CAPTAIN GRONOW.

Otago Witness, Issue 2402, 15 March 1900, Page 60

CAPTAIN GRONOW.

THE LAST OF THE DANDIES.

Captain Gronow was a famous buck in j bhe days when a man's dress was more j costly than a woman's; he gambled in all ] the smart " hells " of the time ; he fought elections against candidates with long purses so zealously that he was afterwards unseated for bribery and corruption; he married a lady belonging to the Paris Opera ; and though, his private fortune , .was small he never earned any money ex-cept-his pay as an officer in the army and such as he picked up at cards or wagering. iThough he was. known to be the second best pistol-shot in England and was engaged in many affairs of honour, he' was no bully or braggart, and though hi youth. Ms time was chiefly spent among the #akes and fribbles surrounding the Prince ■vE&egent he was a keen soldier who took his share of the fighting at Waterloo. Nor ;was he a mere brainless dandy.

' "His acute little mind had a corner for literature, and he repeats some good fctories of Shelley (whom he knew at Eton) and Byron (whose character he disliked). He is," we believe, the classical authority tfoi ' the fight between Shelley and Sir Styles. The poet had the advantage in inches, the baronet in science. began with a Homeric defiance 8n the original Greek, but Styles went to ?work like a practical artist, and " delivered a heavy slogger on Shelley's breadbasket." This so " electrified the baud " "flhat he fairly took to his heels and found asylum in his tutor's house.

The reason why Gronow did not admire Byron was that he was " all show-off and affectation." He pretended that his reason for disliking to see Avomen eat was that he wished to believe in their ethereal nature. His real motive was that they were helped first at dinner, and got all the ■wings of the chickens! "Byron could Xiever write a .poem or a drama without making himself its hero, and he was always the subject of his own conversation." His love of pose was especially irritating to a sharp, conventional little person like Gronov/, of whom his friend, Villemessant .wrote discerningly that "he was very good form, had a great respect for everything that was proper and convenient, and a strong propensity to become eccentric " — but always without making a fuss over it. '" He committed the greatest follies with--■out" in" the least disturbing the points of his shirt collar." ._

How well we know the type, and what good service they do their country in time of danger! But in long periods of peace their chief pride seems to be in " going to the devil'" Jike gentlemen. . Byron in his noblest moods was never quite a gentleman — according to the English convention ; and this accounts for the grudging manner in which men have always accorded the admiration that they cannot refuse. But a frivolous little Kian-about-town like Gronow, possessing just that Equality the other lacked, was welcomed jvlierever he chose to show himself, and "amongst women of the highest rank enjoyed a success at least equal to that attained by a peer whose personal beauty was only less remarkable than his genius.

" This little man, with his hair well arTanged, scented, cold, and phlegmatic, Sinew the best people in Paris, visited all jfche diplomats, and was evidently intimate (with everybody in Europe." And this was when he had come down in the world, and ihis creditors had made it impossible for ihlin to live in London. But he was equally at home in the French capital, which he had first entered with- the Allies in 1815, tod where he was afterwards present on December 2, 1852.

; But he was always a favourite, always an taracle, as he sat in the "Petit Cercle" arid "delivered hinuelf of his reminiscences — with (his gold-headed cane pressed to his mouth. It was a strange life — calmly selfish, and stolidly futile. The best commentary on the Captain, perhaps, is an abstract from the obituary notice in the Morning Post. "He has left ■his wife (a second wife) and four children ' totally unprovided for,, and his friends in {Paris are trying to get up a subscription for fcneir benefit- "— - Saturday Review.