CLASS versus CATTLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 634, 24 August 1951, Page 16

CLASS versus CATTLE

by

SUNDOWNER

JULY 22

in H. J. Massingham’s rather dull Wold Without End: An old book, John Darke’s Sojourn on Corswold, points out with truth that the ploughmen, carters, shepherds, cattle-folk, etc., regard themselves as superior to the day-men and the day-men to paupers and tramps: And they recognise a like division of social distinctions in the classes of bigher strata. Even the smallest tradesman is "‘Maaster.’’ while the squire’s gardener or butler is "Mister," and a still loftier grade is ‘"‘Mister So-and-so." The peak is "Sir." We have never had anything quite as bad as that in New Zealand, but we have done our best in some parts of New Zealand-Canterbury and Hawke's il CAME on this passage today

Bay especially -not to lose sight of class distinctions altogether. I think I

suggested in an earlier note that it was sheep against cattle: class made a strong bid for survival but was trampled under, foot in the cowshed. Though the "Sir" acquired at some of our private schools lingers on in a few dark places-I hear it occasionally even in the pens at Ad-dingto*-it is now an embarrassment to most of us rather than an offence, and would not even embarrass us if no one else heard it. Flattery does not worry

us. What worries us is knowing that others know that our. badges of rank are bogus. Once when I wes a real sundowner, carrying my swag from station to station and taking care not to arrive too soon, I came with another gentleman of the road to Earnscleugh homestead in Central Otago. It’ was early summer, but already very dry and hot, and when we asked for a shakedown and something to eat we were sent to the cookhouse, which happened to be in, charge of a woman. She was a2 woman who understood the fitness of things. I was not often hungry on the road, but that night I was, and this class-conscious cook made us wait outside till every straggler on the station had come and gone. Then’ with contemptuous condescension she barked "In: ya come," threw some boiled meat and cold potatoes at us and withdrew noisily from the room. I have .been patronised since, and snubbed since, but never so plainly, rudely, or excusably as ‘by that slatternly woman. It was, I realised even then, one of the few chances she would

have-of looking down instead of looking up. The musterers despised the shepherds, the shepherds the rabbiters and

rouse-abouts, and all in turn despised the cook; for cooks in those days were not the lordly tyrants they became later.

They were inferior to everybody but dag-pickers and swaggers, and this was her hour of brief authority. , f a

JULY. 23

LJNTIL last week I had: seen no more than half-a-dozen rabbits in | three months..I was, in fact, beginning to hope that the excessively wet winter had drowned some in their burrows and forced ‘the others to migrate,.But this

week I have seen three or four every day, Courting has begun, nesting has: be-

gun, and I know that the traps which have beén collecting rust since autumn under’ a macrocarpa tree will be in use again before we are far into spring. To ask where rabbits go in wiriter. is like asking where blowflies go. They don’t go. In both cases they remain, but with different habits, and in less conspicuous positions. On this particular holding I think the rabbits retreat to the gorse, burrowing accasionally under cover, but in most cases living on the surface. Tl.ey do not 6ccupy the established warrens, and when the earth is wet do not scrape. If I had watched long enough, and at the right times, I would no doubt have seen them emerge now and again for the tit-bits that tussock country provides even in the coldest weather, and I did see a pair come into" the garden one evening at dusk. But the remarkable fact has been the absence of signs-tracks, scrapes, droppings and nibbled grass-and not merely of the rabbits themselves. If my country faced south I could suppose that there had been a seasonal migration to the other side of the hills; but I face north, and no rabbit goes voluntarily to the cold faces when the warm ones are open. x a *

JULY 24

}-ROM astro-physics to shepherding is as far as from Fred Hoyle to the Man in the Moon. I cam neither understand what these people say, _ r believe it, nor reach any conélusion at all about it except that to me it doesn’t matter:

but I like listening ‘to them. The | only . astronomer T have ever under-

stood was born in the head of Dr. Johnson and confessed to Prince Rasselas that he’ had, wasted his time and was more than half cracked. There was, however, a return of "delight in sublunary pleasures" after a succession of visits by two fascinating young women, and when we take leave of him he is sane: Of the various conditions which the world spreads before you I am ‘ot able ‘to ,instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience: in the attainment of sciences which can for the most part be but remotely useful to mankind: I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life. . . I have, since my thoughts have been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun to question the reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and suffered it in vain. 3 IT am not going to suggest that Fred Hoyle is cracked, or robbing himself of life, or following a course that will end in disillusionment. If voices mean anything he is the happiest of happy philosophers, with his feet planted firmly on verifiable figures. But he could be wrong; and since his only way of. talking to the ignorant is in dogmatic assertions which ignorance can neither accept nor deny, we end where the blind | when someone tells them that roses are red and violets blue. (To be continued) /