A TOUCHING STORY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 23 December 1913, Page 6

A TOUCHING STORY.

«i-&ss' t i r -vs. —■. •„; ' ;., ,"_' 'I " The' strangfc wayward existence of I ' Francis Thompson, the pauper poet who so}d matches in the street and. slept'in London doss-houses,- has beenl, told many times, but one willingly turns ta his latest biography—that of Mr Bverard Meynell, one who knew him better than most and who helped tp drag his genius from obscurity—for an authentic revelation; one feels the pathos of the' story deepened, the tragedy intensified. Mr Meynell draws a parallel between Thompson and De Qufncey, the lives of the two being indeed in many ways strangely similar/ WOt merely in the central affair of opium-eating, but in a remarkable range of habit, thought and experience. By a stroke of irony it was Thompson's mother who was, the first ' to turn thoughts* to opium, when ho was, about twenty years old, 'by - giving him a copy of De Qumcey s "Opium Eater." At .this time Thompson was a medical .student, but without the least enthusiasm for the profession chosen for him. A natural reserve or timidity prevented him from declaring, his predilection for literature. "If the lad had but told me!" . his father exclaimed afterwards when '.he heard of his son's growing fame. At first he had been trained in a seminary for the priesthood, but in this he had proved a failure. His father spent hundreds of pounds on his medical training, also in vain, while other brief experiments in earning a livelihood proved equally futile.. So Thompson left his home and went to London,, "much as a wounded animal strays apart to hide its shameful inefficiency." Here he obtained work as a publisher's book-collector, but ~sd*xn'lost it, and thenceforth he driftled., time came when he had no lodging jjdad waadered, ragged, hungry -'aa3. sleepless -in the streets. Sometimes, but rarely, *-there fell manna in 'the wilderness, as when he picked up in the,roadway t\^b bright coins, seem.'ingly new halfpennies, which proved to be sovereigns. Later he obtained employment atid kindness from a Haymarket bootmaker, "and while in this billet he wrote much prose and poetry, sending soma of his work to the writer's father, Mr William Meynell, then editor of "Merry England." A vivid picture is given of the editor's first impression of the poet. "The door opened and a strange hand was thrust in. The door closed, but ; Thompson had not entered. Again it opened, again. it shut. At the third ' attempt a waif of a man came in. No ■ "such figure had been looked for; more Tagged and unkempt than the average beggar, with no shirt beneath his coat, and bare feet in broken shoes, he found my father at a loss for words." Thus did h new phase of Thompson's life begins a phase in which, in a ; strengthening and kindly environment, he found the power to redeem himself from the thrall of opium, and the peace of mind which is necessary to the reduction of great art.