Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/247

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��Readers of ' N. & Q.' will recognize that the names of some of the most distinguished in the above list are those of frequent contributors to its columns. In the absence of other accommodation the British Museum may possibly find a room for the deliberations of the new Academy.

��PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. (1816-1902.)

The death of the author of ' Festus ' on the 6th of September, 1902, recalls to me the pleasant message I received from him through his niece, Miss F. C. Carey, in reference to the extract from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton's letter in The Athenceum of the 1st of April, 1876. The passages were very gratifying to him, but he told his niece that when he wrote ' Festus ' he certainly had never seen ' Paracelsus.' His niece wrote :

" My uncle and Mr. Browning had so great admiration for each other's genius, and each was so noble in character, that I am sure that if it had been so the influence would have been as willingly admitted by one as it would have been generously accepted by the other."

Although the papers have had biographical notices of the poet, a few notes as a record may not be out of place in ' N. & Q.' He was early brought under poetic influence, as his father, who had been a schoolfellow of Henry Kirke White, was also a writer of verse. When a boy of eight he witnessed Byron's lying in state in the " Old Blackamoor's Head," situated in the High Street, Nottingham. So early as 1836 ' Festus ' was commenced, and in 1839 the book was published by Pickering.

Mr. J. A. Hammerton, in an essay on ' Philip James Bailey and his Work,' which appeared in The Sunday Magazine, January, 1898, after he had been paying a visit to the poet, describes 'Festus' as being the answ r er to Tennyson's hope,

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill :

" Many another has suggested this world problem ; but Philip James Bailey has essayed its solution."

During the whole of his long life the poet enjoyed excellent health. He was passionately fond of the sea, and for a time he resided in Jersey ; then at Cliff Cottage, near Ilfracombe ; from there he removed to Blackheath ; but he longed to spend his last days in his beloved native town, so returned to Nottingham, where he led a life of quiet retirement among his books and the flowers in his old-fashioned garden.

On the 27th of October, 1896, he had the great sorrow of losing his wife, the Clara of his poem, after a perfectly happy life of thirty- three years. Since her death he had been surrounded by loving

��1902, Sept. 27.

Philip James Bailey.

��Death of his wife.

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