Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 34, 3 February 1939, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

bu

Trevor

Lane

HE afternoon I sailed from Cape Town for Sydney last. year I broadcast'from one of the radio stations. Following me

on the programme was a man named Hutchens, who was travelling from England to Australia on the same ship. I finished my broadcast, raced in a taxi to the ship, which was due to sail at five. But the hour passed and still we were firmly tied to the wharf.

‘What's holding us up?"’ some shipboard acquaintances asked. ‘Some wretched man named Hutchens,’’ I replied. ‘‘He was due on the air after me and he hasn’t got back from the studios yet.’’ * UT eventually the ‘‘wretched man named MHutchens’’ arrived on board and I diseovered he was Frank Hutchens, that we had both been born in Christchurch, that he was now the eminent composer and one of the most valued associates of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Everyone on the Nestor liked Frank. He wasn’t one of those highbrows who curled a thin upper lip when you mentioned any lesser composer than Beethoven. In the mornings he would give us a concert of good music . . . in the sherry -hour before dinner he’d play "The Lambeth Walk’’ or any other piece of light tomfoolery we’d ask for. ae other day he called on me in Wellington on his way to spend a holiday with his brother, Will Hutchens, in. Christchurch. And he told me something that he said ‘‘was not for publication’’ and then finally’ relented and said I could spill the beans if I really wanted to. It’s this: At the moment he’s at work on an ambitious suite of music to be called ‘‘The Four Cities.’’

"T WANT to try to capture something of the atmosphere of the four biggest cities of New Zealand,’’ Frank Hutchens said to me. ‘‘They’re all so different and so full of a charm of their own.’’ I quoted to him the remark Merton Hodge had made to me in London about Auckland and Wellington. ‘‘Auckland,’’ said Merton, "enjoyed itself with tennis

parties and yachting and so on. Wellington has a much more sophisticated air-it has a political and a diplomatic background which makes it seem more grown-up.’’ Frank Hutchens was interested in that, asked me to repeat it. So when I hear the *‘Rour Cities’’ suite I shall try to discover (although I know precious little about music) the subtle nuances in the Auckland and Wellington parts of the composition. RANK HUTCHENS is one of those rare souls who always look for the good an people. On the ship-and, heaven knows, there was’ enough scandal talked among the sea-bored passengers to start a brace of. slander actions!-_Frank was the friend of everyone, the one

person who could discover good qualities in even the most catty old maids. *« NDIGNANT-but not with me-is Christabel Nation, of Levin. ~ In a letter she says: **T have been so indignant since reading PASSING PAGEANT of the 13th that I must have my

little say. I must congratulate you on your neat reply to Mr. Bu-chanan-Taylor, but, man, why didn’t you make it ten times more venomous? Quite evident he has nu insight into the lives of the less fortunate, and apparently not a vestige of imagination. **T have just read Dave *

Marlowe’s most etertaining and enlightening book ‘Coming, Sir.’ It gives one a vivid picture of the hardships and ineratitudes of a waiter’s life. One feels tempted to present Mr. BuchananTaylor with a copy... if you ever have any further trouble with this gentleman, please give it to him ‘good and hard’."’ *« FRANK you, Christabel Nation, for your stout defence and also for the other nice things in your letter. Actually, I have met Mr. Buchanan-Taylor several times and I have no doubt that his employers regard him as an excellent servant. But that won’t stop me from lashing out occasionally at a system that ssems to be all take and no give. HEverybody in this life isn’t equipped to battle against modern civilisation-but that’s no reason why they should be shackled with chains of misery and poverty. Be you know, poverty and hunger’ are tolerable in the abstract. What I mcan to say is, China’s starving millions leave me fairly unmoved, and if I go to a charity show for Spanish refugees I must confess I’m thinking more of my own entertainment than I am of the ultimate destination of the money I’ve paid. — But hunger and poverty on your own doorstep are differ-

ent things altogether. Some time ago I met a young Engishman, well dressed, well spoken. And then I discovered that he didn’t know a soul in this country, hadn’t a penny, and hadn’t eaten for nearly forty-eight hours. Things like that jolt your conscience far more than earthquakes in Chile and famines in China. Christabel Nation mentions Dave Marlowe, the waiterauthor, who wrote ‘‘Coming, Sir,’’ one of the best-selling books of last year. I met Marlowe in London a@ year ago and I heard from his own lips the behind-the-scenes story of a menial’s life an London. He told me how he had worked for NINETEEN HOURS on end preparing for and then serving some of the two thousand guests at a charity ball in a big London

hotel. And for this he was paid nine shillings! During the evening he had occasion to remonstrate with a young deb. who was amusing herself dropping full glasses of champagne from the balcony on to the heads of the dancers below. The ‘girl was indignant, asked for the manager, demanded that ‘this fellow’’ be sacked! Awfully charming people! If{f story how ‘‘Coming, Sir came into existence is worth retelling. Dave Marlowe had two articles published in the ‘‘New Statesman,’’ one on his experienees as a steward on the Queen Mary, the other of his evening at the charity ball I mention above. These caught the eye of G. E. Kamm, the live publicity manager of Harraps, the book publishers. He got in touch with Marlowe, suggested a book along the lines of the magazine +-articles, and paid Marlowe a retaining fee for éight weeks while he was working on the book. The publication was a big suecess-twenty thousand copies sold in a few weeks in London; ‘‘Coming, Sir’’ was published in New York; it formed part of one of the March of Time films; Dave Marlowe was asked to lecture to book societies, to clubs. XK UT when I asked him if he was giving up being a waiter he said, ‘‘No, I want to keep on waiting and go to sea occasionally. But if I have a choice of working in English hotels or of to 99

sea I’ll choose the latter. Conditions in English hotels are deplorable. I admire the strength of the hotel employees’ unions in New Zealand. In London here the West End is flooded with foreign waiters who undercut the Englishman every time.’’ 4 OR a series of nasty [- cracks at modern youth you’d have to go adeuce ofa long way to beat ‘‘ Youth Be Damned,"’ a new book written by an Englishman, Beckles Willson, and published by 'T. Werner Laurie. It came into my hands the other day and. I’ve becn wondering, be--

tween alternating fits of rage and amuscment, what sort of person this Willson man is. He must have had a pretty sour youth and an even duller and sourer time since. The next few quotations are from his book-I offer them to you without any comment whatever: « VOuTH! How wonderful that this discovery of the superior capacity, virtue and accomplishment of Youth

for this twentieth century, an epoch in human history in which the juvenile popula--tion (in Anglo-Saxon countries, at least) exhibits itself in the mass as unstable, self-

indulgent and intellectually feeble to a hitherto unknown degree. "There was a time when Youth was indeed a power, when illustrious thinkers, Statesmen and poets were still in their third decade. But in former ages life was briefer, men matured early and died off at fifty or so. To-day it is different, and in spite of the exuberant clamour of Youth, the real leaders in almost every department of human effort, the men who are most fully exerting themSelves in the cause of progress, who are making the major contributions to Science (including that of government), commerce and industry, art, music and letters, are men well over forty, are, indeed, even fifty, sixty, seventy and eighty. eH AKING every allowance for genius, for natural intuition, for enthusiasm and precocious abilities on the part of Youth, it will hardly be contended that thete is any substitute for Experience. Yet, as we see daily, want of experience does not prevent Youth of to-day from considering itself capable of running the whole social machine, formulating new political, economic, moral and aesthetic standards, abolishing old laws and customs, vulgarising the drama, literature and the Press, corrupting art and musie and generally playing the destructive monkey in the household of our national heritage. * "We have heard enough and to spare of those fatuous platitudes, ‘Youth is in the saddle,’ ‘Youth must be heard,’ | ‘Youth is knocking at the door’ | and the rest. / ,

‘Might it not better be said ‘Tenorance is in the saddle,’ ‘Folly must be heard,’ ‘Inexperience is knocking at the door’? Ww "\/OUTH, in point of fact, has been in the saddle i in Britain (as well as in America)

for the past forty years. It took possession of thrones and presidencies, pulpits, platforms, and editorships. The old revered figures vanished and were succeeded, by.a set of trueulent, beardiess fellows brandishing Mailed Fists or Big Sticks, eavorting lustily in Johannesburg or the Klondike, writing and reading sensational novels, plays and newspapers, deriding and denouncing the academic in painting, sculpture and poetry; juvenile insurgents wearing red ties and full of red blood, holding the banner of Youth aloft (even though the boast was occasionally contradicted by their individual birth certificates) worshipping the New Heralds of the New Age, in which the New Art, the New Religion, the New Woman and the New Morality were in the ascendant.’? | .