GHOST IN SCARLET.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16305, 21 December 1920, Page 6

GHOST IN SCARLET.

SIR ALGERNON 'WEST’S ANECDOTES. Sir Algernon 'West's “ Contemporary Portraits” (just published by Unwin), might be described as “ butter for bureaucrats,” but ‘‘.it is the best butter.” It gives an amusing account of many distinguished Civil servants, interspersed with anecdotes, not a feiv of which aro good and new. He has an entertaining, story of manners at the Foreign Office, where in, Victorian days the staff were not precisians. A ukase had to bo issued. “ Clerks are not to walk about the passages in their shirtsleeves,” but this was disobeyed. ‘‘On a. broiling day the chairman’s private secretary came into the board-room in his shirt-sleeves. Montgomery, with Ids fascinating little stammer, called him hack as ho was leaving the room, saying, 'Mr , should it be auy convenience to you to conic lu without your trousers pray do not let any consideration for the board prevent your doing so.’ ” Sir Henry Taylor, a mandarin at the Colonial Office, and at one time of some tame us a poet, *‘ was a vain man and so pleased by the scarlet, robes of Ins D.U.L., which had been bestowed on him by the University of Oxford, that he used to wear them at. Jus own dinner table, whereby bangs a tale. Years after his death a resident at Bournemouth, going to her room, saw in the passage a man in a scarlet robe disappear through a door.” She afterwards heard that Sir Henry had lived and died in the house. Lord Welby, a Treasury official, was notorious for the chaos of his table? "At the time of the Waimvrigbt murder, when the poor victim’s limbs were cat up and distributed, a cvnical colleague was heard to say, ‘ What a fool the murderer was—if he had put Hie body on Welby’s table it would never have been dis;overcd !’ ”