ON TOMB AND TEMPLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 292, 26 January 1945, Page 11

ON TOMB AND TEMPLE

The Autographs of The 3 Infamous HE urge to write one’s name in all sorts of odd places is rarely resisted by New Zealanders. It is almost a‘national habit to scratch, with pen, pencil, or knife, one’s name and the date of the offence. Take the desks and forms in almost any school and you will find thousands of carvings. Builders engaged recently in renovating the classrooms of a big South Island school found in the crevices of the walls, the flooring, and even tucked away in cracks in the ceiling, tiny pieces of paper carrying the names of hundreds of pupils — some of them to-day distinguished soldiers or highly respected in business life. A few of these personal documents contained pieces of satire directed at the masters of the day. But the autographing craze does not disappear with the end of school life. One may read the names of would-be-celebrated in strange corners of any city

or town. For instance, "Foo," who recently set Wellington agog with curiosity, has left his mark all over New Zealand. The strange signature is on walls of buildings in Palmerston North, Auckland, Christchurch and Oamaru. Surroundings for autographings do not seem to matter a bit so long as the name is seen by the next comer, and, possibly, by the writer, years later. I confess that for many yeafs my own initials, deeply carved, stood wind and weather on the railing of a southern pier. There is bitter disappointment, of course, when, on his return to his old haunts, the autographer finds that some conscientious caretaker has "obliterated his claim to fame. Name-writing, however, can easily become vandalism. Visitors to the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Sea Islands complain that it has

been defiled by inscriptions of tourists from the Seven Seas. Soldiers returned from this war have reported seeing names. of New Zealanders scribbled on the walls of Hindu temples and the Egyptian Pyramids. Religious exhortations are found painted in huge letters on the natural rock in scenic beauty spots. I have seen them in many parts of New Zealand, placed there to remind us that all flesh is grass. The sign marking the divide between Canterbury and Westland, in the Otira Gorge, will no doubt have a further list of names added to it these holidays. Film stars in Hollywood observe the childish rite of implanting their foot signatures in wet concrete for "fans" to view with solemn reverence, but in that case the concrete is laid for that specific purpose and nobody suffers.