DULCIE DEAMER: AUTHORESS.

NZ Truth, Issue 135, 18 January 1908, Page 4

DULCIE DEAMER: AUTHORESS.

TACKLES A TOUGH PROPOSITION. Sweet Sixteen on the Sex Subject. "As it was m the Beginning." Hew will it fee ia the Eld?

Dulcie Deamer, of Featherston, is a youthful prodigy who writes beyond her years. For a girl of sixteen to tackle successfully the immeasurable difficulties of the sex problem, as Dulcie has done m her prize story m the "Lone Hand," is an indication of genius 'which may develop into something abnormal 'or wither m maturity like numberless samples of juvenile precocity m the dim and distant ,past. "As It Was In the Beginning" depicts things m the era when there were no clothes to speak of, and when the law of natural selection made the gentle ; art of wooing ■a simple process of reducing the lady to abject servility by pure brute force. Costume had no part m the programme. The Strong Man's "six feet of hairy manhood was belted with a strip of fawn skin suppled with grease. S-avs for this, he was naked, but beside him lay a spear, beaded with chipped jasper and a coil of deer-skin thongs. He was a dark man with fierce grey eyes, and his long Mack hair fell all about his shouldersj- The reason for being where he was was very simple. He wanted --a wife. The worn/an —she was young, a girl still, and well^rown. Her only garment was a belt of red deer's hide, and she was fresh with the freshness of all young animals that have not known motbe"hood, as a sleek heifer or ■' voting hind knee-deep m / fern." Tl wom»m loves' strength, but strength without tenderness is as nought, for love is the mainspring of existence. How he got her : "The st ''ono; mon sprang, lion-like, and struck her down, and stifled her f'r'st ;.eroam n.r; it. was horn. When she (Vii.s drajy^orl inio the shelter of the gorse he squeezed her throat till she lay gasping, and as she blinked up at him, her eyes, green; as a cat's, were wild with hate and fear. Very swiftly he bound her. with raw thongs, until she was more helpless than a new-born babe. Then the captor's hand ,closo.d again upon - her throat, and when they loosened the r&ntive -was insensible from suffocation." It wasn't entirely successful. "T- T e had mated as the,* beasts mate, brutally And by force, but things had not turned 'out or Tf, m his dim mind ha-:' expected. So >.■ bad broken several lough wood splinters m the endeavor io set them right." The woman.'didn't appreciate him. It was avV-c" lhc strong man foiled a lion at on? blow. Ihen .slipped beneath the yellow-white fangs of a cub-despoiled lioness, that the woman awoke to her responsibilities. She speared the 'lioness and saved her lord, and tberoaHer love entered into the business wilh satisfactory results. The strength of the story is its simplicity, but the phraseology is astonishirgly apt and graphic. "Among the wate'.'-eo'.irses the gorse burned like golden fire and licked the edge of the current with vivid lips." What could he more cvnressive and luminous ? It is the daring of the sketch that com;mairds admiration and inspires amazement at its production by a demure miss, who might , not write thus, embarrassed by sex knowledge born of the experience of maturcr years. The story has given artist/ Norman Lindsay, an opportunity to idealise the brute m man. Dulcie. Deamer, who is the goldenbai'ed daughter of a Featherston medico, had previously attained purely local fame by the unusual histrionic aptitude displayed m recitations on Wairarapa concert platforms, and m private theatricals. In dramatic impersonation she did not go beyond the family circle, and shared with other Feaiilierston young ladies, ' some of whom took male parts, the enthusi-. astically expressed approbation of a favored few auditors. Her future will be watched with curiosity.