SCENE OF THE LATE FIRE

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 229, 31 January 1885, Page 4

SCENE OF THE LATE FIRE

TRAGIC DEATH OF A SCENIC ABTIST.

The above sketch of the scene of the late fire, in which Mr John Henry Holmes was suffocated to death, was taken on th'» spot by the Observer artist on the morning after the occurrence. It gives a very faithful rojn'csentation of the scene, and shows the position of the body of the deceased, as it lay on the floor, covered with an old dirty sack. A brief biography of the late Mr Holmes is published in another colunr 1 . There are, however, two or three facts which are omitted from tiie biographical notice. The father of the late John Henry Holmes was a famous oil painter, and was specially commissioned by George IV. to paint several portraits. The son studied at the Louvre with Milais and other famous painters, and when he landed in Melbourne was possessed of considerable means. lie subsequently became the lessee of several up-country theatres, and was on the high road to fortune up the time of his wife's death, which affected him so deeply that he never recovered from the blow. Men who knew him in Victoria say he was not the same man afterwards. Total-abstinence lecturers and others who may be disposed to improve the occasion of poor Holmes' melancholy death as ''another shocking example" should at the same time not forget to point the corollary moral. The man's weakness — if Aveakness.it can be called — was the one love of his life, to which he remained faithful to the last. With the death of his wife he lost all that life was worth living for — love of art, fame, fortune, happiness. His guiding star shone no longer ; all the energy and aspiration died out of him. Henceforth he lived only to mourn, and all his other human weaknesses do not weigh in the scale against his manly devotion to that one love ot his life, still less can they serve to point a moral or adorn a tale for teetotal fanatics, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.