LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2848, 12 August 1916, Page 6

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Mainly Abcut Henley,

' Nights: Pictures of-Rome and Venice in tho Aesthetic "'Eighties'" and "Paris and London in'the. Fighting 'Nineties," is the curious titlo of a new book by "hat always entertaining writer, Elizabeth Robins Ponnell, whoso clever, but rauier crolchetty and cantankerous artist husband, Joseph -Pennoll, recently shook of London off his feet, declaring it tb be no longer possiblo as an- 'art centre. Mrs. Pennell: has known nbt'a ftw artistic and .literary; celebrities in her uriie.'inon suoh\as Whistler, Stevenson, .Burnc-Jones, Edward, Fitzgerald, Barrie, Lang, Kipling, Wilde'. Henley, and others, and possessing a good memory and a clovcr pen, lias made some excellent "copy" out pf hor old acquaintances. At Rome she met,,that picturesque ligure,. Elihu Vedder, a Norwegian-American artist, whose powerfully imaginative illustrations to Fitzgerald's version of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat" still remains the finest work of their kind- Vedder was a tremendous egotist and never tired of eulogising his "Rubiaynt" drawings. , In looking back, Mrs. Pennoll says she-:a-l-ways seems to" see Mrs. Veddet pasting press notices of the famous drawings into a bulky scrap book, and to hear Vedder declaiming Omars quatrains and praising his own drawings. There was one overling when, says Mrs. Pennoll, he came to a dead stop in ■his: walk and his talk, and shaking_ a'dramatic ; :fiiiger. .at;,.the company, said, "I'll tell you-what'it'is. 1 am not Vedder. I am Omar Khayyam!" "No," draTfled the voice of a Hisgustea American artist, who had not oeen able to get a word in edgeways for more than an Hour, "No, you are not." You'r«~lha Great I Am!"

i Over all Mrs. Pcnnell's London recollections looms the figure of Henley, the "Wounded' Titan," as the poet Alfred Noyes calls him in an interesting article on the eultor of the once famous "National Observer," in a resent issue of the New York "Bookman." Henley was a remarkably handsome man. despito ins physical disability—tuberculous disease lind necessitated the amputation of one of his legs—tall and large and fair, a noble TTead' and profile,'a shock of red liair, sbort red beard, and keen pale blue eyes, u? Henley, the talker,'sho writes:

He was the original of Stevenson's Bjirly—the talker who would roar you down, bury his face in his hands, undergo passions ot revolt and o«ony, lettins loose a spring torrent of words. Ho ana liis Young lien were the most clamorous group of the clamorous nine* ties, though curiously their olamour seems faint in the ears of the present authorities on that noisy period. Aubrey Beardsley always was in mortal terror of Henley after their firßt encounter. He hod called, by special appointment, on Henley, to show him some of his drawings. As ho went up the two flights ot stairs to Henley's rooms he heard a voice, loud, angry, terrifying; at the top, through on : open door, he saw a youth standing in' tho . middle' of the ..room.-.. listening in abject fear to a large red man at a desk, -whom ho knew instinctively to be Henley; oaie glance, and bo turned and (led, down, the stairs .into'..the street'.

In .Mr. Isoves's article on Henley— "The Last of tho Buccaneers" he calls him—a story is told of a personal encounter between the author of "Hospital Verses" and that very different person, the author of "Tho ■ Picture of Dorian .Gray." Mr. Noyes says:

Tho soenc is late at night, outside" a famous London theatre... The audience, oloaked and furred, streams out into the smother of tho gae-lit fog. Shrill whistles are blowing for cabs; newspaper boys are yelling hoarsely. In front of the theatre there is a fan of light, alive with fragrance, .quiet laughter, and . the murmur of pleasant voices. A feiw groups of women wait within tho doors like bunched flowers, dispersing from time to timo as' the hansoms drive up. To the left of the doors is a largo yellow and black poster, advertising the play. 'Against this luridly appropriate (back, ground. a heavy figure stands. One or two'people look at him as they pass, and whisper his name. It x is a certain fa? mous dramatist-, now at the height of liis success. Ho is waging some kind ■of wordy warfare with another man;' a man on crutchoe, a certain struggling journalist, named Henley. Tho successful dramatist speaks in a manner which tlu'B, partioular kirifl of struggling journalist—by the 100k 1 of his eyes—will not be likely to enduro for long. And: to clinoh the. whole matter of their argument, as tho dramatist lets tho last word, slip and ' moves" to the street-, Henley—lifting his head like a wounded lion—swinss up his crutch, and hurls it, with all the ■power of John Silver behind it, straight at the head of Oaoar Wilde. Evidently, although Henley might proudly sing: I am tho master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. he, was not a[wavs the master. of his temper. But Wilde liad notoriously a bitter tongue, and before the crutch was thrown, who knows what provocation the cripple may have had? That Henley 'had his softer side there is ample evidence in his poems, notably in those addressed to his wife. A rough diamond, 3ie may have beeu, but never to be forgotten, whilst yet those splendid lines commencing What have I done for you. England, my England? "remain in the memory of those who love England,' and lovo those who write of her in terms of proudest devotion. Henley had his faults, but there aro few latter-day English, poets who can stir an i English heart as did Stevenson's old I friend.