rville, who now appears in the daily press rather
frequently under his flying name of Francis Lord. There is a
great row on between the papers owned by Lord Cholme (known as
the Stunt Press) and the few other miserable rags which try to
survive. I don't pretend to know what it's all about. There is,
you know, an Aerial Telephone Company, promoted by Cholme and a
lot of other guinea-pigs. Carville, I believe, wanted shares, or
a seat on the board, or something, if he flew to America under
their auspices. You know how jealously these moneyed people
guard the sources of their wealth. Anyhow, negotiations hung
fire, for Carville has D'Aubigne quite under his influence, and
nothing could be done with the aeroplane or the patents until
these two came in somehow. The rival newspapers go it blind, and
sling all sorts of journalistic mud about. I won't bore you with
it in a Xmas letter. What I was going to say was about Carville
himself. He simply says 'No!' and goes on with his (to him)
intensely interesting '_affaires_.' And here is one of those
coincidences, as the old lady at the post-office calls them. I
was at an at-home in Chelsea one Sunday not long ago, and met a
Mrs. Hungerford, Carville's grand _bien-aimee_, on and off, for
a long time. She had recently married a wealthy Australian, who
was also present, a large, subdued creature. My hostess was Mrs.
Chase, the wealthy widow who married poor Enderby Chase the
artist. I forget whether you ever met them. Superb woman, fit to
be a duchess, though she says her ideal existence is to be an
artist's wife, and she has an astonishing house on Cheyne Walk,
with stabling for nine horses on the ground floor, and a
stupendous yellow family victoria that Watkyns calls a
Sarsaparilla waggon. Chase died a few years ago, you know, and
his widow has elevated his memory into a sort of cult. She
bought in all his really good pictures--dreary landscapes of the
Smeary School!--and instead of framing them, she has had them
panelled into the walls of the salon. I know this is the right
way to 'hang' pictures, but I'll be hanged if I like it. I kept
thinking of chocolate boxes! I suppose the walnut wainscotting
gave me the idea. One of Enderby's pictures, his one-time famous
_Astarte_, though he knew no more about _A