A POET AMBASSADOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2087, 22 February 1894, Page 42

A POET AMBASSADOR.

Mr Rennell Rodd, who has recently returned with Sir Gerald Portal from being Acting Consul-general in Zanzibar, has published several volumes of poems, the best known, perhaps, being the volume he wrote while he was secretary at tbe British Embassy at Athens. He began poetry by taking tbe prize poem when he was a boy at Haileybury — a veryj'good poem, by the way, something about the Aztecs. There was a most peculiar edition of one of hi 3 volumes published In Philadelphia on green paper, with an introduction by Mr Oscar Wilde. The ta3te of the introduction and the get-up were as bad as the poems were good.

He was for some time at the Embassy at Berlin, where his boyish good looks and charming manners won him the affection of the Imperial family, notably the present Emperor, then only the Emperor's grandson. This led to his writing the life of the Emperor Frederick after that good man's premature and lamentable death. Mr Rodd was a Balliol man, a great friend of Sir Gerald Portal's soldier brother, who was his contemporary. There is a story of Rodd and Portal collecting a violent mob outside Balliol one night after a " wine " by pelting their passers-by with orange-peel and loaf sugar— fragments of the feast. Finally they got alarmed, and went to fetch the Hon. W. St. John Brodrick (who was a member of tbe late Government) to address them on the propriety of going home. Mr Brodrick always took himself seriously, even as an undergraduate, and when he became president of the Union took it with an air of inheritance.

In appearance Mr Rodd is very goodlooking—a slight, fair man, with bright blue eyes, pink cheeks, and yellow hair. While he was Acting Consul-general at Zanzibar it fell to his lot to unmake and make a Sultan. It must have been a sight for the gods to see this boyish-lookirjg poet disposing of crowns to grave, dusky Orientals. Mr Rodd is now about 36 or 37 years of age.