In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 12, 13 July 1935, Page 21

In the Public Eye

The King has. approved of the extension for a further term of the office olthe Earl of Clarendon.as GovernorGeneral of the Union of South Africa. The announcement was received with pleasure all over South Africa and by all' sections whatever their politics. The office of Governor-General of that. Dominion is not a sinecure. The duties.of the King's representative are neither so formal nor so wholly social as the populace, which knows so little about them, is apt to believe. If is the duty of the Governor-General to watch public affairs with a tolerant arid impartial eye, and, like the King in..Great: Britain, to make his influence felt ■ without in' any way trenching on the constitutional prohibitions which attach to his office. , The-first essential is- tact, which carries with it a complete impartiality to the. ebb and flow of party political feeling. Unlike his. predecessors, the Earl of Clarendon was • appointed by the King on the advice of his Ministers of State .in South Africa, and neither technically, constitutionally, nor in any other sense has the British Government had any part -or lot in the appointment. As the direct' representative hot of the British Government but of the King, the Earl of Clarendon has gained the confidence of the country. With a rare enthusiasm he has • made himself acquainted with South Africa. He has thrown him-. self - into a number .of non-political movements .which have: exercised a beneficent influence on the community. His arduous social duties have been carried out with the same tact and sincerity which he has brought to his . more exacting public duties. Hardly less exacting have been the duties which have fallen to the Countess of Clarendon, but she,, too, has fulfilled her high office in a man-ner-which makes her continued stay among us something which will be welcomed by the entire country. The personal misfortune which lias marred the slay of the Earl, and Countess of Clarendon in South. Africa made the country all-the ;more grateful for a decision which; apart from being welcome for its own sake, also solved a political problem that .might have presented some difficulty. Corporal Blowers. Since'l9lß Corporal >W. Blowers has been telephone operator at the Royal Air'Force Station, Helwan, Egypt. He has never been known to leave the air station. He eats in the telephone room and sleeps there on wooden boards and a: mattress, which he prefers to a service .bed. An Air Ministry official told the strange story of Corporal Blowers. "During the war he was on a boat that was torpedoed near Alexandria and was one of the few survivors," he said. "Owing to long exposure in the water he developed rheumatoid arthritis and was sent to. Helwan, which' is one of' Egypt's health resorts. But.even the famous salt; baths of that resort have not cured him, and he cannot leave the telephone room where he has been operating the switchboard for over seventeen years. Each year,,as he is due to come home, he is allowed to extend his service. He could-not live in England." Thousands of airmen returning from overseas are questioned on the corporal's progress. He is known as the perfect telephone operator, and his highlypolished bunk,' in which'he spends his life, is like a small palace. Even the Air Ministry does not know what will happen to Blowers when he finishes his time..He will probably be allowed to carry on as a _ civilian operator. Mr. Stanley Lupino. ' If the people who "live in grand old houses with grand old'crests on their silver think that only such:families are proud" of their' traditions'they are wrong. . In Queen Elizabeth's reign there'landed in England a poor Italian"'• named Lupino. He carried his baby son strapped'on his back. By turning somersaults, making faces, and such tricks he hoped to gain a living. English people laughed at the Italian clown, and.he earned enough to feed himself, and his son. but never enough to,become rich. Ever since that day the,. Lupinos have been clowning .in England, and nearly: all of them'have be.en: very poor. Yet they have stuck to their- trade, and been as proud of it as the greater families who, have stuck'to soldiering, since the days of Agincoiirt, and the others who have followed the sea out of loyalty to the memory of an ancestor serving under Blake. '" Stanley Lupino, who was once ,so poor .that he dared . not take oft his overcoat because of the rags beneath and1 is now a'successful.'comqdian, has written-the family, nistory'in n book called."From the Stocks.to the Stars." . Perhaps the bravest story he has to tell,is about his brother Mark, who was a. popular jester before the war. He enlisted. One day he was riding a motor-bicycle ' when a shell exploded so near that the machine was blown frqm\under him. All he said as he picked himself up.was, "And no audience, to. clap me!" : This plucky clown was gassed. ; The gas did not kill him, but it took away his voice, and ruined him. .His brother tells how painful it was to hear him vainly struggling to make .himself heard.- His jests only reached the first rows'of the stalls. "Gradually agents and managers dropped him," says his brother, "and he tramped the offices looking for work. At'last he looked in. one office-where they had been paying him a big salary as, a star. . , Huskily, he asked for a job, and back came the old reply, 'We're full up!' "Mark's sense of humour came up and he croaked out, 'Don't you want a tenor for the Queen's Hall?'" He died at 42, brave to the end. II is not a very grand boast to say, "My family have made people laugh for more than three hundred years," but it is a fine tradition to laugh at misfortune and make a joke of trouble. The.Lupinos are right to be-proud of it.-

Under the. somewhat elusive title, "Beecham and Pharaoh," Dame Ethel Smyth, the only woman, incidentally, who has obtained eminence as a composer, has given to the public a book on Sir Thomas Beecham. The first portion, "Beecham, or Fantasia in B Sharp Major," does not profess to be more than a sketch,of Sir Thomas Beecham, that hard-hitting and doughty warrior who has devoted his life and most of his fortune to bludgeoning the English people into an appreciation of music. The portrait is outlined in. bold,, unorthodox strokes, yet it is only the more effective for breaking away from biographical' conventions. Beecham himself.-has always been a. stormy petrel in private life as .in the musical world. Dame Ethel recounts his life at university fairly briefly. "With the exact course of his studies at Wadham College I am not acquainted," she says, "but one of his feats was to absent himself without leave for a whole week and proceed to Dresden, where he attended the opera, went {o a few dinner parties, and gave a large party himself. We all know, the story of 'The Miracle,1 how the escapade of a young nun who felt herself irresistibly impelled to taste the sweets of freedom ; was covered by Divine intervention. Perhaps in this more profane version of a similar story, one of the nine Muses, taking . a hint from the Odyssey, dressed herself up in Beecham's cap and gown "■ and personated him during, that" whole week, for strange to say, his absence was never noted. After a sojourn of eighteen months he left the University for .good. I had been indelicate enough to ask: 'Were you sent down?' To which he replied that, on the contrary, the Warden was sorry to lose him, though his.parting-remark was: 'Your untiniely departure has perhaps, spared us the necessity of asking you to go'— a phrase I think: of singular perfection." Beecham's .father, son of the founder ol the business, was a great, music-Jover, and a great collector of instruments."of nil sorts, but early in the young I,man's career .broke : w.ith him 'for domestic ■ reasons. A reconciliation V was later ' effected '.partly through the favour of King Edward. Some of Beecham's earlier escapades and his apparent lack of responsibility and consistency ] in conducting are deplored by Dame Ethel, who nevertheless considers that they were part of the natural development of his genius. "As -the fruit of the vine demands a certain period in which to ferment, so it is with the creative spirit," she says. "And not until some years after the end of the war had the beverage Beecham clarified and matured into a wine that not only gladdened and satisfied the heart of man, but, as the saying goes, 'hadn't a headache in it.'" Dame Ethel has filled her book with, a' store' of anecdotes. Speaking of the . position of Handel early in Beecham's career, she says: "Germany,, his own country, had just rediscovered the 'bedrugged, recumbent giant, and in England he still lay smothered under a mountain of Anglican, curates." Elsewhere, commenting on Beecham's! habit of varying the tempo of performances, according to. his! feelings,: she; says that at one performance,of "Figaro" his whim was to take it at such!'.a.'pace "that the singers, unable' to .act, sing, or enunciate, 'could /only 'bubble and squeak." : Beecham's,friendship with Delius played an important part in his life, and interesting light is thrown on the.personality of that other English composer! whose life of retreat was in such contrast to Beecham's flamboyant figure. Dame Ethol points out in:an amusing anecdote■ how'helpless Delius was'as-a conductor,'even of his own works.' "One day,"! she-says, "at a rehearsalln Queen's Hall, when I asked him during: the-inlervalif they were not rather: dragging the:work, his answer was: : 'Dragging 51? I should say they were! ' But, what can you do if they will go on ■ playing slower and slower?'" '. •, '' v Dr. R. Cochranc. Dr. Robert-Co'chrane, a young London specialist on leprosy, is resigning the medical secretaryship of the British Empire Leprosy ■ Association to work as a volunteer for .five years among lepers in India.. He has offered himself to. the Leper - Settlement.;in Madras, founded by the Countess .of Willingdoh, wife of the Viceroy of India, for a five years'. period of intensive research into the treatment;of leprosy on the mbst modern lines, j He will live among the 750 patients: at the Settlement. ' On his way to 'India Dr. Cochrane will'stay in Ceylon: for a time, at the'request of the authorities, to assist them in.carrying out certain plans which he outlined to them two years .ago ..\vh.en. he was, on. an Empire lour of investigation. During that tour he discovered that leprosy was increasing in some parts'of Africa and on some West Indian islands. Tt is estimated that there are now at least 1,000,000. lepers ■in the Empire. Dr. Cochrane, .■who is married, with three children, is still under 40. He now lives ■ in, London and studied at Glasgow and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, taking! the.degrees of M;B. arid Ch.B. in 1924 and M,D. in 1928. He has. already had some years' experience in a leper'colony. Dr. Cochrane's place as. medical secretary to the Leprosy Association is being taken by Dr. Ernest Muir.