“MORD EM’LY”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18761, 27 December 1930, Page 15

“MORD EM’LY”

THE LATE HR. PETT RIDGE. Many will miss the late Mr. Pett Ridge's annual book; indeed, since 1890, when he began his literary career, he has often published more than one book in each year. He was about 70 years of age at the time of his death at the end of September last. “Roaming East of Aldgate” was his recreation, but, as a matter of fact, he was only a Londoner by adoption. Most writers who try to portray the Cockney make him talk as no one ever talked, either in Brook Green or Bermondsey. Pett Ridge, instead of the absurdly tortured vowel sounds that were supposed to represent the Londoner’s speech, transcribed faithfully that clipped yet sometimes flowery diction so characteristic of the Londoner in what is loosely called “low life.” “Mord Em’ly” was one of his earliest portraits, and it remains one of the best in the long gallery of clerks and officeboys and laundry-girls and railwayporters and pick-pockets. He knew them all—knew all about their ambitions and quarrels and private lives and “in-laws.” He was at his best not so much in the slums as among the half or quarter education young Londoners who used to flock into inner London every day from Bow and Bermondsey and Camden Town and Shepherd's Bush and Camberwell. The types of Londoners Mr. Pett Ridge had met seemed Inexhaustible. Many of them were found in one of his most recent books, which he called “I Like to Remember.” Here are a few:— The coal merchant, “Bethnal Green” way, whose hobby was stealing and collecting hats. The Insurance clerk in the city who at night doubled his income by playing the role of minstrel entertaining theatre queues. The man who became a park orator to keep away from a nagging, invalid wife. The greengrocer who never married because the ceremony was indefinitely postponed, he and his fiancee never being out of gaol at the same time. Pett Ridge was an entertaining speaker. Recalling, in a recent speech, London places and sights of 40 years ago he said the change he most noticed in Bloomsbury was the absence of German bands. “In the days of my youth,” he added, "German bands had a gusty and explosive manner. “If Germany had dropped militarism and kept German bands, she would have won the war.” Pett Ridge was for many years an ardent "first nlghter.”

"I went back to the gallery a little while ago,” he said in the same speech; “to see why it remains such an attractive place In my memory. I discovered It was because from that range—and that range alone—all women on the stage are beautiful and attractive.”