WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT A TELEPHONE?

Evening Star, Issue 21524, 23 September 1933, Page 2

WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT A TELEPHONE?

, ■ - [Written by Panache for the ‘ Evening Star.’] Twice a year, towards the end of each January and July, the head of the house frowns at an official envelope and says that the obvious way to save is to give up the telephone. - Then in the average home there is consternation. The proposal is supported only by the misanthropic uncle, averse from jingling bells, or by the old-fashioned spinster aunt with a deep distrust of machinery. The daughter suggests that it would be much more economical to give up meat. Six butcher’s bills add up to much more than the half-yearly rental; and father’s proposal is not disinterested, as he has a telephone at the office. Father retorts that his daughter is not disinterested, as she does not care for meat, and there is a ponny-in-the-slot at the corner. Mother says mildly that public booths are not much cheaper than private telephones, as most people seem to lose their purses in them, and often their umbrellas as well.

Most people sympathise with the assertion of the Post and Telegraph Department that a home is not a home without a telephone. Although there is no tablet to his memory, Alexander Graham Bell is one of tho deities of the hearth, he who in 1876, in Boston, calmly transmitted to his assistant in tho next room the first complete sentence: “Mr Watson, como here, I want you.” These are dull words for an oracle, and we could wish that Bell had shown some of tho excitement of the Greek scientist who splashed out of his bath on discovering he weighed Jess in the water than out of it. At tho time of his invention Bell was courting, and had the first transmitted sentence been in another key, had he tootled nonsense to tho lady, there might not have been in force the maxim that the essence of telephone conversation is brevity. Not that Bell conceived of his instrument as solely for business. Ho himself combined business and pleasure, and on his honeymoon in England sought to create a demand for his telephones. Queen Victoria congratulated the inventor and offered to purchase a pair, upon which ho presented her with two special ivory instruments. In tho beginning telephones went in pairs, not by analogy with vases or candlesticks, but because they were complimentary, one requiring another to communicate with it. To-day telephone statistics look like computations of reptiles’ eggs, but fifty years ago the public was so apathetic that in England and the United States there was only .00005 of a telephone per head. To-day telephone conversations in the States and in Canada 'average over 200 per head in a year. Wo are not far behind with 179, though Hungary remains apathetic, with an average of fifteen calls in a year. Presumably the Magyar stays at his office without apology, and brings guests home to lunch unheralded.

In 1877, the long-distance ’telephone was exciting great wonder. ‘ Punch ’ publishes a chapter from contemporary history showing Bismark in Berlin insulting his crowned puppets in various capitals. He is in a room round which are ranged a number of “ telephone talkers” ticketed with the names of European cities. He orders princes and kings to the ends of their instruments, breathes blood and iron at them, and then “shuts off the telephone tube.” Two years later, Mr Punch is sending New Year greetings through his coil of wondrous wires, and it is an event for Angelina in the country to talk to Edwin at his den in the Temple, When the first telephone exchange was opened in London there were eight subscribers, and the excitement in the metropolis must have resembled the fever" of our neighbourhood when, a generation ago, we were the first in the street to install a telephone. In those days to have a telephone at all was distinguished, and, as the service grew in popularity, to have a number of two or even three figures was the suburban equivalent of being in Debrett. To have the only telephone in the street meant also being the liaison officer between all new babies and the medical profession. Now people who want the doctor go into a telephone box, a convenient but unattractive adjunct of civilisation. It is useful to the desperate who want the doctor or the police, to the secretive whoso family telephone is within earshot of the dining room, and it offers sanctuary to anyone with a dangling suspender. But though it stands by the wayside like a shrine, its atmosphere is sordid, its light is hard and glaring, its incense is stale tobacco and staler violet powder. The only offerings left are involuntary ones, forgotten purses and umbrellas. The pcnny-in-the-slot is a pathetic telephone, perhaps because it takes, but never gives. It is an outcast, without individuality, because it never takes the initiative, never shrills through anybody’s boredom, never has anyone running breathlessly to answer “ Hullo?” The virtue of the public telephone is that it is not a snob. The private one often is, because it offers a background, its mere number giving a suggestion of property and protection. There is sometimes as much shelter as behind a whole phalanx of footmen. Galsworthy says somewhere that the whole question of class distinctions comes down to baths and accent, but at the telephone the unwashed is at no disadvantage. It is all a matter of accent, which accounts for some pathetic sharpening and refining of vowels and the comments of puzzled children on " Mummy’s telephone voice.”

Home is not home without a telephone. The July crisis is safely over, the rental is paid, and homo is home until the end of January, at least. Not only is it home, but foreign parts as well, for the Puckish telephone can put a girdle round the earth in forty seconds. And when I dial a number 1 shall hear a casual voice answer and

grow warm and friendly as it recognises mine. And whenever I answer a ring it may be the prelude to the adventure slightly overdue. Or it may be a wrong number.