“COLONIAL GOOSE”

Evening Star, Issue 20364, 21 December 1929, Page 2

“COLONIAL GOOSE”

SOCIAL LIFE [By Grace Fox.] CHAPTER V. Mrs Rennard in her present role of a retired old lady can hardly be said to have retired from social life, for when was she ever in it?, In her, early days it was not spelt with so big, an, fe as now. Eater on she was “ buried in her stop-children”; later still she was buried in supplementing an income of £65 per annum. Add to it that not hers was the joy of making life-long friends from school mates, as her whole school career was one of six months when she was six. After that, she and an elder sister more or less waged war daily in a room used as her schoolroom. To be taught by an elder sister is no joke for the teacher or the taught, and she does not know to this day who had the best (or the worst) of it. She remembers planning an escape from it when about ten, and invited a child next door to join her in running away and living in a cave of some gravel pits on a heath a mile away. The enterprise never came off; the neighbour child had a mother she was unwilling to leave. Mrs Rennard was burdened with no such argument against a free and independent life, but sue would not go without a companion, because she was afraid of the dark!

She always has been afraid of the dark. She hopes it is more because she is a “ night blind ” person than from innate cowardice, but she has her doubts. Her daughter, who is “up ” in much of American child psychology, wrote to her once: “Search back deeply into your childhood, and find out the cause* of your fear of the dark; once you find the cause the fear vanishes.” Why or how fear vanishes if the cause of it is revealed is a puzzle to Mrs Rennard. Anyway, she wrote cheerfully back to iho daughter; “No need to search , ‘ deeply ’; the plain truth and cause is that I was badly fed as a child, and had awful nightmares! ” It is supposed nowadays to bo best for each child to have its separate bed, but does it never occur to anyone that the shocking frights of nightmare vanish when you can clutch a sister directly you wake? Perhaps the modern child never has nightmare; perhaps that is why the modern child has often such an air of self-confidence and self-possession that the elderly fear to address it. Mrs Rennard envies it so, for her own selfconfidence is a poor thing. So social life has passed by on the other side of Mrs Rennard in all its usual aspects. In her girlhood, other girls when met used to embarrass her with “Do you like dancing? Do you play tennis? Do you play cards? ” And her nightmare-acquired want of confidence used to make her say an embarrassed “No.” But down in her heart she wanted to ’turn the tables on them, and had not the courage to, and say: “Do you study geology? Do you collect shells and ferns and bits of rock? Do you love studying French and German all by yourself Do you love even the feel of books?” Just as well she didn’t ask them—they would likely have thought her a freak! And to be thought a freak in one’s youth lands (or did land) one in the very bottom of the valley ol humiliation. Nowadays, no young thing seems to know anything about that valley of Bunyan’s famous book.

Did Mrs Rennard miss so very much after all? Social life is only another name for human contact. Plenty of human contact comes with step-chil-dren, children, and a husband who requires one at every turn in life, even for sermon-making. Once a week a child would conic to her with; “Mother, father says if you have the time can you go to him for ten minutes ” And in the study Mrs Rennard would sit gravely in judgment on a half-made sermon ; and “the parish” never knew how many things she put into, or took out of, ii:. As for her children, when little and small, she often thought them “ the best company in the world.” As for later still, when she was busy supplementing her wealth of £65 per annum by the work of her hands—(her brain said to her for five years: “I insist on having a rest)_ — as the world saw it, she had no “ social life,” but she had plenty of human intercourse, and may she never forget nil she learnt and saw. It would quite fill a volume. She saw what it was like not to have a secure income of £65 per annum ; she met and knew women who had twice her courage in meeting life; she met and knew women who would have scorned to do wrong in order to be better off, and who were keen to help other women when the chance to do it came. She met those who gave to the war funds out of their 30s per week, which was their sole living. She met one woman, who was for many years nurse and confidential maid in the house of one of New Zealand’s manufacturing magnates. To her Mrs Rennard said one day; “I suppose you go out in the evening sometimes, and see the other maids in the houses near here ’ and got the hesitating answer: “ Well, I used to a little; but I found I was nearly always asked questions that I thought my master and mistress would not like me to answer: so I have nearly left off going now.” ft was that maid who first arrested Mrs Rennard’s attention one day by standing up straight in answer to something said, and replying; “Work! Oil, I think there is nothing so honourable and so good to do in life as to earn one’s living by work well dono!” Is it any wonder that Mrs Rennard thinks she has not missed all social life (even with a very big S) if social life spells human intercourse She reckons she has “ imperishable memories ” of social intercourse with women who were emphatically “ worth while.” It would be well for women to realise as those she met did that “ life is what we make it.” One day an Archdeacon looked at Mrs Rennard in astonishment (and, I fear, shock!) at her having told him she was working in a factory. She hastily restored his soul by telling him cheerfully “ work is what one makes it, and I’m' making something good of mine.’’ It takes some people nu-iiy years ere it dawns on them that life also is what one makes it. Mrs Rennard has only just discovered that as a consciously-known truth. But. oh, to teach the young this truth! Then would, the world bo full of cheerful people. She was busy one morning pasting huge labels to be put on a firm’s boxes, and most_ of the morning her mind was busy with poor little Charles Dickens, who'was so unhappy when as a small boy he was put into a blacking factory, and had to do much the same job—his biographers make quite a tragedy of it. Such a pity that someone did not stick into his soul: “ Here’s one of my chances in life; and when I’m grown up I’ll have a blacking factory, and all the small boys in it shall have a good and strenuous time ”! It was quite good fun pasting labels, and Mrs Rennard couldn’t think ill of it when she had heard a maid say “ I think it is such an honour to earn .ine’s living by work well done ’’! “Go up top ” all maids who think thusl

Few people seem to realise what a will-o’-the-wisp thing “ social life ” often is in this country. The essen-

tials for it are that often vague thing “ position,” and the not vague tilings of a home; an income, and clothes—especially clothes. Time was when, because of her clerical position, Mrs J'■ on’ nard used to bo filled with dismay by invitations to garden parties. w , r* ever shall 1 wear?” she swiftly thoughts for the luxuries'of a vicarage life and four stepchildren and three of he» own ” rather crowded out clothes. She was not one of the clever_ women who can make themselves look fit for garden parties “ in anything.” Her early training had been so apart from clothesIn her youth she had, heaps of sailing for her sole recreation. You don’t; want “clothes” when yon go sailing.) To go down to Auckland from ten miles up its harbour in a boat in “any old weather,” and have to attend! to its jib and ’uresail, and often have the waves smack y<n in the lace or; pour over vour head, as you hauled at the lines—vou learnt nothing at all that way of “ how to dress.” Yon went down to Auckland sometimes before the wind” in an hour and a-quarter,! certain of an exciting time going back. How the squalls came off Ponsnnby V And how the tides —one from the \> bait River and one from the Maiiemata met the wind at Kauri Point! At times near Kauri Point Mrs Rennard wished for no clothes; forgetting ashore if the boat went over would, she thought, be easier with next to nothing on. Dcr father was always one of the first to take his boat out of its winter quarters, and one of the last to lay her UP What n .a. lot of agility Mrs Rennard acquired in those days—to creep forward and secure the foresail hues when thev have flapped out of their rings, to haul up and let down the centreboard at inst the right moment to get m and out of the dinghy when there was a sea, on. Give a girl or hoy lots of sailing in youth, and they will go through life with an adventurous spirit. (But ol). how hot the deck could he to sit on. when becalmed on a midsummer day!). How little does this country know of the Jovs of the sea, for its people are distinctly not a seagoing folk, and have long decided that the motor cycle trade is to take precedence of that or boa'> hnilding. More’s the pity, especially for a country that was discovered by adventurous sailors. (To be continued.)