PAMELA TALKS OF THIS AND THAT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 424, 4 August 1928, Page 26

PAMELA TALKS OF THIS AND THAT

What Is “D®ne J at the Derby... A Masefield Hraele Play... D'Annunzio aid the Man Without Eyebrows...

(Written by PAMELA TRAVERS, ‘ ■ AM not dead, atter all. That is very strange. I had thought that my last letter to you would have been indeed the last. But the tidal wave has not swept upon England, no wars have broken out, nobody has been tansported to Jerusalem in Elijah’s fiery chariot. Instead we have been spared for the most sacred event of the year—the Derby. As I write this the race is being run at Epsom. Miles away fortunes are changing hands even at this moment, hearts suddenly broken and hearts as suddenly riveted again. Down below in Chancery Lane there is a disconcerting quietness, a lull before the storm. In half an hour the Lane will ring with cries of newspaper men and I shall know whether my money has gone into the bulging pocket of an old checked coat or whether it is waiting to return to me multiplied eighteen times. By which the more subtle among you will realise that I have backed a rank outsider. Early this morning London was wakened by a more than mortal rumbling. Earthquakes, I thought, for the whole city seemed to be shaking and shivering. But it was only the starting forth of hundreds of motor-lorries, charabancs and private cars for Epsom. On Derby Day everything that goes on four wheels is commandeered. Buses are hired for private parties that sit on the top seats while minions make great feasts inside the red bodies of the vehicles. Usually it rains and the passengers have to crowd downstairs and share the red refuge with sundry chickens, salmon and champagne bottles. There is also a certain etiquette to be observed on Derby Day. It is not comme il faut to notice the rain. One sits in watery misery, shivering and woebegone at heart, but with a fixed smile upon the countenance. Occasionally one says, shaking the water out of an ear, “Aren’t we enjoying ourselves,” and it is necessary for all the others to give an affirmatory reply. This is considered gallant and not in the least hypocritical. The Derby is like a woman’s reputation—decent people can only speak well of it. I have recently seen a modern miracle play. It was performed last week on the chancel steps of Canterbury Cathedral and as I sat in the centre of the church I wondered if any play ever had such a subtlety of carving. The play was Masefield’s “Coming of Christ,” and what it lacked in simpii-

’HE SUN’S London Correspondent.) city it made up for in dignity. I suppose it is impossible to get back to that mood engendered by the old miracle or rather, that engendered them. One feels a certain sophistication creeping into the bare, lovely words—as though they had welled up from the mind instead of from, the heart. Besides the old miracle players performed for simple, uncomplex men whose belief was only just beginning to fruit and ripen. Whereas nowadays the leaves begin to grow brown and fall, shaken from the tree by the complexities of life and the imprisoning hand of dogma. Briefly, the poet made his play out of four male spirits—Power, the Sword, Mercy and Light—who receive Anima Christi—the “mind of Christ,” personified. At the determination of the Mind to take on the burden of flesh the Heavenly Host, tucked away behind a screen, sing tender words of comfort and support. The three Kings appear, Balthazar, military power; Gaspar, power of the purse; and Melchior, mental power. They pass and give place to three shepherds—Earthy, the socialist; Sandy, the argumentative one, and Rocky, the sane man. Upon their arguments come the tidings of great joy, followed across the steps by the Mother and the Babe to whom the kings and shepherds bring gifts and adoration.

That is all—a simple enough tale and at times a moving one. AH the.

actors spoke slowly and deliberately, | but even this did not cheat the echo j which repeated their voices from j every corner of the cathedral. None j of the names of the actors were made | known to the audience; in order to jsqueeze the very essence out of the i miracle. A single trumpet call opened | the play and closed it and a great burst of song came from the three hidden choirs when the Mother and Babe were swept into the vestry in a triumphant procession. The voices of these choirs admirably met Sir Edward Elgar’s famous requirement that devotional music should be neither good enough nor bad enough to attract attention.

A simple tale, sincerely written and acted. But I was more moved when, the actors and audience gone, I was left alone in the cathedral with only a silk-footed old verger shuffling about putting crooked chairs straight. It was then that the real pageant began, the invisible but most real pageant of old weary pilgrims, gorgeous crusaders setting off for the Holy Wars, the long drifting queue of worshippers who ages ago walked along the Pilgrim Way to this white pearl of their desire. "When I came out the night had begun to darken in the sky and the cathedral itself soared up against one small and lonely star, its spires yearning to reach and enfold that patch of lovely brightness. How interesting it must be to Gabriele d’Annunzio who had just written the last words of his new book which is all about a man who has no eyebrows. He has been dead to the outside world while writing this curious history, and soldiers have guarded his park gates for months, taking turns at marching up and down a given space with fixed bayonets. I hear that for the last twenty-nine hours of the ordeal he touched no food and did not leave his study except to get books from his library and, since the door between the rooms is low, he cut his forehead several times and had to be swathed in bandages. Then with his own hands he gave the manuscript to his publishers and visited the workmen who are to print it. (Continued on Page 27)