SOMERSET MAUGHAM 271
STEPHEN McKENNA 335

WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET

CHAPTER I

THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE

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Says his American contemporary, Joseph Hergesheimer, in an appreciation of
Hugh Walpole: "Mr. Walpole's courage in the face of the widest scepticism
is nowhere more daring than in _The Golden Scarecrow_." Mr. Walpole's
courage, I shall always hold, is nowhere more apparent than in the choice
of his birthplace. He was born in the Antipodes. Yes! In that magical,
unpronounceable realm one reads about and intends to look up in the
dictionary.... The precise Antipodean spot was Auckland, New Zealand, and
the year was 1884.

The Right Reverend George Henry Somerset Walpole, D.D., Bishop of
Edinburgh since 1910, had been sent in 1882 to Auckland as Incumbent of
St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, and the same ecclesiastical fates which took
charge of Hugh Seymour Walpole's birthplace provided that, at the age of
five, the immature novelist should be transferred to New York. Dr. Walpole
spent the next seven years in imparting to students of the General
Theological Seminary, New York, their knowledge of Dogmatic Theology. Hugh
Seymour Walpole spent the seven years in attaining the age of twelve.

Then, in 1896, the family returned to England. Perhaps a tendency to
travel had by this time become implanted in Hugh, for now, in his late
thirties, he is one of the most peripatetic of writers. He is here, he is
there. You write to him in London and receive a reply from Cornwall or the
Continent. And, regularly, he comes over to America. Of all the English
novelists who have visited this country he is easily the most popular
personally on this side. His visit this autumn (1922) will undoubtedly
multiply earlier welcomes.

Interest in Walpole the man and Walpole the novelist shows an increasing
tendency to become identical. It is all very well to say that the man is
one thing, his books are quite another; but suppose the man cannot be
separated from his books? The Walpole that loved Cornwall as a lad can't
be dissevered from the "Hugh Seymour" of _The Golden Scarecrow_; without
his Red Cross service in Russia during the Great War, Walpole could not
have written _The Dark Forest_; and I think the new novel he offers us
this autumn must owe a good deal to direct reminiscence of such a
cathedral town as Durham, to which the family returned when Hugh was
twelve.

[Illustration: HUGH WALPOLE]