CIVIL LIST PENSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

CIVIL LIST PENSIONS.

WELL-KN QWN NAMES,

An official statement has just been issued of the Civil List pensions awarded during the financial year ended March 31 "last. It provides melancholy proof of the uncertainty of the career devoted to the arts. These subventions from the national Treasury are given in recognition of services to literature, science, or the arts. In their award "regard is paid to the financial , circumstances of the recipients as well as "to public services" —a euphemism for the proviso that a pension is not granted to any one who does not really need it.

Among the new. names on this list the best known, perhaps, is that of Theodore Francis Powys, who receives an annuity of £60 in recognition of his services to literature. A similar sum, for the same reason, is allotted to Matthew Phipps Shiel, a now almost forgotten writer of sensational romances. Dr. Henry William Clark, author of various educational and philosophical works; Dr. Archibald McDonald, a writter on the history of the Scottish Highlands,, and Maude Valerie White,' whose' ballads once enjoyed a wide popularity,^'receive pensions of £100 each. Annuities are awarded also to the widows of James Elroy Flecker, the poet; Cecil Headlanj, the historian, and Archibald Marshall, the novelist of English countryrhouse life, in recognition of the services rendered to literature by their husbands.

It is not surprising that the "London Mercury"' should propose a revision of this method of coming "to" the help of deserving writers, artists and scientists.