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Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24600, 23 June 1945, Page 5

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Farrington Park, Isle of Wight, once the home of the Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, will become a holiday resort for those having difficulty in obtaining hotel accommodation because of their children. Lord Tennyson bought the estate, which- comprises 235 acres, including a farm, from royalties received for his poem “Maud.” He lived there from 1853 onwards, and described it: "Where from noise and smoke of town , . , “I watch the twilight falling brown, “Close to the ridge of a noble down. The new owners are Thomas Cook and Son, in association with the Southern Railway, and they propose to accommodate at least 600 holiday-makers by the end of next^year. From a memorial note, by Desmond MacCarthy, on the poet, Robert Nichols: As we get older, more and more of those inevitably absent tend to he present with us at Christinas. In times like these for everybody, for old, middle-aged, and young alike, these may be far more numerous than those who can actually share our Christmas. I am thinking myself now of the poet Robert Nichols, whom I shall never see again and from whom I shall not get any more long, excited. illegible letters about literary matters and his splendid projects. He was on ardent, disinterested man, an impetuous muddler in life who nevertheless kept a straighter path than most people who are perpetually taking then bearings. 1 met him only at lon = inteivals. but to be with Robert Nichols was to be received at once into intlrnacy. I feel that I have known him well. I guess he was often dejected; I know he was extremely resilient. And he had need to be, for he was often disappointed especially during the last years °* life about his standing as a poet. He •'hew he was a genuine one, and he was often indignant at the small amount of notice hn attracted, at least in comparison with some whom he thought his_ inferiors. He could not hold his peace about this, and fnr that—as well as many other more fmnortanT things—-I liked him. for I, too rated his work much higher than most critics did. # Christopher Morley, haying fortunately come by a copy of the very rare ‘Savrola,’ Mr Churchill s politicoromantic novel,” written u» 1897. when he was 23, has extracted from it, for the benefit of less fortunate readers, the following curiously ponderable description of the library of “a public man”: , • T'lip floor, in spits of the wastew basket, was littered with shelves W^eU-Mrt”volumes. g.fe'wsrarWff iS e rt°ft«wh novelf im "Rasselas" and "La Curee” lay side by side; eight substantial volumes of Gibbons famous “Historv" were not perhaps inappropriately prolonged by a line edition of the • Decameron"; the Origin of Species rented bv the side of a black-letter Bib'e’ "The Republic" ■ maintained W equilibrium with “Vanity Fair” and the

“History of European Morals." A volume of Macaulay's Essays lay on the writingtable itself; it was open, and at that sublime passage whereby the genius of one man has immortalised the genius of another was marked In pencil. , . . A half-empty box of cigarettes stood on a small table near a low leathern armchair. and by Us side lay a heavy armyrevolver, against the barrel of which the ashes of many cigarettes had been removed. In the corner of the room stood a small but exquisite Capitollne Venus, the cold chastity of its colour reproaching the allurements of form ... it was the chamber of a man who appreciated all earthly pleasures, appraised them at their proper worth, enjoyed, and despised them. “One surmises,” Morley says, “that ‘Savrola’ (not a shaving soap, but the name of Mr Churchill's hero) was written side by side with his ,‘Malakand Field Force,’ the preface of which is dated from Cavalry Barracks, Bangalore, SO December. 1897. There ar.e interesting parallels in the two books." 9 In Montreal, Louis Untemwer, reading aloud a saccharine poethl suddenly stopped and asked his audience, “What do you think of this poem?” Wilfred Worry, secretary of the Canadian Authors' Association, answered, ’ ‘T should say it was still in the process of Eddie Gestation.”