ODDS AND ENDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 16 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

FROM LAMPTON TO MEUX. STAGE FAVOURITE'S RISE. A KIPLING STORY. (By S. SAUNDERS.) Admiral of the Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, whose death was announced from London last week, has practically s/'pped out of tie memory oT people at ti'-js end of the vorld, mainly owing to his change of u-ime in 1911 irvm Lamb-fc-.n fo the one he bore during the less adventurous years of his active life, pro-, perly pronounced, 1 understand, as Mouse. Sir Hedworth was the third son of the second Earl of Durham, and, therefore, a grandson of the first earl, John George Lambton, who left Eton at the age of 19 to spend two years in the Dragoons before entering the House of Commons as Whig member for the County of Durham. This precocious youth was not merely a pawn in the hands of the politicians, and though at a later stage he may have received some patronage from his father-in-law, the Earl of Grey of our school books, who instigated the impeachment of Wara-en Hastings and piloted the Reform Bill through the House of Lords, he had plenty of initiative and courage of his own. But that is another story. Our present concern is with Sir Hedworth Meux, whose career in itself makes a very impressive catalogue, as it appears in' "Who' 3 Who," with but a scant regard for chronology. "Born in .1856," it runs, "married, 1910, Viscountess Chelsea, nee Hon. Mildred Sturt, daughter of Lord Alington, and widow of Viscount Chelsea; entered .n,avj- % 1870; Captain, 1889;' Admiral of Fleet, 1915; served bombardment of Alexandra and Egyptian war; private secretary to First Lord of Admirality, 1894-97; manded Naval Brigade in La&ysmifti; South Africa; contested Newcastle seat in Commons (Liberal), 1900; M.P. Portsmouth (Unionist), 1916-18; in command of Royal' yacht; 1901-1903; commanded cruiser division Mediterranean Fleet, 1904-6; second in command Channel Fleet, 1903-4; Commander-in-Chief China Station, 1908-10; Portsmouth, 1912-16;. retired list, 1921; assumed name of Meux." These somewhat confused landmarks in his passage through life show Sir Hedworth to have been a man of rare versatility and resource, and now that he/has, crossed the great divide we need not worry ourselves about the name he renounced or the one he assumed. He was a gallant sailor, who served his country well. A Great Evolution.

It would be discourteous to a lady, however, not to mention the source from which this scion of the House of Lambton derived the material solace that attended his later years. The newspaper men have already told of his succession to the accumulated wealth of Sir Henry Meux, a great London brewer, but none of them, so far as I have observed, has done.justice .to Lady Meux, who passed on the millions to Sir Hedworth. Sir Henry left the great bulk of his huge possessions to his wife, and she, in turn, by her last will and testament bestowed them upon the Commander-in-Chief, as the Admiral of the Fleet then was, as an expression of her motherly regard for his personal and professional worth.. Lady Meux, with all her wit and her wealth, was not the kind of person that figures frequently in the society columns of the newspapers, but Mr. J. B. Booth has left us a sketch of the little woman which presents a very striking figure. "Perhaps the most famous product of the Old Alhambra," he says, "was the beautiful Valerie Rhys, Avho, as Lady Meux, died in 1911. . . . Lady Meux was exceedingly charitable, but her charitable gifts were the strictest of secrets. In the. days of John Burns and the dock strike, the future Cabinet Minister was wont to take from his pocket, day by day, at his meetings, a letter, which he said he had received from a lady of title that very morning, in which was enclosed a £100 note, and a promise of continuing the gift daily until the end of the strike. Many doubted the. existence of the mysterious lady, but it was Lady Meux. She detested the strike and the political agitators, but her heart bled for the suffering women and children. . . Few evolutions, have been stranger than that of the irresponsible, light-hearted little Bohemienne, Val Rhys, of the Alhambra, into Lady Meux, "grande dame, and enricher of the nobility." Looking through the pages of "Old Pink 'Un Days " in search of this tribute to Lady Meux, I came across Kennedy Jones' story of the first production of " The Absent-Minded Beggar," the South African war poem, which may bear repetition.

The Absent-Minded Beggar. It will be remembered by those whose memories reach back as far as the beginning of the present century that Kipling's' "AbsentrMiiided. Beggar" was not received with overflowing enthusiasm by either literary or musical experts, and that professional singers were enamoured neither by its words nor by its metre. The conditions were ripe for Kennedy Jones' Story. "Kipling had written the verses and Sullivan had consented to compose the music," says the narrator.. "But when the composer, saw the lines, inspiration left him.,. - . . Precious days passed, and there was no news from Sullivan. The matter was becoming serious, for publicity had started, and the public was agog for the great war poem by Rudyard Kipling with the musical setting by Sir Arthur Sullivan. At last, in desperation, Jones rang up Sullivan. ' But I can't,' protested ;the composer, 'I've tried again and again and I can't. You'll have to get someone else.' 'Impossible,' cried Jones in alarm. ' We've announced you, and you're advertised everywhere. For heaven's sake have another try.' 'It's no use,' replied Sullivan, 'I've had a dozen tries, and I can't strike a setting with one of them.' 'Rubbish,' said Jones. 'Do something, anything. Why not do it on the lines of "Tommy Atkins"?' 'How does that go?' asked Sullivan, and Jones, probably the worst singer in' Europe, hummed the air over the phone. ' Oh, Tommy, Tommy Atkins, you're a good 'un, heart and hand, You're a credit to your calling and to all your native land,' and so on and so forth. There was a silence. 'All right, '11 try,' came Sullivan's i r oice at last, and the score arrived just—and only just-in time." Eight years or so before the appearance of "The Absent-Minded Beggar," when its author still had to confirm the early impression he had made upon a hesitating public, I spent an hour , or two* in showing Kipling the sights of Christehurch, but he grew enthusiastic about none of them, and I fear. 1.-proved, a somewhat uninspiring guide. Anyhow, ' it was the "Queen

City " of Auckland, and not the " \JatHedral City" of Christchurch he extolled later on with his matured gift of Eong. The Lambton Way. Reverting to the Lainbton family, after all these digressions, Justin McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times"— times, of course, that-do not belong to the present generation —may be warmly commended to - those who wish to know all about the family's founders and their successors. Justin McCarthy tells a story as compelling as any Edgar Wallace ever has written. "Lord Durham," he tells his readers, "was a man of remarkable character. He belonged to one of the oldest families in England. The Lambtons had lived on their estate in the North, in uninterrupted succession since the conquest. They were not, however, a family of aristocrats. . Their wealth was derived chiefly from coal mines, and grew up in later days. The property at first and for a long time was of inconsiderable, value. For more than a century, however, the Lambtons had come to take rank among the gentry of the country, and some, members of the family had represented the city of Dur-. ham in the. H6use of Commons from, 1721 until the early death of Lord Durham's father in 1797." The first Lord, it may interest some of the Wellington peopl ewho have been deprecating the dea of raising a memorial to Edward' Gibbon Wakefield to learn, made a romantic marriage at Gretna Green when scarcely twenty years of, age, and lost his wife three years later. Aβ already stated, he subsequently married the eldest daughter of Lord Grey. It was in the- House of Lords, when speaking in support of the Reform Bill some years later, that he administered to the Bishop of Exeter a verbal castigation, which rarely has had an equal in the British Parliament. Roused to anger by some crude observations made by the. prelate during a previous debate he described his speech as ail exhibition of "coarse and virulent invective, malignant and false insinuations,. the grossest- perversion of historical facts decked out with all the choicest flowers of pamphleteering slang." That was the real Lambton style, and McCarthy has preserved it for us. Wellington has done well to give its principal thoroughfare the name of Lambton. •