As I Hear... Mr Hanan’s Hat And Chaliapin’s Trousers

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 21

As I Hear... Mr Hanan’s Hat And Chaliapin’s Trousers

'By

J.H.E.S.

I hope it is not too long after the event to record the intense pleasure with which I read of the second blast, after the first had opened the hole linking the two ends of the Manapouri tunnel; that second blast, which lifted the Hon. Mr Hanan’s hat off his head. This was not the only hat so lifted; but it was that of the most eminent person present, and there is always something agreeable about it when eminent persons, upon a memorable occasion, have, their dress disarranged by;

some little chance. Unfortun- ; ately, I found no press photo- i graph of the blasting of Mr , Hanan’s hat. If I had found | one, it would have gone into ] my small gallery of photo- 1 graphed disarrangements. ’ * # :js 1

It would have taken its place beside that of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth be' g greeted by the Lord Mayor of some northern English city. The King and the Lord Mayor were shaking hands and the Queen was (smiling with all her unparalleled charm. Nothing funny about that, ’■o: but it was

| obvious that the King was making some mistake, perhaps confusing Birmingham with Liverpool, for the I Queen’s foot was in full view, grinding down hard on his. I Another picture in this little gallery shows the great Chaliapin in full fig—tall hat, i tail coat, striped trousers — descending the steps of the (Metropolitan Opera House, !New York: and again I agree i that there is no laugh in ' that. But the odd thing was 1 that Chaliapin’s elegant ’ striped trousers showed a i huge rent below the knee, i the torn flap hanging down < and opening a chaste view < of his white leg or white i (underpants. Nothing in the , [picture explained this odd ■ i sight: nor did anything in • | the descriptive slip pasted, as j (usual, across the back of the f [photograph by the agency ( that had issued it. ' , For a third example 1 come t nearer home. Years ago “The j [Press” printed a photograph ■ at the Governor-General, .Lord Bledisloe. and Lady Bledisloe. looking at the (horses circling the birdcage (at Riccarton. Her Excellency" I was wearing a close-fitting (white hat, rather like an (inverted pudding basin, as jwas then in vogue: and once more I agree, nothing funny about that. B it behind Her Excellency stood a very tall woman, who wore an indis- ! tinguishable close - fitting (white hat: and the two figures were so placed that [the tall woman’s hat, in the (photograph, appeared exactly to continue Lady Bledisloe’s, [so that it looked as if she were wearing a monstrously ] tall white hat, closely re- ‘ sembling the butt end of a J. prize white marrow and not (at all in vogue, then. This J puzzle took a good deal of (working out. [ * S # ; Mr Hanan, who only had ® I his hat blown off to mark the I (piercing of the Manapouri b tunnel, was luckier than Sir ii (Daniel Gooch, the Great b (Western’s chairman, who was o there to preside when the (headings of the four-mile s; Severn tunnel met in 1884, p I and was the first to creep u [through in what proved to be a 1 “a very difficult piece of navi-

gation; but by a little pulling in front and pushing behind we managed it, and the men gave us some hearty cheers.” Lord Bessborough crept through behind Sir Daniel. What became of their tall hats I do not know. * * *

. It pleased me, also, to read . in “The Press” an article by L an unnamed contributor, who I had been prompted by being , served in a Christchurch res- ( taurant with ice-cream and . mulberries. Mulberries. My ■ wife and I once picnicked : often under a huge mulberry tree in a Governor’s Bay garden. When we began to farm in Opawa we decided to plant a mulberry. We flogged the nurserymen from Papanui to Ashburton and failed to find one. This sad tale we told to an old friend. “Oh,” said she, in her brisk, confident way, “I’ll get you one.” We exchanged a privy smile: but it was wiped off when, within a few days, a young mulberry was delivered . . . When we left the farm for Wellington, we gave the young mulberry into the care of a friend and neighbour, an expert gardener (but too inclined to over-use animal manure) until we could receive it here. As the Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, it was a “damned close-run thing;” for we had barely found a few yards of clay bank and clay flat when this fellow moved to a new post in Aus- < tralia and had to deliver the < mulberry, so to say, on the :

bounce. But, to Sir Otto Frankel’s credit—and there, I’ve given him away—he did it; but, to his discredit, he had chopped away the roots till nothing remained but a stub. It was midsummer. My clay was parched. I planted this walking-stick; and it took hold, and grew. It proliferates mulberries; but how tantalising a fruit! Pick it too soon and it is no good. Wait for the ripe and right moment, and it will have fallen to the ground. It bruises; how it bruises! Which, I suppose, is why it is impossible to buy in shops. Only a born fool would try to market this perverse fruit; and that is why the lady upon whose discovery in a Christchurch restaurant I began was lucky. The man who ran it had a mulberry tree in his own garden. Lucky man. « * .-k To any other lucky men, let me pass the advice that mulberry gin far excels both sloe gin and damson gin. To Sir George Manning, that incurable Welshman, I shall put the question whether he has ever visited St Fagan’s Castle, given to the National Museum of Wales by Lord Plymouth, 20 years ago. In its grounds he will have found a whole grove of mulberry trees, scattering their dark fruit and juice. And if so, perhaps in the restaurant (or elsewhere) he may have eaten bar-brith, that spicy currant bread, “which makes you burp frankincense for

> hours afterwards.” Sir , George? I It is not the black or ; purple mulberry on the i leaves of which silk-worms i feed: it is the white, whose

small, pale fruit is inedible. Have new processes abolished the culture of silk by this old process and condemned groves of white mulberry trees? I suppose so and, if it Is so, I regret it ... I lean to the old ways, as I lean to Sir George Manning’s passionate love of his old Wales. Much has been said and written about him, since he resigned the Mayor’s chair; but this has not been said. I guess that his deepest joy and pride have been in his sitting on the Council of Canterbury University, from which he graduated, years ago, as the first W.E.A. student to take a degree. Right? Sir George?