FAMILY LOVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 37, 6 May 1927, Page 5

FAMILY LOVE

IS IT EXTINCT? Is family affection extinct? Apparently, it is, if we are to believe some of the wittiest of our modern novelists (writes L. AllenHarker, the well-known novelist). Miss Rose Macaulay, Miss Stella Benson, Mr. Aldous Huxley, and Mr. Osbert Sitwell are eloquent as to the hollowness, the irksomeness, and, worst of all, the boringness of family ties.

The mere fact that any of the characters in their books are related to one another is enough to stir up mutual scorn and detestation. Fathers and mothers are the worst sort of tyrants; or, if not tyrants, they are clogs and drags or molluscs, impeding the mental growth and self-develop-ment of their unfortunate offspring. Miss Macaulay, it is true, sometimes writes both sympathetically and admiringly of the very old. But for the middle-aged of either sex she has no mercy; and to be fond of people, whatever their appearance, or however reactionary their opinions may be, merely because they belong to us — seems incredible to any of these writers. And yet, most of us must confess to some undiscriminating weakness of the kind. Besides, what are the real facts? Take parents, for instance —perhaps there never was a time when relations between parents and children were more friendly and understanding than at the present. Certainly there never was a time when parents took such pains to discover, and to further by every means in their power, exactly what their children want to be and do before starting them in life. And the children recognise this forthcoming spirit in their parents, and are frank and confidential, as they would never dare to be if the majority of parents were the selfish vampires certain modern writers would have us believe. If each one of us stops for a moment tg consider the families of his acquaintance, how many of them are composed of members who detest one another?

One is tempted to wonder whether this uncompromising derision of family affection is only a pose—a cloak to conceal in letters their excessive sensibility in life. The characters in Mr. Osbert Sitwell’s latest novel, “Before the Bombardment,” show as little kindness and affection for anyone else as any set of characters I have come across in the last year—yet, Mr. Osbert, Mr. Sacheverell and Miss Edith Sitwell are shining and public examples of the warmest fraternal affection and appreciation.

Miss Macaulay, Miss Stella Benson and Mr. Aldous Huxley do not share with us their doubtless high opinion of their nearest relations; but we are optimistic enough to hope that it is in inverse ratio to the mean and ruthless and violently selfish characters they love to depict. To come down to plain facts, the mainspring that keeps the wheels of action revolving with most of us is not intellectual activity, or ambition, or love of power—but, if we could use that television of the mind that puts a girdle round the earth and can penetrate the darkest places, we should probably find buried under a mass of conflicting motives a strong affection for some quite inconspicuous . person, going his or her quiet way, unmoved and unperturbed by passing fashions of thought. Secure in the certainty that their own particular Michael or Noel or Rose was loving and faith-ful-hearted. As, indeed, Michael or Noel or Rose generally is, though they do not tell the world anything of the kind. There is a tendency just now, especially among what Mr. Priestley calls “the excess of self-consciousness school,” to pretend to disbelieve in either loyalty or disinterested affection, any affection, indeed, except the erotic, and, like most modes of the moment, it was amusing while it was new. But even the youngest writer grows older as the years pass, and this particular mental attitude is already getting rather timeworn and demodee; and those of us who sincerely admire their brilliancy would fain have a little less electric light and a little more warm sunshine.