Mixed Company

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 14

Mixed Company

PAT LAWLOR, in his talk in the new 2ZB series Famous People I Should Like to Have Met, tended to sacrifice entertainment value to honesty. Before introducing us to his selection Mr. Lawlor stated categorically that all six were

distinguished for one thing, that they had consciously worked for the Good-for, said Mr. Lawlor, "I should not have wanted to meet anybody bad." But it is a regrettable fact that the Bad are usually more memorable than the Good, and I felt that Mr. Lawlor would not have compromised himself unduly by a

casual meeting with something pitchy, and it would have formed an agreeable

c6ntrast to the White Man he specialised in. (Not a woman among them-fie Mr. Lawlor!) Moreover I confess with shame that I was completely unacquainted with two of the six, the book-collector Frederick Locker Lampson and the Irish poet | and mystic George Russell. Walter de. la Mare and G. K. Chesterton are two who would add lustre to anybody’s list of six, Dr. Wilson (of Antarctic fame) is.a less obvious choice, but one for whose inclusion Mr. Lawlor makes out a very convincing case. The contrast to these largely literary and almost contemporary figures is provided by Savonarola, whom I (and George Eliot too for that matter) had always regarded as a 15th Century Elmer Gantry, and one whose friendship would have been uncomfortable both spiritually and bodily. But Mr. Lawlor deserves great credit for thus turning a firm back on the temptation to make a dinner table of assorted sexes and concentrating on the assembling of a Fine Body of Men.