The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-04 00:00:00

111E7ROPOLITAiV GOSSIP-7hursday.

The town is full of scandal. First of all there is this lament-
able business of the Duke of Newcastle, which I referred
to in a former letter. There is no longer anything to be
gained by suppressing the name. The whole affair came
before the courts yesterday. That was then made public
to all the world which was pretty well known before in
West-end circles. The son of an honoured states
man bad fallen into hands which, before now, have
proved anything but helping hands. Unhappily
for him, be had visited a notorious sporting-man in the
neighbourhood of one of the most aristocratic squares
in London ; at whose house the wines are costly and the
viands choice, but where it is the guests who in the long
run have to pay—as that poor lad the Marquis of Hastings
and now the Duke of Newcastle have:learnt to their cost.
It is now seen why it was that the Duke never came for-
ward to the help of his brothers, who were compelled to
pass through the Bankruptcy Court. He, no less than
they, had fallen among a class which I nerd not
particularise. Fortunately for the Duke, he has a wise
wife who, having bad settled upon her the enormot
property which she inherited from her father, Mr. Henry
Hope, refuses to pay her husband's debts of honour. For-
tunately, too, he holds merely a life interest in a consider-
able portion of the property which belorged to the late
Duke, and Mr. Gladstone and I ord de Tab', ey have come for-
ward as trustees to protect the interests of the present Duke's
five young children (the eldest of whom is only seven years
old) against persons of the Padwick and Beyfus type. It
is to be hoped that the Earl, who has fallen into similar
straits, brit whose affairs have not yet been made public,
will find some deliverers of the same kind. But neither the
example of these noblemen, nor that of the Marquis of
Hastings, whose ruin was the talk of all the town this time last
year, seems to produce the smallest effect upon our jeunesse
doree. The marquis who perished at 26, the duke who is
ruieed at 35, another duke who had to sell his ancestral estates
as soon as he became of age, some three years ago, and all
the other young peers and aristocrats who have been more
or less hard hit, more or less entangled in the cruel web of
sporting "gentlemen"—all these examples have no more
effect upon the rest of the peerage and the baronetage
than the scorched and lifeless bodies of the moths around
a lamp have upon their fellow-moths.
However, i is not only the blue blood that thus runs to
waste. At the very time that London is full of these
miserable stories we are told of a collection being raised to
buy an annuity for the unfortunate Railway King, who
is in beggary ; and that the Prince of Wales has hired for
Ascot week Cooper's Hill, the seat of Mr. Albert Grant,
late M.P. for Kidderminster. Mr. Grant as he
chose to be called, Herr Gottheircer as his name
really was, was one of the great financiers who, having gone
up like a rocket during 1865, came down like a stick in
1866. His old constituents did not covet the honour of
being represented by him, and so he ceased to he M.P. at
the dissolution of the last Parliament. As for Cooper's
Hill, I know every inch of it. It was formerly tenanted
by Sir J. Cathcart, brother of the general who was killed
at Inkermann. It is a most charming spot, about
half-way between Egham and Virginia Water. At its
foot lies Runnymede, where Magna Charta was signed,
and from its summit Sir John Denham—"the majestic
Denham," as Pops called him—wrote his poem " Cooper's
Hill," which contains that well known couplet in which
he expressed his wish that his poetry might he like the
Thames :

Though deep, yt t clear; though gentle, yet not dull ;
Strong without rage ; without o'ertlowing full.

Unfortunately my chronicle of scandal does not end
here. There are innumerable rumours of divorce suits,
in which some of the highest names will figure. Of these
it is safest to say nothing more. But the most grievous
scandal is the banquet which was given at St. James's
Hall, by a notorious woman of the town, whose photo-
graph figures in all the shop windows among those of
bishops and statesmen. Though the tickets were
£lO a head, they were eagerly bought by our
young nobles, who crowded to the place where
immodesty reigned supreme in the persons of the
chief members of the clemi-monde. Tbe hostess bad the
audacity on another occasion to seat herself in an opera
box just Opposite that in which the Prince and the Princess
of Wales were sitting, and the Prince was so indignant
:that he declared he would never enter the Opera again if
such an insult 'were repeated.
• This has been a gay week. While the Queen has disap-
peared from public view, as is her wont during the height
of the season and the sitting of Parliament, the Prince and
the Princess of "Wales, invigorated by their late journey,
have been attending concerts,theatres, exbibitions,and horse
shows with wonderful energy. Londoners may see them
any day driving at a rapid pace through the streets, while
excited policemen call upon ordinary vehicles to get out
of the way, which command, as they were not in the way,
the ;rebus very wisely disregard. Yesterday afternoon I
Was at a great flower show at South Kensington Gardens.
It was a really magnificent spectacle. Thousands upon
thousands of the elite were gathered together sitting on the
slopes, listening to the two military bands" which played
alternately, or strolling through the arcades wherein the
.azaleas, roses, and orchids shone forth with many-coloured
lustre. But the great sight of all was the huge tent filled
with American plants, chiefly azaleas and rhododendrons,
in full flower. The ground inside the tent is laid out in
miniature hills and dales, and the view seen from one of
the eminences is the most fairy-like it is possible to
imagine. The whole of the plants were transplanted
thither, for the special purpose of the show,. by