OBIT. WAS WRONG

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 10, 11 July 1930, Page 7

OBIT. WAS WRONG

SOME FAMOUS VICTIMS "DEAD" WHEN ALIVE

(By Rudolph Cordova.)

(Copyright.)

Unique in the history of the distinguished people who have read their own obituary notices was Miss Jennie Lee, the distinguished actress, whose death has recently been announced. ' Three times during her life she read the notices of her death and the eulogies passed on her remarkable performance of "Poor Joe" in the adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Bleak House." Another well-known personage who has had the privilege of reading his obituary notice is Mr. G. B. Burgin, the famous novelist, who has published his hundredth novel and is already at work on its successor. Another novelist the account of whose deatli was "greatly exaggerated," to use the phrase made famous by Mark Twain when the newspapers of the world prematurely published his obituary, was; the Rev. Baring-Gould, one of the prolific'] writers of our time. He was "killed" by 'a correspondent of Renter's famous agency, who sent a telegram from Port Elizabeth stating that the novelist had died on board the steamship Norman. At that time Mr. Baring-Gould was alive and well at. his home in Devon, and proclaimed his existence in a telegram which stated: "The news of my death is false. I have not been in Africa." Before the message was received, Mr. Baring-Gould had had the opportunity of reading a series of remarkable biographical notices which appeared in every daily paper in London, one of which mentionet the interesting fact that he "did nearly al his literary work standing at a tall desk/ while another described him as the "greatest living authority on the churches and historic houses of the West," in addition to the eulogies bestowed on his novels in general. The mistake in his case arose through the death of a.cousin wh'o was a colonist in Natal, and one of the first Irish diggers at Kimberley. Other writers who liavr been prematurely killed by the newspancrs are the Right Hon. Augustine Birroil, who is still happily o'ive and well; tho late David Christie Murray; , Mr. Stephen Crane; Miss Edna Lyall and Captain Mayne'Reid,-whose books will be remembered as long as there are boys to read them. COLUMN FOR EARL. Among the titled people who have enjoyed the same experience was the Eari of Liverpool, to whose career one of the leading morning papers devoted a whole column; Earl Fitzwilliam, who, as Viscount Milton, bought a newspaper at a railway station and discovered that he had been killed while out hunting; the first Lord Brougham, \vho is credited with having circulated the report of his own death in order to find out from the notice* the estimate in which he was held; Lord Frampton, Lord de Freyne, and Viscount Ullswater, when Mr. W. G-. Lowther, the Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons. The same fate awaited Sir Claude MacDonald, who was at one time our ambassador to China. It required a keen sense of humour to have treated an obituary notice in the way that a well-known Irishman did when, his death was announced in one of the leading papers in Dublin. He called up the editor from his club and remarked: "I have just been reading here at the club the obituary notice of me in your infernal rag, and all I can say is it's a d bad one." Sir Robert Ball, the famous astronomer, and Mr. Joseph Can;, when Crown Solicitor for County Antrim, shared this enviable distinction with certain members of the journalistic profession like the late E. F. Knight, the famous war correspondend, and Mr. Frederick Villiers, who was actually made acquainted with his death by seeing it on a newspaper poster. "DON'T INTERRUPT!" A few minutes later he was met by a friend, who told him he was on his way to the Savage Club as another friend was going to "hold forth on your late virtuous existence." When Mr. Villiers asked whether remarks were to be complimentary, and assured they were, he exclaimed: "For goodness sake don't interrupt him." Strange as it may appear, Mr. Villers declared the gentleman who was descanting on his good qualities refused to speak ,to him for years after, he was so disgusted with him for being alive. ■Among the famous actors who have seen premature announcements of their death was the late Sir Squire Bancroft, whose death was reported instead of that of the historian of that name; Miss Alma Stanley and Miss Lottie Collins, whose song "Ta-ra-ra-boom de-ay" carried her reputation around the world, and, as in it she •introduced a high kick,"she wrote to the newspapers that "a livelier corpse never kicked." Nor must mention be omitted of the premature announcement of the death, of Sir Henri Deterding, the President of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Combine, in mistake for that of his brother, or of Dr. Venn of Caius College, Cambridge, who, having read the report, wrote a letter to the "Athenaeum," then one of the leading literary papers, in which he humorously said, "I am not disputing the fact." "THE TIMES" ERRED. Among artists, the late Mr. Holman Hunt, the founder of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, saw the announcement of his death in "The Times" iu reference to an exhibition at Ottawa of his picture "The Light of the World," perhaps the most famous picture he ever painted, and a copy of which is to be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral. Considering; the rapid-rate at-which all journalism has to be done in those days, it is perhaps not remarkable that such mistakes should occasionally occur. The fact that the subjects are always famous men is readily explainable when it is remembered that it is only distinguished people who are of sufficient importance to have their death chronicled.