AUCKLAND FAMILY BIOGRAPHY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 517, 20 May 1949, Page 15

AUCKLAND FAMILY BIOGRAPHY

A LINK WITH THE PAST. By the Hon, Eliot R. Davis, M.L.C. Oswald-Sealy (N.Z.) Litd:, Auckland. EN who have lived a life as long and varied as this well-known Auckland business man, and legislator, should be encouraged to write their reminiscences. New Zealand is weak in memoirs. But if they so decide, they should take two precautions: check their memories, and submit their manuscripts to someone with a literary bent, a knowledge of the period, and a capacity for candour. Mr, Eliot Davis did take advice about his script. Dean Chandler, of Hamilton, a friend of his, writes an introduction, and tells us he urged publication. One may take it, however, that Dean Chandler is. not well acquainted with the middle period of Auckland history, and one suspects that he allowed his friendship to cloud his literary judgment. Mr. Davis trusted his memory far too much, with the result that there are a string of errors in fact, including misspelling of names, Even about his old’ school, which he remembers with affection, and to which he Has been a benefactor, he is not always accurate. The book would have been a much better one if it had been pretty rigorously edited, a process that would have cut out many trivialities. As it stands it reminds one of a couple of old cronies gossiping about their past. "Remember Bill Smith?" "Yes, he married Bertha Jones, and they’re living in X. Fine girl, Bertha, wasn’t she?" And so on, and so on, True, many prominent and interesting persons walk in these pages. Mr. (continued on next page)

BOOK REVIEWS (Cont'd)

| Davis and one Michael Joseph Savage, | probably not yet contemplating the possibility that one day he would be Prime Minister, used to wash out the brewery cellar, and the two of them would eat their lunch of bread and cheese and perhaps a pint of beer, on a beer barrel and discuss questions of the day. Unfortunately there are many other personal references that are of little or no interest to the general reader, and there is too much of the small change of daily life and travel. However, with -all its faults of inaccuracy and lack of selection, Mr. Davis’s

book does re-create a society, and especially the dear dead days before (and indeed long before) the first world war. Dean Chandler does not exaggerate when he says. it "jostles with life." All manner of men and women are here. Some of them just put their heads into the scene; others live. In politics there is the story of how Mr, Davis was appointed to the Legislative Council. It is rather piquant. One surmises that Mr. Davis wrote the book primarily for his family connections and his friends and acquaintances. Many of them will enjoy this jumbled fireside-yarning remem- . ; ; f brance of past, critical. The social historian, especially of Auckland, will find it useful. One sociological condition, to which Dean Chandler’s introduction is a pointer, may be mentioned. The Davis family were brought up as orthodox Jews. Mr. Davis tells us how strict his mother was in the domestic observance of Jewish custom. But the family has had a host of Christian friends, including Roman

Catholic and Protestant clerics.

A.

M.