XMAS CARD LAUREATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

XMAS CARD LAUREATES.

1000 GUINEAS FOR 32 LINES. A thousand guineas for thirty-two lines! Such was the amazing offer once made to Lord Tennyson for eight verses of four lines each; and, when the Laureate, who was then in the last years of his long life, felt obliged to turn his back on the golden lure, he wrote to a friend: —“You cannot imagine with what regret I have forfeited this opportunity of world-wide fame, for beyond a doubt, these verses would have found their way into many far corners of the earth where I cannot flatter myself even my name is known.” Indeed there are not a few poets of the Christinas card who count infinitely more readers than the greatest of Laureates could boast; and whose names are known and loved wherever our tongue is spoken.

The best-known of them all is undoubtedly Miss Helen Marion Burnside, whose right to the title of “Christmas Laureate” not one of her rivals would dream of disputing. “I cannot say how proud I am of the title,”

she said not long ago. "I do not know how I came by it; but even the real Laureate, my “big brother,’ could not wear his official crown Lore proudly than I do the homely one conferred on me by the public.” For over forty years Miss Burnside has poured out her Christmas verses, to a number far exceeding ten thousand; and there is scarcely a corner of the civilised earth to which they have not carried their messages of comfort and cheer and goodwill. “The writing of these verses,” she has said, “is to me as easy as it is delightful. When once I start, I can draw on the spring at will, and keep going as long as is necessary. They seem to come to me unbidden, because, I suppose, they are the simple outpouring of my heart.”

But Miss Burnside has had many formidable rivals among them Mr. Clifton Bingham', who, when once asked how many Christmas verses he had written, answered: —"Oh, don’t ask me. I counted up to 5000 a good many years ago and then I gave it up.” Mr. F. E. Weatherley was almost as prolific as Mr. Bingham. Major Cowan confessed some time ago that he had - often written as many as a thousand verses in a year. And the Rev. F. Langbridge’s yearly output has ranged from 400 to, a thousand.