CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 236, 2 October 1920, Page 17

CINDERELLA AND THE PRINCE.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON TILLY OF BLOOMSBURY.

• I By "CYRANO.")

Barrie made a butler and an earl'e daughter fall in love with each other, and, greatly daring , , gave wnat seemed to be; a cynical twist to the end of his play. The super-man butler was in every respect save social position fit to marry the lady: in fact, he was too good for her. But Barrie made him retire from the plane he had reached and marry a kitehenmaid. Once a butler, always a butler, was the moral of this delightful satire on English society, and the temptation to make a happy ending was successfully resisted. Lan Hay has reversed the situation in "Tilly of Bloomsbury"; the man is of the upper classes, and tlic girl belongs to the lower middle. It is an agreeable play, with streaks of sheer impossibility—at least as it was played here. The Mainwaring family in real life would not have beeu deceived for five minutes by Tilly's defensive '"swank." That impossible brother of here gave her away whenever lie opened his mouth. He identified the family hopelessly; the very abbreviation of Percy to "Perce" was aa definite a social badge as the clothes he ! wore. However, in the end, Dick (a most likeable young man, charmingly played), defied his family and married the girl. Did tljfey live happily ever afterwards? I wonuer. Before I felt certain I would like to know more about Dick. What did he do or propose to do for a living, if anything? How would Tilly alfect his future career? Would he never find that she. was not quite in the picture? You must remember, too. that lie married { more than Tilly; he married Tilly's family—including "Perce." "Perce"' had a heart of gotyl. but hotf- long would this have outweighed his social defects in Dick's eyes?

"Kind hearts are more than coronets." Quite so. But sometimes it is a question of balancing them not against coronets, but against other and less ponderable things. You remember the Judge and Maud Muller raking the hay? The Judge came by and admired her, and went away and married a cold society woman he did not love. In after years he regretted he had not married Maud. On her part Maud, who had married a labourer, regretted amid her drudgery that she had not married the Judge. It is pretty, and sad, and an effective sermon against snobbery and class distinctions. But supposing the Judge had married Maud ? Bret Harte re-wrote the poem on this baeis, and made the Judge regret the union. Incidentally the Judge found Maud's family anything but agreeable.

Alas for maiden, alas for Judjre, And alas for tie sentiment that's one-half fudge!

cries the humorous satirist, and winds up by declaring that if "it might have been" is cad, "it is and it hadn't ought to be"' is sadder. Which of the two is right? I should say, as -one -who hates the snob as much as anybody else, that Bret Harte was as much justified as Whittier. For it is as likely that the Judge would have been as unhappy with Maud as with the woman of his own station. A hundred things, big and little, count in an affair of this kind—education, outlook on life, accent, manners, tricks of speech, and at a hundred points the wife mayi jar upon the husband and the husband's circle. \lt is an exceptional man that can cuf; himself from his social world when he marries, and be happy for it. And what of the woman's attitude? It is curious that tjjese problems of union between classes are nearly always looked at solely from t'ho man's point of view. The man, either from family pressure or his own cowardice or conviction, backs out of a Jove affair with someone "beneath him," and the world denounces him as a cad and a snob, and sheds tears over the deserted girl. But is it not likely that the girl is well rid of a_dangerous bargain? T s it certain that she would be ac happy in Belgrave Square as in Blooms-1 bury? TV as Cinderella really happy with the Prince? A modern dramatist of the serious school would take their marriage aa the beginning and not the end of his play.

Sncbbery is a hateful thing, but there ■s H. good deal of cant and thinking aj t it- v lf X am ' a country squire, and I object to my daughter marrying the son or the village blacksmith, I may be a poor snob, but I am not neces"sanly one. I may object, not because i-ne young man has been born a blacksmith s son. but because I am sincerely convinced that being a blacksmith's son he is not by training- and environment tne man to make my daughter happy. I know that, barring miracles, the difference in their stations makes permanent happiness impossible. I may recognise quite cheerfully that the blacksmith is a better man than T am. and his son a better man than the young gentlemen who gather at my house pajties. but the o k her things outweigh these considerations. Ido not admit for a moment that lam a snob. It'is the way of the world the way of other classes beside the squire. How many of the "intellectuals" who spend their days cutting society into ribbon 3 would be pleased if their sons announced that they were determined to marry the daughters of labourers? As a rule class marries into its own class, or into a class near to it, and is much happier for doing so than it would if it stooped or climbed. Some day there may be no classes, and then people won't have to worry about such things.

You who have "Tilly of Bloomsbury," don't over-purr with satisfaction at the thought that, thank God. these things cannot happen in New Zealand, because they do. Not the same things exactly, of course, but similar things. A Scottish woman who visited Xcw Zealand recently declared she had never seen snobbery until she came here. 'Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but that snob-[ bery and class distinctions, which arc not I always the same thing, are rampant here can hardly be denied. Ask the squatier whether he would like his daughter to marry a grocer's son—or better still. ask a man who ha* risen from being a retail grocer to the wholesale trails, whether lie would rare to take a milkman's son into his family. and noie the reply. Happily we are free from many, of the worst class distinctions of tlif ('•ld Country, but on the other hand the distinctions we have are lose excu.-able in that, they have no old custom and tradition behind tiiem. Unfnrtunatelv for; the development of New Zealand drama, they are less spectacular, ]es= telling , from the dramatic point of view than the difference between Bloom.-.'bury and the country house that provides so muc'.i of the interest in lan Hay's play. But ?nme day a writer will arise who "will use them. Tiis work may bo amusing, -but I doubt whether it will be very edifying.