ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 277, 22 November 1899, Page 3

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

(From Cur London Correspondent.")

LONDON, October 21, 1599

I fear that the mission to this country of Mrs Marcus Clarke is turning out- somewhat unfortunately. The big publishers don't care to father short stories which have been Issued elsewhere (even years ago in Australia), and the remaining fragments by the deceased author in his widow's possession are said to be scarcely worth making up into a voiume. However, the whole M!SS have now been submitted to the Authors' Society, who are reviewing them carefully, and as they are exceedingly well disposed towards .Mrs Clarke they may be trusted to do whatever can be done with the material. I fear this poor lady must have been very badly advised in Melbourne. For an expenditure of a couple of guineas and postage she could have cheaply reached the point which it has now cost her a journey of 14,000 miles and pots of money to attain. In order to lay her husband's literary remains before MacMillan's or Hutchinson's, or the Authors' Society, there was really not the smallest occasion for her 'to accompany them. The business could have been easily and inexpensively arranged by post. Of course, however, Mrs Marcus Clarke didn't believe that. She seems to have been extraordinarily sanguine of being able to do great things over here personally, and I fear ignorant or thoughtless friends encouraged this notion. Unfortunately, too, Mr W. .1. Clarke, who had a good berth in the West Australian Government employ, recklessly threw it up in order to accompany his mother nnd his sister. He is now looking about, for work of some kind in London. The whole family seem, indeed, to have trusted to poor Marcus Clarke's parcel of oddments as though it were a literary Goleonda, and their present awakening is conseqneatly the more unpleasant.

Mrs Marcus Clarke will return to her billet in Australia in December by the Orizaba, but the son and daughter must find work here. The proceeds of the Melbourne benefit only covered passages Home, and "His Natural Life," though stilt yielding a small yearly income, does not run to European tours. So far as this country is concerned, Marcus Clarke is a "single speech Hamilton," No one knows of him except as the author of the powerful but dismal novel which earned him fame, and I therefore fear 'tis hopeless even to suggest sending round the hat on his widow's behalf. The case, too, does not seem one for public interference. Mrs Clarke had and has a good berth in Melbourne. The friends who so foolishly advised her to set off on such a very dubious errand must just put their hands in their pockets and aid her back home. A few literary folk here may possibly be also willing to subscribe something, but it must be remembered we have very many similar eases of our own to look to.

Admiral Colomb, who died last week end, was till recently a stock dish at the Colonial Institute, and cropped up with his hobbies in all sorts and conditions of debates. He was- the inventor of the flashing- signals, by means of which the ships of a modern fleet communicate with one another in the night. He was also the author of a "Manual of Fleet Evolutions," and he was so keen a naval controversalist that his frequent and lengthy communications to the "Times" earned him the nickname of "Colomb and a half." "Now that he is gone," says the "Times," "it will not be long, perhaps, before we appreciate all that we have lost in him, and begin to long for even 'half a Colomb.'" It is a pathetic fact, it now appears, that on the very day of his death the Admiral was writing, not half a Colomb, but two Colombs at least on his pet subject of night signalling at sea. The

unfinished manuscript was found on his desk, and was forwarded by his brother, Sir John Colomb, to .the "Times," in which it appears this morning. More pathetic still, the last paragraph of the letter contains a request that the Board of Trade will "kindly restore to the code of night signals it is about to issue the original title which that system bore, and to call it 'Admiral Colomb's Flashing Signals,'" and concludes: "This in-

vent ion or discovery does not deserve to be dissociated from the nationality or from the name of the man who made it, not as a flash of inspiration, but. by dint of hard work, anxiety, worry beyond telling, and certainly by the loss of all professional recognition 01 reward."