THE LAUDER MYTH.

Taihape Daily Times, 14 August 1919, Page 6

THE LAUDER MYTH.

‘ E’ -———o—-—-—= V. ‘ FACT V. FICTION ABOUT THE . '9 NEW KNIGHT. “What’s the height of your ambition, Harry?” I once asked the great little comedian, whose knighthood was ‘the surprise of the recent Honours list. t -Lauder took off and carefully wiped his gold-rimmed spectacles. He thought for a second or two and then replied: “To be 2. bailie (the Scottish equivalent of an aldernlan) at Dunoon, and to have a wee estate 0’ ma ain up among the heather!’ ’ Johnnie Lauder, then a. boy of about 14, was in the room -at the time—— we were all seated at a big Scottish highflcea. in the comedian’s modest house at Toofing—and he refused to be- I lieve that these attainments could possibly mark the acme of his father’s succes. ’ '

"‘You’ll be "Sir Harry Lauder yet,” he ’ remarked, “and” he added, “mother will be Lady -Lauder. VVon’t it be .fine!” . “Dinna speak nonsense, John,” lau-ghingly commented Harry. But his wife, whose admiratiorrffir her husband ‘has always been unbounded quietly observed that “stranger things have happened.” ‘ And now Harry Lauder has got a title to his name, and he has also a tfiine est-ate among ‘.’the mountains, the glens, and the roaring streams of the land he ad-ores. The stories that have grown up around Lauder and -his nit-:2»-Scottish “chsa»racteristics” are innumerable. He is supposed to be noted for a determination not to “bang 3i..pene.~.s" that I rmakes th_e normarl “careful” -Scot seem I a. reckless Aspendthrift in comparison. . Wh-at are ‘the facts? I can tell you. i [Harry Lauder does not believe in rthrotving “about his money to indiscriminately. But I have met thousands of Englishmen compared with whom lEI-arry Lauder is wildly prodigal. VVe who know the real Hs.i*'ry,Lauder know i him for the soul of generosity in numberless good causes, a man whose hospi‘tality to his friends is unbounded, «and whose goodness’ to his own ‘relations is in striking contrast to the behaviour of tens of thousands of men who have | “‘got on” in life, but whose main object in their time of prosy_erity' is to forget’ the £a.thers‘.and mothers, bro- ! thers and sisters,"'and the -comrades of their poorer days. ' Knowing the facts, I used to feel annoyed at the unending stream of grotesquely inaccurate Lauder stories. But any incident ‘in’ my own house in Glas- 3 gow some years -ago altered my point ‘of view.) WHEN HE‘LAU‘GHED_ D

Lauder was reading a newspper article. Suddenly he burst‘ into a. ‘hearty fit of laughter. “That’s the best yet!” he remarked. “They ’Ve telt lots 0’ stories uahoot me in‘ the papers and elsewhere, but this__{f9.irly cows the cuddie. Hcre——grearl it for yersel’. ’ ’ It was a bitter paragraph «about

Lauder getting a cigar from a friend and afterwards 1-eturning al-rue and asking the shopman to change it for gobacco. Most of us have heard the story repeated at one time or another. “Wfhy <lon’t you deny ihe silly stories they tell «about you, Harry?” I asked with some heat. “You let

them pass with a, laugh, but your

friends have always"l=6‘be fighting for you. Why don’t you ‘scotch’ ‘..'hCSC slanders once and for all?” “Hush, man hush!” said Lzauder, with a. twinkle in his eyes, “never spoil a good, 'free advertisement. The mair stories they set’ going aboot me an’ my money the mair anxious will folks be to see. me on the stage. A’ tliese stories are lees—or most 0’ them are—but thcy’re fine for booming Harry Lauder!” ' THE UNOBSTRUSIVE “FIVER.” But let us get away from fiction to feats. Only that morning Lauder had asked me to help him with his cor--I'espolldence_ Out of about two score Aletters half were begging epistles. He read every one carefully; Soine he set aside in aspeeial pile. His business,letVters replied to, he again returned -to the “appeals.” One he perusedwith special care. ' ' “Poor Jamie; ’he’s“ struck a bad patch}, ‘it ;Jseem’s!’* ‘Harry was [now ‘looking out of the window and musing‘ ‘more to -‘himself ‘than to me, “We ,were pit laddies together in Hamilton in the -auld days. Poor Jamie!” A five pound note was furtively taken from Harryze pockct{book*, fand onclosed in -a brief, but friendly letter to = “poor'Jamie.” Another letter, which I wrote at IHa.rry’s dictation, was sent to -a firm of musical instrument makers, instruct- , ing them to forward a eoncertina to a a man in Newcastle who had lost his _ leg in an accident. The man, it seem- ’ ad, was a good player, but ‘had no iny strument, and Was desirous of earning M his live by his talent. He- had once a done a little job for Lauder in Newcastle, and Harry remefnbered him. A pound note here and a half- }: sovereign there soon cleared off the. reanainder of the letters; only two, if I ...~». ~ remember rightly, were not replied to. g land this sort of thing I have known"

Lauder to do, not. occasionally, but Very frequently. Sir Harry, it goes without saying, is a shrewd fillalleiel'_ He has made mr'll:_\' sound investments. A‘ll(lre\v Carnegie. and one or two o‘rhel'.s have ‘helped him in the way of “good things.” But he has been bitten once or twice, and there is no story against him that he likes better to tell then how he was “lambed” for some thousands‘ by a wonderful “boy. financier” on We-.T Stree‘. some years ago.

“I thought, and many other monied men in America. also thought, tll-21.: the kid was :1 heaven-born genius for finance; but we didn’t find out til-1 too late thafi he was only a marvellous liar—quitc the best I have ever mot'_”