ODDS AND ENDS

Southland Times, Issue 23374, 4 December 1937, Page 14

ODDS AND ENDS

Lord Gorell dissents from the suggestion that the best poetry can only be written by those who live in seclusion. Periods of solitude and self-communion are, of course, essential to the growth of all poets, but surely not to the total exclusion of periods of interchange of thought, of labour—even of labour against the will and grain.

Douglas West notes the frequency of murder in contemporary novels. Not only detective story writers but all sorts of authors, including some of the most delicate and rarefied of minds, are nowadays apt to drop a violent death plumb into the middle of their narratives, often with incongruous effect.

The complete story of Rudyard Kipling’s quarrel with his brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, which was the cause of Kipling’s leaving his Vermont home, never to return, is told in a book by Frederic Van de Water which was announced for publication in the United States last month. Kipling's autobiography, published last year,

left some blank pages at this period of his life. It was evidently an episode that he did not wish to discuss. Yet it is an important episode, for had it not occurred Kipling would probably have remained a resident of the United States for the rest of his life. As it was, several of his best-known books were written at his Vermont home. Frederic Van de Water learned the Balestier side of the story from Beatty Balestier himself and wrote an account of it which was published in “Harper’s Magazine.” This short piece aroused so much controversy that Mr Van de Water was persuaded to write the complete story, making use of evidence impossible to include in a magazine article.

Sir Hugh Walpole dissents from the dictum of Rose Macauley that novels seem on the whole to have much less staying power than any other kind of literature. He thinks it beyond question that “Pride and Prejudice,” “Vanity Fair” and “David Copperfield” have outlasted everything of their period except a little of the very best poetry.

From January next the sixpenny Penguin books will carry advertising.