POX AND KETTLE,

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 21

POX AND KETTLE,

With this reservation, one may laugh.with Bichard le Gallienno at the irritable vanity of a great pOet like Tennyson, who at times made ludicrous exhibitions of himself.- And reading of these kinks may become the more enjoyable when one remembers that the author was, among the later nineteenth century authors, perhaps the greatest coxcomb of all. Bernard Shaw advertised himself iv the old days with his short trousers, but Bichard le Gallienne's sartorial performances in the '90's left Shaw standing. Here is a picture painted by the novelist, Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins: "I was out riding one day, and when spinning along a country road I saw a charming lady approaching me on a .bicycle. She was dressed in a suit of velvet and wore knickers. (She had beautiful curly hair, a wide-spreading collar, and on her feet were dainty shoes with glittering buckles. When she came up to me, sue was Biehard lo Gallienne." So. much for. Bich-rd himself. Now ■for his victims: .Figuring in-.the pages of "The Bomantic 'UU's" are Swinburne, Meredith, William Morris, Mrs. Meyuell, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Henry Irving, and a host of other great and picturesque personalities. Mr. le Gallienne, as a young poet from .Liverpool who had been praised by his contemporaries, and as a critic attached to the staff of a London newspaper, came into coutaet (writes "John o' London's Weekly") with people who seem to have no counterparts to-day, before he sailed away to make his home in the United States.