THE SCOTT EXPEDITION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 13924, 7 March 1913, Page 7

THE SCOTT EXPEDITION.

MEMORIAL TO CAPTAIN OATES. Press Association. —Telegraph .-r-Copyright Received March 7, 9 aim. LONDON, March 6., ■ The Inniskilling Dragoons propose to endow a cottage home, for sick and aged members of the regiment, in memory of Captain Oates. THE SCOTT FUND. The Scott funds total <£47,000. MRS. SCOTT AS A SCULPTOR, In a. recent number of the Cosmopolitan . there is an article by Sewell Collins entitled “Robin's Best Pupil," written before the tragic fate of Captain Scott and his little band of heroes became known. After: introductory remarks the article proceeds : —• , Kathleen Scott is married (and married to—well, never mind ; she dosen’t waul 1 me to say)—with a house and servants, and a- big, business-like studio, and a big, strapping son of two or three winters, who looks as if some day he might grow up into a naval officer or an antarctic explorer. Kathleen Scott started to bo a painter and went to Paris to learn how. The. first day she attended a class, and before she got smeared with paint she was suddenly struck by the solemn silence of the room (as the late Sir Gilbert would have described it.) She put down her brush and looked around her. She was surrounded by a collection of antiques (animated objects of virtu) —serious, sombre, spectacled spinsters—-painting away in awful earnestness. They hud been there for years, and there was not a smile or a soul among them.

‘'Heavens!” slio thought, “if I stay here I may turn into one of these! Horrible thought! If this is what painters do, then it is not for me,” So she wiped tier brushes and screwed the little caps back on her paint-tubes and walked out. Disappointed, she turned a corner down the street, and from a window above her there came a. song and the sound oi 1 revelry (and it was by day.) The song had a rollicking Norwegian lilt, and it enticed her in. There wore a lot of students—a

“mixed” class (as they describe the Brighton bathers) and they were not painting. They Were modelling—and laughing! And amid the laughter, joyous forms and figures'were growing out of lumps of clay. So she slopped there. That’s what a Norwegian song will do. After .five 'years with'the great Rodin I knew there was a; mail’s influence, some-, where; I'll not -surrender),- and ,-after’ seeing her clay creations in the salmis of many European cities, Kathleen Scott' is now: making iportraits of our most distinguished people. I don't know' whether' it was the influence of the Norwegian song or the attraction of the polar hero, lint a,s she talked to me and laughed, there grow out. of a chunk of mud a re-' raartfftblo likeness to .the keen, aggressive head of Dr Fridoj Nansen, the Norwegian explorer. “My ambition.” she said, smearing . a slice of clay ‘ along Dr Nansen’s cheek hone, “is to do portraits of men. , I ,don’t want to do women: only men. It’s.much more ftni.” , ■. . . . “Putting them back where they belong,” I ventured, .“into clay—and under your thumb? If must be gratifying.” “No, ’ she replied; giving the poor explorer a savage j;tb in the eye; “meu are easier.” “I always knew that,” I said; “it’s our magnanimous way.” “I mean they are easier to please.” - ' "Ah ! my wife admits that. And aren’t they easier pay?” . 1 “Pay !” exclaimed Mrs Scott, squeezing a, piece, off Dr Nansen’s-‘frost-bitten ear—“now you have touched on a discouraging subject.’’ “Oh, dear!” I apologised, “I didn’t mean to suggest—” "What I mean,’’ said the sculptress, “is that when the subject of money is raised, my hopes are lowered. That is the discouraging part of ray work—or of myself more probably. I am an asset. In ray fingers I have got a fortune, but I can’t get it.” “Yon have no business ability,” I told her with condescension. “What you need is a business manager,” said I (owing at the moment two tailor bills and my bouse rent). “Exactly,” she admitted; “but even he couldn’t, make me do good work to order. The best stuff I do are the things I make for my own amusement—portraits of ray friends. I do them because 1 like .them,' and when they re done—” “1 sec,” I interrupted; “you haven’t the courage to charge your friends what you should for your work. That's bad.” “And when I get a bona fide business order for something,” she continued, beed- , less of my comment, “I feel that I fail with it because I,’atn trembling all the time I’am doing it, thinking whether it is going to please the customer or not,’’ “That proves you are an artist,” I consoled hot*. "Imok at me. I cap sit and write great stuff for myself, hut when an editor asks mo to .write something about yon, and you tell me I musn’t say this or that, 1 can scarcely hit tho keys of my typewriter Lor wondering if I am going to please both'of you.”

“Is this article to be about yon or me?” suddenly said Kathleen Scott, putting mo into my place as easily as she twisted Dr Nansen’s head two points from north to northeast.

Then she unwound a wet cloth from another bust, and revealed the kindly features of the Prime Minister. It was unfinished, the result of but one sitting, but already, the wonderful' knack this Indy has for catching “character” had' asserted itself, and Mr Asquith, with a twirk at one end of his mouth, seemed mruffled and optimistic. She tied him ip again so magnifieicntly that I couldn’t help asking her if she was a suffragette. “I am not,” she said positively. “I am i rabid anti!” and she set him gently on the shelf. The shelves of the studio are studded with character-sketches and statuettes— Wax Bccrhohm, John Galsworthy, Charles Shannon, Sir Clements Markham, \V. B. Ycatcs, Granville Barker, lion. Svdney Holland, and many other celebrated citi-zens-—a sort of “Who’s Who” in bronze. , .-Mrs Scott’s most important work is a >tatue of the late Hon. C. S. Bolls, the first British airman to fly the Channel. To commemorate this event, the statueis shortly to be unveiled .it Dover. The fate of her friend has not deterred Mrs Scott in her .enthusiasm for, flying, ■rad several days of each week find her it Brooklands—soaring to other heights than her art.

. “I suppose tlic greatest drawback to a successful artistic career,” said tlio sculp-tor-airwoman, “and by that I moan making art pay, is a sense of humor. People who can impress the public with their importance and makethein friends think they are great arc the ones who turn their reputations into bank-balances. They either have ho sense of humor, or have -ense enough to wait till they get home, then draw the curtains, lock the door, ana, after feeling secure in their solitude have a good laugh at themselves. I suppose if I could have received you in a shaded room, with a blue light burning, and a

piece of incense, with a studio-apron and aIF the effects and 'props’ of a supposed genius, instead of in walking-costume, just ■ having come from shopping, you would have been much more affected.

“No I shouldn’t,” I said. “I understand and I agree with you. But there is a lot in tile old thing about familiarity, and no man is a hero to his wife,” ; "Oh! but mine is,” she exclaimed inconsistency;- “the more I know of himthe greater he becomes in my mind.” As Mrs Scott accompanied me to the entrance-hall, the postman handed her a parcel,of letters. She opened one. “A cheque!” I suggested,. "No, ' she said; “only a press-clipping ■lt says “Kathleen Scott, the sculptor, an exhibition of whose work is now at the Grafton collieries, is the wile of Captain Robert Scott, the Antarctic explorer;” That’s a startling piece of information, isn’t’it?” . ■