USES OF ADVERSITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

USES OF ADVERSITY.

STORIES OF NOBLE LIVES, "Peace hath her victories . . . and we are too seldom reminded of the fact. Jn a book which she has called "Handicaps" (Longmans), Mary MacCarthy has retold the stories of five men and a woman who triumphed over infirmities of body or mind. The woman is Mary Lamb, sister of Charles, and "the men are Beethoven, Arthur Kavanagh, Henry Fawcett, W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson. The story of "R.L.S." is well known, those of some of the others are less so. Beethoven's handicap, of course, was hie deafness, which, after the age of 32 "was always with him, baulking him at all hours." His composing was not affected, but it became impossible for him to conduct his orchestra, and he had to shun the company of fellow artiste. When the Ninth Symphony was played before a great musical audience in Vienna in 1824, Beethoven stood by the conductor's platform. At the end "there was tremendous enthusiasm, until the audience realised that for him, the composer, it had been a silent performance. Some .years before, in melancholy depression, he had contemplated suicide, but, as he had written, "It seemed impossible to leave this world ■until I liad produced all that lies within me." The success of the Ninth Symphony heartened him, and though completely deaf and cut off from any spontaneous human intercourse he> went on with the composition of string quartets.

Henry Fawcett, when in his twenty fifth year, was accidentally shot by his father and blinded for life. Nevertheless' he became professor of political economy at Cambridge, a member of Parliament and Postmaster General. Henley, an invalid from childhood, had one foot amputated and his doctor was about to amputate the other when he resolved to go to Edinburgh to see if Professor Lister could help him. Though poor and ill he made the journey alone and Lister saved his leg, though the treatment took twenty months. That period was the turning point of his life, for in it he met "R.L.5.," then a young student, and he was encouraged to pursue his career in journalism. It was while in hospital that he wrote "Invictus."

But perhaps the most remarkable ease of, all. was that of Arthur Macmurough Kavanagh. He was born without hands and feet, but he learned to do "almost everything that the normal man can do. better than most men." He learned to ride very early and when not driving and not indoors he lived for the most part in the saddle all his life. He even rode to hounds. He could also write, draw, shoot, fish and sail a boat. At the age of 20 he secured employment as a military dispatch carrier in India, and later joined the East India Company. Three years later he succeeded to his family's property in Ireland. There he lived the normal life of a well-to-do landlord, married and had a family of seven children. He became high sheriff of Kilkenny and a member of Parliament.

The most striking feature of the lives of these men was their happiness. R. L. Stevenson was nearly always in buoyant >; spirits and frequently gay. Leslie Stephen remarked' of Fawcett thalpto few men was there granted so of happiness.' Hfenley, though tfver-impulsive, quarrelsome awl jealous, was full of life. Kavanagh when,; at home was "the life of the whole house." And there is no sweeter story: in history than that of the companionship of Charles and Mary Lamb. Mrs. MacCarthy has done well to draw attention again to half a dozen lives in each of which a dauntless courage made light of infirmities that to lesser people would seem equivalent almost to a living death.