Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 22 January 1901, Page 4

Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Although Sir Arthur Sullivan willingly undertook to write the music for Kipling’s “Absent-minded Beggar” and gave the fee to the War Fund—it was not long (says a writer in Mr Clement Scott’s journal, the ‘•Free Lance”) before he repented of his bargin. For days he could not hammer out an air that would fit the words, and he told a friend of the writer’s ho had never in his life had a set of verses that gave him so much trouble. “Pay ! pay 1 pay I” he exclaimed, with an air of comic distraction ; “how, in the name of all that’s poetical, can one write music to such stuff? I’ve hardly had a wink of sleep for a week through thinking about it.” And when the music was finished Sir Arthur frankly confessed that it was the worst he had ever written, and declared that he would rather write a whole Savoy opera than undertake such a task again. Sir Arthur Sullivan, it is understood, has not died a rich man, for although during the earlier days of the Savoy he made a large income (£23,000 a year for some years), he lived his life, spent royally, and dispensed to charity with true Celtic liberality. At Leeds, where his fee as conductor was a bare £2OO, he entertained members of the Royal family, and he more than once went from London to rehearsal by special train, likewise returning. At one time he leased an estate in Norfolk, beside? a riverside cottage at Walton, and a house near Monaco. Ho also had racehorses but was unfortunate.