A MIXED BUNDLE.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 42, 17 August 1918, Page 11

A MIXED BUNDLE.

"Those Were the Days." By George A. Taylor. Tyrrell's, Ltd., Sydney.

Both Australia and New Zealand are punished for their geographical isolation. They cannot help it. of course, but whether it be the heavy costs of travel nowadays or the ofttimes turbulent seas that divide them, there is not the interchange of thought, and views there should be, considering how much alike in many ways the people of both countries are and how both are pursuing the same democratic ideals. Expensive travelling is doing more and more to isolate New Zealand from Australia and Australia from New Zealand, but one thing is likely to mitigate its effects, and that is the intercourse which our New Zealanders in, France,, Egypt, and Palestine have had with the Australian soldier and the latter's acquaintance with this country on passing through it on his way to the front or coming back from it. Our men, too, have seen Australia in like circuntstances. The little book under review, however, deals with many notable people in the arts in Australia, who are known here by their woi'k more than anything else. Among them are Henry Liwson, Norman Lindsay ; Steele Rudd, L. Hopkins ("Hop" of the Bulletin), Randolph Bedford, and J. F. Archibajd. Nelson Illiugworth, who was a sometime resident of Wellington, is included in the little group, whose sayings and doings are here enshrined. "I write of the early years of the 'nineties, when sano jolly souls came together and made the moments merrily pass," is the author's way of putting it. In the early 'nineties many potential readers of these reminescences were in swaddling clothes, of course, so that some of the names of the "jolly souk" will be names to them, and nothing more. But those who know their Australia of the early 'nineties will be pleased to refresh their memories with the little book. The great, "Blue and White Ticket Affair," so long forgotten, i 3 revived. It interests but few, if any, to-day, although it created a great stir at the time. Sydney never quite forgave Earl Beauchamp' for the faux pas he made at the very outset of his career as Governor o£ 'New South Wales. Much of the matter concerns the better known contributors to The Bulletin. This journal, described by David Christie Murray, the novelist, as a "pestiferous literary dustbin," has attracted to it some of the brightest writers and black-and-white artists that. Australia has known. Of some of them thumbnail personal sketches are given by Mr. Taylor. Other well-known names occur of writers and black-andl-. white men, well known in Australia some twenty-five or twenty years 1 ago— or less—he does not mention. But it is very gratifying for those who were young and sanguine in the 'nineties to read again of the Bohemians of those days, to say nothing of the theatrical notabilities of the time—Bland Holt, Dampier, Robert Brougb, L. J. Lohr, Walter Bentley, Harry * Bracy. J. L. Smyth, Harry Lyons, Harold Ashton, Howard Vemon, Armes Beaumont, and many others who pleased people we]] in the days when there were no cinemas. Mr. Taylor concludes : "Then we were young and light-hearted. We lived for the moment and only saw tli'e surface of things. We did not stop to realise that the pre£ty_ autumn tint on the leaf was the first sign of the death touch of winter, nor did we ponder that the glory-glow of the snnset was to be followed by the cold, dark grip of night. . . . We are to-day learning in perhaps a hard school that there are other worlds beyond."