The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-03-09
QUEER LITERARY
BARONET MISSING
Sir Walter Strickland Be-
lieyed to Be Dead
WROTE FREAK BOOKS
Declared That Shakespeare Was an
Italian and Recommended Moths
Eggs as Particularly
Good Eating
by HAYDEN CHURCH


London, March s.-(Special.)-One of
the most amazing literary men" in the
world is missing, and his friends, being
unable to discover the slightest trace CT
him, are beginning to believe that he Is
dead. This is Sir Walter Strickland, a.
rich English baronet aged g., who is the
lord of some 21,000 acres and who has
spent his life In wandering about the
earth's surface, making queer researches.
writing freak books, tracts and poems
and getting into trouble with the author
tiles of many lands. whose rule he never
has hesitated to criticise' on the slight
est pretext.
Sir Walter, who was last heard of at
Marseilles, has been missing since De-
cember l, last. and for several weeks
past the personal column of the Times
has contained an advertisement signed
by his solicitors in which he is cam
est1y requested" to communicate with
them at once. They tell me, however,
that they are still without a reply and the
fear Is beginning to grow that Sir waiter
has fished in troubled waters once TOO
often and that he has met his death at
the hands of one of those agents whom
governments sometimes use and always
dsavow.
One of his friends once dubbed Sir
Walter the Scholar-Anarchist-Gy Hell
has been wandering about the world fcr
80 years now, botanizing, studying natural
history, transating Horace and Mol1ere,
making collections of all sorts OF queer
things, and writing violent pamphlets and
verse against everything established.
Only once has this strange vagrant OF
literature been in London, this being IN
800 when he succeeded to the title, ana
then he stayed here only a week. Ills
family IS an ancient one. They are salo
to have been settled in Strickland before
the conquest, and a Sir Thomas Strlck-
land bore the banner of st. George at the
LattIe of Agincourt The first barontt
was one of oliver Cromwells lords,
member of the sham house of peers
created during the great rebellion
The last news of Sir Walter Strickland
came in the shape Of a characterlslic
postcard which the baronet wrote TO the
secretary of a naturalistic society IN
Yorkshire. This postcard, which an
nounced the sending of packet OF
Shells was dated from a hotel in Mar
seilles and gave the writer's next ad.
dress as "Poste Restante, st. Raphael,
but Sir Walter is not at ct. Raphaei,
nor Is there any trace of his having peen
there. When he left the Hotel Veritas
in Marseilles, the earth appears to have
swallawed him up.
The baronet's first literary work was q
monograph on Some Forms of Sand.
This was written in 1882, when its author
was n years old He travelled In Italy
from 1892 to 1898 and again in 19OS-ll.
While on his first visit some riotous
strikers were shot by the troops. Thls,
to Sir Walter Strickland, constituted
mo ssacre. and he wrote an ironic lode
in Praise of Lead two stanzas OF which
follow;
"NIob starving, desperate, fudge!
That howl for bread, sirs!
Brave soldiers never bulge,
But give 'em lead, sirs-
AI.ead's the best panacea
For poor mems ills,
And bullets the least dear,
Most drastic pills"
These remarkable verses furnish good
idea of the quality of the baronets muse
He was a versatile writer, anyhow. ms
publications including short stories, fairy
tales. dramas, and works of folklore
besides his political and naturalistlc
works. Like another eccentric English
baronet (the renowned Sir Edwin Durn-
ing -Lawrence), Strickland held decidedIy
original theories about Shakespeare. lie
wrote and published an extraordinary
Bard was not English but Italian or jew
sh blood, and that he was an atheist
and was 'sblack- haired with dark brown
ewes like the majority of literary
geniuses" The family name of Shakes
peare, he said, was originally Scaccio-
speranzai
to study flying fish, but they did not
come up to his expectations SO he took to
shells instead and collected these along
the Australasian coast as well as In lndia.
Ceylon and Malaga. Meanwhile he paid
his compliments to his own countrymen
In the first named country.
''Will Asia ever rouse itself, ne Wrote
land say to this alien slime of weasel,
toad, and leech Behave yourselves or
go?' y
This "alien slime q. e. the EnglishD,
is also styled 1.-THE Alglo-India Camorra
OF liars, thieves and assassins; who have
destroyed the Independence of india by
series of crimes, butcheries, perfidies and
forgeries.'
Soon after penning this sunny essay,
the baronet wrote and published pa
thetic poem on growing old" satire on
individualism, and a study of Tennyson,
the latter decidedly uncomplimentary to
the late Poet Laureate.
. The year 1906 found him in Java, busy
parodying we'll known hymns. At Travan-
core he made stay of seven months;
result poem on Fire Flies and some
cxceedinely sarcastic verses at the ex-
pense of Indian officials. Here he adopted
two native boys whom he brought with
him to Europe. They, are settled in
Munich and Zurich respectively, and one
of them is busying himself with studies
Of spiders eyes,
AS one would except, the baronet had all
sorts of queer dietary fads He divided
foods into aerial foods" tobacco was
one of these) fluid foods and solids.
Opium he termed IAN excellent food" and
so, he said, were alcoholic drinks of all
kinds in moderation. 1.-THE roe of the
large hawk-moth" he found particularly
good eating, and other foods he recon-
mends are chocolate, meat extract and
sanquinacci.
A few months ago the baronet decided
to go to China, almost the only coun-
try which he had left unvisited. Hence
his journey to Marseilles. where he APP
piled for passport. But his record from
the official point of view, was not good
one; views like the baronet's seldom
smooth the way to passports. So the per-
nit was refused, the postcard about the
shells was sent and the eccentric noble
man disappears from view. His London
publishers have heard nothing from him,
and neither have his two adopted sons,
who it appears are absolutely dependent