Preparations are already on foot for the great banquet to be given in
honour of the famous Russian novelist, Dr. Ladislas Plovskin, who is to
visit England in July. A representative committee has been formed, which
includes, amongst others, Sir GILBERT PARKER, Mr. CHARLES GARVICE, Mr.
SILAS HOCKING, Mr. C. K. SHORTER, Lord DUNSANY, Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS and
Mr. EDMUND GOSSE, who will take the chair at the banquet. There is a
peculiar appropriateness in this, for it was Mr. GOSSE who, some ten
years ago, first called attention to Plovskin in one of his masterly
studies. Since then, Plovskin has gained the Nobel Prize and become the
object of a special cult which has centres from Tomsk to Seattle, and
from Popocatapetl to Oshkosh.
The address which will be presented to the great Muscovite fictionist
has been written by Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS, and is a masterpiece of sensitive
and discriminating eulogy. Thus in one passage Mr. DOUGLAS says, "while
preserving your own individuality with miraculous independence, you have
summed up in your work all the inchoate influences to be found in HOMER,
DANTE, SHAKSPEARE, VOLTAIRE and VERLAINE, and carried them to a pitch of
divine effulgence only to be equalled in the godlike work of our
marvellous MASEFIELD."
Dr. Plovskin is no stranger to England, for he was an intimate friend of
the late EDWARD LEAR, who alludes to him under the name of Ploffskin in
one of his touching lyrics, and, as we have seen, he owes almost
everything to the generous appreciation of Mr. GOSSE, to whom he has
dedicated his last novel, which bears the fascinating title of _The Bad
Egg_. Portions of this, it is to be hoped, will be recited at the
banquet by the author's brother-in-law, Mr. Ossip Bobolinsky, Managing
Director of the Anglo-Manchurian Steam Tar Company.
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In smart intellectual circles Tagore Teas are now all the rage. At these
elegant and up-to-date entertainments China tea is absolutely
proscribed, the refreshments, solid and liquid, being exclusively of
Indian origin. After tea the guests cantillate passages from the prose
and poetry of the Great Indian Master to the accompaniment of gongs (the
Sanskrit _tum-tum_) and one-stringed Afghan jamboons, for the space of
two or three hours, when their engagements permit. Sometimes the reading
is varied by mystical dances of a slow and solemn character, but all
laughter, levity and exuberance are sedulously discountenanced, the aim
of all present being to attain an attitude of serene and complacent
ecstasy which enables them to invest utterances of the most perfect
ineptitude with a portentous and pontifical significance.
* * * * *
"The advent to the episcopal bench of Dr. Russell Wakefield--the
only Anglican Bishop on record to wear a moustache with a
clean-shaven chin--does not appear to have aroused so much
comment as the appointment of Dr. Ryle to the See of Liverpool
in 1884. It was then said that the new prelate was the first
Anglican Bishop to wear a beard for over 200 years."--_The Daily
Chronicle._
Dr. RUSSELL WAKEFIELD, of course, has not worn his moustache for a
quarter of that time.
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