MISS COLONIA IN LONDON.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1196, 1 February 1895, Page 13

MISS COLONIA IN LONDON.

CONFIDENCES TO HER COUSINS ACROSS THE SEA. From Our Own Correspondent. London, December 7. Christmas Herb and There —Cards and Their Failings An Interesting Dinner—Lions at Table —The new Poet, John Davidson —The Story of His Life— Porridge—Toujours Porridge—Davidson’s First Meeting with Swinburne —How Success Came at Last—The Grosvenor Wedding— Prince “ Dolly " of Teck and his Bride will be admitted to the Home Circle—“ Ashes " at the Prince of Wales—A Poor Piece Poorly Played.

Dear Cousin, —The shops have put on their Christmas finery, our country cousins are up for the cattle show, and altogether the town is very bright and gay. When the weather happens to be seasonable —I mean nice and frosty—the fortnight before Christmas is the cheeriest and jolliest of the year in London, and I think most Australians and New Zealanders find it so. We are lively enough at the Antipodes at this time in our own warm way (I mean nothing slangy, dear), but frost —the hard frost which silvers everything except the tip of one’s nose—is essential to the perfect enjoyment of an ideal Noel. Of course, if we come to think of it, the original Christmas

“ When shepherd 3 their flocks by

was a great deal more like ours in Australia than like the festal season here. Some of the Christmas cards overlook this fact completely, indeed the magi are often represented worshipping the infant Christ in a palpably East Anglian “shippen” upon which a fierce snowstorm descends. Mention of Christmas cards reminds me that I ought to tell you what there are new this year in the shops. Well, my dear, I don’t know how it is, but the designers don’t succeed as well as they ought to, considering the large prizes offered nowadays by Baphael Tuck and others. The tendency lies too much in the direction of tawdriness, gold and silver and iridescent colours. For my part, I think by far the nicest are the photogravures of famous pictures prepared by Boussod Valadon and Co. and others. A tiny card of seasonable wishes accompanies each, and they make charming pictures framed. This Christmas there are some panels containing sets of three mounted and costing 2s 6d a piece, which are too sweet for anything. AN INTEBESTING DINNEB. And now I must tell you of a most delightful dinner party to which father and I went the other evening. It was given by a dear lady, well known to hosts of people in the colonies, whom I will call Mrs Brisbane, and amongst the guests there were Mr Bichard Le Gallienne, Mrs Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes"), Mr Lewis Hind, the editor of the Pall Mall Budget, Mr John Lane, the publisher, and the Miss Brisbanes. But the bright particular “ star" of the occasion was Mr John Davidson, the poet, who, after fifteen years of desperate endeavour, woke up one morning recently to find himself famous, and who is now the literary “ lion " of the hour. Mr Hind took me into dinner, which I was glad of, for I had met him before at an Authors’ Club soiree. He is a tall, wellbuilt man of perhaps thirty-two or three, with a clever, refined-looking face, a strong sense of humour and the caressing manner which I find belongs more or less to a great many literary and artistic notabilities. Sometimes this manner is absolutely odious and makes me long to slap the man’s face savagely. I could mention a very great personage indeed, whose “my child," or “my dear child" will, it is said, set the nerves of the strongest girl quivering with repulsion But there is nothing of that sort about Mr Hind’s little way. He sometimes says the most audacious things, but always in an absolutely harmless and inoffensive manner. I found him highly diverting and an excellent talker, full of fun, and able to tell me all about everybody. Mr John Lano, the publisher, was on my other side. He is a short, comfort-able-looking man, with a shrewd, capable face, and quiet manner. I heard afterwards that lie had discovered numerous minor poets as well as such big planets, as Le Gallienne, William Watson, and John Davidson.

Mrs Craigie was too far off for me to talk to, but I could look at her (and she is worth looking at) and occasionally catch scraps of interesting conversation.

THE NEW POET. And now let me tell you about the new poet already hailed by the noble army of reviewers laureate inposse. If I had met John Davidson crowded in a ’bus I should have judged him a superior mechanic, probably a man of ex ceptional nerve and resolution. His struggles have given him a look of stern, almost grim, determination which seem 3 softening beneath the sunshine of success. The cast of countenance belongs to an ordinary Scotch type and would not, but for the eyes, attract a stranger’s attention specially. They, however, light it up like lamps in moments of interest and excitement. He talks briskly, taking no care to pick his expressions and never hesitating to call a spade a spade, if it will make his meaning more forceful. An uncompromising Scotch accent finishes off the man effectively. I liked it. We beguiled Mr Davidson at dinner to tell us something of his early struggles when he was a charity school master and wrestled for seven hours a day with a class of a score of “ cannie little Scotch deils " for the magnificent remuneration of L6O a year. On this sum the young man had to lodge and feed and clothe himself, and to buy or borrow such books as the higher life he aspired to needed. It shows what may be done by a strong lad fired by a great resolve, when I tell you you that of his salary of L3O John Davidson one half year saved ten.

“ How did you live ?" we asked in chorus. “ Porridge," was the brief reply. “ And what else ?" “ Porridge." “ Surely not always?" “ Toujours porridge." We one and all attacked the succulent cutlets on cur plates with renewed zest. THE MAKING OF A POET. Mr Davidson told us his father was a Scotch minister, and one of the founders of the Evangelical Union. At the age of six little John was a daily reader of the “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” at seven he revelled joyously amongst the romantic and seemingly illimitable fields of Scott, and at twelve (mark this some of you boys) he was absorbed in Shakespeare and “ Sartor Resartus 1"

At thirteen, with Bunyan, Scott, Shakespeare and Carlyle at his finger ends, young Davidson left school and was initiated into the chemical department of a sugar factory at Greenock. At fifteen he resolved to be a poet, abandoned sugar as a beginning, and entered on the flowery path of a pupil teacher’s career !

All day long sustained by what someone has called “ the distending diet" of “ parritch" and milk, John Davidson hammered on at instilling elementary education into infant classes. At night, however, he rode away rich in a buoyant imagination into dreamland, and wrote tremendous plays in blank verse. Two of these he burnt, but some of the work of those early days between 1878 and 1886 is extant and very fine, I am told.

Mr Davidson’s plays, though only first published by Mr John Lane last year, were shown ten years before to the late Professor Nichols, who sent for the young author and gave him encouragement and good advice. It was a winter’s afternoon when he called on the Professor, and in-the shadow of the room sat another figure whom shortsighted young Davidson couldn’t see clearly. Professor Nichols introduced the figure as Algernon Charles Swinburne. The lad was spending his spare halfhours just then reading Swinburne at the Edinburgh Free Library, and was naturally full of adoring worship for the great master of word melody. Before he went away he overcame his shyness so far as to ask if he might have a look at the famous poet. So Swinburne good naturedly came and stood in the light, and Davidson walked round him (metaphorically speaking) and took in his points. “ And," he told us, “ I have never forgotten the impression which Swinburne's pale and beautiful face, crowned by a heavy aureole of the rosette golden red hair, made on me. Soon after that Swinburne read my plays and clapped me on the back and told me I was a poet." Davidson thought his fortune was made then, but blank verse plays are the must unsaleable of all literary commodities, and for years no publisher would touch them.

It would take too long to tell all the ups and downs" of this young man’s career. He married when he achieved LllO a year, and has two jolly little boys I’m told. His wife has stood by him with uncomplaining and unfaltering devotion. Like the poor clerks in “ Thirty Bob a Week/' she is made of “ flint and roses."

Many times Mr Davidson thought he had turned the corner to fame. In 1885 his “ Perfervid ” was a fair success, and “ In a Music Hall ” (1893) and “ Fleet Street Eclogues,” were both well reviewed when they appeared. It was not however till “ The Ballad of the Nun ” in the October Yellow Book set the literary coteries asking “ who is John Davidson ?" that the tide began to flow, which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune. Luckily the “ Poems and Ballads " appeared immediately on the top of this tour de force. It is an extraordinary little book, and I should dearly like to quote the “ Ballad of Heaven," “The Ballad of Hell," and “ Thirty Bob a Week," to convince you of the author’s excellencies. Unfortunately they are too long, and selections wouldn’t do. One might equally well exhibit bits of a broken Portland vase in order to show the perfections of Wedgewood’s masterpiece. With the publication of “ Poems and Ballads" John Davidson was “discovered." The newspapers, from the stately Times to the ecstatic Chronicle , and the superior Pall Mall, “ enthused " thereon after their respective manners. Interviewers arrived to cross-examine the rising star and

photographers to take his portrait. This little book itself sold like the proverbial “hot cakes,"and able editors, no longer coy and difficult to get at,clamorously demanded ballads at the poet’s own price. Finally Archdeacon Farrar preached about the poems and their lessons in Westminster Abbey, and another eminent divine expressed pained surprise at his doing so. Here was fame indeed !

Then Mr Davidson went home to his Pillared Halls, six rooms “ about the size of travelling trunks," in a northern suburb, and kissing the little wife and the two sturdy laddies thanked God. The years of storm and stress were at last over. How trying some of these must have been his city clerk’s story in “ Thirty Bcb a Week " reveals—

But the difficultest go to understand And the job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that’s the proper thing for you.

It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf, IPs playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It’s walking on a string across a gulf, With millstones fore and aft about your neck ; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one, And we fall, face forward, fighting on the deck. THE GROSVENOR WEDDING. And now I must leave Mr Davidson, pro tem at any rate, and tell you a little about the Grosvenor wedding, concerning which all classes of womenkind have much to say. First, my dear, there is the astonishing fact that the Queen has substituted, for her hitherto inevitable wedding present of an Indian shawl, a very superior piece of jewellery. To the lay mind, inexperienced in the ways of courts, this may seem a trifle. To those however, aware that the laws of the Medes and Persians were not more unalterable than are certain Royal precedents, it occasioned great surprise. As a matter of fact no precedent has been departed from. The jewellery indicates that Her Majesty recognises Prince “Dolly" of Teck as a relative and desires it to be understood that he and Lady Margaret Grosvenor are on their union to be received into the family circle of the House of England. This was far more than the “ dear Tecks " dared to hope for, and, of course, delighted the Duke of Westminster. Amongst our haute noblesse two words in their vocabulary are all important, and lead to more envy, hatred, and general uncharitahleness than any others. I refer to “ precedent " and “ precedence." Questions of the latter more particularly are the cause of endless bickering and soreness in august circles. Just now “society" is eagerly discussing exactly where Prince and Princess “Dolly" will come in. At present the youngmanis merely a courtesy prince, but it is anticipated the Queen will presently confer on him an English Dukedom.

Lady Margaret’s wedding dress will be of richest English white satin, trimmed with very rare and beautiful old Brussels lace caught with groups of orange blossom. Her ornaments will include the pearl and diamond spray presented by the Prince and Princess of Wales, and a priceless necklace of pearls. The six bridesmaids are all either neices or half-sisters of Lady Margaret. Four are children and two grown up, or rather, sweet seventeen. They will be dressed in ivory white thick corded glace ondine silk. Their dresses have pointed vests of white pleated chiffon, lost beneath girates of pale sky blue velvet. The vests are bordered down either sid® with bands of thick cream-coloured Italian lace. There are folded collars of blue velvet narrowly edged with sable and the long narrow cuffs from the elbows are finished with bands of blue velvet narrowly edged with similar fur. The top portion of the sleeves arranged in ample hanging puffs from shoulder to elbows are of ac-cordeon-pleated chiffon having bands of the lace inserted down them at intervals. The little girls’ dresses are similar in all respects save that the whole bodices are of accordeon-pleated chiffon. “ASHES." On Friday afternoon we —that is Jenny, another, and self—dropped in at the Prince of Wales Theatre for a rest after shopping, and to see a trial performance of a small tragedy called “ Ashes." The joint authors of the play, Messrs Edward Collins and Richard Saunders, seem to have studied the manners and customs of good society from the same handbook as Oscar Wilde and Henry Arthur Jones. But either of those dramatists would have made better use of the materials of the play, of which I will give you just the brief outlines. Lady Constance Kerr, having been “ chucked" by her lover (no “ lady" is genuine without one according to the dramatist’s handbook), Reginald Dunning, who transfers his affections to her niece, flies to her husband and tells him that Dunning has grossly insulted her. Sir Everett Kerr, instead of kicking Dunning downstairs, or challenging him to mortal combat, proposes a game of dice with death as the stake, the losing

player to Bigu an agreement to kill himself within a certain time. The saving clause is that should the winner shuffle off this mortal coil ere the time arrives for the loser to commit suicide, the agreement becomes invalid. Dunning accepts these terms (why one can’t make out) and the dice are against him. The fatal day arrives. Dunning is preparing to take a draught of poison, when, in the very nick of time, my Lady Kerr comes in by the window —they always build houses that way in “ society"—and snatches the fatal cup from his hand. She tells him that his life is his own for she has killed her husband. Dunning doesn’t throw up his hands in horror, nor pay “avaunt, and quit my sight, murderess I" or anything of that sort. He calmly tells her, in a roundabout fashion, that he is not disposed to renew their intimacy. She then swallows a dose of poison and dies at his feet. Curtain. The final scene in the hands of an expert would have been made vastly moving, but the authors fail to touch your nerves entirely, and the acting on Friday was very mediocre. I felt throughout that the whole thing was “ play acting," and never once lost sight of the fact that the dress circle seats of the Prince of Wales are extremely comfortable to rest in after a spell of “ bargain hunting."