AUTHOR OF THE "CURFEW"

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1402, 11 September 1923, Page 2

AUTHOR OF THE "CURFEW"

AT THE AGE OF 16 YEARS. "England's sun was slowly setting O'er the hilltops far away Filling all the land with beauty At the close of one sad day; And its last rays kissed the forehead Of a man and maiden fair —" These familiar lines, parodied around the world, were written by Rose Hartwick Thorpe while living in Litchfield, Mich. (U.S.A.) when she was 16 years of age. Oddly enough though the scene is laid in England, the author has never been there. The poem was a favourite of the late Queen Victoria. That the author of the most celebrated poem of modern times, "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight," is still alive will come as a pleasant surprise to the younger generation, and also to thousands of persons who many yesterdays ago recited the classic, with appropriate gestures in little red schoolhouses the country over (says the New York American). Mrs Rose Hartwick Thorpe is hale and hearty and mentally alert, and a living refutation of her confessed age of 71. She now resides in San Diego, Cal. For many years Mrs Thorpe was a bedridden invalid, but continued to write. Learning of her almost impoverished condition, Fleming H. Revell, the Chicago publisher, gave her literary employment in Chicago. Later she went west, her husband's health having failed. Despite its enormous popularity, "Curfew" has not profited its author materially to any considerable extent. Her principal source of income is the rent from one-half of a duplex house, an attractive, but unassuming house in a quiet residential section of San Diego. In talking of her famous poem, Mrs Thorpe told how the thrilling stanzas were scratched out in a frenzy of inspiration on her school slate one evening while the young girl was supposed to be doing her arithmetic.