Widnes Examiner. — 1886-06-05 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

THE FXAMINER. SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1886  the various dinner tables. As all were in uniform their arrival added unusual brilliancy to a scene remarkable in the quietest times. I did not see Mr. Gladstone there; but Mrs. Gladstone, in her very best dress, with quite unusual display of diamonds, came moderately early and stayed late. From eleven o'clock till midnight the crowd was enormous. It took an hour to make the journey from the foot of the staircase to the principal room. But there was no crush.ing or struggling for places. It was as well to be on the staircase as anywhere else. There was light, and warmth and music and flowers, and ever i changing company. The average number of invitations issued for receptions at the Foreign Office is I 2,000. On Saturday 2,400 were invited, and I fancy there were not many refusals of what is, perhaps, take it for all in all, the principal event of the London season.  The personal animosity towards Mr. Gladstone, always latent in Conservative circles, has at the present moment blazed forth with periodic intensity. As usual,during one of these outbursts of impotent terror, good Conservatives comfort each other with the most ludicrous stories. I remember during the Russo-Turkish war, when Mr. Disraeli was displaying his "spirited foreign policy," an article appeared in a Turkish newspaper giving a circumstantial account of Mr. Gla4stone's parentage, showing how his father was a pork butcher, with many details of domestic life calculated to be little a man who made such a fuss about the murder of a few thousand Bulgarians. There is a story told by Conservatives just now which shows how one touch of nature makes the ignorant Turk and the educated Englishman kin. It is cited upon the authority of a noble lord, who, being a dinner guest with Mr. Gladstone, had the opportunity of Inventing the scandal. After dinner, says the noble lord, he saw Mr. Gladstone retire into one of the recesses of the drawing-room and with excited gesticulations mutter "Power ! Power !" Mrs. Gladstone, observing him, came up, took him by the arm and quietly led him out of the room. This childish nonsense seems incredible when set forth in sober print. But the story was gravely related to me as a matter of fact by one of Lord Hartington's supporters in the House of Commons -who had heard it in the Conservative circles he frequents. They "would not say Mr. Gladstone is in a dangerously excitable condition ; but this incident is.very strange." Which truly it is. The political stress has told sadly on the unfortunate race of artists. We are now at the end of the first week of June, the season is in full swing, the Academy is crowded, but the sales have been fewer than in any former year. The loss falls—as such losses always do—on those who can least bear it. The strong men, Millais, and Leighton, and Tadema and Hook, have got better prices than they would have got a dozen years ago, and have had no difficulty in selling the contents of their studios. But the lesser lights of the art world are threatened with extinction. For the last ten days, and they Are the most important ten days at the Academy, no one could tell when a General Election might come to make trade stagnant and to disturb the minds of art patrons from that quiet enjoyment which preludes an offer or a bid. Oddly enough, however, Rubenstein has been a sweeping success. It, was thought Liszt, coming first, would have swept all the amateurs clean, but the Russian has conquered, and the doors have been beseiged on the days of his concerts. Time has told more upon his face than on his playing. He has grown old anthugly. He used to look like a sort of a Japanese Beethoven, picturesque and moody. Now he looks barbaric and outlandish. When he was last here, me had a sort of idea one had met him before on a teapot or on a China bowl. Now, in his black clothes and very thick boots, he looks like a kind of savage schoolmaster. His success has been one of the features of a season that opened badly and promises to end worse.