FEATS OF MEMORY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 405, 14 December 1932, Page 2

FEATS OF MEMORY

BY FAMOUS MEN REMARKABLE INSTANCES OF GRASP. OF WORDS AND NAMES. ROYAL FAMILY'S APTITUDE. "Hullo, 'Potato,' how are you?" These tare the words •with which the Prince of Wales greeted a man wh'om he recognised' in a erowd, and who.m he had noti seen for years. But the Prince immediately recalled him and the nickname hy which he was known to !his mates. This faeulty for rememhering people is shared by all th'e Royal Family, and both the King and Queen, las well as the Duke of York and hi3 brothers, have often astonished people hy their instant recognition of those whom, perihaps, they have only seen once hefore in their lives. This (particular kind of memory seems to he usual in'princes land potentates,. Classical history tells us th'at an Amhassador to the Romans from Pyrrhus had so cultivated his memory that he learned the names of all th'e assembled people in one day, and the next could s'alute memhers of the Senate, and the ordinary citizens, each by his own name. Pliny tell3 us, that Cyrus knew the name of every separate soldier in his vast armies. Napoleon also h'ad an extraordinary aptitude for memorising the names of quite insignifieant jpeople Memory for Words. But there are memories and memories. That kind first cited concernis itself with names and th'eir owners. Another concentrates . on ordinary words, lilce that of the philogist, Dr. Leydon. He could repeat, without n-isplacing a word, a long Act of Parliament or an similar document, after reading it once. No wonder he was ahle to learn foreign languages and dialects with extraordinary easis! Another well-known man with an excellent memory for the written or printed word is Mr. Horace Annesley Vachell, the novelist. On one memorahle occasion, Mr. Vachell experienced the agony of finding that ihe had left an important typescript in an underground train. He had no carbon eopy, and the story had gone for ever. There was nothing else to he done but to go through the distasteful drudgery of writing it all over again. To his, astonisiliment, the author found that he could remember every word of it. Friends of Mr. Winston Churchill still claim that he can remember every word of any speech he has once deiivered. A certain faeulty, highly developed in some artists, clearly perceives colours and forms in the mind's aye. The great painter, Turner, could examine a ship and then go home and draw it with every rope and spar as correctly placed as if he were standing in front of it. There have also been artists who could produce the most accurate Iilcenesses, from memory. The painter and Royal Academician, Calderon, was travelling in Spain when he had his watdh snatched. He had only caught a memontary glimpse of the thief hy the light of a street lamp, but he sketched his face so faithfully that the police were ahle to recognise from th'e drawing ian old practitioner well known to them. Dr. Duncan, of Edinhurgh, came acros3 an amazing instance of this faeulty on his travels in Germany. There was an almost priceless altarpiece in the Church of St. Peter at Cologne, by Rubens. One night this prized pictura was carried off hy thieves, to the great regret of all connected wit'h the church'. A painter in the town, seeing the grief of the congregation, volunteered - to make a copy of the altar-piece from memory, and :succeeded in doing se with such great accuracy that many people thought that the original Ruben3 had been brought back. Ivor Novello left the just-completed score of a musical piece in a taxi on his way to play it over to Mrs. Claude Beddington. The taxi vanished, and so did the MS.. But the composer was not defeated, though downcast. He shut himself up in a country cottage with a piano, and in a fortnight had reprodueed the entire score. .Mozart's Impressions. 1 Some mu'sicians ha,ve marvellous memories. Sir Th'omas Beecham can conduct ia work, the playing of whieli lasts for five hours, without having a note of the score in front of him. The composer Mozart recollected impressions so vividly that he could compose without the aid of an instrumept. "When I proceed to write down my ideas," he said to a friend, "I take out of my bag of memory what has previously been collected into it. For For this reason the committing to paper is done easily enough, for everything is already finislied, and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination." This marvellous man, while he was eomposing in this way, could join in any conversation that was going on around him at the same time as his facile pen was flying over the music paper! Th'ese are some cares of wonderful memories possessed hy distinguished men. The fact remains that a. specially good memory for some thing3 is an attachment to he found in an otherwise quite inferior brain, writes Arbuthnot Maunsell in the Johannesburg Star. The psychologist, Dr. Eldridge Green, knew a man of very feehle brain-power, who with regard to time or anything connected with g h'ad a tmarvellous memory. His favourite reading was time-tables, and he knew nearly every train in Great Britain.