Page:Facts and Fancies about Our "Son of the Woods", Henry Clarence Kendall and his Poetry (IA factsfanciesabou00hami).pdf/24

18 a man always ready to recognise and give a helping hand (by some employment) to the talented in need of some means of living. This was not a distinguishing feature of some of his successors in the Ministry of New South Wales, unless, perhaps, the late Sir John See, who was a man of more than average kindly feeling; and had his position at the head of affairs been longer and more consolidated, would, I think, have been a gracious patron of art and literature. I only met him once personally, but I shall never forget the impression of "Nature's gentleman" that I carried away with me from the interview, which was on a public matter in which I was then engaged in opposition to a Government measure then exciting wide public interest, and Sir John See himself solicited the interview. Though I did not fall in with his view of how we might compromise matters and cease the agitation (if it might be so called), he gathered from the floral decorations of his reception-room at the Chief Secretary's office, all the beautiful white flowers, and presented them to me in recognition, he said, of "the purity of my intentions."

Men who are this truly chivalrous to women are, as a rule, generous in their appreciation of all that is pure and refined in sentiment, and therefore (other things being equal) are the willing patrons of poetry and art.

Besides, I have heard of several other acts of the late Sir John See that were touching in their unaffected, spontaneous and yet dignified courtesy, where he might have been supercilious and indifferent, and even arbitrary. I may never be writing again in such a way as to afford me an opportunity of thanking him for those pure white flowers which have never faded from my grateful memory.

The friend and relative I have already referred to in the first pages of my introductory chapter, as being an ardent admirer of Australian poets generally, was the late William Charles Melville, a solicitor, at that time, on the Manning River. In response to my appeal for help in search for specimens of Kendall's poetry, and for some information regarding his life, my friend, when sending me the volume of "Poems and Songs" as a loan,