COINCIDENCES IN FACT AND FICTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 1956, 20 August 1891, Page 36

COINCIDENCES IN FACT AND FICTION.

WilWe Collins related a very strange case of circumstantial coincidence in connection with his striking novel "Armadale." In November 1865, 13 parts of the tale had been issued, and the actual conclusion of the plot had been sketched in the author's notebook more than a year and a-half. The story largely turned on the fatal consequences of "sleeping in foul air. In the month just mentioned the newspapers reparted loss of life on a vessel lying in the Husskison Dock at Liverpool. The ship was looked after by a caretaker, who slept on board. One day he was discovered dead in the deck house. A second shipkeeper was put on duty, and next day he was carried in a dying condition to the hospital. On the third day a third man was also appointed, and in his turn'perished in the deckhouse. At the inquest the cause of the three deaths was shown to be poisoned air breathed in sleep, The name of that ship was tbe Armadale. Dr Robert Chambers experienced a singular coincidence which happened in 1844, while waiting for the resting of a gig horse at a Morpeth inn. He had with him a favourite copy of Crabbe's poem, " The Borough." To while away the time he reread the poet's detailed description^ of a pleasure party casb away on a sandy island periodically eavered by the tide, and victims of- dread and anguibh when they realise that their boat, has drifted out of reach. Just as he finished the passage a waiter came in with a copy of the Sun newspaper, In this the traveller found Crabbe's picture portrayed as a terrible reality. The news sheet had an account of a pleasure-seeking company stranded on the Carr Rock in a steamer from Dundee to Edinburgh. Every line given in the poet's description lived in the plain prose of the journalist. Mr Walter Besant must have been struck by the resemblance of truth to fiction a short time back. In his " Doubts of Dives " one of the characters te Mr Pinder, who figures as an old dramatic critic. A copy of the book was bought by a Mr Dives, of Johannesburg, on account 6f his own name occurring in the title. What was bis amused astonishment to find coincidence upon coincidence. He had a friend named" Pinder, who had been a dramatic critic, and in other points resembled the creation of the novelist's imagination. H-j wro'e to Mr Beasaut on the subject. That gentleman could only answer that it was " most extraordinary." The daring satirist, Dean Swift, published

"Gulliver's Travels" in 1726-7. He was pleased to relate of the Laputans — who were intended to hold up Sir Isaac Newton and the Royal Society to ridicule— that they had discovered " two lesser stars or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters and the outermost five ; the former revolves In the space of 10 hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a-half." Swift was prophesying in his bitter fun the happening of the unlikely. But he had contrived to antedate actual discovery by a hundred and fifty years. In 1877 it was announced that Mars had two moons pretty much as the imaginary folk of Laputa saw them. Professor Hall's great telescope had brought them within the ranger of human vision, and incidentally fitted out fiction with an interesting "coincidence in genuine fact. The witty dean had probably little expectation of his dream coming true. Neither, it is to be presumed, have the majority of the makers of prophetical almanacs. Bat there was a coincidence with the weather almanac of a man named Murphy, and the event gave Paternoster Row a memorable sensation. Murphy had been an officer in the British army. He retired and dabbled in meteorology. When he wished to bring out his almanac he tried in vain to find a publisher willing to take the risks of the venture. He was driven to print at his own cost. By arrangement the name of Messrs Whitaker stood on the title page, and a cargo of copies were left on sale at their house. It seemed a complete and conspicuous failure. There were a very few stray 3ales, until it chanced that Murphy's forecast of a particular low temperature on a particular day was curiously verified. The date was the 20bh of January 1838, and for three hours the glass remained at the remarkable temperature of four degrees below zero. Everybody talked of the circumstances, and the fact was spread abroad that Murphy's almanac had given due warning. The whole edition was bought up, a new one was produced with great haste, and such was the crush in the Row on the day of publication that salesmen and agents long remembered the scene and the battle for eaily copies. The fact in the coincidence has sometimes belonged to the past and the fiction to the present, though without any conscious theft or plagiarism. There is a rather familiar Btory hailing from the prairies of the Par West|of a stalwart American pioneer who had an awkward and perilous adventure. He came face to face with a grizzlj at a point where retreat was difficult. But the brave backwoodsman did not propose to secure himselt by flight. Instead he braced his nerves for a tussle and (in the veracious yarn) said something like a prayer — viz., that " Providence need not help him so long as Providence did not help the bear" The ways' of the wild new lands are supposed to be illustrated in the tale. But a lady wrote to the Athenaum some time since and pointed out that, as an historical fact, a o general in one of the wars of Frederick" the Great rode out to battle at the head of his troops and offered what was substantially the v Western pioneer's prayer. Another correspondent mentioned the general's name and the occasion. The speaker was Duke, of Leopold of Dessau, and. the battle was that of Kesselsdorf, in 1745. A peculiar coincidence on other lines is found in the history of one of the most notable poems of the nineteenth century. Mr I Philip James Bailey's •» Festus " was first conceived when its writer was a youth of nineteen. On publication it achieved an enormous success, both in England and in America. The. admiring public over seas absorbed an edition de luxe, as well as cheapier copies. And amongst the illustrations to this example of American fine art an ! imaginative sketch of Festus in a garden scene was given. Here enters the odd coincidence. Quite by accident the transatlantic artist had supplied the book with a somewhat idealised but, on the whole, strikingly accurate, portrait of its author. It was much morethan a nine days' wonder amongst the personal friends of the poet.