BOOKS, BABIES AND THE BIG WORLD TOO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 275, 29 September 1944, Page 16

BOOKS, BABIES AND THE BIG WORLD TOO

A Talk With Mrs. Sydney Greenbie F I felt a little nervous as I knocked at the door which was to lead me to Mrs. Greenbie, I was soon to be put at ease, I felt nervous not only because Mrs, Greenbie is the wife of the New Zealand representative of the United States Office of War Information, but also because she is a Ph.D, of Yale University, writes books on history and psychology, and has travelled widely and brought up two children; but she made me feel that all this was just the most natural thing in the world for a woman to do. She seemed surprised that I knew of her academic qualifications. "My publishers like to keep that quiet," she said. "It might put people off my books if they thought they were highbrow. You see, they are just popular books for ordinary people, and readers might be frightened off if my books appeared to be written by an expert. Besides, I took my degree in English." I asked how she came to write psychology and history. "Well, I started writing while I was still at university. I began writing for the theatre, not of course great Broadway successes, but plays that have been ‘presented. Most of the writing that I have done has. been in response to some request. I think that what started me off was a request to write a play presenting the historical background of Ithaca, my university town. It was put on by a combination of commercial, theatrical and amateur groups. It must have been appreciated, because after that Cornell University asked me to do the same for them. Then I seemed to get busy with plays and all sorts of odd jobs. I was working for the motion picture industry, too, doing reviews and criticisms-but don’t think that was an important or glamorous job in those days. Pictures were in their early days then, and this was just a very humble little job. But I enjoyed it." Hard Work and Fun Mrs. Greenbie, I felt, was a person who is prepared to enjoy jobs even if they are only, as she says, humble ones. But her next venture, while it probably involved a good deal of hard work, also. involved a lot of fun, too. That was clear from her account of it. "I went round the world to collect material for a Wesleyan Missionary historical -pggeant,"’ she explained, as naturally as though it had been a train journey to Auckland from Wellington. That certainly was an important and exacting bit of work. I was Director of Pageantry, but that trip gave me all sorts of opportunities to write contributions to journals, and it put me well on the way to writing regularly. Of course once I married and had children, I had to give up my connection with the theatre. I could not make myself free (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) at all times and go out in the evenings to help with productions as I had before." "So you took to books?" "Well, yes, though not exactly deliberately. I think I was first asked to write a book embodying some of my ideas after I had been holding forth on some social occasion. A publisher asked me if I could put my ideas down in book form. Personality was my first popular psychology venture, and it was followed by four others: Arts. of Leisute-that is mainly on mannersIn Quest of Contentment, just a homely way of putting over home truths, The Art of Living in Wartime, and Be Your Age." From psychology Mrs. Greenbie graduated to history. She planned to write a popular history which would show the contribution made to American history by local groups of people. She planned also to write the history and literature of the American dream of a better life. That took her to the Local History Room of the Library of Congress, and there she found a mine of relatively untouched material. The result was American Saga, followed by My Dear Lady, a biography of Anna Ella Carroll. Her most recent book, Lincoln's Daughters of Mercy, an account of the organisation which was the forerunner of the American Red Cross, has just been published. The Children Flourished And where did the children come in? Mrs. Greenbie and her husband have not "stayed put" long in any place, and so the children have had what Mrs. Greenbie calls a "complicated" life, but I was assured that they flourished on it. "The chief difficulty was the formal preparation for college, but the war has intervened, anyhow, and the boy is in the Army now, and both are married." In fact Mrs. Greenbie is a distinctly proud grandmother of a 14-month toddler, and very pleased to talk babies and baby feeding with anyone. I was no longer surprised at the copy of Feeding and Care of Baby, by Sir Truby King, which I had previously spotted on her bookshelves. As for bringing up her own family, well, yes, it did have its own complications. The feeling that she had that the children needed a quiet and stable home background led her to take a job for some years as a university lecturer at Holyoak College. "The papers gave me a lot

of dreadful publicity," said Mrs. Greenbie. "They had headlines like ‘She Takes a Place Where the Children Can Play,’ and I suppose it was mainly true. Anyhow, the children got the background they needed, and I was able to get a nice college girl from time to time to mind them. But we missed the life end stimulus of a big city, so did not stay too long." Feminists in America I could not leave without a question on the rights and status of women in America. Have women succeeded in gaining equal rights with men in America? Mrs. Greenbie explained that there were two groups among feminists in America, those who pressed for absolute equality in every sphere, and those who were anxious to guard women’s interests. "I belong to the latter group, and as you can see, it is not quite the same thing. We feel that if we press for equality too far we will lose all sorts of women’s privileges, and that special protective measures will go. And as for opportunity, we feel that in the States women have got all sorts of opportunities politically and in all sorts of spheres which perhaps they have not got in many other countries." It was only as I was making my way home that I realised that although we had talked for quite a long while, there were still a whole lot more things that I would have liked to ask about: that astonishing tour round the world in aid of a Wesleyan pageant, her life in Japan (for she has been there, too), more of her opinions on combining careers and children, or even what she thinks of US. However, she has come to make a home in Wellington, so I may yet get my answers.

S.

S.