Mr. Frederick Whyte during his connexion with various London publishing
firms has acted as literary midwife to various works famous and not so famous, and this has brought him into contact with many writing people of whom he has much pleasant chat to record. A Bachelor's London (Grant Richards, 12s. 6d.) contains therefore much agreeable gossip and light literary criticism together with many good stories. Figures that are beginning to fade shine again through these pages—Arthur Diosy, E. F. Knight, Archibald Forbes, Colonel Newnham Davis (tile Pink 'Un's Dwarf of Blood) and Sir Henry Lucy, who appalled Fleet Street by leaving a quarter of a million. behind him ; and there are reminiscences of Barrie, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Kipling, H. G. Wells (who wrote his Outline of History because, as he acknowledged himself, " I knew, if I didn't, G. K. C. would "), and, of course, Mr. Bernard Shaw. Mr. Whyte's queer " Russian " story, which he says he has never seen in print, has appeared on a picture postcard ; but we love the rebuke given by a masterful chairman of a certain public body in Ireland to an over- persistent debater : " What we want from you, Misther O'Brien, Sorr, is silence–:-and damn little of that."
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