A UNIQUE HOUSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19459, 15 October 1926, Page 11

A UNIQUE HOUSE.

ST. MARY'S FIRST VICARAGE* BIRTHPLACE OF HUGH WALPOLE BUILDING TO BE AUCTIONEDA house of unique interest in New Zealand, since it was the first home of the eminent novelist, Hugh Walpole, will shortly disappear from Auckland, as it will to-day be offered at auction for removal. The . house stands at 205, Parnell Road, next to >St. Mary's Cathedral, on the Newmarket side, and was the first vicarage of St. Mary's. In it was born in the year 1884 Hugh Walpole, who is now in the front rank of modern novelists. His father, then vicar of St. Mary's, is now Bishop of Edinburgh. The house is one of the oldest in Parnell, having been built about 1868 for Archdeacon Maunsell, who was the second incumbent of St. Mary's, having succeeded Archdeacon Kissling. The next occupants of the house were Hugh Walpole's parents but as it did not please them a new vicarage, which is at present occupied by Canon James, was built at the rear of tho church a few years later. The c!d vicarage was let, and was for a long timo occupied by the late Dr. E. D. Mackellar, Since his death a few years ago the dwelling has been used as an apartment house. It is the property of tho General Trust Board of the Auckland Diocese, and its removal is necessitated by proposals for the cutting-up of the section on which it stands. Hugh Walpole was only a few years old when his parents moved to New York, where his father had accepted an appointment as professor in a theological college, and there are residents of Pamell who still remember the great novelist as a little lad with .great brown eyes. To Mrs. T. Ward, of Burrows Avenue, Parnell, then Miss Meta Kissling, belongs the honour of having taught the little Hugh his ABC. Seven yeafs after their departure for New York the Walpole family migrated to England. After completing his education at King's School, Canterbury, and Emanuel College, Cambridge, Hugh Walpole became for a year or two a teacher in a boys' school in the provinces. Then he went to London, settled in cheap lodgings in Chelsea, reviewed books for the newspapers, and commenced to write novels. His first, "The Wooden Horse," had been written while at Cambndge, but was not published until 1909, and was fallowed within a year by "Maradick at Forty." Other successful novels followed until the novelist's career was interrupted by the Great War, :n the earlier days, of which he worked with tho Bed Cross on tho Russian front. Later he was given charge of British propaganda at Petro-g-ad, and lived there throughout the chaos of the first revolution. His experiences provided the material for his most gloomy novel, "The Dark Forest," which was published in 1916, while he was in Petrograd. His later novel, "The Secret City," has been described as the truest novel of Russian life ever written by an alien. Many of his novels have won great popularity, and he has been described as being as near to a typical Englishman as any man can be.