MAN WHO WROTE 2,000 NEWSPAPER LETTERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 152, 17 September 1927, Page 10

MAN WHO WROTE 2,000 NEWSPAPER LETTERS

AN INERADICABLE HABIT Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs. —Shakespeare (Richard II). That inveterate letter-writer to the London Press, Mr. Algernon Ashton, is not. making another of his positively last appearances. “I would like to correct a horrible rumour which has reached me;,” Mr. Ashton said to a # Daily Chronicle” representative, "that 1 have written my last letter to the papers, and that I can never be tempted into print again. • The rumour is wholly false, as 1 am now determined to go on writing until I am dead.

"It is true that I have already retired twice. My first retirement was in 1903, but I had to burst out in 1905. I retired again in 1908. when I publicly registered a vow never to write another letter to any newspaper on any subject whatsoever. "But the urge was too great for me, and in 1911 I was back at the old game, and have played it off and on ever since.

"How may a man break a happy hobby of 40 years? My first letter appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette’ on November 11, 1887. It corrected a statement that George Cruikshank. the famous caricaturist, was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery—his tomb really being in St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Since then I have learnt Kensal Green Cemetery by heart, and other cemeteries, too, like Highgate. I have also made a special study of the tombs of Pere-Lachaise in Paris.

"Every churchyard has had a fascination for me from my boyhood. Out of ;ill this prying have come hundreds upon hundreds of letters to the Press about the graves and epitaphs of famous men, giving many valuable corrections and other interesting matter.

“Covering all subjects, over 2,000 letters of mine have appeared in the newspapers.”