UNKNOWN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 320, 21 February 1910, Page 3

UNKNOWN

si I;II!I;D !;•■ in- :-isti<;n. AX INTERESTING INTERVIEW. (Jsy Mi's, Malcolm ltoss.) At. tin; time when England—and, inclecLi, the whole civilised wond —was ringing with the praises of the Sirdar who had reconquered the .Soudan, it was my good fortune to gain the friendship of sister, Mrs, Parker, of Kurow, Utago, and to hear at lirst hand from her much that was of interest regarding her favorite brother. At the present time, when the name of Kitchener is again on everyone's lips, it may be interesting to repeat some of these little details of his life and character.

.Mrs. Parker gives one the idea that il" she had been a man she would have been a distinguished soldier. She has an expressive, clever face with strong, determined lines, and sue is a charming raconteuse, at all events in congenial company, telling her story with a smile or a sigh—a smile because, happily, she sees the humorous' side of life, and a sigh for the gallant times of derringdo and action she lias left far behind her. it is with a sigh that she confesses she "misses the army," and this i is scarcely to be wondered at, for is she not a soldier's daughter, a soldier's sister, and a mother of soldiers. At the ' time of our interview her eldest son ■was lighting 011 the Indian frontier—and was already decorated and she was' seeing off her youngest son as a member of the First New Zealand Contingent that went to South Africa. She had high hopes for his future career. Poor mother! The charming lad, gav, debonnair, and keen to answer to the call of arms, was shot dead in 'his first engagement after he liad joined Kitchener's Horse.

When I met Mrs'. Parker first England and the world were ringing with plaudits of her distinguished brother, the Sirdar, after he had crushed the rebel hordes at Atbara and Omdurman. Mrs. Parker would have liked to have seen the splendor and the fervor of his' greeting in London. She has been with him in many of his experiences. It was always a great delight for her to go about with him. "A splendid-looking man," she described him, "tall and tanned, and with no superfluous flesh about him. He has the most extraordinary eyes, keen and blue, with a squint, but a most fascinating one, I assure you. People used to recognise him as lie passed along the London streets, and the audience ,in a theatre would rise and cheer as he entered. It was thrilling." But his sister told me that the famous soldier took all ovations in the calmest manner. He must be thoroughly accustomed to them by this time. She added that he is rather a reticent man, and decidedly avers'e to receiving interviewers, which is no doubt the reason that we know so little about the real Kitchener. Probably this dislike of his for publicity is the reason for many of the curious mistakes that have been made about him in the public prints. The writers have evidently gone empty away, and have trusted to their imagination for their facts. "1 can't help laughing when I read what they write at times about my brother," 6'aid Mrs. Parker. "They begin by saying he is Irish, which he is not, though he was born in Kerry, where my father, after he had left the army, had taken up land. He is thoroughly English, though, if you go back far enough, you will find in him a strain of French Huguenot blood. My great-uncle wa« a Chevalier, and he it was who cultivated the well-known Chevalier barley. Every farmer knows about that barley, but, probably, not one in a thousand knows that it came to us from the great-uncle of Lord Kitchener. '•'They say m}' brother possesses the lively Irish temperament," added Mrs. 'arker, "which is a huge mistake. As ■ boy—he was a delicate lad—he was "served and dreamy, and even in the ; • vs of his conquests in Egypt, whatr he may be now, he was rather a siknt man, with no hobbies, save that of soldiering. I ; n other words, he made his profession his hobby. Nowadays it is said he is a collector of rare china." In Egypt, Mrs. Parker told me, he had a wonderful way with the natives. He dressed like them, spoke their language, and lived witTi tiiern. Indeed, it was not easy, when he donned the native garb, to distinguish him from a native. His met, patience, determination, and knowledge of the way to handle men made him regarded as a kind of English Jove by the tribesmen, whose friendship for Britain he eventually obtained. Mrs. Parker spent one winter in Egypt with her brother. She recalls the time with delight. In the midst of the desert a little bit of London seemed to have been set down. The Sirdar, when at Government House in Suakim, always liked his sister to wear evening dress at the little dinner parties that were of nightly occurrence. He was also most particular about his band —which, of course, was composed of natives—though he himself was not very fond of music. There were then only two other white women in the town, s'o Mrs. Parker's calls did not take up much of her time. This was to her liking, as she preferred to ride to the frequent reviews and gallop out into the country with her attendants. Her brother led a busy life and spent a great part of the day "fuddling" with tlie natives. Fuddling has quite a different meaning in Egypt to what it has in England. It signifies to argue in a ifriendly way, or to "palaver," for the purpose of transforming enemies—active and passive—into friends and allies. "One of the most picturesque sights I ever saw," Mrs. Parker told us, '"was at a lonely part of the coast. We had gone up in a gunboat, on which I had to wait. I was not allowed to land, for it was unsafe, the natives' being hostile, but I watched the tribesmen filing in on their horses or their camels to talk to my 'brother. It was most picturesque, and the vivid colors and floating draperies of the ever - increasing crowd, brilliant in the tropical air, were exquisite." There, too, Mrs. Parker got to know man yof the devoted little hand that clustered around the gallantcentral figure. Among others she s'poke of "Little Gordon," so-called because he was a nephew of the great Gordon. "Little Gordon" married a daughter of Sir Edward Stafford's.

Mrs. Parker has had ocular proofs of the intense cruelty of the tribesmen. Often men used to reach their camp minus an arm or n foot. One day while out riding they ;r.et " poor fellow enrrvinsr his cut-off hand. He had been

j carrying il for three days, and the result, in that climate, can be laiiitly imagined by lb'- reader. I!ut discomfort and illness were mere trifles compared with the horror c' not entering I Paradise, and :.oiie who lias lost a member of nis body can enter in there. Il j does not appear to matter to the Allah 1 of the Egyptians whether the members j of the body are coherent or otherwise, I so long as the tally is correct'.

It was near here that Lord Kitchener was wounded desperately by a ball that, struck his cheek, shattering the bone, and entering the veins at the back of the neck, wnere it was latal to attempt to operate. "The doctors declared bs must die," said Mrs. Parker, who went out from England to Cairo to nurse him, but my brother said he wasn't going to. And, thanks to a grim determination to live, and a magnificent constitution, he pulled round all right after great suffering. He used t.o declare there was no bullet there at all, until one day, while lie was eating a cutlet, it foil out into his' mouth." lie wears on his keyciiain the flattened piece of lead that nearly robbed England of a great hero.

I Lord Kitchener had much to do with the suppression of the slave trade, and in a gunboat used to pursue the great slave dhows with their sad cargoes. "We caught seven in one day," said his' sijter, with reminiscent satisfaction, "and I fired a Gatling gun myself at one of the dhows. But it was only meant to frighten them, and was aimed high. The slaves were sent to the hospital or to a home; the slave-dealers to pris'oll, to reflect on their sins." There have been sad tragedies in the family history of the Kitcheners. A cousin, also at one time in the army, perished in Dunedin while saving his two boys from a fire, in which his other children were burnt to death. The widow, who was terribly burnt also, took the two boys away from New Zealand to the East, and there one died of typhoid. The other got a position in an Auckland bank, and "for no earthly reason," s'aid Mrs. Parker, "shot himself through the brain." The question as to how the great soldier regarded women naturally occurred, and Mrs. Parker laughingly told me that most women bored him dreadfully. He hated frivolity, and used to declare he would get fearfully tireu of seeing the same face at his breakfast table. "Et is the funniest thing," she said, "to see him paying devoted attention one day to a pretty 'girl, and the next day to hear him wondering what her name is l and where he met !her." She has imagined she has the lion of London in her silken fetters, while he has forgotten her existence.

Since I listened to Mrs. Parker her brother has gained more honors greater distinctions. Now in the heyday of liis power and fame he is coming to see the Britain of the South. Needless' to say, all loyal New Zealanders—and the percentage of non-loyalists is so very small as not to matter at all—ffill give him a kindly reception, and will be ready to listen seriously to any message he may have to give.