As Others Saw Us

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 33

As Others Saw Us

EEING -ourselves as others see us is always a fascinating pastime, and New Zealanders are perhaps more selfconsciously fascinated than others, For Mirror to New Zealand, six programmes in the Women’s Hour being heard now from 2ZC and 2ZB, and later from other commercial stations, Shirley Maddock has collected opinion on New Zealand from our visitors and settlers, using their diaries and letters as a mirror in which we could view our past. "If one is to breathe any life into our forebears," she says, "it isn’t enough merely to read about their official exploits or study them looking brave and resolute in patriotic paintings." Accordingly she has prepared a series of candid snapshots from such diverse sources as Tasman’s laconic remarks and Robin Winks’s rather more provocative ones. Seeking reactions to everyday life in pioneering days, or the hectic times of the goldrush, or the more solid growth of the new dominion. Shirley has found some interesting comments on our family history and character. In the 1840’s, Mary Taylor complained to Charlotte Bronte that the only topic of conversation was the price of meat-the rest was gossip; but Beatrice Webb some 50 years later found a more advanced colony. The major part of the conversation was on "football, racing and cricket."