STRENUOUS LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

STRENUOUS LIFE.

AUTHOR'S SUCCESS " TOO LATE. Mr Jonathan M. Den wood, of Cockermouth, Cumberland, who in his early days was driven to poaching fish and game and whose novel " Red Ike was selected in June by the Book Society as the book of the month," was recently reported to be seriously ill. . In a letter fc> a friend declining an invitation to dine with a London literary circle in October, Mr. Denwood says:— '< I who have spent a lifetime as strenu ousiy as any man, surviving the hardbitten eighties in America and the poacher's usual tendency to die from tfk. middle '—i.e., from chills due to constant immersion —I am now so 11 and crippled that I cannot enjoy the luck or success that has come so suddenly Tate has a way of making sport of us all, and success is ashes in the mouth. •• As a butcher's boy, emigrant, journeyman tailor, and poacher my needs have always been few. I havnever been more than a little above the poverty-line. But, in the last two yeais, when 'my novel was being kicked about from publisher to publisher, I desperately needed money, for the first time ,n my life; money for the skilled medical attention that would have arrested my malady. "Now it is too late. Nothing can be done. You say nearly 30,000 copies of the book ("Red Ike") have been sold since June. If you had said copies it would have made no difference. Mr Denwood's letter, excepting for the signature and a postscript, was written by his nephew, as -the author is so stricken, following two strokes, that his own writing becomes illegible after he has written a few lines.