EVERY KIND OF 'XMAS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 10, 10 December 1936, Page 17

EVERY KIND OF 'XMAS

By R. H. BRTJCE LOCKHART

"When a man has spent twenty-five years of his life as an Ishmaelite, his Christmas experiences are bound to be both varied and exotic. My own cover three continents and a score of countries. They range from youthful memories of a Scottish home filled to overflowing with a whole army of sporting brothers and cousins and uncles —and with football in a covered court in the'afternoon and a fancy dress dinner at night—to official AngloAmerican celebrations in Legations abroad, with the British and American Ministers fraternising over the turkey and champagne and a Viennese Jew orchestra playing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” in the background. , Three Christmases stand out above all others in my memory. The first is the .Christmas of 1909 which 1 spent in the Malay States, f was then the only white man on a small rubber estate ten miles away from the nearest outpost of civilisation. It was a more lonely spot then than it is to-day. Motor-cars were almost unknown, and my sole means of transport was a native “gharry.” My Christmas arrangements had broken down. I had been invited to spend the week-end with a friend at Port Dickson, the miniature Brighton of my State. But at the last minute he had been knocked out by a bout of malaria and forced to cancel his party.

f was therefore L had received no presents. Worse still, my Christmas mail from home had not arrived, and at twenty-two I was more homesick than I would have had my seniors or juniors believe.

The day was a Saturday, extra hot after a night’s rain which had left the surrounding hills enveloped in a blucsteam. In the morning J did a little snipe shooting with my Malay headman, came home, picked the leeches off my ankles, .changed, lunched, and nad mv customary 6iesta.

From five to six T played a game ol football with my Malays on the tiny ground which, at mv own expense, T had reclaimed from the jungle.

At 7.30 I sat. down to my lonely dinner, of which the only Christmas fare was a plum-pudding ordered from England three months previously. At nine, full of a rather morbid selfpity, I retired to bed.

I must have been asleep for about two hours when T was roused by a sinister knocking at my veranda door. My knees were rocking. I had never had a nocturnal visitor before. My first thought was of Chinese gang-robbers (there was a Chinese mining village with a had reputation four miles away), and it seemed an eternity before r dared to risk my voice. “Who's there.-' I said as fiercely as I could in Malay.

The answer banished my fears. My visitor was Mat Saleh, the Malay corporal from the village police station. He had received a telephone message from mv friend, Cuscaden, the Chief Police Officer at Seremban. My letters and parcels bad arrived. kfe and three others were bringing them out by car. Could I give them supper? I could and did, and we spent, ar jolly evening. That Christmas taught me that human nature is not so pestilentially selfish as we are sometimes inclined to think. CHRISTMAS IN MOSCOW. Another Christmas, which I shall never forget was the Christmas of 1914 In Moscow. Christmas in Russia was not so great a- festival as Raster, be-, cause the Russians regard the resurrection of Christ as an even more important date in the history of mankind than His birth. Still, it was a festive period, because owing to the difference between the Russian and the Western calendars we had two Christmases. Tn spite of the war that Christmas of 1914 was as gay as any I remember. Mv wife and I celebrated the English Christmas in our own flat with Hugh Walpole as our chief guest On the Russian Christmas Eve we heard Chaliapin in “Boris Godunoff for the first time. On Christmas Day we dined with Michael ChelnokofF, the Anglophile and Moscow mayor, and afterwards Walpole, Lykiardopolons, the secretary of the Art ilieatie, and I sleighed through the silent, snow-paved streets to Balierr s J3at, then at the height of its fame. There, too, for the first time I met Gorky, "a quiet, modest man with an expressive face, the ruggedness of which was relieved by tlie softness ot tlio brown eyes. What remains most in my mind, however, was the infectious optimism. The Russian troops were still advancing in Austria. Moscow still believed m a Russian victory. When we came in we were received with dice re. and the orchestra played “God Save the King. There was nil actor, too, who was dressed up as a doddering Prana Josef with a barrel organ. He sang a series of couplets, one of which ran somewhat as follows: “Alas! My sleep is now troubled, And sad are the visions I see; For each round of the clock brings the frontier ~ Of Russia still closer to me. The words and the tune roused the Russians to a frenzy of enthusiasm, and champagne and vodka, flowed with wojiipiiity. It *» 7 li-inpv war Christmas. The next yea tho P glorv and the hope had departed from Russia.

IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Tlie Christmas which has left the most lasting impression on my mind was the one I spent at St. Joachimsthal, in Czechoslovakia, in 1924. The story begins with the St. Andrew’s Day dinner, which Maurice Peterson, then First Secretary of our Legation, John Taylor, our Consul, and I organised in Prague—-perhaps the first St. Andrew’s Day celebration that medieval city bad ever seen. Twelve of us sat down to dinner; six Scots, including our Minister, Sir George Clerk, five Englishmen, and one Czech guest. Jan Masaryk, and the son of the President. We bad haggis. We had the champion piper of the Cameron Highlanders sent all the way from Cologne by a- sympathetic Scottish Colonel. Above all, we had Athole Brose drunk with full honours, with a man standing on each side of the drinker. The precaution was necessary. The fumes from the huge bowl were so powerful that even the Scots had to

drink quickly for fear of being overcome before they had had their fill. I rose from a sick-bed to attend that dinner. The next day I was down with a temperature of 104. A small abscess had developed into blood-poisoning. For three weeks I lay between life and death, while the Czech and German doctors wrangled over my emaciated body-, the Czech refusing to operate, and the German insisting on the knife. Fortunately, the Czech prevailed, and on Christmas Eve I was able to he moved. Maurice Peterson took me to St. Joachimsthal, a little mountain village in the Erzebirge, to recuperate. We left Prague in a damp fog, which accompanied us all the way to Schlackenwerth. Then, as wo began to ascend the mountain, we rose above tho mist and came into sunshine mid an azure sky.

Children were tobogganing down the long village street. The hillside was a mass of Christmas trees. Beyond the village was a long strech of open moor so like Scotland that even the most exacting exile must have felt at home. And here I spent Christmas and won back my health. At seven I went to mass at tlie old fifteenth century village church, and for the rest of the morning I sat out on the hotel veranda and read the story of St. Joachimsthal. For the little township has its place in history. To-day it lias tho largest radium mine in Europe, and it was from tho pitch-blendc of St. Joacbminsthal that Monsieur and Madame

Curie made their famous discovery. But the place has a more popular claim to fame than even tho discovery of radium. It was from the famous Joachimsthal silver mine that in 1516 was coined the first silver “thaler,” or coin from the valley, a word which, corrupted by generations of German emigrants, is the origin of the once almighty dollar. As I read the story in tlie warm winter sunshine, I was conscious of the first glow of returning strength. I had been recklessly extravagant in Prague. I wanted dollars and even Czech crowns badly. But in that moment I realised, as never before, that health and sunshine were worth all the dollars and all the Czech crowns in tho world.