LORD BALDWIN'S LEISURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23527, 16 June 1938, Page 20

LORD BALDWIN'S LEISURE

"THE HOUR OF RELEASE” CHANCE TO READ AND THINK (From Our Own Correspondent) , (By Air Mail) LONDON, May 23. How he has b6;en occupying his leisure since his retirement, nearly a year ago, was told by Lord Baldwin Whence opened a new £IOO,OOO libirary at Liverpool University. After 20 continuous years of work a? tiard as had fallen to the lot of any jnan, he had looked forward for many years to that hour of release, and had always pictured himself as sitting down to read and to think. But, said Lord Baldwin, he could do neither. Ho bad given the last ounce of strength, physically and mentally, to his job. For months he was unable to do anything. Gradually it came into his sub-con-tcious mind, “ You have to get back to the poets.” and something said * Wordsworth.” So the first book he j-ead was “The Excursion,” which ieemed to bring back the calm he Wanted. Then, he read “ The Prelude.” That did him good. Next he began to contrast the peace of those boons with the restless world outside. . He thought of Europe, with its boundaries once more *fluid. He thought of the great crisis in' history and he read ™ The Dynasts,” every word. CONSIDERABLE BROWSING After that he felt able to read some •rose. After considerable browsing fca took down a book he had not read for 50 years, Froude’s “ Letters of Erasmus.” He thought, “ Here are the letters of a man will a fine and {sensitive mind who Jived in a time When. Europe was breaking up.” It showed the civilisation he had known when strange winds were blowing across the Continent and into England. It was an age, to use a platitudinous phrase, of transition, but it resembled this age in that no man knew where Europe was proceeding, or whether the transition was needed any more than any one did to-day. “I read right through that,” continued Lord Baldwin, “and I found the poise 1 had lost.” It was » comforting thought that

there was no brotherhood on earth like that brotherhood of the men and women who loved books. It was a brotherhood with no borders of class, recruited from all ranks. It was a spiritual republic. Some entered intn it more easily by the fortunate circumstances of birth; others—and he could think of friends in the Labour Party whom he knew well —had toiled against incalculable difficulties in early life to win their freedom in this republic. BOYHOOD READING Lord Baldwin’s love of libraries "oes back to his boyhood days. He spent many hours lying on his stomach on the hearthrug in his father's library, reading by the warmth of the fire Nowadays, as he has confessed. “ a kind of senile convexity” would disturb the equilibrium of such a posture. His hearthrug reading was solid. It, was usually selected from the consignment regularly sent to his father from the London Library. Lore Baldwin is fond of the conversational gambit which consists in picking the work, he would take if allowed only one book for companionship on a desert island. Once his choice was the Oxford English Dictionary. There are 20 volumes and they weight anything up to 2cwt.