ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 505, 25 February 1949, Page 13

ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT

(By

Airmail

— Special to

"The Listener" )

JANUARY 29 NGLAND is the centre of the world. In apologising this week for the non-appearance of a speaker in a series of BBC talks on the colonies, the introducer of the series explained that the talk had actually been recorded in Barbadoes, and was being "flown back," but hadn’t come, For some people in this little island there is only one way, the centripetal way, to |

look at journeys abroad, even at domicile abroad, Not only the Colonies and the Dominions ("out there") either, but America too. Egocentric is surely one of the last words one would apply to such a man as E. M. Forster. Yet Mr. Forster, in talking over the BBC about his experiences in America in 1947, called America "out ‘there." This is a habit which the

Englishman exhibits when he is most at his ease (as Mr, Forster always is in front of the microphone). Some months ago a Fleet Street journalist of unusually broad outlook, a man with what I thought were fairly wide horizons, talked to me of Denmark, when I showed interest in it on hearing that he had been stationed there after the war. He spoke of the cultural life of Copenhagen, of hospitality there, of the food-and then out slipped the little phrase: "Yes, I had some marvellous experiences out there." Now an Italian, Paolo Treves, has written a book on England (having been here during the -war) which he calls England, the Mysterious Island. The Manchester Guardian reviews it this week, prickling a little at some of Signor Treves’s observations of English oddities: "Indeed, Mr. Treves contributes at least as much to the mystery as do the people whom he studies... . The English have a social sense, they are unhurried, they are tolerant, they do not raise their voices, with them ‘polite conversation is not supposed to be argumentative.’ In short, they behave very unlike Italians, and there is your mystery." There it is indeed, and the mystery goes deeper still when one discovers that an Englishman cannot see that it is one. It is like the picture on the old Cerebos salt tins, containing-itself-con-taining-itself ad infinitum. The English are peculiar, But to say so is peculiar. It is peculiar that to say so is peculiar, is it not? Postscripts to ITMA A POSTSCRIPT to what I wrote before of Tommy Handley: Speaking of him, both the Director-General of the

BBC (Sir William Haley) and the Listener's "Spoken Word" critic (Philip Hope-Wallace) alluded to Dr. Johnson’s remark on the death of Garrick, that it had eclipsed the gaiety of nations; but both without committing themselves to using it of Handley. Sir William Haley, in fact, said that it was only a friendly exaggeration in the first instance, Now, a cofrespondent of the Listener, writing from Liverpool (which was Handley’s place.of origin), puts a case for regarding it as an exaggeration in the first, instance, but not in

the case of Handley. That is as may be; but the correspondent is right (if Teutonic in his grammar) in saying that. "into the reasons for .. . the popularity of Tommy Handley and ITMA itself it will be necessary for the social historian to go." ITMA_ was loved and waited for in every kind of. home, whether the radio sat on the kitchen dresser of

was a console in a stately drawing room. On the only occasion when I sat in a chair once occupi by the literary great (a chair in which James Stephens used to sit arguing with Yeats, as I gathered) and nervously handed bread and butter to one distinguished woman novelist, while carrying on a conversation with a minor but distinguished poet and critic, the talk came round to ITMA. On the show of faces, and on the address, which was a couple of doors from Keats’ home in Hampstead, it was a literary tea, and yet the talk came round (by way of margarine, petrol, and the servant shortage) to ITMA. As it still would, if ITMA still existed, or could again. In the Manchester Guardian this week a correspondent contradicts another who said that Ben Jonson’s comedies were the nearest parallel to ITMA, and wished to substitute Aristophanes. "Not only in its punning, its topical allusions, and uproarious and zestful ridicule of contemporary persons and institutions, but in its form does Aristophanic comedy present the closest of parallels to ITMA. For as in ITMA so in Aristophanes’ ‘comedies do we find not a close-knit dramatic unity but an almost formless succession of short scenes in which fantastic caficatures of contemporary Athenian types flit in and out to pest the main characters." But the Guardian itself in its leader drew the important distinction, ITMA was "not tricked out with poetry." It will be remembered by name, but not in substance. Its place on Thursday nights has been taken by the fatuous (continued on next page)

LONDON Lae Pee (continued from previous page) Twenty Questions, a radio version of "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral." Its place as the most popular broadcast of the week has been taken by Wilfred Pickles’ Have a Go, which I believe is now being tried as an export to New Zealand. Pickles has a huge following here; he is writing his autobiography at the moment, to catch the market.

The Writer Wronged

HE State’s complementary wrongs of taxing authors as if for income on what is really their capital, and of "communising literary property after less than two lifetimes" (G. B. Shaw’s phrase) are up for discussion together at present. A letter to The Times from Mr. Shaw has raised the one matter, and the suggestion of the late Rupert D’Oyly Carte that the Savoy Operas should be nationalised to save them from vandalism when the copyrights expire has raised the other. They are closely related in effect. Mr. Shaw pleads for a renewal of the afrangement (not now in force) by which authors could average their income over three years for tax purposes, and claims that a man who attempts to live by writing is a gambler at odds no bookmaker would touch. How writers envy their fellow gamblers on the turf and the Stock Exchange whose gains are untaxed, he sighs. A writer may spend ten-or twenty years of his life in working up to one book which will reward him for those years, only to see most of the royalties go in tax, as if they had been earned all in one year. In Australia, the sheepfarmer, who has to reckon with droughts and flush years, is allowed to average over a period of two or three years; but the writer may not, and so the author of The Harp in the South is said to have’ lost most of the prize which she was to have won from the Sydney Morning Herald, and royalties too, This for an example near to home, though I cannot check the details from here. Mr. Shaw also asks: "Why is property in turnips made eternal and absolute when property in ideas is temporary and conditional?" The writer has to gamble against tremendous odds; when they do turn in his

favour, the state snatches the prize from him, however he may have deserved it; he follows a profession that has no pension; when he is dead and his copytight runs out, the property is seized without compensation and left to anybody to exploit and mishandle (in the tricky field of reprint publishing). Officially, it "passes into the public domain." Mr. . Shaw calls this "throwing

it out of the window and into the street." Charles Morgan (also in a letter to The Times) makes an attempt to appeal to the Government’s baser instincts in the matter; he points out that at present many English authors of world-wide fame could earn thousands of dollars for Britain by accepting some of the enormous commissions that are offered to them, but which: they refuse because they would get practically nothing for doing them. The suggestion has already been made that instead of surtaxing successful authors, the State should tax reprints of books on which copyright has expired; or that it should tax reprints and set up a fund on the proceeds to help writers. This latter method bristles with difficulties. But not with nearly so many as face the unlucky writer who works for years without reward and then sees the fruits of all his patience go in income tax simply because they all ripen within one arbitrary fiscal year.

‘The Savoy Operas

N the case of the Savoy Operas, there is another factor involved. It is not merely that throwing the copyrights into the public domain might throw money into the air for whoever could catch it, but that in their production the works might be vandalised. D’Oyly Carte was anxious to protect the standardised productions and see that Gilbert and Sullivan could not be jazzed up or played about with. This is different from the proposition that the gains from free exploitation of dead authors’ works ought to be taxed to offset the difficulties of living authors; but it might involve some of the same problems. Hannen Swaffer has collected a symposium of views on this question. Here are snatches out of some of them: Sir Malcolm Sargent: "The operas are indeed national assets. If they could be protected by an Act of Parliament I would be all in favour." Bernard Shaw: "All copyrights should be nationalised on their expiration, This cannot be done by throwing them out of the window into the street as at present. .... As a playwright, I have to compete with Shakespeare, who charges no author’s fees. I might as well be a linkman or a water-carrier competing with municipal street lights and taps. in every scullery." John Masefield: "I trust that the fumbling hand of the bureaucrat may be kept off any work of art anywhere for

the little life remaining to me." Sir Alan Herbert: "Much as I like the Savoy Operas, I think a little fresh treatment of them would not be a bad thing." Sir Kenneth Barnes (Principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art): "T feel that the public taste and not the Government should really be the guardians of good tradition."