Abercromby-square. Mr. A. J. Beresford-
Hope and Lady Mildred Beresford-Hope will stay with Mr.
and Mrs. Frederick Hull, Rodney-street, while Sir Richard
and Lady de Hoghton will be located at the A.delphi
Hotel.

The executive committee of the bazaar consists of about
30 gentlemen, and of these the following htive respective
departments allotted to them : —Mr. Charles K. Prioleau,
finance; Mr. James Spence, stalls and general manage-
ment; Mr. Trapmann and Mr. Charles Stoess, music and
refreshments ; Mr. Oldershaw and Mr. John Sailers, recep-
tion ; and Mr. A. B. Forwood, amusements.

Rumor, COLLEGE.—On Friday last the Fel
lows of Balliol College, Oxon, came to a resolution which
will thenceforward admit Roman Catholic undergraduates
to that great and learned society.

DARING BURGLARY AND OUTRAGE IN ESSEX.—
The quiet village of Woodford, in Essex, has just
been the scene of a daring burglary and attempt to murder
a policeman, which it is to be feared may prove fatal. A
farmer named Joseph Kemsley, whose land stands by the
side of the Woodford-bridge-road, lives in a somewhat re-
tired spot, with his two daughters, near Woodford, and at
about half-past 11 o'clock on Friday night last the two
young women were suddenly awakened by three men
dressed as labourers, with crape over their faces, and other-
wise disguised. They threatened them with instant death
if they raised any alanr. One of the ruffilna held
a pistol to the head of ono of the girls, and,
with a heavy bludgeon in the other hand, so terrified them
with imprecatins and throats that they both fainted, and
remained unconscious for some considerable time. The bur-
glars took advantage of the helpless condition of the girls
to possess themselves of a small gold watch (maker's name,
Hall, Romford), with gold key attached, a French silver
watch with plain silver guard, two sloth wide-a-wake hats,
one black and the other brown, about £4 in gold, and 9s. in
bilver. While th,y were ransacking the house a man
servant who slept up-stairs heard them, but was afraid to
venture down or to give any alarm, but a policeman named
Delerbertanche, No, 146 K, observing an unusual moving
about of lights in the house, managed to effect an
entrance, and met the ruffians in the parlour, just as they
were about to open the chiffonniere. The three burglars
set upon the unfortunate policeman, and beat him severely
about the head and body. They then degamped, and the
man in the house did not stir from his room or make any
endeavour to raise an alarm, and the poor fellow who had
been so grieviously ill-treated lay there weltering in his
blool fur a considerable time, until ho was found by the
sergeant of police and another patrol. He was conveyed to
the police-station, where he at present remains in such a
dangerous state that, erysipelas having supervened, his
death is expected.

THE DAVENPORT BROTHERS.

On View, at the Hanover-square Booms.
Last evening, between seventy and eighty gentle-
men, connected with the London Press, assembled at
the Hanover-square Rooms, for the purpose of eves
mining into the nature and peculiarities of a Mystic
Display, which has for several weeks past been pro-
minent among the miscellaneous town-talk of the
metropolis. Following Mr Home succeeding
Mr Forster there have come to us, quite
as a matter of course (like those two renowned
personages) from Amerioa•—a whole group of—
we can't precisely say Wise Men from the East,
but thwever-you-may-like-to-call-them from the
West. A whole ouster of American Exhibitors—
Exhibitors of they don't know what! The enter-
prising young gentleman who is the Barnum of the
occasion, being, just as you may please to call him,
a holy or an unholy Palmer. The Spokesman of
the Performers, who talks to us in front of a move-
able wooden cupboard, raised upon tressles,
is our old friend (with a new and decidedly
Yankee face) Mr Ferguson. And—listening to him
as he talks, and looking at the structure about
which he is talking—we very soon discover that
Mr Ferguson don't lodge there—he only discourses
about it. There is a Fay, too, we should observe,
but it happens to be a veritable, substantial
flesh-and-blood Fay, among these choice spirits
recently imported to England from America.
And last, but not least, there are those two
—how shall we designate them P—serious
speechless Dromios, the Brothers Davenport.
Any exhibition at once moreclumsy or more childish
we never remember to have witnessed. The pro-
ceedings were from first to last simply preposterous.
They were—at any rate according to our estimate
of them--nothing less than an insult to the com-
mon sense of every rational auditor and of every
sane spectator in the room. During nearly two
mortal hours we endured the tedium and absurdity
of these most ridiculous demonstrations. The
puerile character of these demonstrations has too
frequently and elaborately been described, by Mr.
Dion Boucicault and others, to require that it should
be here once more minutely delineated. The
displays, such as they are, have become
by this time little less than notorious.
They are vulgar to the last degree of vulga-
rity. They are noisy, blatant, and ridiculous.
A sufficiently intelligent observer among those
present last evening—not a savant, lot us observe,
not a philosopher, merely a writer of penny serial
publications very well known "down Whitechapel
way"—neither a Professor Owen nor a Professor
Faraday—simply Mr. 0. W. M. Reynolds, of
Reynolds's Newspaper and Reynolds's Miscellany
—threw out a capital suggestion by way of test,
namely, that the Brothers Davenport, besides being
strongly bound by cords, twisted and knotted about
their wrists and ancles, folded across their knees
and fixed to the bench upon which they
arc seated, should be tied up likewise
at their wrists and aneles, and so on—with
packthread ! Let them, ho argued, be so twined
about with bonds of packthread, as well as with
strong cord, and if—after the tumult of discordant
sounds, emanating from the closed structure—the
packthread proved, upon the opening of the doors,
again, to be still unbroken—he would believe, but
not till then, that the Brothers Davenport them-
selves had nothing whatever to do with these demon.
strations With the tinkling of the guitar strings,
the rattling and thumping of the tambourine,
the jingling of the muffin bell, the scraping of
the fiddle and the clanging of the trumpet ! A
shrewd and reasonable proposition enough in itself,
but one that—as a matter of course—was not
acceded to !
Among other rather significant circumstances
noticeable in connection with these singularly
stupid, tedious, and contemptible performance e, the
following are worthy of being particularised by
reason of their very obvious significance. The
Brothers Davenport, for example, while to all Bp-
pe.arance quietly seated inside the cabinet, bound
hand and toot, after each tumultuous clamour of
fiddle, trumpet, belt, guitar, and tambourine, upon
the opening of the doors, though still seated quietly
and as strongly corded as ever, proved, upon
being scrutinized through a lorgnette, to he
absolutely streaming with perspiration! Indicative,
as it appeared to us, of violent muscular exertion
on their part during the very interval of their
apparent quieecense ! Again--when it is borne i❑
mind, that upon the fourth or fifth time of their
being shut into the cabinet (bound hand and foot)
upon the re-opening of the door of the structure,
a few micutes afterwards, the cords are found to be

lying in a loose bundle at their feet—themselves
unbound ! And when—still later on—the doors

being closod, while the cords lay in:a loose heap
between the feet of the two unbound brothers,

a few minutes afterwards—on the flying open of
the doors, the two men were found:strongly corded
up, bound hand and foot. each to the bench upon
which he was seated—is not the conclusion to be
arrived at perfectly transparent ? Namely, that as
they can be released from the cords (no matter how)
at that stage of the performance, and then fastened

up again securely (no matter by what agency) they
might, they obviously were released from thoir
bondage upon each of the previous occasions when

the musical instruments were agitated—resuming
their fritters in time enough to appear manacled
as before when the clamour had ceased.

Seeing that the principal mystery Oa disant) of
,he whole of this very ludicrous exhibition consists

,n the tying and untying of these same amiable

Brothers Davenport—the question requiring to be
solved in their regard is at tho least, it may be
allowed, a knotty question. All that seems to be
_ _

needed by them is—what wo, for one, should
certainly bo disposed to allow them—namely—rope
enough.

Fastensd tightly hand and foot in a sitting posi-
tion, immediately confronting each other, inside
the wooden structure (profanely spoken of, more
than once, by the American Showmen as a
Tabernacle) the Brothers Davenport there,
when entirely concealed from view by the
simple fact of the three doors of this ridi

culous clothes-press or wardrobe-upon.legs being
fastened from within by sliding bolts (the two
side ones by the nimble fingers of their long-armed
exhibitor or showman, Mr Ferguson—the centre
one through the audible snapping of the sliding
bolt by, how shall we express it ? some very Odd
Force, or by the agency of some exceedingly
materialistic spiritualism)—tbe Messrs Davonport
there and then went through (such as
they were) their nonsensical performances.
If we were seriously challenged to explain bow the
whole thing
was managed by them—taunted per-
haps precisely as Sam Weller was taunted under

cross-examination in the famous case of Bardell v.

_ .
Pickwick, with ‘,
Haven't you got eyes, Mr Weller?'
—we should be disposed to reply with Sam at once
to the taunt and the challenge—" That's jest where
it is, my lord. If ye 'd a double pair o' patent
magnifiers—ye might perhaps see through a deal
board or two, and so forth, but having only eyes,
you see—and using thcse even last night in a

... _
darkened room, with the gas lowered—our wision's
limited."

GENERAL GARIBALDI.— rhe is following an ex-
tract from a letter addressed to the Glasgow Herald
by Mr Robert M'Tear :—" Having just returned from a
visit to General Garibaldi at Caprera, I think it a ill be
gratifying to the public to learn the latest authentic news
from the ' Island of the &a.' I found the general in per-
fect health, the wound being completely healed, and without
pain, but leaving a stiffness in the ankle joint, rendering it
necessary to have recourse to the carved oak staff sent him
by a Glasgow working man, and which is now his constant
companion. The general desired that I should inform his
friends in Scotland that the primary object of his coming to
Britain was to visit Glasgow, and that ho would not rest
satisfied until ho had performed that most pleasing duty,
which he hoped to accomplish next year if events in Italy
permitted. In regard to his so suddenly leaving England,
and the controversy which ensued about it, he assured me
that, whatever ho might have said or felt in the heat of the
moment, he is now convinced that it was owing to no pres-
sure from foreign powers, but entirely out of consideration
for his health ; awl he said that,
instead of showing any
cowardice regarding him, Palmerston, Russell, and Glad-
stone bad shown the greatest courage, and had heaped
honours upon him. He said, " Gladstone has been too good
a friend to Italy te be suspected for a moment."