FROM WEALTH TO POVERTY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8487, 15 July 1907, Page 5

FROM WEALTH TO POVERTY.

A NOVELIST'S SAD PLIGHT. LONDON, July 12. The Daily Mail has published a painful record of the poverty of "Ouida," ths well-kisown novelist. Owing to her extravagance, she was expelled from her beautiful villa at Lucca, in Tuscany. Subsequently she was homeless, jand passed the night under trees. The mother of iher old servant sheltered her in her cottage. The novelist is now living in a squalid milkman's house at Massorosa. Once she was four days without food. (Doubtless the sad state of Miss Louise .de la Ramee ("Ouida") had been brought under the notice of the Imperial Government, as it was only a few days ago that we received news that she had been granted a Civil List pension of £l5O par annum. It would seem that her present sad condition must be the result of reckless extravagance, seeing that she must have derived a large income from her novels, which for more than forty yesrs have been exceedingly popular and commanded an immense sale. She has lived for a long time in Italy, where the scene of many of her novels.is laid. Tho pension lately granted will, if her other resources are exhausted, go a very little way towards enabling her to [live in the style to which she has been long accustomed.)