Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1904 — Right From Old London. [ARTICLE]

Right From Old London.

Augustus Phillips, the celebrated and very suooessful actor, ‘Gus” to everybody at his old home here, arrived Thursday afternoon for a visit of two or three weeks with bis father Simon Phillips, and other relatives. He still is the leading man in the Spooner Stock Company, in the Bijou, Brooklyn’s biggest and most popular theater. He has plenty of ohanoes to take a leading plaoe in more pretentious traveling companies, but he has no present intentions of making a change. He and his company are very popular in Brooklyn, and this popularity bears tangible fruit in the way of pecuniary returns for Gus to the extent of up towards $l5O or so every week. He has just returned from his seoond summer trip to Europe, this time having gone alone, partly to reouperate his health. He spent about two weeks in London and oleaned up everything of interest he did not see last year. This also included a trip to Stratford on Avon, Sbakspeare’s birthplace and home, whioh was about the most interesting part of his trip. The plaoe is all devoted to the memory of Shakespeare, and all the buildings nearly are of the time he lived there. This includes the house he lived in, Ann Hathaway’s house, an old ohuroh built in 1400, and many other very old buildings. In the rear of Shakespeare’s house in a garden in whioh specimens of every flower named in his works, are cultivated. In London he also met and hobnobbed with such great actors as Beerbohra Tree, Sir Henry Irving and Lewis Waller. After his London visit Guss spent two weeks in Paris and thinks it the gayest and most beautiful oity on earth. He spent lots of time with Unole Jaok Gowdy, the oelebrated Ameiioan Consul General at Paris, and great all-around citizen of the world, and ex-Hoosier politician and raiser of big steers. "Oom” Jaok talked muoh of old Rensselaer friends near whioh town he was raised, and where he still has some relatives and countless admirers. He sent his good wishes for everybody here, and to his speoial old friend Uncle Bimon Phillips, he sent one of his latest photographs, showing him to be a slick and smooth-shaved Parisian, with not a trace left of the wide-flowing whiskers whioh that used to wave in the winds of Rush oounty, Indiana.

While at the consulate Gus met still another noted man who was raised near Rensselaer. It was Hon. Geo. W. Paris, of Terre Haute, former congressman from his distrlot, and who is making a a big European trip. At Paris Gus saw all the great palaoes, galleries, parks, museums, eto. The Petit Trianon, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lived, before their heads were ohopped off. Their royal ooaoh; Napoleon’s tomb and numberless of his personal rslios, and any amount more, which we have not space now to enumerate* But especially the famous morgue of Paris, so graphically described in "Trilby” and whioh he had a speoial interest in, for his having so often appeared as Svengali, In the play of Trilby. Gus, by the way, has never appeared in any of Shakespeare’s plays, and will make his first venture in that line in October, when he will appear as Romeo, in "Borneo and Juliet.” He expeots to stay here perhaps three weeks, but may out it down to two in order to aooompany Mrs, Spooner and her daughters to the world’s fair. They are now at their old home in lowa.