The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-26
ALICE HEGAN RICE ENTERTAINED BY
 BRITISH WRITER'S Lavish Hospitality Show cred Upon Author of
 Mrs. Wiggs" PRETTY AMERICAN
 TO MEET H. G. WELLS Writer of Coster Stories and the Straight-Laced Schoolma 'am-How Pierre Loti Treats His Corre-
 spondents-Literary Gossip
By HAYDEN CHURCH


 London. July 25.-lSpecial )-Mrs. Alice Hogan Rice and her husband. Gale Young Rice. are in London this week, but they won't be week from now, and it is all the fault of their many friends in the literary world here who, ever since their arrival have been lunching and dining and otherwise feting them almost to the extent of their physical endurance. The ring leader in the business, judging from what Mrs. Rice told me the other day, between morning of motoring, a luncheon party and a matinee, appears 10 be " Pett Ridge. who, however, is ably abetted by Walter Hines Page, the American ambassador. c. N. and Mrs. Williamson, who wrote "The Lightning Conductor and "The Princess Passes;' . Mrs. Alice Meynell, the poetess and es- sayist who, many folk thought, ought to have been made laureate, and sev- eral other we'll known literary men and women.
 We expect to reach the end of our lunching, dining and eatre-going ca racity about the middle of next week, said Mrs. Rice, "so we are going to beat hurried retreat then to the Isle of Wight, where we shall spend the rest of the summer. We come over nearly every year, of course, and our friends here are always kind, but l don't think there has ever been so much doing before. Work? Yes, l ex- pect to do some when I get over to Shanklin, first of all to put the lin ishing touches to my new story, The Hon. Percival,' which has just started as a serial in America and in which. for the first time, l have taken an Englishman for my hero
 To Meet c. H. Wells
 Another fair American guest at most of the parties that have been given in the Rices' honor, by the way, has been pretty Margaret Vandercock, who also halls from Kentucky( and wrote The Loves of Ambrose" not to mention sev- eral books for girls and who threatens to write a best seller before she is much older. Mrs. Vandercoox, whose late hus- band was a well known and much liked London correspondent, but who now lives in New York, is about to pay visit to some friends in Essex who. it seems, are near neghbors and intimate friends of H. G. Wells, and is greatly "bucked, < as they say over here, at the prospect of meeting the literary man whom she considers the most interesting in Eng land, Shaw not excepted. MeanWhlie, 'sThe Loves of Ambrose" is about to be placed before English readers"
 Robert Hichens so his publisher tells me- is in Greece at present, which coun- try is to be the scene of his next novel. Enviable indeed, Is the lot of the literary man or woman who can thus roam at will from one of natures fairlands to another, and weave a romance about each which will pay the butcher and the baker, and likewise the man at the motor garage. Like the Williamsons, say, or E. w. Hornung, or Mrs. Elinor Glyn, who was motoring through France the last that one heard. A rowing friend of mine tells me, by the by, that Kitchens Is famous even, in sort of way, in southern AL geria, and other remote easterly places where two or three are gathered together who like good stories of character with fine, warm backgrounds.
 Referring to w. Pett Ridge few para graphs back, reminds me that this popu- lar short-story writer, who is probably one of the keenest lovers of children and workers for their particularly the poor ones-in all England, and who gave up what everybody supposed was a confirmed bacheorhood a couple of years back to marry a pretty fashion artist, is now the father of two little shavers of his own thing that must please him almost to pieces.