LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 21

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

One of the exhibits at tho recent Persian Exhibition in London was a copy, lent by the King, of Queen Victoria's "Leaves From the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands," done into modern Persian, and handsomely illustrated. ' Two biographies of the Earl of Birkenhead have already been published. Now a third is announced as '' Smith of Birkenhead," by Mr. H. A. Taylor— the author of "Goodbye to the Battlefields." Miss Daphne dv Maurier, who has written a first novel, entitled "Tho Loving Spirit," is the second daughter of Sir Gerald dv Maurier, and granddaughter of George dv Maurier, tho famous "Punch" artist. Most of the book was written at Fowey, in Cornwall, the Troytown of Sir Arthur QuillerCouch, who lives there. Coiian Doyle is being rewritten —by Edgar Wallace. The Gainsborough Company, which is about to produce at the Islington studios a talking version of Sherlock Holmes's adventures in "Tho Hound of the Baskervilles," has asked Mr. Wallace to write fresh dialogue for the film, in what is described as his "best and most up-to-date" manner. At the Bull Hotel, Rochester, celebrated in "Pickwick Papers," only one person dined on Christmas Eve. This visitor occupied the "Pickwick" room. The wall of the staircase which led to the room was decorated with oldfashioned, long-handled, and burnished copper warming pans. The Pickwick bed was canopied and curtained, and spread with a black and white silk eiderdown quilt. An anecdote in "The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel" reveals Gladstone as a courtier:— At Sandringham the visitors were always weighed. After Gladstone had gone through the process on one occasion the Prince said to him, "And what do you think I weigh, Mr. Gladstone?" "Now," said Gladstone, in telling the story (as he often did), "I knew quite well that the Prince weighed at least 16st, and for a moment I was puzzled how to reply. But I said, 'I should not wonder, sir, if your Royal Highness weighed at least as much as I do." Mr. Rudyard Kipling is one of tho few authors who persist in opposition to broadcasting. Listeners-in hear no extracts from his works, poetry or prose. At his weather-beaten manor house, known as Bateman's, at Burwash, Mr. Kipling has a wireless set, which he uses for getting the time from Greenwich. "There is more in this than meets the eyo at first," says Mr. Hopkins in "The Lure of Sussex." "His house is four miles from a station and in a part of Sussex where folk work only when they feel the urge. At Burwash even the wheels of time occasion-, ally become a little clogged, but now he gets the time by 'wireless,' and is right to the second." Mr. Hopkins adds that Mr. Kipling, notwithstanding his championship of modern progress, loves the Sussex people well for the something untouched and unalterable that he finds in them. He has been careful not to outrage Sussex tradition by having the telephone at Bateman's, and where it has been possible to keep alive the customs of tho land on his farm they have been preserved. Mr. Kipling keeps an American motor plough, it is true, and this is regarded with intense disfavour by the rustics. But, according to Mr. Hopkins, he chuckles with delight when his bailiff remarks: "This 'ole motor plough may be all right in Aineriky, but it don't turn the earth not a spit deep—■ ain't no good for tho honour of tlio land."