Author of “The Red Sultan.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XII, 19 September 1903, Page 791

Author of “The Red Sultan.”

Mr Maclaren Cobban, the Scotchman who has written so many popular articles and books, is the subject of som? notes in “M.A.P.” One of the tales Mr Cobban contributed to “Belgravia” was called the “Plague-Smitten Ship,” and there is a very curious coincidence attaching to it. In the story the ship beats in towards the harbour of a certain watering-place in t'he lull of a terrific storm. The people of the place aie afraid of all strange ships, lest they bring the cholera, then epidemic. The harbour authorities, when they learn there is illness on board, are in a panic. They refuse to help the ship to make the harbour, which is a ticklish one, but allow a young doctor to go on board. The storm revives, and the ship is driven away, and goes to pieces on the rocks. But the skipper’s daughter, who is siek of a fever, and all on board save two sailors, are saved on the timber with which the ship is laden. The girl had been wrapped by her father in all her bed-elothes, and last of all in a tarpaulin, and she is found, when brought to shore, to have lost all her fever. On that discovery the young doctor founds a special fever treatment. In all that there is nothing remarkable, but the sequel is strange. When the story appeared Mr Cobban learned from an old resident of the watering-place in question that vears before all had actually

happened as Mr Cobban had imagined, down to the special fever treatment afterwards adopted by the doctor, and. said the old man, “there are the graves of the drowned sailors up there in the Quaker burying-ground.” How many people are aware that there was once a Sultan of Morocco who was half an Irishman? Yet such is the case, and one cf Mr Cobban’s most successful novels, “The Red Sultan,” is founded on this historic fact. Some twenty or more years ago a Swiss, who had risen to a high position in the Sultan of Morocco’s service, came over to London in search of a private secretary. Mr Cobban was an applicant for the post and was practically engaged, although at the last moment negotiations fell through. In the meantime Mr Cobban spent some weeks at the British Museum “cramming” Morocco, and it was in the course of his researches that he unearthed the story of the “Red Sultan.” In the time of the great Sultan, Mohammed ben Abdallah, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, an Irish sergeant of Royal Engineers, or it may have been “Gunners,” was lent to the Sultan by our Government to assist in strengthening the defences of the country. The sergeant took with him a “sonsie” Irish wire, who found favour in the Sultan’s eyes. The sergeant died —‘whether naturally or of the always fatal malady which is apt to attack inconvenient husbands under Moslem rule, history does not relate. 'Anyway, the widow was not inconsolable; she became the Sultan’s wife, and in due course bore him a red-polled son. who eventually ascended

the throne. The “Red Sultan” is. perhaps, the only one of Mr Cobban’s books to which any particular story is attached. but he has written many more, among which one singles out “The King of Andaman” and “The Angel of the Covenant.” the latter the first of a yet unfinished triology dealing with Mr Cobban’s favourite hero, the great Marquis of Montrose. Then Mr Cobban’s “Life and Deeds of Lord Roberts” must not be forgotten, if in a sense one could wish that it had never been written, for prob ably the strain of writing it—a matter of 400,000 words in four volumes—besides a novel, in a little over a year, had something to do with promoting the painful malady which has laid him aside fr‘mt all work for the past six months. Still despite suffering, he keeps cheery and a “stiff upper lip ” Tall, thin, cleanshaven, with light hair and humorous grey eves, his high wide forehead and general east of face give him a certain look of Mr Anthony Hope. He is married and has a little daughter, who. eighteen months old at the time of the Kings accession, was taught to say "The King - -God bless him!” whenever she drank her milk. One day she was given only half her usual quantity. After some deliberation she raised the glass to her lips and said: “The King!—God bless him! —a little bit.”