END OF A ROMANTIC LIFE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3145, 27 November 1922, Page 7

END OF A ROMANTIC LIFE.

With the recent death of Mr Wilfred Scawen Grent there passed away one of the most picturesque and romantic figures of our time. A diplomat who became agitator in Egypt and Ireland, a Sussex squire who became a wanderer through Arabia, Syria and along many unbeaten tracks of the East ,a poet who wrote largely on travel and politics ,a would-be M.P. who in two successive years stood as a Tory and a Liberal candidate, and a breeder of Arab horses, he saw life and criticised it from many angles.

Educated at the Roman Catholic colleges of Stonyhurst nd Oscott, he was in the Diplomatic Service from 1858 to 1870. In 1872 he inherited the Crabbet estates in Sussex, but the leisured life of a country squire was not to his taste, and with his wife, Lady Anne Noel (a grand-daughter of Byron, and subsequently Baroness Wentworth), he set out for the East.

For four years he practically disappeared from the world that had known him, travelling in Arabia, Persia and Mesopotamia, and returning with view which" brought him in frequent conflict with British interests and policy in Egypt and elsewhere. He threw himself into the Egyptian National movement in 1881 and 1882, intervened to save Arabi Pasha from a British firing party after the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and later gave his views of a stormy period in "Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt" and "Gordon at Khartoum."

A few years afterwards he was throwing himself into the Home Rule agitation of the mid-eighties. He stood as a Tory Home Ruler for Camberwell in 1885, and as a Liberal Home Ruler for Kidderminster in the following year. On each occasion he was defeated at the poll; and in 1887, for calling meetings in a proclaimed district, he spent two months in Galway and Kilmainham gaols. As a poet he was chiefly known • for his "Love Sonnets of Proteus," published in 1880. In 1914 a number of British poets, including Mr W. B. Yeats and Mr John Mscfield, presented him with a piece of sculpture as a mark of their homage. In Egypt he developed an enthusiasm for Arab horses, and with his wife carried on for a time a stud on their estate, on the borders of the desert near Cairo. Later he transferred to his Sussex estate the breeding of Arab horses, and in recent years, after the storms of his career, this became his chief interest.

In St. Paul's Cathedral some time ago a guddie was showing an American round the tombs. "That, sir," said the guide, "his the tomb of the greatest naval' 'ero Europe or the world never knew — Lord Nelson's. This marble sarcoughogus weighs 42 tons. Hinside that his a steel reeeptiele weighing 12 tons, and hinside that is a leaden casket 'ermetically sealed, weighing over two tons. Hinside that his a mahogany coffin holding the hashes of the great 'ero." "Well,'' said the Yankee, after thinking a while, "I guess you've got him. If "he ever gets out of that, cahto me at my expense." 'The greatest eve-opener to me during my visit to England was the immense volume of motor traffic and the perfect state of the country roads," said Mr W. Charm an on his return to Auckland from a. six months' trip abroad (states the Auckland Herald). "Why," he added, smilingly, "I saw more, mud in walking from the Ferry Buildings to the Auckland city markets than I encountered the whole time I was away." The motor traffic, he said, was enormous, continuous streams of lorries, char-a-bancs, motor care, amd motor cyoleetravelling up and down the principal cross-country roads. Everywhere he went the roads were being improved, widened, straightened, and levelled, to adapt them to the ever-increasing needs of the motor, the large army of unemployed being extensively used on these works. The main road from London to Dover was being widened to 85ft., including a single footpath. All over England country roads were being macadamised' and sealed with tar and sand.