Unique Smell

JIPPING STREET--Childhood in a London Slum--Kathleen Woodward--Harpers ($2.50). Sanctioned by the crown, Author Woodward published last year Queen Mary of England, satisfactory biography. With lowlier matter and higher art she now records her dreary childhood before she was smiled upon by royalty. Jipping Street ends in a canal much patronized by suicides, and is flanked by breweries, tanneries, and jam factories, each with a unique smell that clashes with the sickly odor of chloroform wafted from the hospital below London Bridge. Here Kathleen's mother supported six children and an invalid husband, scrubbing floors, working in a steaming washhouse. "Life kicks you downstairs and then it kicks you upstairs," but her daughter refused to live by any such stoicism. By pretending to several more years than she had, she got her start in a collar factory, lives now in "The Temple," distinguished retreat of barristers and litterateurs.