The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-08
Humorist Has Already Had One Piece Produced-SOn
 of Physician
HALLE ERMINE RIVES
 IS VISITING LONDON
Says All Her Novels Will Have Amer ican Setting Henceforth-AuthOr Who Bought Prayerbook Be-
 fore Visiting Bishop
By HAYDEN cHuRcH

London August Especial )-J. Storer Clouston who wrote "The Lunatic at Large Count Bunker" and other high fy diverting novels, and who recently had a play produced here that just missed being a capital farce. dropped in yester- day to announce that he is deserting this metropolis temporarily. anyway, and re- turning to his native wilds, namely, the Orkney Isles. Meanwhile he declares that he means to go in whole-heartedly for playwriting, which it seems was the thing that he really wanted to do at the begin ming, and by dint of which he fondly hopes to reap similar golden rewards to those that have come to Barrie, Bennett, Jerome. Harding Davis and other erst- while novelists who have turned dram atists.
 As beginning it appears he has dram atized both "The Lunaticn and Count Bunker and negotiations are now under way for bringing these to the notice of managers on both sides of the Atlantic. H is half American himself, is Clouston, his mother having been a Connecticut woman and hig, brawny and ruddy- checked does not look his age, which is exactly 40. He is the eldest son of quite a big-wig among physicians, Sir Thomas $. Clouston, who was formerly physician superintendent of the Rayol asylum at Morningside Edinburgh and held no end of other distinguished positions among them that of president Of the Royal Col lege of Physicians and who was lnighted in 1911. Clouston, Jr., after graduating at Oxford, was called to the bar in 1895 and practiced in the Inner Temple, but soon gave up the law for authorship.
 Really. you know. he said, T never had any idea of being a novelist. While I was at Oxford I wrote a comic opera and did couple of one-act plays too, and thoroughly intended to make that my line, but then, one day, somebody said: Why don't you try your hand at a novel?' and so l did. Of course. one tried every thing. We'll, The Lunatic at Large was the result and made a success at once, and so it was goodbye to playwriting, for, of course, with publishers keeping after one for books and yet more books, it's next to impossible to ignore them and go in for so problematie a thing as play writing
 Now, however, I mean to see just what there is in it for me, and so, as l consider that one can write far better in the wilds than in the cities. I'm chuch- ing London where my wife and I have been located for the past several years, and going back to the OrSneys where 1 was born and raised. So it's au revor for the present."
 Goes to Orkney Island
 From now on, accordingly, this authors address will be Smoogro House. Orkney, N. B. Since he left me, by the bye I have looked him up in Who's Who" and discovered that he gives Orkney history as one of his ''recreations" others being shooting and golf. The farce of his which was seen in London recently was called
 The Gilded Pill" the chief part being taken by Rutland Harrington, the fla nous Gilbert and Sullivan comedian of other days. Since then. too, Clouston has had a one-aet play with the attractive title of "rhe Pocket Miss Hercu.es' done at another London theatre. and yet an- other piece which he has written in col loboration is to see the light shortly, so he already is well started in his new field of activity. Later he may run over to the United States, where he has quite lot of relatives. He has already been there once, some 10 years ago, when he went over for the purpose of doing a stage version of his second novel, HThe Duke" with Jeanette L. Glider, but I gathered from him that this partnership did not pan out especially well.