LONGED FOR DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

LONGED FOR DEATH.

ONCE GREAT HORATIO.

BOTTOMI/EY NEW ANI> OLD

HEART CRY OF "THE MAN WHO WAS."

"The old Bottomiey 15 dead! I am the man who was! l r or four months I have longed for death. Every night I ]ioped that before the dawn I would pass jjito the Land of Nothingness." The faded blue eyes and the faded 6ilvcr voice of the old '•Tribune of the People," as he still ealle himself, strove to revitalise the ghost of their dead glamour, writes James Douglas in the "Daily Express." "The Land of Nothingness!" he murmured. "The Lund of Nothingness!" He had got up and put on his clothes for the time since hiri illness. They Lull' , loosely on hit, shrunken frame. They were ('leased and crumpled. Vory seedy and shabby the old man looked as lie siit ill his easy chair by the tit o. liven his necktie was old and worn. It had been tied so often that it was jiotf a string. But he was well groomed in his old clothes. His bands were sadly white. His skin was blanched and bloodless. A heavy flap of anaemic flesh drooped below his chin. He wus beautifully shaven. Hand That Shook.

A few grey wisps of hair straggled on lis bald head. The old lion had lost the ■wild mane that lie had long ago tosecd on a thousand platforms. His right hand shook as he poured out the tea. As I gazed at the wreck of Bottoraley tke lines of Keats haunted me: — The weariness, die fever, and the frot Here, where meu sit nud lioar each other groan ; Whore palsy shakes a low, sad, last grey hairs. "The Land of Xothingness." The phantom voice caressed the melancholy phrase. "Ah, there arc wide spaces in the Land of Xothingnese! -, "Do you believe in the life beyond the grave?" I ventured. "I am no religionist," said tho ghostly Toice. "You know Bradlaugh was my father. My mother was a beautiful •woman. 3he died when I wag four. But I am sure Bradlaugh was my father."

The old man dreamed his way back to the Hall of Science and the forgotten Freethinkers. "I made a study of comparative religions in those days. I am a Deist. I believe in the Deity and in the ethical teachings of Christ. But after death the individuality perishes in the Land of Nothingness." » As ho whispered in low mellow cadences the face grey more Bradlaugheeque. Then he told me how the doctors had all given him up, how he had fallen into a stupor for weeks, how his mind had refused to function, and he passed his ■white hand wearily over his white brow that ie so strangely unfiirrowed, as if suffering had ironed out its wrinkles. "Resurrection!" "But I have a wonderful constitution," he gleamed with the shadow of a smile playing round his lips. "There is a new Bottomley, What a resurrection!" The old man brooded over the word "resurrection." It comforted him as he repeated it like an incantation. "Resurrection!" he whispered in a carefully modulated music. He played like a virtuoso on the vocal chords that had so often charmed the cheering crowds. "I cannot enter Parliament again. I am disqualified. But when I regain my strength I will speak, I will write, I will help the under-dog. "What a state the world is in! What » Budget! Why don't they make the hanks disgorge the fifteen millions of unclaimed balances? Ah! they are afraid of the banks!" His bed was a litter of pencilled manuscripts. Hβ read me paragraphs. He chuckled over anecdotes of prison padres and old lags. "You know," he said, "while I wae in prison I was their father confessor. I learned a lot there. And Borstal — what a place! The Borstal boys are the worst criminals. 1 " Hβ meditated on hie lonely poverty. "They suid I had put away money. Does it look like it? "My 0 ■ 'n Fault." "I am penniless. I soon discovered how few friends I have. But it is my own fault. I gave a man ten thousand Pounds. I wrote a cheque payable to 'self or bearer , and handed him the cash." The old man shook his head mournfully. ''When I asked him to help me in my penury he wrote that he was hard up. No. I did not keep one of his letters. I eent them all back to him." Ho says he will be ablo to leave the nucsing home i:ext Thursday. Ho has «Htten his autobiography. ''Its title, ,, he said, is 'My Life and Death.' A good title, isn't it?" ■ Bottomley gave me the preface which ne has written for hie book. He save:— "The title of this volume has not been ('hosen out of desire for journalistic or literary intrigue. "It expresses the plain and simple fact' that tlie man with whom it is concerned ] "-politician, journalist, financier, lay! lawyer, newspaper proprietor, Bohemian and bon viveur—is dead, whatever may <,H 1e rem °te chance of resurrection. ■ To-day all that is left ie an elderly Philosopher, ruminating on the ruins °j a career which has touched life at almost every angle, and who awaits Wβ closing of his innings whenever the

Umpire gives him 'out'—unashamed and unafraid; consoling himself for all disappointments by the belief that: When the one Great Scorer , Comes to write against your name, He'll write not what you won or lost, But how you played the game. "In that belief, and by that test, I will stand my linnl trial, whenever I may bo summoned to the Great Assize." Ex-Ex-Exit. On the titlc-pnge he describes himself as '"Ex-Deputy Lieutenant of the City of London, ex-member of His Majesty's Parliament, and Chairman of the Independent Group in the House of Commons, ex-Journalist and Proprietor. Ex—lt." "What stories I can tell," said Bottomley. "I was standing beside llaig at the Unknown Warrior's grave in West-. minster Abbey. '" 'I wonder who he was,' I said. "'I will tell you,' said Ifaig. 'He is the Man Who Won the War.' " The old man revelled in his anecdotage of the great. "Mr. Asquith offered me a minor post in his Government," he declared. '"No," I said, 'I would only be a nuisance.' " Then ho talked of the millions he had played with. "Why," he said, "I was paying fifty thousand a year in income tax. Fifty thousand! And now I have nothing!" He dreamrd for a while till I mentioned the name -01 ivrcugcr. "Hat ry," he Hashed, "was an amateur compared with Kreuger—an amateur!" Then ho tuld me how his misfortunes had transfigured him, chastened him, regenerated him. He was in the mood of the fallen Wolsey. Vain pomp and glorv of tile world, I hate yp, I Tecl my heart new opened. "I despise the common things I used to prize. What a fool I was! I drank! j Now I am practically a teetotaller." As! he spoke.he sipped the tea and ate a piece of bread and butter. "I drank!" There was all remorse in the two sad words. As he brooded over his wasted life I thought of Rossetti's dark verses:

Look in my face ! JJy name is Might-Have Been : I am also called Js'o More, Too Lute, Farewell. But tlio OKI Bottomiey dreams of the Xew Bottomiey that will rise out of the ashes of the past. "I am only in my seventy-second year," lie *aid. "Aly brain is as active as ever. I know the law from A to Z. I learned it all while 1 worked for live years as an official shorthand writer in the Law Courts. '•WJies I told Mr. Justice Horridge that after I hart served my sentence the law of England regarded me as being in the position of a man who has received a free pardon from the King, he disagreed, but later in the day he admitted that I was right." As he recounted his victories over great lawyers in the courts the light of battle flickered feebly in his viaionary eyes. A faint colour flushed his pallid features as ho saw the tumults and triumphs of his oratory in those dim, far-off days when ha swayed the multitude and his words were the common soldier's Bible. "Ah," ha said, "the Man in the Street . . . the Stan in the Street . . .the Tommy 'in tho trenches. Bottomiey was their idol." Suddenly he swept away the dead days and began to plan his new life and his new career. "I am changed," he said. "I am changed. I will come back."

I left the New Bottomiey building lii.-s castles in the .air.