Publications, Newspaper Cuttings, Photographs and Correspondence about Persia and the Persian Gulf [‎356r] (716/879)

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903 3
A remarkable amount of interest was taken in
the opening of the new Gaiety Theatre on Monday.
The King and Queen were both present. The public
desire to attend was so great that a man took up
his position at the gallery entrance as early as
five o’clock in the morning. He was soon follow
ed by ladies, and the Company increased through-
out the day, heavy rain being powerless to oust
them The piece presented was a new musical
play entitled The Orchid Look, by J. T. Tanner,
the music being by Ivan Caryll, Lionel Monckton,
and Paul Rubens. The play is of the usual Gaiety
stamp.
This week’s race meeting at Newmarket has
been fortunate in the matter of weather, only one
day being wet, but the sport on the whole has been
very poor. The principal event was the Cam
bridgeshire, which afforded only a tame race,
although twenty-seven horses ran. Captain
Forester’s Hackler’s Pride won easily from Mr. J.
Hammond’s Burses. Third honours were secured
by Lord Howard de Walden’s Kilglass. The
best two-year-olds were not out for the Dow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. -
hurst Plate, but in the earlier races that most
successful filly, Pretty Polly, added two to her
successes.
General Reginald Quintin Mainwaring, late
I Madras Staff Corps, died on Wednesday at his resi-
idence at Bath. He entered the Army in 1845,
I became Major-General in 1886, Lieutenant-Gen ral
gin 1890, and General in 1894. Mr. Alexander
"Elliot Russel, late of the Bengal Civil Service, died
| on Tuesday at his residence in Hampshire, aged 77.
; He served in Bengal under the old Company from
2 1845 to 1871.
LATER.
: Turkish feeling is markedly hostile to the Reform
i scheme. The Council of Ministers is unlikely to
1 accept it.
। ■ It is reported that the Unionist Free Food League
’ has split into sections headed by the Duke of
Devonshire and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach respec-
i tively.
A further plot to avenge King Alexander and
Queen Draga has been discovered in Servia, and
officers have been arrested at Belgrade.
Better news comes from Bilbao. The workmen
have asked for two days in which t a come to an
agreement.
903 3
A remarkable amount of interest was taken in
the opening of the new Gaiety Theatre on Monday.
The King and Queen were both present. The public
desire to attend was so great that a man took up
his position at the gallery entrance as early as
five o’clock in the morning. He was soon follow
ed by ladies, and the Company increased through-
out the day, heavy rain being powerless to oust
them. The piece presented was a new musical
play entitled The Orchid book, by J. T. Tanner,
the music being by Ivan Caryll, Lionel Monckton,
and Paul Rubens. The play is of the usual Gaiety
stamp.
This week’s race meeting at Newmarket has
been fortunate in the matter of weather, only one
day being wet, but the sport on the whole has been
very poor. The principal event was the Cam
bridgeshire, which afforded only a tame race,
although twenty-seven horses ran. Captain
I Forester’s Hackler’s Pride won easily from Mr. J.
| Hammond’s Burses. Third honours were secured
by Lord Howard de Walden’s Kilglass. The
best two-year-olds were not out for the Dew-
hurst Plate, but in the earlier races that most
successful filly, Pretty Polly, added two to her
successes.
General Reginald Quintin Mainwaring, late
Madras Staff Corps, died on Wednesday at his resi
dence at Bath. He entered the Army in 1845,
became Major-General in 1886, Lieutenant-Gen ral
in 1890, and General in 1894. Mr. Alexander
Elliot Russel, late of the Bengal Civil Service, died
on Tuesday at his residence in Hampshire, aged 77.
He served in Bengal under the old Company from
1845 to 1871.
LATER.
Turkish feeling is markedly hostile to the Reform
scheme. The Council of Ministers is unlikely to
accept it.
■ It is reported that the Unionist Free Food League
has split into sections headed by the Duke of
Devonshire and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach respec-
tively. .
A further plot to avenge King Alexander and
Queen Draga has been discovered in Servia, and
officers have been arrested at Belgrade.
Better news comes from Bilbao. The workmen
have asked for two days in which to come to an
agreement.
A RUSSIAN TRAVELLER IN
PERSIA.
We should know little enough of the intellectual
life of other lands, save for the kindly mediation of
the translator. It would almost seem as if, even
in the Twentieth Century, the nations still develop
ed in water-tight compartments. Who in the
English-speaking world is aware that, for some
time past, there has been in Russian a work of
almost classic excellence and importance upon
Persia, by M. Lomnitzky or Lomnitsky, called
Pisma is Persii or “Letters from Persia, 1898-
1899 ”? The Continent is inevitably somewhat
closer to Russia than is England ; and cultured
little Switzerland has always been the cos
mopolitan land. It is to four recent numbers of a
French-Swiss magazine that we owe, not indeed,
a complete translation of M. Lomnitskys" Per
sian Letters," but a “ reasoned abridgment " of
100 p ges, together with a running commentary
chiefly devoted to correcting the Russian writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. 's
unreasoning hatred of England There is here
so much good matter that most of it must, in
any case, be omitted. We will, therefore, with
regret, pass over M. Lomnitsky’s personal ad
ventures, which were more human than those of
many travellers ; pass over his Anglophobia, for
the most part, and his minor social observations,
in order to be able to concentrate upon his
large conclusions as to the position and prospects
of the antique, the always tottering, yet persistent,
Empire of the Lion and the Sun.
Persia seems to M. Lomnitsky, as we shall see
later, to be by no means without a possible power
of recuperation and rejuvenation Meanwhile,
the minds of the people are congealed, bewitched,
almost as completely as is the case with the
Chinese. Racially they are so much nobler than
the Chinese, at least so much better looking and
closer to ourselves ; yet they lack the unpleasant
but useful hardness, the real power of survival in
a competition, of the individual Chinese, who have
been compared to so many crustaceans in his
very admirable recent History of Oreec-, Pro
fessor Bury has some notable remarks upon the
singular weakness of character, the unintellectu-
ality of the ancient Persians even in their conquer
ing days, which compelled them t > receive an
imprint from their subject peoples, which quickly
made them, despite their pure Aryan blood, the
representatives of the worst Semitic tracts. In
twenty-five centuries the Persians have not essen-
tially altered, save by the infusion, from Arabia,
of the virus of religious fanaticism. This same re-
ligion of M homed, with its omnipresent, omnipo
tent ministers, the mouchteids, the mullahs, and
the seid», who ride the nation as in a nightmare, is
what seemed toM. Lomnitsky the greatest obstacle
to the regeneration of Persia It is not so much
that the Koran is necessarily reactionary, as that
it is persistently construed in that sense. We hear
very much about the ceremonial word pedjis, “ im-
pure, ” or “ defiled, ” which must get upon
the nerves of the European in Persia as much
as the foolish Marathi verb ale" (batane), with
a similar meaning, sometimes does with Anglo-
Indians The word pedjis, with its connotations,
has been invented by the Persian priests within
quite recent generations, as a weapon wherewith to-
strike at all foreign innovations. It is enough tor
an article, an individual, a custom, to be called
nediis to be withered as if by the Papal anathema
of the Middle Ages. M. Lomnitsky gives quite a
marvellous, yet probably accurate account, of how
the English tobacco monopoly of some years ago