ABOUT PEOPLE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16135, 11 January 1913, Page 6

ABOUT PEOPLE.

STORIES OF CELEBRITIES. SOME PERSONAL NOTES. Miss M. E. Durham, who has won fame by serving as the first woman war correspondent with the Monte-, negrin forces in Turkey, had peculiar qualifications for her task. ' For many years she has made herself familiar with various Balkan lands, and moro especially with those wild f ,and rugged Albanian mountains, tho home of fierce warrior clans. Amongst these people, with their strange customs, unceasing blood feuds, and eternal warfare with their relentless master, tho Turk, Miss Durham has passed many days and nights: has sat at their hearths or by their camp fires, and has frequently had to sleep in thoir stables for lack of better accommodation. At first tho young English lady riding in amongst them, trusting herself with utter fearlessness to their hospitality, was a source of unmitigated wonder to them, and she went fearlessly where scarcely a European—for Albania hardly seems Europe under Turkish rule—Uiad over beon. and certainly no foreign woman. But these people, whom for convenience wo call Albanians, are a chivalrous race, and Miss Durham was looked upon as sacred whilst amongst them. In tho course of years sho has grown to be their honoured and trusted friend, and often adviser; has participated with them in various historical episodes, and has frequently nursed, doctored and tended them in times of trouble.

" But for somo idea of her life amidst these mountain tribes, upon whoso customs she is now the first authority," writes Mr J. D. Mackellaiy in the London "Daily Chronicle," "it is surely sufficient to refor the reader to her very well known books, ' High Albania,' ' The Burden of the Balkans,' and 'Tho Land of the Serb,' and at this particular time a study _ of theso works will throw an illuminating ray on many Balkan happenings which puzzle the outsider. Speaking Serb, and having a certain acquaintance with the tongue of the Albanians, she has been enabled to get nearer these people and corao to a fuller understanding of their ideas, hopes and ways than anyone elso. Her extraordinary endurance and pluck, her disregard of all dangerß and discomforts, has led her into many 'a tight corner' in her wanderings, and made her a witness of many stirring events. Misa Durham, however, is a lady yho is very modost about herself. She has little desire for publicity, and is not likely to he pleased at encomiums on her work. It i 3 perhaps her brave ministrations in hospitals and in tending wounded and refugees that have most endeared- her to the Montenegrins and the Albanians. Her clear judgment and indomitable spirit, combined with her sympathy in tho many evils which have befallen the much-tried Albanians, fiavo made these people look upon her as a sort of aueon—and, indeed, in places they call her_ Kralitza, the queen. Hers is a kingdom based on human hearts, and vory human, sturdy, and faithfid are thoso hearts; so surely it is a kingdom worth having.

" So much of tho history of these lands has passed under her eyes, so much of it has she_ participated in, that on tho capitulation of Tim, it was a very natural thing sho should be invited to be present with the princes of Montenegro. It was her due. Last year Miss Durham was at Podgoritea tending tho wounded in hospital and ministering to tho thousands of refugee Albanians who had fled into Montenegro from the Turks. She .assisted in distributing the relief funds which were contributed from England, the "Macedonian Belief Fund" Society having undertaken to raise a fund for tho unfortunate Albanians. The Turkish army lay entrenched on the frontier, in sight of Podgoritza. after having ravaged and harried tho lands of their subjects, burnt their homes and villages, destroyed their cropa and \nbvented their tilling of the ground, which meant famine in tho coming year. Many Albanians had been massacred. The eyes of Europe wero fixed upon the imbroglio between ' Franco and Germany over Morocco;

but very important things were happening almost unobserved by tho general public in the ever-restless Near East. Tho Great Powers wero aware that any moment might plunge Europe into war, and all thoir efforts were cleyoted to avoiding an imminent conflict.

"Tho chief danger lay with the Montenegrins, who had to feed all these thousands of Albanian refugees, armed men, while barely being able to afford to keep themselves. They were with difficulty restrained by King Nikola from flying at the Turkish foe, camped on their very frontier, and entering their territory in pursuit of tho Albanians. King Nikola, however, loyally kept his promise to tho Great Powers, and did restrain his people; but it was impossible to say at what moment war between Turkey and Montenegro might not break out. If it did—then what would tho restless, watching Balkan States do? What would Austria do, with her forces waiting on tho frontier of Novi Bazar? 'Would she march directly on Salonica? The Great Powers brought pressure to bear on the Montenegrin King. They said he must stop feeding thoso refugees—with maize. He could not let them starve, he replied; they were a trouble and a burden te him and his people, but if he stopped their food they must either die of starvation or perish at the hands of the waiting Turkish army.

" Much diplomacy was employed on. all hands by-the emissaries of the various Powers. Finally a promise was exacted from Turkey that sho would allow the Albanians to return to their own land and desolated homes, but unarmed. She promised them money to build shelters, and that food would be given to them. Tho Albanians would not trust her promises, and refused to return without arms. At tho same time, they demanded guarantees from the Great Powers. They would listen to no one, and the situation became more and more serious. King Nikola at last said that in two days he would stop feeding them; a rumour was also spread that cholera was on the way. The maddened Albanians threatened to turn their arms against Montenegro sooner than go, and Podgoritza lay practically at the mercy of these many thousands of fierce, half-starved men. In this pass, all else having failed, Kiag Nikola sent his serdar to Miss Durham, and she was at length induced to undertake the task of persuading tho Albanians to return to their own land.

"So the following day—it must be a memorablo day in her life —she addressed those thousands of men, and whore all others had failed she succeeded, but their arms had to be conceded to them, and, trusting no word but hers, they would only go on tho condition that sho went with thorn. So the young Englishwoman led that tattered horde of thousands of wild, half-starved men back into their own land—and m all probability saved a great European war. What is happening to-day would probably have happened then ; and what is happening to-day is the outcome of the policy pursued by the Great Powers last year, and has been inevitable. Miss Durham, accompanied by Mr Nevinson, undertook to see that the Turks kept their promises, and visited on horseback tho scattered and destroyed homes of the Albanians, distributing relief. Miss Durham remained throughout the winter in- Scutari to be in touch with her people, and when the Turkish Commission last year visited Scutari in order to inquire into the grievances of tho Albanians and "execute roforms" (that stale old catchpenny) the one and only good thing resulting from it was that they acceded to the request of Miss Durham end consented that seed corn should be given to tho people to save them from impending starvation. " After a well-earned rest in Italy, Miss Durham went to Montenegro to await the making of moro history, m which it was inevitable sho must play a part. Now, as we see in tho intervals of her work as a war correspondent, hor idea of rest is cleaning out a filthy Turkish hospital with her own hands and tending its inmates, and riding to and fro to see that all is right. Ihis h characteristic of her. It is nowhere recorded that tho Sovereigns of the Great Powers wero so grateful to her for averting a big war that they hung pretty Orders all over Miss Durham, though she had certainly earned them but perhaps in their hearts many or those Powers wanted war. Well, some are having it—others may also have it., Meanwhile Miss Durham is doing the work that'is te her hand and to her taste, and I daresay she will be very wroth that anyone should write about h er _but to all their guerdon, and hers is one of gold. An American journalist met her in 1911 in Podgontza. ' That is a noble woman,' he wrote to a friend."

A quaint picturo of a Japanese child is drawn by Mr Toshio Markino, the famous Japanese artist, in the course of a story of his own life. Yoshio was bora at the end of the Japanese civil war and his earliest recollections began several years after the feudal system had died out. " Japan had already bogun to be democratic," he writes, " and perhaps my father was one of the most democratic Samurai. Nevertheless his inner\ heart was a purest chivalry. 1 think his idea was not to make Samurais into labourers, but surely he expected all labourers te become Samurais. He always said, ' Children ought not to know too much about the money matters.' So, when I wanted some books, papers, etc., I used to go to shops with his sorvanta. I picked up all what I wanted in the shops, and after I left tho shops tho servants used to pay. In that way I did not know the values of anything until I became fifteen or sixteen. If I dropped ooins or anything on the ground I never tried to pick them up, bocatise my father told mo only tho beggars would act such shameful manners." Naturally the family fell deeply into debt. Tho home life of the Markino family, though they had been rich and had become poor, was, to quote the author's own expression, " warmly harmonical." The mother was adored both by her husband and her children. " Between my parents there was always existing some sweetness, abundant sympathy, and much 'respecting te each other. And they adored us, the children." Heiji was the youngest. "It is a general rule in Japan ,"ho writes, "that the youngest child is spoilt by -the parents, and I was not an exception from this. Of course my sister and brother loved me eo much too. But as soon as I was grown up enough I realised my position; I began to respect my sister and brother, and try to be as nice as possible to them. Surely that gave some sweet euphony in my family, and we were the specimen for the children in our village. Indeed, I often overheard somo parents telling their quarrelsome children, 'Bo as nico as Mr Markino's children.'

At five years old the little boy began to attend the village school; He did not like it, but his Samurai sentiment led him to pretend that he did. " If the school children had a quarrel," ho says, "I always took tho part of the weak. I felt it was my duty to wipe the tears of the victim and strike the winner. This was much encouraged by my father. And I always loved the tenderness and dreaded Batage roughness." The little boy was taught a very " high ethic," and seems to havo taken kindly to goodness. Any faults which he committed in school ho would confess to his mother, who wont herself next day to apologise to tho masters or th» Echolars, as tho case might be. For his mother, who died whon ho was only eleven years old, ho had a kind of worship- "* " w «»» nothing could

be more pleasant than to Bacrifice oneself for one whom we love most. "When I was quite a child I liked to 6pin the tops, fly the kites, and all thoso games moro than other children. But just when I was going out to play, I was often called back by my mother to do something for her. How happy and Bweet I felt to give up my own pleasure for the sake of my most beloved mother! I felt something so noble in my heart." Bofore hi 3 mother's death, however, this very precocious little boy had fallen in love with a little girl, and marriage appears to have been discussed as a future possibility by the respective parents, but finally they decided against the alliance. " Her mother told my parents that would be a misfit; because she must inherit from that wealthy family, and to do that she needed a very businesslike husband. One who loved ' to look at the moon or.whistle at the pine valley could not be her husband: on the other hand, the best part of his nature is the poetio feeling, and he would suffer much if he had to go to the business line.' W© both felt so sad, but decided to give up our love for our parents' sake."

With the passing away of the lato Mr W. B. Tegetmeior there disappeared the last living link save one with the great scientists of mid-Victorian times. There still remains the overyouthful Alfred Itussel Wallace at the ago of eighty-nine. It is difficult to realise that when Darwin was making the researches which were afterwards given to tho world in " The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," the " Origin of Species," " The Descent of Man," and othor epoch-making works, one of his chief assistants was Mr Tegotmeier, who vrns born at Colnbrook, Bucks, in 1816, and was tho eldest son of a surgeon in the Royal Navy. George 111. was still on tho throne, and Mr Tegotmeier saw five Sovereigns succeed him, two of them bearing tho same name. As a boy ho used to buy wild birds and keep them in his father's houso in St James's, and ho also took to pigeon fancying. It was through a neighbour, Mr Yarrell, who was also g, well-known writer on birds and nsh©3, that Mr Tegetmeier made the acquaintance of Darwin, who at the time was in search of facts about variation in animals. Darwin grateaccepted his help, and in. his volumes has made many acknowledgments of the assistance rendered by his fellow naturalist.

Mr Tegetmeier was of to Darwin in many different directions. For instance, he tabulated for him from the "Racing Calendar" the births of racehorses during a period of twenty-one years, and also the births of greyhounds as recorded in the "Field" for twelve years. Mr Tegetmeier had over 160 letters from Darwin with regard to the work in which they took such _ a keen interest, and to tho end of his lifo he closely followed the development of the theory of evolution. On ■ more than one occasion he suggested a method of research which Darwin adopted. For instance, as a young man of forty —one may use tho expression with regard to Mr Tegotmeier with absolute confidence, for he was never really old —he tried an experiment by which a bee was led to build a single cell, and found, as he suspected, that the " geometrical" instinct of the bee was a myth. The cell, in fact, was circular, and he read a paper on this discovery at tho British Association meeting in 1858. As a journalist, Mr Tegetmeier had a unique record. He was on tho staff of the "Field" for about fifty years, and wrote more than 1100 consecutive weekly leaders for the " Queen." Authorship with him, as far as publication in book • form went, extended over exactly fifty years. Ho wrote many books on bird life. It was one of his few boasts that he was the oldest holder of a reading ticket at the British Museum. He took out his reading ticket in 1833, at tho age of seventeen.

Sixteen people, not on© of whom was under seventy years of age, ate a slice of iced cake and sipped a cup of " special" tea in the Tooting Home a few weeks ago, when Captain David Jackßon, an inmate, celehrated the 104th anniversary of his birthday. Captain Jackson himself was too excited by the portentous occasion to eat, but pottered about between the beds of those of his guests who could not rise, and was very anxious that his sister, Mrs Alice Smith—who is seventyeight years of age, and is also in the Home—should eat a slice of the birthday cake. With a snow-white beard and hair framing a ruddy face, Jackson is a neat old fellow who has experienced his full share of the vicissitudes of life. He runs his fingers round his gums to illustrate their innocence of teeth, but despite their absence he eat 3 well (his weakness is new-laid eggs and fruit), and he smokes a pipe regularly. His memory is clear, and his health good, and it is only within the last year that ho has been unable to take a daily constitutional. Some months ago he fell and fractured two ribs; he is so hardy, however, that he has quite recovered from the accident, and he was present at the annual service to seamen in St Paul's, whither he went in a taxi-cab. This is a function which ho has not missed for some years, for from the age of nine ho followed the sea as an occupation for nearly half a oentary.

Born, at North Runton, near King's Lynn, in 1808, Jackson was apprenticed to the sea, and before he was twenty wfl3 a fully captain. He rounded Cape Horn many times. Once he was shipwrecked. By degrees he saved over £2OOO, which he invested in a ship, but the vessel foundered on the first voyage after it became his property, and penniless, he went to London in 1860. Hera he was employed by a firm of shop-blind manufacturers in Clapham, and at ninety-nine he entered the Wandsworth Workhouse, whence ho went to Tooting. He was up at seven o'clock in preparation for his birthday celebration, ate breakfast, dinner and tea and did not retire until seven o'clock. At that hour he showed no symptoms of fatigue, and was vigorously explaining to a crony the reason why "no slrip'H ever S ot rou nd the North Pole."

The life of Frances Willard has been written more than once, end she wrote her own autobiography m 600.000 words (aftarwarde curtailed for publication); but there is still room for the biography which has been prepared by Air Strachey. In a foreword to the volume, Lady Henry Somerset writes: "She was the groatest democrat I ever know not because she advocated any especial democratic measures, althougu she did this abundantly, but because she seemed to know- no difference between human beings on account of any outward distinction of class, or money, or social position. It was not that she know these differences and felt it right to ignore them, but alio actually did not know them, and could not bo made to understand why they should oxist.' Towards the end of her life, Miss Willard becamo a Fabian, and lent her ever-ready sympathy to Labour in its strugglo off&inst the encroachments of Capital. But it is as a temperance reformer and woman suffragist that she is be*t known to-day. Born in America's youth (1839) at a time whon slavery flourished in the South, and the "City of Dreadful Night," Chicago, was unbuilt, she lived a secluded girlhood in the log house her father had built himself, and it appears, from the diary she kept, that she was a very natural and lovable girl, with an almost boyish love of sport and a passion for freedom. She found housework tedious, rebelled against St Paul's dic-

turn on her sex, loved learning, and took a vital interest in politics even before the hateful day when 6he was sixteen and had to do up her hair and wear long skirts. That day she spent crying in a cellar, " feeling as if all the joys of life were over for ever."

At tho age of fifteen she came across a copy of tho " Una," wliich she noted as " a first-rate woman's rights paper," and, no doubt, it was not without effect on her plastic mind, although she did not declare herself for this reform until she found, much later, that every other reform for which women hope and pray was bound up with it. But it was not the first she had heard of the subject, for she related, at a pubho meeting in after years, the following account of how she remembered, as a child, her father and mother discussing it: "Longer ago than I shall tell," she said, " my father roturncd one niprht to the far-oif Wisconsin home where I was reared, and, Bitting by my mother's chair, with a child's attentive ears, I listened to their words. Ho told the naws that day had brought about Neal Dow and the great fight for prohibition in Maine, and then he said: ' I wonder if poor rum-stricken Wisconsin will ever get a law like that ?' And mother rocked awhile m silonce; then 6he gently said: ' Yes, Josiah, there'll be such a law all over tho land some day, when women vote.' " Willard 5 s love story, is told in this diary, very frankly, very sweetly: " After church and tea he asked me to go walking. Coming back—l don't know how it was—it is all like a beautiful dream—he told mo that he loved me—that 1 was ' the first and last and only one.' And with no fear, no shrinking, I told him that I had always loved him—that it seemed so natural, as if there was nothing else I could do except that." In eight months the engagement was broken off by mutual consent. The two individualities were too strong to blend, and both were wiso enough to realise this. By the timo she was thirty-one. Miss Willard ha*l reached the top of the teaching profession, and was the first woman president of a college in the United States. At thirty-five she gave up the career for that of a reformer, and threw herself heart and soul into the Women's Christian. Temperance Crusade, whose formation, Mrs Strachey says, "was one of the most remarkable events in the surprising history of American politics. It was entirely unexpected, and came sweeping over the Middle States with the violence of a prairie fire, and, like fire, it burnt away the old order of things and made room for a new order to grow. . . . It was undoubtedly a most important moral movement/' From this time forth tho career of Frances Willard was one long and strenuous fight against the forces of evd, and through it all she never lost her womanly charm, her tendor sympathy, her unquenchable nope. For although the seamy side of life was'laid bare to her in all its grim and appalling reality, it could not shake the faith in which she had set out. A sincere and broad-minded Christian, she believed to her last hour that " goodness was natural, and evil only an accident."

" A curious development of the controversy that has suddenly been aroused as to tho precise place of origin of the contributions sent to the Vienna ' Reichspost,' as from the Bulgarian headquarters, from Lieutenant Wagner," says the "Westminster Gazette," "is the apparently authorised statement that the now famous war correspondent has never asserted that he had himself witnessed all tho battles and fights of which he wrote, but has repeatedly said that he had obtained his reports from well-informed persons. In that case, Lieutenant Wagner is to be regarded as the Defoe of to-day s journalism, for the process is precisely that which was adopted by tho earliest journalist of genius known to us. What for convenience -may be termed tho Wagnerian process was precisely that adopted by tho author of ' Robinson Crusoe' when writing in the summer of 1718 his graphio account of ' the entire desolation of the island of St Vincent, in the West Indies, by the immediate hand of Nature, directed by Providence.' The ordinary London journals were content to give scraps of intelligence about that appallingly destructive earthquake from private correspondence as it came to hand. Dofoo took a more original and brilliant lino. And he executed his task so well that up to ten years sincej when the whole matter for the first time was critically investigated, it was universally belioved that this true narrative was a clever fiction."

A new instalment of Li Hung Chang's Diary in the London " server " contains a fine tribute paid by the Chinese statesman to Gladstone, with whom he spent a few days during his visit to Great Britain. " If," says he, "I could be any other person than Li Hung Chang, I would want to be William Ewart Gladstone, the Grand Old Man of England." In the garden the G.O.M. made an attempt to convert Li to wood cutting. "He pointed out some tree stumps to me, and said that in eight years he had kept his health good and muscles strong by this chopping exercise. It amused mo very much, and I told him I would like to see him strike a blow; eo he took up the instrument for cutting and made Goveral great dents in one of the trees. Then he turned to me and said: ' Lord Li, did you over cut down a tree?' I told him I had many a. time when I was a boy, but that, like many other boyish habits, I had outgrown this one also. But he wanted me to try, and I did. However, it was awkward work, for the handle of the instrument caught in my sleeve and I nearly out my foot."

Mr William O'Brien, the leader of the independent wing of the Nationalists in tho House of Commons, who has been violently attacking the Chancellor of tho Exchequer, can claim what is probably a unique experience—that of being assaulted with his own portrait. In 1888 a working man's club in Cork subscribed to have their member portrayed by Mr H. J. Thaddeus- Before the commission was finished came the split in the Irish party, when Mr O'Brien sided against Parnel! to the intense annoyance of mos*- tho subscribers to his portrait. So when the picture arrived at the club tho committee wheeled it on a truck to the hotel where tho member for Cork was staying, stormed his 6itting-room, and threw it at his head.