Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 27, 16 December 1938, Page 12

Passing

Pageant

by `

Trevor

Lane

> @ g "AST week-end IT saw the fruits of an experiment that | ..began in my. schooldays. : I was staying with some old friends in Nelson, and during the few days I was with them I ran into quite a few people I had known at school, people I had envied or pitied, depending on the amount of freedom they were allowed, the number of times they went to the cinema in one week, the magnitude and magnificence of their playthings, their bicycles or their sports gear. HERE was one familywe'll call them the Smiths -whose lives seemed to be one round of carefree happiness. The children were fairly smart at school; algebra and other things that worried me a lot didn’t -trouble them in the slightest. Their between-term parties were the brightest events in my fifteen-year-old life; every Christmas they all went off on long holidays. They always knew the latest jazz song's, the newest dances, the local gossip. They left me breathless with their sophistication ... and very envious. . They were the cause of a lot of arguments in our household. ‘‘But why can’t I do it?’’ I would ask. ‘‘The Smiths are allowed to.’’

The answer always seemed to be most unsastisfactory. ‘‘Well, the Smiths may be brought up one way, but you’re being brought up another. And that’s all there is to it,’’ * Joneses were quite . a 1 dif. ferent proposition. Wise: parental control 4eatured largely in their young lives. (Although at the time, of course, I didn’t think there was. wisdom in any sort of control.) Their parents gave them a good home, a ear, a tennis court to play on. But they frowned on too many parties, too much gadding about the. countryside. The Joneses weren’t allowed to ‘skip church .on Sunday, weren’t allowed. to fill their minds with trash from American magazines. _ They were growing up in the atmosphere of.a good Christian home, imbued with the principles of honesty and simplicity. But I didn’t envy the Joneses much, . * T HAT: was ten years ago. The other day in Nelson I asked after the Smiths. ‘Oh, they’re back numbers: You mever see or hear of them nowadays,’’ I was told. I discovered that one of the boys had got a good job. in the North Island, thank. to his school principal, hac’ grown tired of it and thrown _ tt up. The depression came along and he found himself on relief work with a wife to support. Then his wife left him and they were eventually divorced. Now he’s with the Public Works Department somewhere. One of the girls "marricd in haste and now, separated from her husband, she’s able to repent at leisure. Another boy is a barman tm @ fifth-rate pub. * TLE Jones family, on the other hand, had gone from streneth to strength. Today the children are fine men and ‘women, respecting their parents, working with initiative and with plenty of Chri istian prineiple. "hey have lots of te jends, they have.their own cars and at "the week-ends they go to tennis parties or away on ski-ing expeditions. Their name ‘is a re--speeted one in Nelson-TI have a sincere admiration for them, and even more for their parents. oe

"VOU’RE only young once.’’ ' That little expression seems to be finding increasing favour as an excuse for everything from breaking traffic laws to seduction. Greatest place I know of for discovering the value of

parental | control . during childhood years. is Oxford . University. I spent quite a little time there when I was. ‘in England a few months ago, and I met all types of

youth-serious and flippant, responsible and harumscarum. It seemed to me that those most conscious of the wonderful traditions of the old university were the Americans, the New Zealanders,

and the South Africans, English students were inclined to take the whole thing for. granted, Australians:were a little scornful, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about

0X my first morning there t drank a glass of sherry in a sunlit room overlooking the centuries-old quadrangle of Pembroke College. My host was one of the dons, not a bit pedantic and very much in touch with world affairs. Oxford is no longer 4 ‘‘nleasant backwater,’? untouched by the troubles of the ~, world. Nor is it an exclusive ‘ training ground for the sons of the rich and of the aristocracy. Plenty of Oxford students wrestle with the problems of personal finance as earnestly as do their much-publicised American contemporaries who earn their fees as elevator boys or waiters. VERYONE seems to talk a great deal at Oxford. Meals go on for hours while the conversation bounces back ‘and forth like a tennis ball ... from the latest London play to a dissertation on Cicero, from the ugliness (or beauty) of the new Nuffield College to a discussion on Hitler’s love affairs. . One day we had a threehour lunch, thanks to a New College man who mentioned the Oxford Group. At the table was the Hon. Miles Phillimore (my host that particular week-end), whom many New Zealanders will yemember was here as @ champion of Dr. Buchman and his teachings. Miles sprang to the defence of the Group and the argunent waxed long and strong. | pv A DAY or two later we motored out for tea to the home ot General Winser in the Cotswolds. The general, as keen a hunting man as ever I hope to . meet, has a beautiful old Elizabethan house at Butts Green near Chadlington, and there he proudly showed us stables with their magnificent horses. (One of them had been ridden by the King a week or two before.) ‘Tea in the big hall was a pleasant affair of muffins and thick enrrant cake and tea and, of course, much talk, Informal, too... the son of a. British Cabinet Minister sat mending the heel of his riding boot, a Russian prince, one of the hest | horsemen in England, talked about his experiences at a-point-to-point in the North, the general teased one of his guests (from Adelaide) about. her ‘*foreign accent.’"’ General Winser has only one leg, lost, not in any of the many wars in which he has played a gallant part, but on the hunting field. He

"You're only young once" seems to be the excuse for every youthful excess to-day. But isn’t discipline worth while? isn’t a good, Christian upbringing worth while? Read what Trevor Lane says to-day. _-

asked me if I belonged to the Oxford Group. I said f didn’t. And then I discovered that he was one of the stalwarts of the Group in England, a man who, after spending half his life fighting on the field of battle, is now fighting equally strenuously on the field of peace. . I heard many arguments advanced in favour of the Oxford Group when I was in England but none put so simply or convincingly as General Winser’s, * T was in the ancient Hall at Balliol College that I came across a painting of one of my forebears, Dr. Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol. The Countess of Oxford and Asquith, in her autobiography, says of Jowett: ‘‘He was the hardest-working tutor, ViceChancellor and Master that Ox-¢-tord ever had. Balliol, under ‘ his regime,. grew in numbers and produced more scholars, more thinkers and more political. men of note than any other college in the university. He had authority and a unique prestige.’’ There’s a.famous epigram, written by an undergraduate of

the ‘eighties, that j is ‘still quotes at Oxford today... First cone I, "my name. 4 Sowett,. There’s no knowledge but. I know ‘it, T am Master of this College What T don’t know-is nol knowledge. ; j WAS the first "colonial relation of Jowett to visit Balliol and I was introduced to the present Master, Mr.

Lindsay, who recently stood for Parliament. I was shown Jowett’s favorite haunts, his _ Study and the memorial to _ him in the chapel at Balliol. I even met an old servant at the college who remembered the .Master in the early "nineties. Margot. Asquith tells many . Stories of Jowett in her autobiography, not the least of _them being that he was once in love with Florence Nightingale. (But the famous

. nurse seemed to have a lifelong contempt for ‘‘the feelings usually called love. ) * EN Margot Tennant (as she was then) told Jowett that she contemplated marrying Henry Asquith, then a widower with five young chil-

dren, he was concerned and wrote to her: bs Sot ee *‘The other day you were at a masqued ball, and you told me -a few months hence you will have, or rather may be having, the care of five children, with all the ailments. and miseries and disagrecables of children (unlike the children of some of your friends): and not your own, although you will have to be a mother to. them, and this state of things will last during the greater part of your life. .Is not the contrast more than human nature can endure? T know that it is, as you said, a nobler manner of living, but are you equal to such a strugzle?: ‘If you are, I can only say, ‘God bless you, you are a brave girl,’ But I would not have you disguise from yourself the nature of the trial.’’ . Just what a good wife Margot Tennant made Henry Asquith, and how well she mothered his five children and the two more she bore him, all the world knows. Dr. Jowett had one or two connections with New Zealand (apart from his relatives here), although he never visited this country. He was largely responsible for the appointment of the wellloved C. E. Bevan-Brown to the headmastership of the

Christchurch Boys’ High School, and he was also responsible for the appointment of a far less successful head master to Christ’s College. . we par. ‘world’s greatest "‘human interest’? story was written avross the pages. of history two years ago when a Royal crown was laid aside for. love of .@ woman ee + «+ but there are other "human interest"? . stories right here at our own doors, and the little quotations I gave a fortnight ago from letters written by members of

Dorothy Wood’s Happiness Club have brought forth "many requests for more. Well, there isn’t much room left on . this..page today, but I’ll do my. best. rg THERE ’S real New Zcaland | grit and ‘courage in this letter, written by a Happiness Ciub member, from Kaipara Flats, that lonely far-off farming. district in North Auckland. She’s been ill in hospital and her husband and young family have been fending for themselves. But let her tell her own story... One thing I have a good husband and good kiddies. Robert only turned twelve in October -he cooked the meals, made puddings, ete. Ruth did her share, too. .She is eight. Robert. also helps milk. We have 41 cows milking now, and expect more in very soon. At present we are busy . shearing sheep and we have. one pet lamb. Well Dorothy, I felt hurt today while listening to you. I. heard my only sister send a cheerio to her neighbour and yet she never writes to me. It is not as if I can see her often -she lives at King Country and I at North Auckland, so we are miles apart. I would not care, Dorothy, only sometimes I never see anyone all day-they take their tunches and go to work at the back of the farm. Ruth

and Robert leave ‘home for school at eight o’clock and are not home until five o’clock. * a 3 ERE’S another ery from a lonely heart, a woman who lives near. Pukekohe; but who hails from the good ‘green fields of Devon. Sometimes she’s terribly homesick . I was very blue. today, home-

sick. Devon is a long way away but I’m feeling better already. Now this is really what it was. On one of our shooting trips I was sitting at the edge of the

bush alone, way up high, and I ‘was thinking of life-I’d been reading some books on theosophy and one of the many I have read mentions that there are seven souls looking after and helping different parts of the world: and, Dorothy, you came in my mind. I don’t know you, I haven’t a photo of you, I only saw ‘you once at the Farmers, after I’d waited just to look at you, but I do,admire your life of help, kindness, sympathy, ‘your mental © strength and, above all, although you dott really say much about it, your faith,

gum says ‘ihe doesn’t know Dorothy, has never seen her. ‘But I DO know Dorothy end T say to her with all my heart, "‘Késp: "up the good work.: If’ you can bring happiness into ‘lives that avert -all roses arid sunshine you’li‘be’ rewarded by the gratitude of- many lonely, weary: ‘souls-and such a blessing is gutely the ‘Dlessing of God." a