SIX MOTHERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 23, 28 January 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

SIX MOTHERS

For Women

DERHAPS some day, when babies are grown in test tubes, we shall be able to develop just 'k en ' ÜBes We require—and then again we may not. For it is a remarkable thing that great men, almost without exception, have had great mothers. It is difficult to find aiivthing about the mother of Henry Ford. Her name iU - v , Litogot, and she married William Ford in the 'sixties. 'lhev lived on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan She is noted as saying that "lie was always tinkering about with things," and was a "born mechanic." but beyond nat there is nothing about her. literature and the Theatre The chief power behind the throne ot >o«'l Coward is undoubtedly his mother. Throughout hi<s book, "Present Indicative," she is a kind of tiicmesong. The only picture of her snows her as an elderly woman, upright and alert, a trifle aggressive-looking perhaps, nit with a glint of humour about her «\ves. she married Arthur Coward, one ot a numerous musical familv. I heir first child died of meningitis; then the redoubtable Xoel was oorn, and later another b«»v. Eventually the family found its way to London, where \ iolet Coward decided to help

By--M. M. Calhoun

tbe family finances by taking in pay in™ quests. For many years this continued in vary ins degrees. until Noel's success enabled them to buy a house in tht> fount ry, where boarders and lodscrs became a of the past. If t he mother of (ieorge Bernard Shaw had been born fifty years later, she might have become ;h famous and picturesque a figure as C.H.S. liimself. hven in the days when opportunities tor women were few, she was a notable person, independent, self-reliant, and utterly indifferent to public opinion. Lucinda Elizabeth (Jurly was the daughter of an Irish country gentleman. Her marriage to George Carr Shaw, twenty years older than she, was not altogether a success, but Lucinda Shaw's talents and energy found outlet in music. For many years the family lived in Dublin. Lucinda had three children, yet found time to sing in public, to copy orchestral parts, to lead the oj>era chorti.-, ar.d even to appear in some of the principal parts. I he mothers of the three great modern dictators make an interesting study. VNith totally different |>ersona!ities, thev

were alike in their determination to educate their sons. The mothers of Mussolini and Stalin both intended their s-''ns for the priesthood. Very little is known of the mother of Mussolini. She was a schoolteacher at Dovia di Predappio, the birthplace of Mussolini. Perhaps the fact that she does not appear to have had any direct influence on Mussolini accounts for her vagueness in biographies of the dictator; yet she was an exceptional woman. The family lived in a tworoomed tenement, with bundles of hay instead of mattresses, and rarely tasted meat. They were a violent family; passionate arguments and quarrel* were frequent. Rosa battled to send young Benito to a religious school, despite the fact that liia father was a professed atheist. After accomplishing this, the mother of Mussolini appears to have faded out of his life, yet this insistence on his education laid the foundation of his career. Klara Poelzl, the mother of Hitler, was a strange, neurotic woman. At the age of ten. Klara became a maid in the home of Anna Glasl Horer, who was Alois Hitler's first wife. Some time later, for some mysterious reason, she disappeared and went to Vienna. Why she went, and what she did there, no one knows. After ten years she returned to her parents in her native village of Spital. Here. Alois Hitler met and married her. This third marriage

was a dismal mistake, but the mother courageously battled for her children. Unlike the other dictators, Hitler's family -was not poor. They lived in furnished rooms in a three-storeyed house in Braunau and were moderately comfortably situated. Klara had three children, but between Adolf and his mother there was always the deepest affection. When he was about six years old she developed cancer, and for ten years she lingered. Klara Hitler is described as being "a tail, nervous woman, with a narrow, sensitive face and large, luminous eyes." She was not as robust as the usual village stock, but was a woman of exceptional endurance and courage. We now come to Stalin's mother. To begin with, the family name is not Stalin, but Djugashvili or Dzhugashvili. Katerina married the village cobbler of the little town of (iori, and had borne four children by the time she was 20. The three elder ones died, leaving her with only one son, Josef. The family was miserably poor, but Katerina insisted on Josef attending a religious school. When Josef was eleven the father died, so the mother became a dressmaker and worked early and l«te to give "S060" his education. Her joy was great when he was admitted to the Orthodox Seminary in Triflis to study for the priesthood. Sha moved there in 1893 to be near him, but at the age of 18 he left the school — whether he was expelled for his Marxist ideas or whether his mother removed him on account of ill-health, seeing to be a debatable point. His political activities and frequent absences were a great grief to her. Some years ago Stalin brought her to Kremlin, where she spent a bewildered month trying to discover what her son "did" for a living.