As I hear... At my library

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33241, 2 June 1973, Page 17

As I hear... At my library

(By

J.H.E.S.

Greatly as I admire Compton Mackenzie, I had never read the successive “Octaves” of his autobiography, “My Life and Times,” till I came on them neatly ranked on a shelf in my much valued Public Library, and felt moved to begin. I suppose my pleasure was all the greater because I had for so long turned aside, much as my devotion to Jane Austen, whom I had dismissed as a feminine pifflemonger, was founded on "Pride and Prejudice,” the last resort of a teeming wet day in Hokitika — where, indeed, it can teem, so that the rain splashes up a foot in the air from the road. Well, I have been working through the “Octaves” with sustained delight; and one of the sources of it, slight but deep, is Compton Mackenzie’s often disclosed love of the English language and his corresponding detestation of those who misuse and abuse it. As I illustrate from Octave Eight, when he had been trying to get an airmail service to Barra in the Outer Hebrides where he was living. His last plea was answered in typical bureaucratic prose—of course, “in the negative” — which included the phrase “an increase in delivery expenses.” Upon this innocent phrase Mackenzie commented —and how I gloated 1 — turning it to his own purpose. “How sad that the civil servants of 1939 had not yet thought of that idiotic and superfluous new American word ‘escalation’. An escalation in delivery expenses could have been so much more impressive than an increase.” How sad. How much sadder that the officials and the politicians and — I’m sorry to say, the journalists — of 1973 in New Zealand dote on this "idiotic and superfluous” word. As I’ve wasted years in deploring and damning. But my great-uncle Samuel Johnson would have been on my side. * * *

Since the paragraphs above originate in the Public Library of this city, renowned for its Main Drain, I take the occasion to add to my recent notes on the odd habits of two borrowers who rummage the shelves devoted to “Mysteries.” One of them, two or three may recall, likes to block in neatly, with ink, the enclosed spaces of capital letters such as B, D, 0, P, which of course occur most frequently on title pages, where he has most scope. Another rings (also neatly) page numbers that are a multiple of 8 but has a special care for page 88, which he rarely misses. Now I have a third nut: every time one of the Holy Names occurs he obliterates it with one of those coloured pencils. I say “he,” but it may be “she.” Like the others, he (or she) obliterates the Holy Name neatly, taking care not to smudge the word before or after. Also, the obliterant colour is always red. Is that significant? Possibilties.

I have noticed a good deal of evidence pointing to a renewed or stronger interest in Maori culture and proposals to keep it alive and make it fruitful. I remember a little dinner party when this subject came up and was bandied across the table. Those present included the Chancellor of a University, the Vice-Chancellor of another, the Librarian of the first, an historian, and a man of letters. If you want to know how I categorise myself in this company, it is as an official. There were present, also, a man of business and his spectactularly beautiful and almost incredibly stupid wife. Somehow the question

of Maori culture came up. It astonished me to learn that the academicians were at one in rejecting Maori culture as such and pressing for the soonest and fullest integration of Maori and pakeha society and culture. (I must except the historian, whose expressed opinions I do not recall.) The only one who agreed with me in taking the opposite view and looking for the fullest, deliberate cultivation of — what is it they call it? Maori-tanga? — was the man of letters. Now I notice that the academicians have swung around and are on my side, which is of course to their credit. But how do you explain such switches of academic opinion within a few years? * * $

I see a great deal in print about the inabilty of children graduating from primary to post-primary schools to read: this on top of a great deal of evidence to the same effect in previous years and of discussion about different methods of teaching the young to read. All this baffles me. When I was a child among other children we could all read, some with greater facility than others, but we could all get along somehow. I found it easy because I’d never been taught to read: I’d picked it up, being left among books and papers, until one evening I startled my father and mother by .reading from the “Guardian” | —not the Manchester paper: its Hokitika contemporary—an item about an accident that had befallen Mr Lloyd, the fruiterer. I was five, or about, and I had picked up reading from “The Pickwick Papers,” in the large-type double-column Household edition, of which my father had a full set, bought from the estate of Mr Purkiss the magistrate. What a buy! And what a book to learn to read from! I still own it, brokenbacked and tattered, but a treasure. And I recall this, in all the argy-bargy, about learning to read because somewhere recently 1 read the wisest contribution I’ve come on to the argument. The writer, whoever he was, said simply, defer all attempts to teach a child to read till he is seven. Till then, set him among books to find his own way. He’ll probably find it or be on his way to finding it. At seven or so you may begin to interfere without much risk.

Membership.—The national conference of the Returned Services’ Association will be asked to investigate the possibility of amending its membership rules. The Ex-Royal Navalmen’s Association wants membership to include all former members of the Royal Navy who have served and are serving.—(P.A.)