Great Victorians in Every-day Life

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12423, 17 April 1926, Page 12

Great Victorians in Every-day Life

One of the compensations of the years is that we can remember men and women whom our juniors would wish to have seen. Memory is the only miser who is willing to part with his hoard. Yet I denounce myself when I thjnk of the opportunities I have lost of great or interesting men. In my sixteenth year I was given the run of London for three days. If, instead of going to the Dore Gallery and Madame Tussaud’s, 1 had watched the Chelsea, Embankment, I might be able to say that X had seen Thomas Carlyle. Nearly ten years later, as a young Londoner, I might have heard Ru*kin at the old London Institute in Finsbury Circus, where he was to lecture on Smoke or Thunder-Clouds or something of tho sort. Ten or more yeaTs later than this, Lewis Hind,' then my chief on the “Academy,” asked me to go with him to see William Ernest Henley. I wriggled out of it. I was in too great awe of the editor of the “National Observer” and simply had not the nerve to meet hiip at his fireside. . • . ’

In my first visit to London J went, alone, to the Strangers* Gallery in the House of Commons. And there, ori the Treasury Bench, sat Gladstone talking to John Bright. I had been mouthing their earlier and greater speeches in my school “Header” for a few years, and was not even then done with them. I can never forget that Pisgali sight of human greatness. When I come out, it happened that Gladstone himself was leaving the House, and I followed him along Ahinsdpn street, treading with pious exactitude in his footsteps until he entered one of the tall brick houses. At that time Gladstone was more than a statesman or a Prerfiier in the North Countrv; ift homes like mine he was confused with the Old Testament prophets—and not the minor ones. On my next,. and much later, visit to the gallery I heard Gladstone speak in the House, hut all I remember is his leonine leap from the bench to answer Lord Randolph Churchill. Young men of to-day conceive the power of Gladstone a ' personality; it exceeded that or any statesman within living memory. i once met him on a spring afternoon.in

Portland place, and it happened that a hundred yards of empty broad pave-ment-divided our approach. He naa probably arrived at Baker street etation from Dollis tfill,. and I remember that he wore or carried a shawl, ana one or two books. You may laugh, but I trembled as I passed him. tlio last I saw of Gladstone was his coto under the roof of AVestminster Hall, and/ like many others, I was startled by its smallness.. . , , , Several figures that were ratable m the streets of London in the late ’eighties come bach vividly. One ot these was Sir Henry Irving riding m a hansom cab. 1 never eaw Irving wall., except on the stage. In. his hansom he sat in the middle of the seat, often with hia elbows an the apron. lhe cab, cabman, actor, and horse made a memorable ’silhouette in the Strand, for Irving scorned to give character -to the whole equipage, from the horse s nose to the driver’s top hat and nigh whip. It was his custom to rehearse his parts aloud ' ll his cabs, under cover of the general noise Of the street, and many times I_ saw his lips moving as ho passed. • , . . „ , In Whitehall I used to meet Archbishop Benson bn horseback, the last archbishop, I think, to be so seen in London; he rode handsomely and with i lordly self-possession. ■ Tho judges in the law courts, thirty land forty years ago, provided some interesting'studies. A strange figure, at once stately and lackadaisical, _ _was that of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. He had the curious habit of placing at his side a tumbler containing some white fluid that looked as though it might be sherbet; this be occasionally stirred with a spoon before sipping it.

I place a poet highest in my gallery of these whom I have known, and know no more. Outwardly, Francis Thompson was a very different man from the Francis Thompson vvho must be pictured by readers of liis poetry to-day. I constantly met and talked with him between 1896 and 1902, and -rt f,ell to me to handle stores of his articles and reviews in manuscript. He wrote in .pencil on ordinary ruled pa r per, torn out of common exercise books. It amazes me to think that his MSS., when printed and done with, went into our waste-naper baskets. Blit it was hardly the author of “The Hound of Heaven” and “Sister Songs” who stood before us in the largo back room of the old “Academy” office at 43, Chancery Lane, opposite the brick Gateway that 1 Shakespeare knew. Thompson was no moody poet, and I cannot associate him with silence. He used -to come down once, possibly twice, a week to hand in his belated manuscript, and to collect any new books which wo could persuade him to review. Tf> carry these home lie brought, a sort of fisli-basket, which he wore, like an angler, from, a strap over his shoulder. It was much easier to set Thompson’s , tongue going than to stop it; for he was a most responsive talker, easily pleased with his company and himself. He could be an absurd person, and would talk until liis loquacity and naive laughter made the room swim about us. He had then written all that lie thought could be jvbrthy of bis genius But he once told me (it was at the old Vienna Cafe at the corner of Holborn anil Hart street that he knew his poefr.v would live. But he said that passion had left him, and that nothing new could rise from its »sbes; and he applied to himself those words of logo to Othello, so sonorous of effort spent and Tate fulfilled:

Not poppy, nor mandragorn, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that ajveet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday. I have not known a man more sweet and lovable, nor one whoso lips, had been so evidently touched by a live coal fram the altar. —JOHN O’ LONDON. Cecil Roberts lias completed a novel. “Little Mrs Mannington,” which is to be published this year.

It’s dogged as does it. It ain’t thinking about it.—Anthony Trollope. • * . * • An interesting addition to Stevensoniana will be an account of- a jour-, ncy to the Riviera taken in 1863’by R. L. S. with his father and mother and liis nurse. Gummy. It consists of a diary by Gummy in about 33.000 words, with drawings by Stevenson himself.

| j\l*ss May Sinclair has just finished a novel, “Far End.” - * * • An editor received from a lady some . verses, daintily tied up with pink ribbon, and entitled, “I Wonder if He’ll Miss Me?” After reading lie returned the effort to the sender with tho following note: “Dear Madam,—* If he does, he ought neveT to be trusted with firehrms again.”