ENGLISH AUTHORESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1938, Page 16

ENGLISH AUTHORESS

CIVIL LIST PENSION

Miss Cecily Hamilton's friends are pleased that she is to receiye a Civil List pension for her services to literature, but when they think of all the books she has written, one of which, "William, an Englishman," was awarded the Femina-Vie Heureuse prize, and the success of her first play, "Diana of Dobson's," they think it rather hard that they did not bring her financial prosperity, states a writer in an English journal. The story of "Diana of Dobson's" rankles in their minds. It had a long run in England, was toured in the Dominions, and paid handsomely, but it did not pay Miss Hamilton handsomely. Sh.e had sold the rights for £100. That was nearly thirty years ago.

Miss Hamilton served during the war at a British women's hospital in France. The tragedies she saw have left an indelible mark on her mind and such a sense of hopelessness that in one of her recent books she confessed that now when she looks at buildings she pictures them dissolving in ruins. Her play. "The Old Adam," which Asquith went three times to see, had the same sense of the hopelessness of trying to avert war. During recent years Miss Hamilton has been writing travel books which have run through several editions.

Some of the most delicious of the seventy or so different varieties of dates cannot be packed lor export. They can only be eaten where they grow.