Death of Jemmett

Where the polished sands of Biarritz proffer their parquetry for the brawling cotillion of the Atlantic surf, an Englishwoman, one Mrs. Williams, and her daughter went swimming last week, were caught where the tide pirouetted around sunken rocks, cried for help. A lifesaver dragged the elder woman to safety, went back for her daughter. Weakened, he was drowning, when out of a crowd on the beach stepped one W. B. Jemmett, artist, 6 ft. 9 3/4 in. tall, cast off his gaudy beach cloak, braved the tides. Six minutes later, Death in the whitely smiling seas had taken the girl, the lifesaver, had dashed the skull of Giant Jemmett once, twice against the rocks.

W. B. Jemmett, a competent though not a celebrated painter of miniatures, was known rather for his dandyism than for the skill of his huge fingers with tiny pictures. To the decayed art of fine dress, the perfection of a gesture at once startling and urbane, he devoted his considerable talent and adorned for many years the bars of London and Paris, leading always by a string a white Russian wolfhound, wearing always in his buttonhole a fresh-cut posy.

Once when Jemmett was striding down Bond Street King Edward issued from a shop. Appalled by the incredible size of the passerby, the King halted. A member of his suite presented Jemmett.

"What height are you, young man ?" asked the King.

"Six foot nine," growled Jemmett, made savage by embarrassment.

"And a very good height, too," replied

Edward, patting the giant on the hip.

Last week, friends of Jemmett spoke of him as they toyed over cool glasses in the rendezvous he once startled with his hound and flower. They agreed that his death was an epigram which well became one whose life also had been consecrated to the elegance of the spectacular.