AUSTIN DOBSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17567, 18 June 1925, Page 6

AUSTIN DOBSON.

MINIATURE ARTIST. Mr Austin Dobson died less than four years ago. During his lifetime it was a select and cultured public that walked in what Mr Edmund Gossc called “ the most carefully arranged and exquisitely tended garden” of Dobson’s muse (writes "John O London s Weekly”). It would seem, however, that his popularity has considerably increased since bis death. In 1922 Mr Dent published an anthology of his prose and verse selected by his son, Mr Alban Dobson. In 1923 the Oxford University Press issued the complete poetical works, and now the Oxford Press has re-issued the Dent v flume at three and six, and have also incuded “Selected Poems” in the World’s Classics. The poet of the exquisite is numbered with the immortals in a library that contains Shakespeare and Adam Smith, Tennyson and Tolstoi. Yet it is permissible, to doubt whether the charm of Austin Dobson, kin as it is to the charm of Watteau or of a porcelain vase, can ever touch the heart of the world that has perforce to dirty its hands and to collect mud on its boots. I confess that I find Austin Dobson most charming when his work is of the slightest. Many years ago in the series called “ Canterbury Poets ” there was published a collection of Ballades and Rondeaus and other experiments in the old French poetic forms, collected ,hy the late Gleeson White. The little volume, which has long been out of print, is a constant source of joy to me, and in it I find what is for me the best of Austin. Dobson, as well as the best of ‘Mr Edmund Gosse, and almost the best of Andrew Lang and Henley. How delicate and delicious is the triolet: — Hobo kissed me to-day. Will she kiss me to-morrow? Ret it be as it may, r.os« kissed me to-day. Hut thi> pleasure gives way To a savour of sorrow;— I? 080 kissed me to-day,— Will she kiss mo to-morrow? How irresistible is the Ballade “ On a Fan that Belonged to the Marquise de Pompadour,” which begins: - Chicken-skin, delicate, white, Painted by Carlo Vanlco, Loves in a riot of ligrht. Hoses and vaporous blue: Hark to the dainty frou-frou! Picture above if you can. Eyes that could melt us the dew, — This was the Pompadour’s fan! It is when Austin Dobson grows serious and writes of things that really : matter that he is less satisfactory. The longer and more elaborate of Dobson’s poems tend to grow tiresome, and this is inevitable because the man who is concerned with things that do ; not matter at all, or at least do not matter very much, should skip lightly from subject to subject, otherwise the f thinness of thought, and feeling becomes too apparent. I think that Mr i Gosse has well described his friend as an exquisite artist, but the exquisite artist should always work in miniature. 1 Dobson was so deliberate!}' outside the g rush and scurry cf the world that his •- aloofness at times becomes almost an irritating assumption of superiority, as 1 when he writes: And yet—why not? If zealots burn, Q Their zeal has not affected i- My taste for salmon and Sautcrne, n Or I might have objected. I Spiritually, Austin Dobson belonged to the eighteenth century, and in his ° prose it is of the eighteenth century that he has written with the greatest ,1 charm and the greatest understanding. :. He would have been happiest in that i- age of artificiality when men deliberately turned away from the rude tragedy ’ and comedy of actual human life, when R it was vulgar to talk or think of the a soul, and when pose was of far more e importance than piety. In a very ;• charming essay on the Thames in Sj “ Side-Walk Studies,” Mr Dobson ' 3 wrote: • I can see Steele landing at Strand Bridge, with "ten sail of Apricock ~ boats" from Richmond, after taking in melons at Nine Elms; 1 can see “Sir _ Roger” and "Mr Spectator” embarking * at the Temple Stairs in the wherry of j the waterman who had lost his leg at La Hogue. Yonder comes a sound < f " French horns, and Mr Horace Walpole’s barge gees sliding past, with flashing cars, carrying Lady Caroline it Petersham and “Little Ashe" to mince o chicken at Vauxh&ll, and picking up " Lord Granby on the way -“ very drunk from Jenny's Whim." Or it is 1, Swift, with “that puppy Patrick” in attendance to hold-his nightgown and i® slippers, bathing by moonlight at < hel* t! sea; and by and by posting home to , ’ tell Mrs Dinglev and .Stella, in the fah, mous “Journal,” that he had lost his )i landlady’s napkin in the water, and h will have to pay for it. '? The Thames brought to Dobson's j* mind the men of the eighteenth cents tury. That was his period. It would be a great test of likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, to discover ” what it is that the old river brings to the mind of each one of us. I won- ” der very much how many modern men •' and women, when they cross Westminster Bridge or stand on the terrace of the House of Commons, remember the legend that once, years ago when the j Saxon ISebert was King of England, 5 St Peter himself appeared on the left _ bank ct the river and was ferried over * that he might consecrate the church " built in his honour near the site where ' Westminster Abbey now stands. “ No man can serve his generation bet* 7 ter than to give it his best, and Austin ‘ Dobson certainly did that. If it was ~ in the trivial that he was most interested. how attractive he makes the J trivial! If it was in the eighteenth century that he loved to dream, how well h’.; understood the men of that centurv- the Johnsons well r.the 1 j TValp .'iff