THE PORTER'POET

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 10

THE PORTER'POET

HOW "THE DAY" WAS WRITTEN

WHAT IT YIELDED ITS WHITER.

in August of 1914, within three days of tho outbreak of war, I sailed for England from Canada, writes Lieutenant Coningsby -Dawson in the New York Times. It was a time when everyone was prophesying, advising, suggesting; very few had sensed the real extent and glory of the calamity that had overtaken us. There was a good deal of anger and a good deal of verbal energy—much of it ill-directed; it took adequate shape for the first time in a poem, entitled "The Day," which wa3 said to have been written by a railway porter. Tho poem swept through all the counties. I was motoring at the time, and found it pasted up in the windows of every, little town. Later, when I returned to America, it had got there before me; it was in New York, printed on a kind of lavish Christmas card. It was in the Rocky Mountains. From the Atlantic to the Pacific it was quoted and made tho subject.of articles. While trained literary men were.selecting phrases, a railway porter had expressed the indignation of two continents. ON THE PLATFORM. It was in the railway station at Bath that I mot him the other day. The meeting was purely by accident; I was visiting John Lane of the Bodley Head. As we were leaving the platform, Mr. Lane said, "This is where Henry Chappell works: I'd like to introduce you. This morning I published his volume 'The Day,-and Other JPoems.' We ought j to find him in high feather." In the yard a cab was drawn up against the curb; a Great Western porter was helping 'to heave a trunk on to the roof. He was a well-built man of middle-age, white haired, with an extraordinary refinement in his face. ( While I. was waiting to be introduced, Mr. Lane told me an anecdote, quite Johnsonian in its bluff justice and carelessness ■of convention. Tli'ef Poetry Society was holding a meeting recently at Bath. It was quite obvious that Henry Chappell was the most widely-known poet in the community,' but nobody had thought to ask him. . Mr. Lane undertook to set matters right; but on speaking to Chappell was assured that it was impossible, as it was his turn to be on duty to meet the trains. A LOCUM TENENS> Mr. Lane then went to the station master and proposed a bargain—that he, John Lane, the porter's - publisher, should push the barrow and receive the tips .during the hours that the' Poetic Society was in session, and that Henry Chappell, the poet, should attend the meeting. The anecdote had reached this point, when the owner of the trunk tipped the porter, the cab drove off, and I was introduced. The situation was or^ after Carlyle's own heart; here was one whom he would have called "an original man." I at once commenced to tell him what had been thought of his poem in Canada and the States. He smiled quietly; he had heard rumours. I expressed the hop© that his literary fame might bring him promotion. Again he smiled—a little incredulously I thought. "But I'm go good at figures—never, was. And I like being a porter." When we parted we shook hands. As I walked away I glanced back. He;was touching his hat; in doing so he touch!ed my heart. His volume had been displayed that morning in every bookshop in England—it had been published less j than eight hours.' I It, was the proudest | day of his life. He made £100 by "The Day," and I gave it all to the Red Cross.