THE POETS' DINNER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 785, 7 April 1910, Page 5

THE POETS' DINNER.

DESCENDANTS OF THE GREAT BARDS.

By Tcleeranh—Prep Association—Copyright. (Eeo. April 6, 10.15 p.m.) London, April C. Lord Coleridge presided at a banquet promoted by the Poetry Recital Society to bring together the descendants, or, failing that, the nearest family representatives, of . £he great poets of the past. The banquet was fixed for April 5, as being the late Mr. Swinburne's birthday.

There were 300 guests, -poets and poets' descendants, including the Duke of Nor-, folk, Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, and representatives of Sir Philip Sidney, Sir John Suckling, the Earl of Rochester, Sir Walter Scott, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and seven members of Shakespeare's family.

The toast of "The Immortal Memory of British Poets" was drunk in silence.

Itangiuia, the Maori singer from New Zealand, in Maori costume, gave Native songs and a war dance after the banquet.

SOME OF THE CLAIMANTS. Applications from descendants oi poets desirous of attending tho dinner by the Poetry Recital Society were arriving by almost every post when the English mail left. So numerous, in fact, were the intending guests, who claim to trace their' ancestry to moro or less famous bygone bards, that the authorities of the society had to resort to the somewhat delicate process of "weeding out." ■ Some of tbe poets were exceptionally prolific in tho cumber of their descendants. For example, Mrs. liemans, 1 of. "pasabianca" fame, has been found to have no fewer than twenty descendants, and there may be others. The following table shows tho proportion of descendants of some of the more famous poets who have been traced by the society:— Shakespeare .... 3 Spenser 2 Wordsworth .... 6 Shelley 5 Southey 6 Scott 2 Burns , 6 Browning 2 Byron ............. 3 ' These descendants arc people of all classes in life, some of them engaged in occupations far remote from anything poetical. Ono of the Shakespeares, a lady of Bournemouth, is so desirous of attending the dinner that she has offered to draw up her pedigree showing lier descent from the sister, of tho immortal bard. The society has asked her to send the pedigree ajong. . [It will be seen that the throe Shakespeares in the above table have increased to seven in the cablegram. Some of the claims were in. doubt wheii the mail left.] ;

. Because Thomas Warton, Poet Laureate, wa-s her uncle,'"three times removed," a Cricklewood lady thinks she is entitled to a ticket for the banquet, iiot only for herself, "but one also for my sister, or husband." "This is the first wholesale order we have received," said Mr. Kyle, the secretary, laughingly, to a reporter. Another application comes from ..Alice Knight, "niece of James Collins Cox, the Poet of Bermondsey, 1867." ' This lady is a poet herself, apparently, for she writes: "I am in possession of a letter of thanks from Queen Alexandra', and a congratulatory one from the King of Portugal, each Sovereign graciously accepting verses."

One of Mrs. Hdmans's descendants, apropos of ,thp poem "Graves of a Household," mentions that his: father, who' was one of Mrs. Hemans's sons, died in Brazil, and was buried out there, a sad parallel to the poem, which, of course, tells of England's children who go abroad _ throughout the world and live and die far from home: , , • I Sir. Kyle fqund another of Shakespears in the person of Mr. F. ■(Shakespeare Heme, a cousin of the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare. / The Baroness de Bertoiich must have been an interesting guest at the dinner. Sho is a direct descendant,' through his only daughter, of John "Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who was' sonnet-writer and poet to the Court of Charles 11. R-ei-gate has produced another descendant of Byron—Miss Georgine Byron—and from Nottingham a Mr. Edward Sutton writes to say that he is descended from Georgo Herbert, author of.. "Tho Temple," known as the Poet of the Church. The society has also heard from Miss Clara Bloomfield, great-grand-daughter of Robert Bloomfield, author of "The Fanner's Boy." Miss Bloomfield has in her possession the original manuscript of this composition. Mr. Deighton Patmore, an insurance broker, of Leicester Square, is a son of Dr. Tennyson Patmore, the eldest son of Coventry Patmore, the poet.