ACCIDENTAL IMITATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1970, 22 August 1889, Page 32

ACCIDENTAL IMITATIONS.

I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray intimately, whether he had had any model for Becky Sharp. She told me that Becky was an invention, but that the idea of the character had been partly suggested by a governess who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington square, and was the companion of a very selfish, rich old woman. I inquired what became of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after the appearance of "Vanity Fair," the governess ran away with the nephew of the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in society, quite in Mrs Rawdon " Crawley's style, and entirely by Mrs Rawdon Crawley's methods. Ultimately she came to grief, disappeared to the Continent, and used to be occasionally seen at Monte Carlo and other gambling places. The noble gentleman from whom the same sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died a few months after " The Newcomes " had reached a fourth edition, with the word " Adsum " on'his lips. Shortly after Mr Stevenson published his psychological story of transformation, a friend of mine, called Mr Hyde, was in the north of London, and being anxious to get to arailway station, he took what he thought was a short cut, loEt his way, and found himself in a network of mean, evil-looking streets. Feeling rather nervous, he was walking extremely fast, when suddenly out of an archway ran a child right between his legs. The child fell on the pavement, he tripped ever it, and trampled upon it. Being of course very much frightened and not a little hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole street was full of rough people who kept pouring out of the houses like ants. They surrounded him, and asked him his name. He was just about to give it when he suddenly remembered the opening incident in Mr Stevenson's story. He was so filled with horror at having realised in his own person that terrible scene, and at having done accidentally what the Mr Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate intent, that he ran away as hard as he could go. He was, however, very closely followed, and he finally took refuge in a surgery, the door of which happened to be open, where he explained to a young man, apparently an assistant, who happened to be there, exactly what had occurred. The crowd was induced to go away on his giving them a small sum of money, and as soon as the coast was clear he left. As he passed out the name on the brass doorplate of the surgery caught his eye. It was " Jekyll."— Oscae Wilde, in the " Nineteenth Century."