This World of Ours

Radio Record, Volume XIII, Issue 11, 21 August 1939, Page 2

This World of Ours

JOHN

GUTHRIE

[z is the odd, unexpected happenings that make London seem not quite real. Of course, it neyer is quite real to a New Zealander on the first visit. When he walks along the Strand he constantly has the sensation of being a person. moving in @ dream. He sees a notice leading to the old Roman bath, the Lyrie where Irving acted, Simpson’s restaurant where so many good eaters and’ drinkers have added nobly to their girths, and he is enraptured with the red and yellow buses that go thundering by. He walks on to Trafalgar Square and sees Nelson on his tower and down below Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the Thames where Elizabeth sailed on the Royal Barge when Si. Martin’s in the Field was actually surrounded by lambs

and buttercups instead of mighty stone buildings, and Golder’s Green was actually green and, for all one knows, there might have been an elephant and a castle at the tube stop called Elephant and Castle near Waterloo station. * * * [N time, this sensation wears off. He no longer has to pinch himself when he walks down the Strand. He is more concerned with cursing a red and yellow bus because he has missed it than being enraptured by its novelty. He is more likely to pay attention to a man on @ soapbox in Trafalgar Square than Nelson on his column. And if he looks at Big Ben, it is to see if his watch is right. ¥ ¥ ¥ T is like matrimony, like. the girl in the sweetshop after she has made herself ill on chocolates in the first week, alas, a little like life itself. The novelty wears off a little. * * *

Ber still the odd things happen, London yet has its surprises. One of them came to me casually last week. It came along the pavement by the National Portrait Gallery and it wore a grey suit, a grey hat, a beautiful green tie and a long beard that waved in the breeze. Tt didn’t look real at first. It was George Bernard Shaw. | * * * NoBoby was asking him for his autograph, he was quite alone. He was not preceeded by a bodyguard, brass band or citizens’ welcoming committee, or being dogged by an admiring srowd. He was. just a nice old gentleman with that excessively clean skin that nice old gentleman often have, who was going for a walk. We might have been. you: or I, out for the afternoon. Nobody was asking him for an interview, he was not saying that he couldn’t for the life of him understand why New

Zealand people should call England Home when they already had a perfectly good home of their own, he was not (so far as one eould see) being witty, striking, wicked, rebellious, dramatic, iconoclastic, or Shavian. He was being a simple citizen of London. N a moment I felt rising inside me with almost overwhelming force the awful instinets of the journalist. I

wanted to stop him and ask him his views on the LRA, pasteurised’ milk, and modern plays. It was only with an effort that I crushed them down. London wouldn’t let me. » x ee

" London says that so tang as they go their ways within the laws, no men must be molested. Loudon says that men may go through the Park in shorts with & cat on @ leash, and that women may wear plus fours in Piccadilly, and that youths may go about in beards that birds cauld nest in-yet, you. must not stare at them or question their unusual ways or stop and ask them what is their trouble. Lendon in spite of its 8,000,000 people, is the most private, the most anonymous city in the world. So Mr. Shaw went by undisturbed, not aware of his escape, with no tribute beyond the quickened heartbeat of a New Zealand wayfarer and the gesture of a plain, middle-aged woman a short distance ahead of me who suddenly broke off her criticism. of the Edith Cavell statue nearby to register amazement, stop short, and blow a kiss to the back of the head of the Twentieth Century sage after he had passed her by. * * * NE can forgive London much. One ean forgive, for inStance, a great deal of flagwaving and letters to ‘‘The Times’’ signed Brig.-General (retired), to a city which permits to be carved on the Edith Cavell monument the words that she wrote before she was shot in the last war: ‘‘Patriotism is not cnough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone."’ * * * oR is it difficult to forgive a great deal of ugliness to a eity which: can produce Shakespeare’s ‘‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ in the open-air theatre of Regent’s Park, where the green turf is the stage and the quiet English trees make the backdrop scene, and you feel the magi¢e of Shakespeare is matched only by the greater magic of

Nature. You hold your breath as the troupes of fairy ereatures dance in pretty draperies under the open sky. The audience watch from the comfort of canvas chairs. Everybody is spellbound. There is not a sound to be heard except the voices of the actors on this mild calm night. There is one scene which represents the coming of 1 ngage dawn, the finest stage scene I have ever seen. Everything is * in utter darkness, * * * Then, slowly, a pale hint. of light appears and as one sits in utter silence the light grows stronger, very gradually beginning to touch the outlines of the trees and give them shape and meaning. There is no haste in the coming of this artificial dawn, "The light steals in so imperceptibly that one can only tell its coming by the greater clarity of the objects on which tt falls.. Ages seem to pass, for no sound is spoken, and all one can hear ts the twitter of waking birds. At last, the whole scene is lighted with the lovely soft light of the early morning. You feel you have been taking a hand in the Book of Genesis. __ * * & TIL, inevitably, a bombing plane flies low just overhead, drowns the voices of the actors and sends illusion flying, while above the drumming of | the engine come the words of Puck, queerly appropriate: ""What fools these mortals be!’? The audience gave a_ short, satiric laugh. * * * THE queer moment ‘passed, .the play went on. As Peascblossom, Oberon, quaint Bottom and the rest played out the pretty comedy in the. fairy- fe land of lights, one could almost * forget that down in Whitechapel there were seven children and their parents sharing two rooms, that in a great town house a Duchess was spending £2000 that evening in_ champagne to launch one daughter, that in thousands of rooms in the city, lonely people were cating their hearts out in misery, that only one Briton in five uses te toothbrush. * * * ON E forgot, or remembered only with a snvile, that down im the country a prasperaus gentlemen of one’s acquaintance had proudly exhibited the air raid shelter trench he had built. lt was in two sections, each with a@ separate entrance. One entrance was for the family. The other,.so:to sneak, was the "*tradesmen’s’’? entrance. It was for the maids,