A TRAIL OF CHIPS

Southland Times, Issue 25341, 20 July 1935, Page 11

A TRAIL OF CHIPS

The 1935 Newdigate Prize, Oxford’s most famous verse award, has been won by a Freshman, Mr A. W. Plowman. The subject chosen was "Canterbury.” * * * The winning manuscript in Messrs Hodder and Stoughton’s £lOOO Autobigraphy Competition is by Igor Schwezoff, a Russian in exile. It is called “Borzoi: The Life of a Dancer.” • « *

A new book by Hendrik van Loon is published by Messrs Harrap. “Ships and How They Sailed the Seven Seas” tells in van Loon’s amusing manner the whole history of navigation from its earliest beginnings. The book is illustrated by 150 of the author’s drawings.

The sixth volume of Dr Ernest Baker's exhaustive “History of the English Novel,” which Messrs Witherby are publishing, has just appeared. It deals with the beginning of the nineteenth century, particularly with Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. * * *

The personal diary of Montaigne, the great French essayist of the sixteenth century, was sold in London in June for £7BO. Another interesting sale was a copy of the late Colonel Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of ■ Wisdom,” which fetched £260. In the past as much as £6OO has been paid for a copy. Surprisingly small sums were paid for autographed manuscripts of the late Sir Arthur Pinero’s plays—“ The Second Mrs Tanqueray,” £10; “The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith,” £l3; “Trelawny of the Wells,” £l7; “The Gay Lord Quex,” £11; “His House in Order,” £7 5/-; and “A Wife Without a Smile,” £l. * * * Beverley Baxter, the editor of the Daily Express who writes lively reminiscences in “Strange Street*' (Hutchinson) recalls that when "he was waiting for dinner during one of his first visits to Lord Beaverbrook’s country house, he was spoken to by a man with a high-pitched voice and a stammer. The stranger asked him whether he played the piano:—

“A bit.” “Come and play duets with me Monday ... at five o’clock." This was becoming ridiculous. Who was he. where did he live, and was it possible that people still played piano duets? It was Arnold Bennett. And they played their duets together! Another man with a stammer was Wyndham Lewis, who at one time was “Beachcomber” of the Daily Express. His successor, J. B. Morton, the present holder of the office, was employed on the Sunday Express and worked in the same room. One day Mr Morton, we are told, arrived in walking kit with his shoes covered with wet mud:— Lewis looked disapprovingly at him and stuttered:

“F-f-filthy fellow.” Morton went down to the basement and knocked most of it off with a stick. When he returned Lewis looked him over again. “F-f-f-fop!” he said. On the staff of the Express was Lake the author of the words of “I hear you calling me.” * * * “Kay Lynn,” the name under which a first novel called “Laughing Mountains” appears, hides the identity of a woman who was born in Russia. She is said to speak six languages, and until 1930 was a secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Moscow. She has worked for the production side of the famous “Chauve-Souris” company. Miss Katherin Mclntosh, whose third novel will appear shortly, lives in Bath, a few doors away from the house once occupied by Jane Austen. She was bom in Warwickshire in 1911, was married in 1932, and published her first novel, “Darkness Appeas’d,” in the same year. A lock of hair from the head of Lizzie Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, has been sent by her niece to Miss Nancy Price, who recently had to abandon the production of a play on the poet-painter’s life owing to objections from the family. Mrs Rossetti was the model for many of her husband’s pictures. The lock is described as being “not of the carroty hue which might be assumed from the pictures, but more of a golden colour, brilliant and very fine.” * * *