OF BISHOPS, BOWLS AND BRICKLAYERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 100, 23 May 1941, Page 13

OF BISHOPS, BOWLS AND BRICKLAYERS

(Written for "The Listener" by

R.

W.

ANGELY enough, hobbies -commendable as they undoubtedly are-quite often lower the status of the devotee in the eyes of the outside world. Most of us at some time or other have probably been conscious of that disheartening anti-climax consequent upon seeing the bishop approaching us across the lawn with spade in hand and episcopal shoes sadly besmeared by common clay. Macaulay, in his Essay on Frederick the Great of Prussia, mercilessly pours ridicule on the mighty warrior who rode into battle with a "quire of bad verses in his pocket." Indeed, Frederick’s hobby was of the tell-tale variety, showing as it did that an almost childish sentimentality may lurk in the strongest of breasts. Likewise, no one will have forgotten the case of Nero, who played the harp while Rome burned.

Drake Wouldn't Finish It To-day Posterity has passed surprisingly light judgment upon the greatest of our sea-dogs who calmly indulged in the pleasures of a hobby when duty called. But ‘times have changed, and we feel that a British admiral of the twentieth century who was found playing a rubber of bowls while enemy ships patrolled the Channel, would meet the severest censure alike from _ the Admiralty and the Press. Another example from history is that of George I.’s_ minister, whose apparently honourable hobby earned for him the rather unpleasant sobriquet of "Turnip" Townshend. And Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man" of Victorian England, spent much of his leisure in cutting down trees on his estate at Hawarden. Indeed, he was in the very act of putting a scarf into one giant when he was told that he was to

be Prime Minister in 1868. One historian records the incident thus: "For a few moments he continued to swing his axe: then he paused, looked at the messenger and said, ‘My mission is to pacify Treland.’" In fairness to Gladstone, however, it must be pointed out that there is no known connection between his love for wielding the axe and his ardent desire to pacify Ireland. "Winnie the Brikky" Some of our notable contemporaries have hobbies which throw interesting sidelights on their characters. Britain’s present great helmsman, Winston Churchill, is a bricklayer when absent from

Number 10. ("I’m Winnie the Brikky," sings the vulgar bard). In fact like the thorough-going man he is, Churchill has ventured the whole distance and became a member of the Associated Bricklayers’ Union! When free from the trials of their respective positions, Anthony Eden, R. A. Butler, and the eminent scientist J. B. S. Haldane, all don their gardening togs. Sir Archibald Sinclair saws wood; (as a modern Liberal he scorns the Gladstone axe), Peter Dawson is a dog-lover; Colonel Josef Beck, former Polish Foreign Secretary, plays cards, and in response to a question regarding his hobbies, the novelist Compton Mackenzie would give the startling reply, "Cats and

gramophones!" Fundamentally it is pere haps merely noise that Compton fancies, _ Sunday Afternoons With Wells The H. G. Wells Sunday afternoon hockey games are well known to readers of Mr. Brittling Sees It Through. And 25 years or so ago a visitor to the Wells home at a week-end would quite likely have found H. G. on his knees in the playroom, or perhaps on the lawn, completely absorbed in a complex game of toy soldiers known as "Little Wars" which he himself invented (and wrote a book about), and which is still practised by a few devotees even in this country. In fact, the pre-1914 Wells has the creation of a whole collection of semi-childish, semi-adult "Floor Games" to his credit. Fond also of charades, the illustrious H. G. once appeared adorned with a long tow beard halved by a dinner mat and circled slowly across the room to the complete mystification of his friends until he explained he was depicting the quotation "God moves in a mysterious

way." The episode must have been damaging to Wells’s prestige, and it is fairly safe ta assume that at least one of those guests has to this day continued to regard him as "not coms pletely sane." Down From Their Pedestals And finally, witness Lloyd George. Think of him, not as the dramatic figure within the lofty precincts of Westminster waving his arms and impatiently pawing the floor with one foot and all the while engulfing his listeners in a flood of eloquence, but as the stooping farmer, clad in an obsolete cloak, feeding swill to grunting, gluttonous pigs. What descents from sublime heaven to cold earth are these! And yet, perhaps, how salutary for them and how comforting for us poor mortals to know that our demigods are only human after all!