People Talked About

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XVI, 15 October 1904, Page 2

People Talked About

The Late Mr. George Adams. The late Mr George Adams /“Tattersails”), who arrived in the early fifties from England, was a native of Herts., England. In the early stages of his Australian career Mr Adams started on a venture to the gold fields in Queensland, and making some money, he returned to New South Wales, and took the Steam Packet Hotel, at Kaima; afterwards taking up a station property nt Crookwell, and a butchering business at Goulburn. His next important move was to Sydney. Tn 1878 he took over Tattersail’s Hotel. Pitt-street. from the late Mr John O’Brien. Possessed of great business capabilities, the new landlord quickly made improvements. Prior to

that, the premises, known as the Craven Hotel, had been included with Tatterball’s. and a new room, on the site of the present Palace Theatre, was built for the accommodation of Tattersail’s Club m< mtbers. w ho previously met in the long room, now the dining-room of the hotel. So well-known in various parts of the country were Mr aid Mrs Adams that I he hotel business grew rapidly, and mat uial alterations had to bo made in the hotel. However, it is in connection with the popular Tattersall’s sweeps that Mr George Adams' name became worldwide* known. With the late Mr Hunt and a few others. Mr Adams was always to bo found participating in a sweep got up on the various events at Randwick. The idea grew upon him that Hie public would readily participate in i sweep if they had the chance*. After chatting the* matter over. Mr Adams decided to draw one* in connect ion with the Sydney Cup of 1881. won by Progress. The swoop was limited to *2OOO members at ,£ 1 each. ami was drawn in the main parlour of the* old building. The sweeps ra-

pidly grew in favour, and it is pretty safe to say that nothing more popular or profitable than Adams’ sweeps could be imagined; the great feature in connection with them being that they were always fairly and honestly conducted. As his wealth accumulated, Mr Adams speculated freely. Always taking an interest in South Coastal affairs, he took in hand the Bulli Colliery and Coke Works, besides no end of gold-mining ventures, the Palace Theatre, the Palace Electric Light Station, and the Waterloo Paper Afills (now closed), Broken Hill Electric Light Station (since dispose -* of), the Newcastle Electric Light Station (subsequently disposed of to the local municipal council), and. most recently. the Tasmanian Adams’ Brewery. When the authorities forced Mr Adams to transfer his great sweepstakes business to Tasmania, he naturallv became interested in other business

matters in the island, and he is said to have spent £200.000 in the island in recent years. So extensive have been the alterations and improvements to Tattersall’s Hotel in Sydney, that, except the bar and little back room at its rear, close to the Palace Theatre, nothing is left of the old place: and. with his marble bar. and splendid bar in George-street. it is now one of the leading hotels in the city. Without a doubt we have lost in Mr Adams one of the best men we ever had in the licensed victualler’s business in the State (says the “Town and Country Journal”). He did not take a prominent place in sport. Still he owned and raced several horses, trained mostly by bis old friend, the late Mr William Forrester. Generous, just, and honest in his dealings with every one. we mu«t say that all who knew the late Mr George Adams had nothing bn* a good word for him. Air Adams leaves a widow, who is now in Tasmania. Tie had two brothers living in Sydney. Afr AV. J. Adams, a nephew, the son of a deceased brother, has been general manager of the businesses for some years past.

John Strange Winter. 1 do not think, although I am blessed with an excellent memory, that my re menibrances extend to an abnoimally early period of my existence, writes “John Strange Winter” autobiographically in a London weekly. What I do not remember is really more important than what I do remember, for I do not remember ever learning to read, and cannot look back to any time when I could not read with as much ease as I can at this moment. Tradition goes that 1 never was taught that necessary accomplishment. and my people never knew at what precise date I acquired it. Still, the household was not quite certain whether I really could read then (wHen I was hardly three years old), or whether the knowledge came to me somewhat later. I can look back to about this period, because T remember wearing a sort of black and white mourning for one of my brothers who dies when I was 20 months’ old. and I remember dressing myself up as a cavalier, in a large felt hat with a steel buckle, and dancing in front of a looking-glass. This was probably some trace of my playacting blood.

The most vivid recollection that T have after concerns a time when I must have been about four years old. and it is of waiting one Sunday morning in the afore mentioned hall, dressed in my best, which was a white frock and a black silk jacket edged with lace, singing the “Te Deum” in a very loud voice out of my mother’s gilt-edged Prayer-book. I think she must have been rather late that morning, for when I had finished the “Te Deum” I went on to “Oh, all ye fowls of the air.” From that time I was a voracious novel reader, but of toys I had none, and did not want them. I possessed two dols in the course of my life, one of which 1 gave away, in an excellent

state of preservation, when 1 was six-and-twenty. I was not what might be called a studious child—Heaven help, me far from it! The acquirement of the art of reading was, as far as I can remember, the one sign ’of grace of my childhood’s days. I preferred boys to girls; romps to games involving intellect; I began everything and finished nothing. 1 had large ideas—what I may call world-wide ideas—and looking back I can see myself a queer and distinctly ugly little figure of fun, always in the position of a leader. I dominated the games, I was the ringleader, I was the enthusiast who fired all the others to naughtiness. 1 did many and awful things when 1 was a child, but I do not think, to be quite honest, that I was a wicked child—l certainly was not a mean one. But I was extremely adventurous, and considering that I was tied down by the fact that I was a girl—and a parson’s girl to boot— I certainly got myself into about as many scrapes as ever an unfortunate child did in this world. A very great actress once said to ms in speaking of the possibility of writing her autobiograpny. “Whj. my dear, 1 should have to leave out all the interesting parts!” Now, in writing of the days tot my youth, ought I, or ought I not, to leave out all the interesting parts? I think not. Well, to confess, this was my crowning naughtiness. I used regularly and continually to play truant from school. Whenever there was a big raee on, or a review, or any function of that kind. I found school much too tame for my expansive mind, so I used to make provision in the shape of hard-bfoiled eggs, and such like, and with a pal, several years older than myself, who attended another smart ladies’ school in the town, I used to witness some most interesting sights, and spare myself many days of bore-

dom. But the brightest dream has its awakening, and one day, when I was about 13, having laid an elaborate plan for spending the day at a yeomanry review, I was baulked of my pleasure by the fact that the rain began to fall, and continued falling with a steady persistence, which left no hope of sunshine during the rest of that day. Now. for my part. I always liked my creature comforts, and having, with my pal, sheltered under a railway arch, we ate our stolen lunch. At tw*o o’clock I made the best of my way to school. T went in quite in an ordinary way. as if I had just arrived from home, and was greeted with: “Hullo. Etta Palmer, you’ve got yourself in for it this time.” “Have I?” I said. I felt the game was up, and that there wtould be a Nemesis to follow of the most unpleasant description, hut, in spite of a sinking heart, 1 put a brave face on it. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Mean 1 Well, your father is upstairs.” T said. “Oh!” and sat on the edge of a box and wondered what T should do

next. My first impulse was to run out of the house and holt altogther; my second. to face the music. I did face the musie, and went up into the schoolroom in the usual way, and presently in came the head-mistress. She was a woman of extraordinarv dignity, who did but little of the teaching, being the figure-head of the establishment. She sauntered round, swishing her silk skirts and glancing over the shoulders of first one and then another of the girls bending over the long desks. Thon, when she camo behind me. she took hold of mv skinny little shoulder with a firm but not unkindly grip. “Etta,” she said, “your father has been here.” "Oh. has he?” I said, in a very meek voice. “I have told him what T think about you.” she said, in accents more of sorrow than of anger. “T don’t wish to say anything to you on the subject, but you will hear all about it when you get home.” This was prolonging the agony. I felt that facing the musie was postponed till T reached the paternal abode. How T suffered that afternoon! The whole school knew exactlv what had happened. Some were sympathetic some admired my courage, and some contemptuously put me down as a little idiot for running the risk of getting myself info such a horrible scrape. » » • • So home I went to face the music. I

was received with looks of distinct disapproval. My mother sighed and looked tearful, my father told me I should bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, and that one day I should regret deeply that I had neglected my opportunities. And so they talked to me and at me, and, at last, it dawned upon me that neither my father, my mother, nor the head, were in the least aware that I had not been at school all the morning! You can imagine the relief to my mind, and you can imagine that a conviction had birth and grew and throve in my brain, that it is better to be bom lucky than rich. The explanation of my mother’s tearful looks and my father’s reproaches was, he had been recommended to take me away from a school where I was learning nothing, and where I would not learn anything, for, as the head delicately put it. “We really feel we are not earning your money.” I suppose it was my shrewd NorthCountry blood that told me such an extraordinary piece of luck would never befall me again. Certain it is this near shave was the end of my truant days. I

left school at the end of that term, and began private lessons under my father’s eye. They included Latin and Euclid. Latin T loathed, but it was Euclid which undid me and cast me out of my father’s study! * w ♦ * After that for several years I was entirely given up to music. T did nothing else, cared for nothing else. Then came a time when T realised that, neglectful as T had been of my opportunities, there was something in me which could only come out through the point of a pen. and that was the literary birth of "John Strange Winter.” Stanley as a Treader. The feature of “Scribner's Magazine” for September is a striking tribute to Stanley’s memory by his last surviving officer. Mr A. J. Mounteney-Jephson. who visited New Zealand a couple of years ago. “His faults.” he writes, “were never of a mean or petty kind, and were easily forgiven when one saw the true greatness and nobility of his nature beyond. . . . TTis seeming hardness and callousness in working to achieve what ho had undertaken, if he felt that the end was a good one; the curiously hard and unsympathetic atti-

tude he had toward failure of any kind, no matter how blameless the failure might be; these and many others are not qualities that are usually found in gentle and amiable natures, and they do not as a rule attract sympathy and affection. But they saved the whole expedition from annihilation many a time, they dragged us out of difficulties which would have overcome an ordinary man, they drew us through places where there seemed to be only death before us. and they gained for him the absolute trust and confidence of all those who followed him. In the early part of the expedition, we, Stanley’s four officers. Captain Stairs. Captain Nelson. Dr. Parke, and myself, did not entirely understand his character, and at first the things that he did seemed to us sometimes to be hard and unnecessary. But as the months went on our estimate of his character changed, for we saw how absolutely right and necessary all that he had done had been, and we realised that sometimes it was very necessary to do hard things for the safety and preservation of an expedition like ours. Stanley has often been accused of cruelty, but T can only say that during the three years we four officers were with him in Africa we never onee saw him do a cruel or wanton thing, or anything of which our consciences disapproved.”

In the same number is a poem by Winifred Coombe Tennant, the sister-in-law of Lady Stanley, which is a protest against the policy which forbade the burial of Stanley in Westminster Abbey by the side of Livingstone.

Touring Team Titles. As the county cricket clubs wind up their season the period of third-class cricket begins to reach its meridian, and all manner of amateur teams go on tour (says the London “Daily Graphic”). There is no doubt that the number of these touring teams has shown signs of considerable increase this season, but the development is accompanied with one tendency which, it is complained, is derogatory to the dignity of the game. As with one mind, a quantity of the new teams have indulged in alliterative titles more catehv and, perhaps, witty, than dignified. There are some titles of this nature, such as the “Hampshire Hogs." justified by antiquity and grounds of derivation. The Guinea Pigs,” again, a name given long ago to teams which boasted the absence of a “tail,” has an appropriateness that must be recognised. But the stylist has some excuse for objecting when a locality beginning with “]>’’ thinks it desirable to call its team the “Dumplings,” and plays the “Stragglers” from Somerset; and this surrender to the fatal attraction of alliteration becomes genuinely lamentable when Chorley or Chesthunt, or some such sounding place, supports an eleven of “chappies.” No doubt most of the synonyms for "touring” are used up. Wanderers, Nomads, we have in excess, but the imagination of cricketers should be able to advance beyond snippet assonance.