FROM FAR-FAMED ORIEL

NZ Truth, Issue 1203, 20 December 1928, Page 4

FROM FAR-FAMED ORIEL

Welcome Guest of Old College And New Country

From time to time, people mhose Uoes'haOe held all. lhe. color that the world's centres can give them, find a still greater happiness and content m our own countt^. ......

OF such is Miss Dora Desmond, now at the Diocesan Girls' .'High - School, Auckland. Miss Desmond began life m one of the most romantic bits of London, the Middle Temple. Here she lived m the very rooms occupied by Feilding, while Oliver Goldsmith's chambers were just across the way. Games of hi,de-and-seek with the Temple choir boys were bright spots m a quiSt childhood.' Here, as ■■' playmates, were the children of Ramsay Macdonald, then quite unknown to fame. In the eight years that she attended the City of London School, Dora Desmond had another queer home. She lived right m the Billingsgate Fishmarket, m rooms overlooking London Bridge. M. scholarship took Miss Desmond up to Oxford, and here again the unusual came her way, for during four years of her stay, Somerville College, to which she rightly .belonged, was housed m Oriel, while the Somerville build- ... / . ._

ings were used for a hospital. Thus the women students had the privilege of dwelling m one of the oldest sanctuaries of scholastic mankind — and the loveliest, too, for the beauty and dignity of Oriel are almost without rival. After joining, at Somerville, "all the societies which I could afford, particularly those fiercely political," Miss Desmond went down to teach at the pioneer of .co-educational schools,; Bedales, Petersfield. War swept away reactionary and dull ideas from Oxford, and women were at last given the chance to tal.e the degrees they rightfully earned. They became "undergraduates," instead'of the humble "women students," ■ which, as Miss Desmond puts it, "always . sounded so mild-eyed and mejlahcholy." Miss : Desmond ; was among the first batch of women sbudents who matriculated at the first degree-giving where women students took part. .7 ..-.'.■ ; Professor .Sir. Walter -Raleigh took charge of the poetic and literary education of a little group of students,; of. whom "Miss Desmond was one. Sir Gilbert Murray, John Masefield and

societies; which took drama to the remote villages. ... '■.-■■• I Many were the adventures of pliiying m remote barns, and once, when "The Passing- of, the Third Floor Back" was presented at Gloucester Gaol, the only dressingrooms were cells, which would. lock I only on the outside. Castle and cottage alike saw the production of dialect plays. But five years of play-giving and teaching set Miss Desmond to inquiring after fresh fields, and New Zealand was that chosen: from a. long list of faraway names. "I love my new country, -for. there is always the fascinating pursuit of exploring — of seeing fresh people and fresh modes of life," says Miss Desmond, whose holidays: are usually tramp ones, spent m inaccessible spots which many New Zealanders never see.. Miss Desmond writes. for the "Manchester Guardian," and has been given, of late, the pen-name "A New Zealand Woman"— prophetic, m the light of. her forthcoming marriage to a New Zealarider, by which means she will adopt our land m real earnest.

Robert Bridges were familiar figures, and by no- means chary of invitations to sit at their feet at the poets' colony at Boars' Hill. Msfrgaret' Kennedy, writer of the triumphantly successful — arid also lasting— "Constant Nymph," ""was another contemporary. Sylvia Thompson, author of "The Hounds of Spring," startled her -friends by publishing her first novel when still at school. • Living as far as possible on her two scholarships, Miss Desmond spent her vacations sometimes as a domestic helper at the Holiday Fellowship centres, sometimes as "hostess," m charge of all social arrangements, once as a guide among the wild mountains of Northern Wales, once as a designer and maker of costumes for a school of Shakespearean performers.Leaving college with first honors m English, Miss Desmond interspersed teaching Avith amateur theatricals, • "a very good antidote." For some time she was a member of the Cotswold Players, one of the earliest repertory I