Ulysses Takes a Look at Hobart

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 May 1928, Page 9

Ulysses Takes a Look at Hobart

FTER Sydney’s ferocious traffic and stridulous voices, one takes a special pleasure in the half-conscious calm of Hobart. It may be that all the world else knows how picturesque a town is this. One wanderer, at least, was unprepared for the beauty of the harbour, surrounded by hills not excessively but artistically wild. And Mount Wellington, frowning nobly above the town, is a sort of corrective to its air of dullness and provincialism. Only that distinctly tragic mountain seems to remind us of the island’s appalling past—of the convict days and the slaughtered aborigines. Yes, Hobart is now a little slumbrous or so, a* place to relax the nerves and enlarge the paunch. “It’s the most New Zealand-like of the Australian cities,” said a much-travelled Hobart man, but he did not speak in compliment .... There are few distinguished buildings, and the dwelling-houses, set in God’s plenty of trees and lawns and gardens, are content that their surroundings should be so much more lovely than they. But where else shall we find a little dull row of cottages conjoined, and named “Alice Maud Tert’ace”? This was a tribute, perhaps, of pride or affection; but of which variety—whether filial, paternal, or connubial —the passer-by can only wonder again. And is there in any other city a Dr. Syntax Hotel? No doubt it was named after William Combe’s old book, with the Rowlandson ilustrations, and there one’s ale should be twice as nappy as in the other inns of less fitting title. The shops are not splendid, as a rule, but one should celebrate the charming queerness of their keepers’ names. These names were Dickensian or Arnold Bennettish more often than not, it seemed, as one passed in the tall, swaying tramcars with seats that caught one woundily across the small of the back (and with surprisingly gruff notices: “Do Not Spit on the Cars!” and “Keep Your Feet Off the Seats!”) Who would not delight to buy his meat from the Willing Bros. —one imagines them jocund and purple-faced, with horses rampant or his small-goods from Vimp.ny? There is another butcher named Tudor, no less; but he must be rather daunting to any non-armorial customers. The other trades have no fewer of these fascinating styles, as Propsting, Holyman, W. Guppy, Lampkin. McHugh, Palfreyman. Bidencope, Soundy, Worbey, Hosan, Shalless, Dearman, and a strange score of . others. These are singled out in envy, I

not in mockery; for it must be delightful to own $o distinguishing a label. As Mr. Belloc has said, in the “Gnu” poem of his “Moral Alphabet”: — Child, if you have a rummy sort of name, Remember to be thankful for the same. There are manufactories of jam, the pride of Hobart, whose bluegowned girls take the sun in their lunch hour. But, this time, in spite of Mr. Belloc (you remember his poem, of course): — I turn to jam, a subject stiff With interest for* the reader, if ' The reader has been, as have I. From youth of jam a votary . . .) in spite, one repeats, of Mr. Belloc, the jam factories remain unvisited and unsung. What else? The spacious library, of half-filled shelves and vacant seats, was found to lack many needful hooks, but to save cime that were unexpected and desirable —almost every-

thing, for instance of Walter de la Mare, and Edith Sitwell’s “Troy Park,” and a valuable book by Wanda Landowska (the Harpsichord-Player) on “The Music of the Past.” The. Art Gallery is tragic: one hopes to remember no more than a passable water-colour of John Muirhead. But the drama seems to flourish rather better. The Hobart Repertory Theatre did fairly in its past season, producing, with a small financial profit, “Pygmalion,” “Loyalties,” “A Bill of Divorcement,” and “Mice and Men.” For this yeai* a more interesting programme has been arranged—“An Enemy of the People,” “Major Barbara,” “Abraham Lincoln,” and a group of short plays. But where is the intended hymning of that, most, glorious prospect from Mount Wellington, the ineffable wide miles of sea and lake and hill and orchard? What of the Derwent, proud and splendid river? —of all the other beauty that you ached to leave so soon? . . . ULYSSES J. 8.,