ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22025, 7 August 1933, Page 6

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

Adam Lindsay Gordon is one of a very small number of poets Avho have sung their songs so siveetly outside the Mother Isles that the echo of them has come back to the Homeland. The decision of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to alloAv the erection of a memorial to him in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey is interesting for many reasons. It is interesting as an acknoAvledgment, such as is but rarely given, and is seldom due, of the flowering of literary artistry in the colonial clime. So far the traditions of the British dominions, impressive as they are, have not been distinguished in the field of letters. Gordon’s admission to the national shrine will create a precedent that may encourage the dominions to a better opinion of their literary potentialities and, possibly, to a more vigorous use of them. The honour is the more flattering since it is known that the Dean of Westminster at least is not inclined to be over-responsive to requests for additional memorials in the Abbey. John GalsAVorthy Avas declined burial there, the unofficial reason given being lack of space, and early this year Dean Norris spoke rather strongly upon the question of the Abbey memorials. Great masses of sculpture, he declared, occupied space where it Avas greatly needed, so that there was scarcely room to Avalk in procession. “ There arc,” he said, “ monstrosities in the Abbey, memorials to quite insignificant people and events, and some quite vulgar things,” which were an eloquent testimonial to the sentimentality of the Briton, but not to his artistic or common sense. The Adam Lindsay Gordon bas-relief will be, no doubt, quite a comely and unostentatious affair compared Avith some of the triumphs of the old-time sculptors’ art Avhich commemorate men Avhose fame has passed away. And from his selection from the company of poets and Avriters aa’lio have made their reputation in the dominions there can be no dissent. He is no doubt more entitled to a tablet in the Abbey than many of his countrymen who are commemorated there, and though he

does not, perhaps, entirely deserve Marcus Clarke’s encomium as the founder of an Australian school of poetry, his sage and virile work is representative of a stirring of literary growth which will yet come to fruition. It has been the easier, perhaps, to accord Gordon his niche in Westminster Abbey because his work was not in truth typically Australian. It has something of universality to the British character, which enables all peoples of the Empire to understand it. And they may take the apportionment to its creator of a modest space in the Poets’ Corner as a gesture from which they are not excluded.