THE MARQUIS DE LEUVILLE AND THE SAMOAN DISASTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 385, 17 July 1889, Page 4

THE MARQUIS DE LEUVILLE AND THE SAMOAN DISASTER.

An individual who calls himself the Marquis de Leuviile, and whose craving for notoriety seems utterly insatiable (writes a London correspondent), has been trying to advertise himself through the odd medium of the Samoan hurricane. " From certain documents that have been sent me," says " Truth," "it seems that this mountebank has had a medal struck, bearing, of course, his own name, and vvhab, I presume, is his family crest, as its most conspicuous ornaments, and this he purports to have presented to Captain Kane aa a mark of his (De Leuville's) flattering opinion of British seamanship generally and Captain Kane in particular. Not conienfc with this, the Marquis has written and had printed a copy of some doggerel verses, surmounted by a pictorial representation of his medal, and this effusion he is sending by post to officers of the British 3STavy, accompanied by a fourcolumn notice and a picture of himself from a publication called "The Elocutionist." The notice is framed in such terms of fulsome adulation that I wonder at any journal inserting it in any other iorrn than that of an advertisement. In order to show the impression created on an average British seaman by the medal, the poem, and the puff, I append a letter from an officer at Portsmouth who has been favoured with these articles : "Sir, — 1 have, as temporary commanding officer of one ofH.M. ships, received per post from the author the enclosed graj tuitous insult to the officers, living and dead, of the vessels belonging to Germany and America which suffered in the recent hurricane at Samoa. "The astounding effrontery of the selfadvertiser is evident from the sketch of the medal, supposed to be struck in honour of Captain Kane, but which, you will notice, appears in a most prominent way the name of the titled advertiser, . . . What, however, naturally strikes the naval mind is the open insult to our German and American confreres by the assumption that ' pluck ' was the monopoly of Captain Kane, and, by inference, that cowardice was the cause of the loss of the less fortunate ships. In evidence of this, let me call your attention especially to the note above the sketch." This is the note to which my correspondent refers :—: — "Medal in gold struck expressly for presentation to this Biave British Officer, by the Marquis de Leuville, the author of ' Entre Nous*,' in honour of his having gallantly upheld British pluck where both I the German and American ships foundered." "I am quite sure that Captain Kane, who has already shown that he ranks his achievement no higher than a man ought to do who has simply done his duty, will be the first to say that no tnoie ' pluck ' is lequired to pub jour ship's head to the wind and steam away than to beach her on a lee-shore in a hurricane. 1 have the highest respect for Captain Kane myself, and for that reason I hope that he will add one more to his present claims to public gratitude by declining to accept the De Leuville medal."