CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 198, 4 August 1928, Page 9

CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS

{By the Hon. 0. T. J. Alpers.) (London- John Murray.) “The hoy began to earn his own Hying at the age of 12. in a strange country, speaking a strange tongue, without means, In the sequel. 45 without friends, without influence, years later, he took a seat on the Bench of the Supreme Court as a Judge. These memoirs show what striving, what trials, what industry, courage, integrity and ambition went to the making of so magnificent a career.” So writes the Earl of Birkenhead in his enthusiastic preface to this record of a gallant and successful uphill fight put up by one of the most striking personalities in New Zealand. One would never imagine, when reading the book, that it was dictated by a man doomed by a dread disease, working against time in the grim sense that time for him was soon to be no more.

The thought of R.L.S. more than once crosses the mind as one turns the pages, for “0.J.T.” had a heart as big and a courage as high. The closing paragraph, composed when his life was practically at an end. conveys the sense of the quiet strength and confidence that belonged to the man who could, even in the face of death, recount and re-enjoy his ‘‘cheerful yesterdays.” “Of the gifts I have had reason to be grateful for during a very happy life, the greatest of all has been the God-sent gift of winning and retaining friends. Of this I have had during the last months of a long drawn out illness, proofs that can never be forgotten by me or any member of mv family. "My book, if published at all. will. I fear, be posthumous. But as Noyes Westcott said of David Harum in his letter to Appletons, who finally accepted it, nothing can take away the pleasure it has ! been to write it.” Oscar Alpers was a boy of 8 when he and his parents landed at Napier in 1875 after 108 days at sea. Turn” ed loose amongst boys of his own age, without a word of English, he had to make the best shift he could to make himself understood, and to understand. That was the only kind of tuition he had, and by means of it he picked up a "slangy and hopelessly mispronounced” version of English. Afterwards he completed his mastery of the language in St. John’s Anglican School, of his teacher m which he speaks with great affection. He left school and began to earn his own living at the age of twelve and a half. It is amazing to read that he was almost immediately appointed as a pupil teacher in the Napier District School, although the regulations laid it down that the minimum age for such teachers was 14.

By striking up an acquaintance with a journalist, and by sharing his Press tickets, Alpers eked out his education still further and developed a taste for the drama. The description of his various visits to “Hamlet” may be taken as a sample of his breezy wit. “The first of my ‘Hamlets’ was Herr Bandmann. a ponderous German actor, who gave what was called a ‘scholarly performance' in a vile German accent. Miss Louise Pomeroy played the part of the Prince in corsets, and spoke her lines in a deep contralto voice which did not, however, avail to disguise her sex. The third was an American whose name for the moment I forget, He ‘explained himself’ with much unction to the newspaper interviewer. He was. he said, a realist and a stickler for the authorised text, and for the literal as against a fanciful interpretation of it. He played "Hamlet” in a tow-coloured wig. because all Danes were supposed to be fair. He also worse a beard; for how else, he said, could Hamlet exclaim :

"Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?” Some day, no doubt, we shall have an American actor, product of a Chicago Shakespeare Society, who will act Hamlet as an Irishman with a Tipperary brogue; for does he not in one scene swear and that most valiantly by St. Patrick?” At the age of 16 he staited a night school for working men, and a splendid example of his stick-at-noth-ing’ methods may be found in the following incident: ‘Mv boldest stroke of business was done with a young fellow, a printer. I remember on the staff of one of the newspapers. He had a pleasant tenor voice and had been called upon to sing on occasions the anthem at St. John’s This was his undoing. Abetted by his admiring relations, he conceived himself to be a Sims Reeves, and nothing but the Leipzig Conservatorium was good enough for him. “Would I teach him German? "Now. I did not know one word og German; but I at once realised it was high time I did. The pronunciation of that harsh language was not altogether strange to me. I heard the sailors on the good ship Friedeburg singing German ‘shanties’ in the fo’c’sle. My father, too, would Sometimes try to sing—he really had no each—"Ach dy liebe Augustin.” He. I reuected. would certainly help m» with the difficult gutteral.-. My printer was willing to pay double

rates—four shillings a week. I had a key to the exercises, and, what was much more important, he had not, so why hesitate? I did the first six exercises of Cassell's “Lessons in German” before commencing to teach him, and thoughout the year I kept my lead. At the end of it he knew quite a good bit of German and I knew more—six exercises more, to be exact.” Afterwards, he went to Christchurch as an undergraduate in Canterbury College, where Professor Macmillan Brown took a great interest in him because of his proficiency in languages and literature, and he became assistant professor. For the succeeding 15 years Alpers served on the staff o fthe Boys’ High School in Christchurch.

It is impossible to do justice here to the latter part of the book, which deals with his legal career, but it is crammed with readable reminiscences. one of which is reproduced on this page.