"OUIDA'S" POVERTY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8523, 28 August 1907, Page 3

" OUIDA'S" POVERTY.

The Florence correspondent of the Xondon Daily Mail sends an interesting account of Mile, de la Ramee's life during the past two years. It is a very pathetic story, which will stir the sympathy of Ouida's countless admirers. Until two years ago Mile, de la Ramee occupied at Sant Alessio, Lucca, a splendid three-storey villa adjoining a church. She was known as the Lady of the Dogs (Signora dei Cani), as she had invariably thirty, and was seen always with a number of them around her. Her intense fondness for dogs, occupied with a certain megalomania, caused her on one famous occasion to give a meal of milk, bread, and L meat to every dog in Lucca. In the end the landlord of the villa turned "Ouida" out. There was a dispute about some furniture, and she brought an action against the landlord, and won her case in three courts. The legal expenses, however, still further crippled her purse. After this she went to Viareggio, then took a small villa at Camajore, and then rooms in the first-class Hotel de Russie, at Viareggio. Once again her thoughtless expenditure exhausted her resources, and her plight was last September the "Mamma of the Dogs," as Viareggio had named her, passed the night under the trees on the sea front. Her faithful, beloved dogs, the remaining few of the large family she had once owned, were by her side when her maid's mother found her at five o'clock in the morning on the beach at Viareggio. This kindly woman took Mile, de la Ramee to her own humble cottage at Monti, and kept her there for some months. That homeless night on , the cold beach caused "Ouida" to : lose totally the sight of her left eye, and also brought about a deafness from which she has never recovered. In February last "Ouida" took two rooms at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, Viareggio. She stayed there until recently, when, financial straits having again overtaken her she left with her ex-maid's mother to stay at Massarosa, a village five miles away. At Massarosa the air is delightful,, but it is a melancholy spot. Here in a squalid milkman's cottage "Ouida" now lives. The news of the grant of a pension has aroused much interest. It is known that Mile, de la Ramee once went without food for four days through sheer want, i