BROWSINGS IN BOOKLAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13942, 29 June 1907, Page 5

BROWSINGS IN BOOKLAND

Br Constant Reader,

My range of Tending includes the Outlook, that- "Christian Weekly for the Home w hieli tho editor of the Tablet hvpheniouoly, but far from euphoniously, invariably describes as "The Presbyteria'u-Metlicdist-Congregatiolialist organ of Xew Zealand." Now, according to its latestissue, the Outlook has heon in the wars, and so severe was the critical assault that the 'tablet- editor lias been moved to offer liis sincere condolences—a practical union of the churches which all right-minded men will rejoice to behold. And one of tho lines of assault—indulged in by tho Rev. ))r Erwin at a recent meeting of the Christchurch Presbytery—was that every issue of the Outlook " contained a number of glaring transpositions"; this and other alleged defects moving the worthy doctor to dub tho Outlook " a disreputable .paper." My'soul warnw towards Itr Erwin, for he and I are in exactly tho same box. As with his sermons, so with my "copy," the pernicious printer has been at work with his " glaring Transpositions," although I would scarcely go so far a6> on that account, to wriie down the Otago Daily Times as "a disreputable paper." Last Saturday, when concluding my budget of " Browsings," I was made to make George Meredith end his " Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt" in this extraordinary fashion: Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies croy. Yet all I to hear anew those ladies cry, This appeared so much like a. cryptogram that I was curious to get to" tho bottom of the mystery and ascertain exactly the reason of" this remarkable transposition. Having some slight- acquaintance with the vagaries of the linotype I succeeded in my endeavour, and herewith present Dr Erwin with the solution, which he may or may not. regard as sufficient- solatium for his evidently wounded feelings. When Meredith's concluding couplet was firet- typed by the machine the proof read as follows: — Yi-t all! to iiMr anew those Indie? croy, Ho who's foi ns, for him are we! The "reader" promptly struck his pen through the redundant "o" in the last word of the finst- line, and, marking "delete" in the margin, returned the proof to the operator for correction. The linot-yper, equally promptly, corrccted his initial error by setting the line: Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies »cry ( sent the corrected proof with the new line endowed to the "stone hand." Tlie intelligent "stone hand," full of hurry and zeal to get- the paper to press, mistook tho lino to be altered and substituted tho newly-set- line for the second line of the "couplet," which then read us follows :— Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies croy, Ytt all! to hear anew those ladies cry, and in that form the paper went to press. If time had not been so limited yet anotiier development- was possible, nay even probable. With the alteration made ae shown «sov£ a revised" .proof would

have been pulled and sent to the reader, who, noticiny that the word "croy" still appeared at tho end of tho first, line, would havo concluded that the correction had not been made, and would have returned it onco more to tho operator. The industrious operator would again have fiet (he line:

Yet ah! to hear anew those ladic-3 cry, and the "stone hand," making no mistake this Urn?, would have deftly substituted the correct line for the faulty one, whereupon the couplet would have read :

Yet ah! to hear enow those ladies cry, Yet fill I to hear anew those ladies cry,

For tho benefit of anyone not sufficiently intimate with Meredith's poems to detect tho outstanding mistake 1 will quote the couplet- correctly (fhat is, if my friends the linotype operator and the "Btone hand" will kindly permit) as follows:— Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry, He who's for us, for him ate wo! with the remark that the lines make fitting epitaph'for the late Sir John Hall of honoured memory, a man whose passing marks tho disappearance from the world of affairs oi yet one more of the political stalwarts whose labours havo dons so much to make New Zealand the happy ■ land in which wo are privileged to dwell. Immediately alter reading in the morning paper the sad intelligence of the decease of the veteran statesman, I took up a copy of Mr W. Sidney Smith's " Outlines of the Woman's Franchise Movement in New Zealand," and gazed long and earnestly at tho portrait of Sir John Hall contained itherein. I then looked up the references to the leading part played by him in tke long and arduous straggle for the enfranchisement of the women of New Zealand, so vividly described by Mr Sidney Smith. Tho book as a whole has considerable interest in view of the march of events in the Homeland, but for tlie nonce my atention was centred upon Sir John Hall and his work. After detailing' the rebuffs met with by, and the -unpleasant things said against, the lady leaders in the franchise movement, Mr Smith proceeds:

On the other hand, there were numbers of gocd men and tnie who, by voico and pen, heartily supported the courageous women who were working for this great reform. Chief among these were Mr Alfred Saunders and Sir John Hull. Both were veteran politicians (usually on. opposite sides of the

House), both were full of yeare, and each had a long and honourable record of public service. The prestige of their names gave weight and influence to the movement, and their great experience rendered Ibem invaluable advisers; their unselfish co-operation and generous advocacy lifted the question high above the mire of mere party politics.

And following a short sketch of Sir John Hall's career, Mr Smith makes this apt comment on the character of the man himself:-

To fully describe his career would be to lvvite the political history of the colony. Colonial Secretary, Postmastergeneral, and Premier has Sir John Hall been, and, whether in office or out, his enormous capacity for work, and bis acute intellect have made him a conspicuous figure and a man to be counted with. Courageous, keen, alert, and wary, a past master in the art of .political tactics, who has never lost an election, a moro skilful general of the Woman's Franchise Parliamentary-forces could not have been found or desired.

It is fully 17 years since—or, to be exact, August 5.' 1890—Sir John "Hall fired the first shot in the Parliamentary battle by moving, on the motion to go into Committee of Supply—"That, in the opinion of this Rouse, the right of voting at the election of members of the House of Representatives, should be extended to women." It if pathetically interesting to just now recall some of the arguments which Sir John Hall employed in his speech in support of his motion, which was carried by 57 votes to 11. Again I quote from Mr Smith's little volume: —

Sir John Hall pointed out that the principle on which the electoral franchise in the colony was based was that every resident adult had the right to a voice in making the laws by which he was governed. Mr Gladstone had said: " All who live in a country should take an interest in that country, love that country; and the vote that s,nee that sense of interest fostere that love," To every general rule there were exception*;, and the exceptions in this case were lunatics, iDfante, and criminals. The tnegt pj somen jrsre iigK&rs

placed by our laws on a level with lanatics, infants, and criminals. They were even on a rase footing than tlie latter, fur even convicted criminals were allowed , to vote when they had served their sentences. It seemed absurd that n mini jnet out of gaol had a vote while the woman win supported liis children had none. Women were equally interested with men in '.'verytliini; affcoting (rood government. It had often lim.ii said iliat n woman',-- sphere was at home among her children. Tin's was quite true, , and she filled it in a manner that was n credit to h«rself and a Merging to us all. lint other people had Hieir spheres. The doctor, the lawyer, the artisan, and the seaman hart their special spheres of action, but were not prevented from voting. With reference, to the alleged inferiority of woman's lirain, the university ' results had answered the intellect question. Wo cannot afford," he said, " to bid woman stand aeide from the work of the nation, wo need all their spirit of duty,. their patience, their energy, in combating the sorrow, sin. and want that is .-ironnd us." Sir John concluded by eaying that he had been led by a long "consideration of tlio matter to the conviction that woman is entitled to be placed on a perfect equality with man.

It is interesting to turn aside for a moment to note that Sir John Hall in his conclusions 17 years ago had reached exactly the same position as Geor?e Meredith occupies in his "Essay on Comedy." What Meredith designates the "Comic Spirit" may be defined as the sane and thankful, but critically humorous, outlook on life commended to tho world in his novels, as in all other true comedies. This comic spirit, as G. M. Trevelyan points out, with its tutelary watch over men and women, is represented in all his works, but the philosophy of it is most clearly expounded in his " Essay on Comedy" (now included by Constable together with two volumes of his poems, in the handy pocket edition of his works). There he suggests the relation which comedy, as lie defines it, bears to the position of women as he would have it :— Comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when they

have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjqy in it. . .

Eastward you have total silence ot comedy among a people intensely susceptible to laughter, as the "Arabian Nights" will testify. Where the veil is over women's faces you cannot have society, without which the senses are barbarous, and the comic spirit is driven to the gutters of grossness to slake its thirst. . . . Never will thero be civilisation where comedy is not possible; and that comes of some degree of social equality of the sexes. I am not quoting the Arab to exhort and disturb tlte somnolent East; rather for cultivated women to recognise that the Comic Muse is one of their best friends. They are blind to their interests in swelling the ranks of the sentimentalists. Let them look with their clearest vision at home and abroad. They will see that where they have no social freedom, comedy is absent; where they are household drudges, the form of "comedy is primitive; where they are tolerably independent, but uncultivated, exciting melodrama takes its place, and a sentimental version of them. . . But where women are on the road to an equal fooling with men, in attainments and in liberty—in what they have won for themselves, and what has been granted to them by a fair civilisation, —there, and only waiting to be transplanted from life to the stage, or the novel, or the poem, pure comedy flourishes and is, as it wonld help tiiem to be, the sweetest of diver-i-ions, the wisest of delightful companions.

Convincing proof of the correctness of Meredith's theory and the soundness of his argument may be found in the wes of Pierre T.oti's well-known novel " Les Despnehantee's": the haunting pathos of that recital with its de.-cription of the vain yearnings after freedom and liberty indulged in by ihe unfortunate inmates of a Turkish harem remains with me yel, although it is many months since first 1 read the book. Of course there is a foil to every picture, and in this case the foil may be found in the famous letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a book which, according to R. Brimley Johnson in the introduction which he furnishes to the "Everyman" edition, is "like many another literary classic, constantly quoted i-and seldom read." The original edition id Ladj; Marty's wsrjss, in five

volumes, dated 1803, fell inlo my hands the other day, and I was so much interested in the fine old type and the discoloured paper that 1 forthwith sat down and read the second volume right through. And in a letter to the Countess of Mar. dated Adrianople. April 1 (0.5.), 1717. T came across this pertinent expression of opinion, strangely at variance with Meredith's idea :—" Upon the whole T look upon (he Turkish women as the only free people, in (he Empire: tlie very divan pays respect to them; and the grand fignior himself, when a pasha is executed, never violates the privileges of the harem (or women's apartment), which remains unsearched and entire to the, widow. They are queens of their slaves, whom the husband has no permission to look upon, except it be an old woman or two that his lady chooses. True, their law permits them four wives, but there is no instance of a man of quality that makes use of lliis liberty, or of a woman of rank that would suffer it."

Messrs Methuen have just published a book entitled " Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times," to the perusal of which I am looking forward with much interest. The author who disguises his or her identity under the pen-name of 11 George Paston" had the good fortune to come across some 400 or 500 unpublished letters in the Wortley Montagu MSS. at Sandon Hall. A large number of these belong to the period of Mr Wortley Montagu's courtship with Lady Mary Pierrepont, and, carefully read, they are said to give the key to her subsequentlife. In regard to her harem experiences, Brimley Johnson remarks :—

The somewhat profitless discussions as to whether Lady Montagu over penetrated a harem may be summarily dismissed. The evidence does not countenance such a report, undoubtedly current in her own lifetime and afterwards accepted without question; but its truth or falsehood scarcely concerns us to-day. The letters contain a stiaightfonvard account of what she had seen, of the authority on which she wrote, and of tho source from which her information was derived. No independent inve<tig?,tion is required in judging the value of her observations. No doubt she could point a moral and adorn a tale; but there is no reason whatever for supposing that she pretended to any knowledge sho did not

possess or ■wilfully misrepresented her actual experiences. And in 0110 of her letters written from, Constantinople to Mrs Thistlewayto, at a time when she was busily ongagcd in the liccossary preparations for an expected increase' in her family, Lady Mary writes: — You may easily guess at my uneasy situation. But I am, however, in some degree comforted by the glory that accrues to me from it, and a reflection of the contempt I should otherwise fall under. You won't know what to make of this speech, but in this country it is more despicable to he married and not fruitful than it is with us to be fruitful before marriage. They have a notion, too, that whenever a. woman leaves off bringing children it is because she is too old for the business, whatever her face says to the contrary. . . Without aaiy exaggeration, all the women of my acquaintance that have been married 10 years have 12 or 13 children, and the old ones boast of having ha<l five-ami-twenty or thirty apiece, and are respected according to the number they have produced.

In another letter to the Countess of Mar, Lady Mary again eulogises the position of the Turkish women, who, she remarks, " are perhaps freer than, any other ladies in the universe, and are the only women in the world that lead a time of uninterrupted pleasure exempt frcin cares, their whole time being spent in visiting, bathing, or the agreeable amusement of spending money or inventing nsw fashions." Probablr this sort of existence would scarcely satisfy the free and independeut lady voter of New Zealand, and yet, when all is said, bow many of the women of the present day 'ead as idle and superficial an existence as tip Turkish ladies of two centuries ago pictured by Lady Mary, During the debate which followed Sir John Hall's speech on woman's suffrage, already referred to, one Dγ Kodgkinson, declared that instead of Sir John Hall, being a friend to women he was their greatest enemy, for lie w^s trying to put them in a position for which God Almighty had entirely unfitted them. The * Bible showed the proper position of women, and he believed that this doctrine as to the RR.M&. # UStESH ajs Jfegir-claims to the,

suffrage came from below and not from above. Now 1 have reason to believe thiit there are many n&n in New Zealand to-day who fervently «dio the doctor'., belief, and who, regarding the woman's franchise movement as a retrograde liolicy, argue that the position of the women of New Zealand to-day will not compare with that of the "women of England a, himilrod years ago. As a broad-minded man, open to conviction fioni any unbiassed source, I inn bound to confess that tlie perusal of -a famous old book, nothing loss than William Cobbett's " Advice to Yrning Men " (just issued by Ht-nry Frowde in his delightful series of half-crown net reprints) supports this view. Cobbett is perhaps better known as tho author of a. Grammar of the Knjrlish Language, originally published in 1818, but which I notice Henry Frowde is about to reprint. The letters abound in fascinating biographical touches, besides throwing considerable light upon the position of women in what are commonly regarded iis the heniehted days of the 'early part, of the nineteenth century. Either Cobbett was an exceptionally devoted husband, or else I havo had an entirely wrt*.i; conception of the lot of women iv hundred years a,«o, for I am fain to admit that this book of Cobbett'6 has inclined me to question whether, after all, women have gained a great deal by tho franchise imd the kindred movements for their emancipation.

Cobbett divides his advice into sections, starting with the youth, and then on to the young man,'the lover, the husband, and the father. But I find my space is gone, and I must reserve my string of selected quotations dealing with the. proposition of woman a hundred years ago until a future occasion. Permit me, however, just one comment in closing. I note r that the Domestic Workers Union has decided to hail the mistresses of Wellington before the Arbitration Court upon the much-vexed question of "time off." Possibly—nay, very probably—the Otaco Daily Times penetrates to the Wellington province, end for the benefit of any unhappy mistress, trembling at tho thought of an approaching appearance at Court, Cobbett's solution of the difficulty—although a century old—may act as a healing balm :—

Till I had a second child, no servant ever entered my house, though well able to keep one; and never in my wholo life did I live in a house so clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk, or slept or dressed, in a manner so perfectly to my fancy as I did then. I had a great deal of business to attend to that took me a great part of the day from home; but whenever I could spare a minute from business Ihe child was in my arms; I rendered the mother's labour as light as I could; any bit of food

satisfied me; when watching was necessary, we shared it between us; and that famous Grammar for teaching French people English, which has been for 20 years, and still is, the great work of this Itind throughout all America, and in every nation in Europe, wa-s written by me, in hours not employed in business, and in great part during my share of the nirfit watchings over a sick, and then only, child, who, after lingering many months, died in my arms.