Hugh Walpole

He Wrote His First Novel for the Family Cook

Hugh Walpole advanced jovially into the office last week, looking a trifle thinner than when I last saw him. He had returned from delivering 180 lectures; had purchased a large collection of etchings with the proceeds from them, thus indulging his latest hobby. He acted for all the world like a schoolboy who has just started for his summer vacation, and affirmed that he was enjoying himself. He will not return to England until the end of June. Meanwhile, the author of Fortitude, The Cathedral, Jeremy, et cetera, et cetera, will en joy himself some more.

The egotism of most authors heralds them and meets you as they en ter the door. I have yet to discover it in Hugh Walpole. He is the most modest author I know, yet, somehow, the most confident. He believes in his books; but he does not expect you to believe in them. If you do, he is glad. If you do not-- well, then, there will always be another. Walpols is tall, broad-shouldered, practically always smiling. He has a broad fore head, He wears glasses. His plat form manner is excellent, and he speaks as he writes -- with care and distinction.

He is a son of the Bishop of Edinburgh. He was born in Auckland, New Zealand. As a boy, he lived in America and attended a private school on Washington Square. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, he wrote two novels. One of them, The Wooden Horse, was his first published story. Before this, however, at the age of twelve, he is said to have written a novel concerning Guy Fawkes for the delectation of the family cook. For a time he worked as a journalist on The London Standard. He is popular in London; but it is only at certain times that he allows himself the luxury of society. He likes to be alone in the little Cornish village of Polperro where he secludes himself to write his novels.

Walpole's work is rich in background and in characterization, as well as in a rare understanding of humanity without an overlarding of the sentimental. He is wise, tolerant and youthful in his freshness of interest in life. Having accomplished so much at so early an age (39), there is every chance that he will continue to write better and better books. His last word, the other day, was: "Well, I must try to write a novel that's really a novel, now that this lecturing if over !" He probably will. J. F.