Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 37, 24 February 1939, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

by

Trevor

Lane

Can anyone train himself not to be hurt by the words © and actions of the people he calls friends? Passing Pageant today says NO!....Were the sad-eyed re- — fugees on the Aoranci immune to the lashes and barbs of their oppressors? .... But there ts love inlife....

* I’ve trained myself not to let people hurt me any more. If you were to walk out of this room now and say to the first person you met that I was a swine, it wouldn’t hurt me.... because I wouldn’s let it. = HAT’S what someone said to me in Auckland the other day, and I’ve pondered a great deal about it since. I can picture the whole Scene again. We were sitting near the window high up in a big block of flats. It was grey and wet and misty, and cleaving its way slowly through the

dull waters of the Waitemata was the Aorangi, in-ward-bound from Vancouver.

THOSE words, spoken in seeming sincerity, seemed tO me as grey and grim as the Auckland sky, as the harbour below. Can anyone — ANYONE ON THIS EARTH-school themselves not to be hurt by the thoughts and actions of the people they call friends? No, I say-emphatically no!

The person who has mastered his emotions, the person to whom the cruel words of others are like so much water off a duck’s back, has ceased to be entirely human. He’s @ robot that eats and drinks ‘ and sleeps, but the magic of star-decked nights, of love, of plaintive music on a violin, is lost to him for ever. And that’s a pretty terrible thought, isn’s it? O, to say you can train yourself not to let people hurt you is to make one of those glib statements that sound all right in a ‘‘elever’’ play, but won’t bear the fiercer light of cold reasoning. You’ve been in love-and so have I, You’ve been let down, too-and so have I. And didn’t it hurt? Hurt like the very devil? And didn’t you say to yourself that you’d never be such a fool again-that you’d never again let anyone run away with your heart and your head? Of course you did-and a month or two later you were going through the same thing, your former good intentions thrown to the four winds.

ND you, HXPERIENCE is a very different thing. Lxperience tempers your judgment, tempers your emotions. But experience gives as it takes. It gives you the power to appreciate even more the lovely music of Schubert, it lets you look into and beyond the eyes of the Mona Lisa, tt gives you a lump in your throat as you walk along the Champs Elysees in the dusk of a Paris spring. And that is good for us. But experience is a mighty different matter to hardening c the heart and stceling the soul against whatever the Fates may hand you. 4 ; DON’T really think that the ‘girl-or woman, rather-who used those words to me really and seriously meant them. I hope she didn’t, anyway, because she’s much too charming, too much loved by people of all classes to have such a grey background to her soul,

Most of her life she’s struggled and fought and now she has what most of us long for-comfort, money, a tremendous circle of admirers and a small treasured handful of real friends. Oh, how I wish I could tell you who I’m talking about, because I’m sure you know her, too! Be ATER on we both went down to meet friends on the Aorangi. Lining the rails of the ship were German refugees, exiles who were looking for the first time on the land they would now call Home. There was relief on the faces of some, sorrow such as I never hope to experience | ' on the faces of others. It was a quiet and pathetic little assemblage. *‘Those people up there have been through more than you and I can ever imagine,’’ I said, ‘‘but E don’t. think they’ve learned, from all their suffering and all their misery, not to let people hurt them any more. Do you?’’ There was no answer to thati-and I felt I had scored

the point I had been trying to make all the afternoon. Ne. I find boundless delight tn liking people and being liked by them. And I hope I always shalt. The other day-I DO seem to have been having an intense time lately!-someone asked me tf I could name six

people that I really admire. I said yes, I could, and I don’t mind telling you who they are. Two of them live in Auckland, two of them in Wellington, and the other two in Canterbury. .

[IN Auekland-yes, you’re right first guess-lives Dorothy Wood, Dorothy is my idea of courage and simplicity and resource fulness. She has forthrightness that is a tonic to those of us © who spend our lives beating about the bush. How much happier we would be if we could give a plain yes or a downright no to many g&the questions that confront a Well, Dorothy can-and she never offends anybody. Don’t think for one moment that Dorothy has always been the big radio star, packing town. halls with her admirers and talking over the air to thousands of enraptured listeners. She’s known what it is to be broke, to be hungry, to be one of a long line waiting for a badly-paid job. But now she’s ‘‘got there’’-~ and her own experiences in the school of hard knocks have given her a sympathy with the folk whose lives are dull and despair[PTBRLY different in looks and temperament-but a great friend of Dorothy’s, nevertheless -is Yvonne

Oakes, of Auckland, wife of Major T. H. EB. Oakes. Mrs. Oakes is one of those rare people with a sense of humour that never makes you feel uncomfortable, an artistic ability that could earn her a very good livi YE if needs be, and an adaptdbility that has brought her many friends in Auckland. I mention adaptability because Mrs, Oakes is an English woman used to many of the things that we regard as ‘*frills.’’? But she has become ‘fone of us,’’ fitting into the colonial scene without losing that poise and quiet manner that are so much a part of her charm, She sails quite soon for England, taking her young daughter Home to complete her education. scene moves on to Wellington and one of my two choices here is Mrs. Knox Gilmer. L

Said a friend.the other day, **You know, if Mrs. Gilmer was to tell me to do something I’d spring to it without staying to argue,’? Well, I’ve never felt that way about Mrs. Gilmer. She has never awed me-and I don’t think she wants to awe anybody. I remember going along to one of her political meetings with a friend from Hawke’s Bay. It was a pretty tough mecting, but Mrs. Gilmer was giving parry for thrust with the best nature in the world. ‘Well, I don’t know," said my friend, ‘‘but there must be something fine and big-spirited about a woman in Mrs. Gilmer’s position who not only puts up with a mob like that, but puts up with it so goodnaturedly.’’ There certainly is something fine about her. She does a lot that no one ever hears about. She has a love of Nature. She likes people with enthusiasm and initiative-and encourages them. I hope her own enthusjasm and her own sense of citizenship won’t be allowed to run to waste. WHEN you've had a very happy married life with comfort and few worries beyond those attached to the bringing up of a cheerful, normal family; when suddenly you find yourself confronted with death and oa dwindling income-well, you might be forgiven if you sit back and say, ‘‘ Well, I’m no longer young. I can’t be expected to cope with so much tragedy and worry.’

That’s why Mrs. Muriel Lewis is a woman for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration. With a family almost grown vip she found that, on the death of her husband, she hadn’t as big an incogie as ske had thought. UT she didn’t pour her troubles into every one’s ears. She set about making a career for herself. .

first in one of Wellington’s big stores, then as lady editor of a. newspaper. From Wellington she went to Hong Kong, worked hard and enjoyed life there before coming back to New Zealand. Now she’s

carving out a career as a broadcaster and making a jolly good job of it, too. She’s running ‘‘Roundabout" in the ‘‘Record,.’’ ‘‘No one ever hears Mrs. Lewis ask help of anybodyeven if it’s only the matter of an introduction,’’ an old friend of hers said to me recently. "But she’s always offering to do something for other people. She’s deserving of a very special kind of heaven.’’ the dark days of the depression when I was young, inexperienced and working for about tuppence a week, I used to pour my troubles into the ear of the wife of the Rev. T. M. Curnow, then vicar of New Brighton, in Christchurch. Heaven knows, Mrs. Curnow had enough troubles of her own, but she was a real inspiration and guide in those not-very-hanovy davs.

It was she who spurred me on to apply for a job on, the ‘""Record,’’ and she has watched my career with sincere interest ever since. Hanging on my office wali now is a little wooden plaque With the heads of two terriers and an inscription, ‘‘It’s not the dog in the fight that matters, but the fight in the dog."’ That arrived in London on Christmas Eve, 1987, with a note from Mrs. Curnow, "You are often in my thoughts, and the words on the small plaque, which I found in a Cashel Street shop, made me think of you at once. Otherwise I’m afraid

it is not a very artistic production.’’ ji VALUE both that little wooden plaque and the note that accompanied it. Mrs. Curnow, like most yiear’s wives, has had to work hard, but contact with all sides of life in several parishes has not dulled her appreciation of fine things, nor yet quelled her sympathy or her quiet humour.

a « She las both my appreciation and my admiration. Her husband is now the vicar of Kaiapoi. I think the people of that little town are very lucky. We MBER SIX on my list is my own great-aunt, who lives on the Cashmere Hills, near Christchurch. Her life, too, has known its trials, but I admire and love her for many reasons, chief among them her ability to make , friends and to keep them, : People she knew fifty and . sixty years ago still call to see |

her, drink a cup of tea, chat over old times and come away singing her praises. And, even in the utmost seallywag she can detect some good. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her condemn anyone. She may reprove, but Ske never condemns. Although she may not have guessed it, she has had an influence on my life-a strong and steady rock in a sea of modern emotion and uncertainty. Ww VW OULD you like the Duke and Duchess

of Windsor to make their home in England? This question, put to a large cross-section of the British public, received the following answer: 61 per cent. said YES. 16 per cent. said NO. 23 per cent. had NO OPINION. It is two years and two months since that chill

morning in December _ When the destroyer Fury slipped out of Portsmouth harbouwr earrying the Duke of Windsor into his self-imposed exile. fOLLOWED the wedding, the visit to Germany, the proposed visit to the United States, which was abandoned through the hostility of Ameriean Labour to Charles Bedaux, inventor of the Bedaux factory system, who was to have been the Duke’s American euide. Since then, their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, have dropped out of the news except as shadowy and, as it seems, rather lonely figures. Strangely enough, the voting papers showed that those whe were against the Duke’s return were the wealthy section of the population-voters in the small-salary class were heartily in favour of his return.