PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21976, 10 June 1933, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

For various reasons critics of the film drama display a ruthless frankness which, in their dealings with the legitimate stage play, is as rare ns sunflowers in the desert. For this the reasons are mostly obvious. The normal order of precedence to a dramatic critic is author, actor, and producer. Stage carpenter and scene painter are as free from criticism as the call-boy and the man at the door. These no criticism ever mentions. The film drama has reversed all this. The author has become merely one of many cooks of whom any one may have spoiled the broth. His name figures inconspicuously in a legion of participators from director and sub-director down to the second assistant camera man—lists of whose unknown names are given in the long sale catalogue that follows the censor’s imprimatur. Rarely is the author employed even to revise his own dialogue —an official half-fledged dialogist does this. Not at a single figure, therefore, is the film critic shooting, but_ at a mob. And the fewer therefore are his restraining compunctions. So we read in London papers: “The leading actor in this film, Bill Boyd, is a bit too bulky for heroics.” Or, “At the Empire Tallulah Bankhead makes a failure with ‘Faithless/ ” Or, of M Jjet Me Explain, Dear, recently exhibited locally: The story reminds us of a French vaudeville romance that has lost its sparkle in a flood of home-brewed beer. Also, of “Lord Camber’s Ladies”: All the people in the story behave with such conspicuous asininity, from Lord Camber down to my ladys dresser, that it is difficult to form any opinion about the film as a whole.

The English dramatic critic lets himself fairly go on the defects of the 1 Sign of the Cross.” Wilson Barrett’s famous religious drama is drowned in the spectacular—the author himself is drowned in it —and Imperial Rome is drowned in it The film version has no spark of spirituality, not a gleam of true devoutness. The ancient Romans, both Christian and Pagan, talk as if their spiritual homes were speakeasies on Broadway. Their speech made one sigh for silence. Mr Charles Laughton, as Nero, plays the Fat Boy of Peckbam with an itch to make our flesh creep in his “ delicious debaucheries.” That usually fascinating brunette, Claudette Colbert, visualises Poppasa as a cheap road house vamp; whilst Fredric March swells out with all the self-importance of a bull-frog ag the proud boss prefect who changes his beliefs to suit his love. Of all the company Elissa Landi alone approaches a natural, sympathetic interpretation in the part of the Christian girl Mercia. Why the director allowed her to be called Monsieur, Murshyer, Meerceeyer, Missyer, and various other alternative renderings of a simple and beautiful. name can only be explained by the love of variety. Evidently the whole company, from the director upwards, resembled that amateur provincial Shakespearian troupe who played “As You Like It” as they liked it. *

A further step towards nationhood — New Zealand is about to mint her own silver coinage. Perhaps! Silvern though the new coinage is to be, a golden opportunity is presented of decimalising in part our New Zealand money, of easing our counting of these counters, and of doing what Britain has often been told to do but hasn’t done. A reform is easily made by dropping the half crown. A florin would then be the tenth of a pound, and the next stage towards complete decimalisation might easily follow. Of what use is the half crown? Uneasy lies the pocket that carries a half crown amid a pile of florins. So like are these two that we look suspiciously and rudely at the change we receive, and only the delicate touch of a bank clerk or of a tram conductor can prevent a man from being touched for the elusive Tenfingered man was meant to count in tens. The barefooted Celts of olden times, having fingers and. toes well in view, evolved their “ score system ” which has left it’s footprints in the old English “three score years and ten." The Teutonic - family, with a nice arithmetical sense, ignored such physiological aids, and clung to a duodecimal method. For 12 is supremely convenient for subdivision; it divides without remainder by 2,3, 4,6, whereas 10 divides only by 2 and 5. Even the simple-minded stockbroker makes free use of percentages, lover of fractions though he be. Let the unnecessary half crown go the way of the'groat and the farthing. And it may be- I —who knows?- —that its place will he taken, in value and in purchasing power, by the two-shilling piece. Dear “ Civis,”—-Could you refresh a poor memory? Dean Inge, in his “ More Lay Thoughts,” refers to the incident when Bishop Wilberforce made fun of Darwinism in the presence of Huxley, and paid the penalty. If it is not too lengthy, would you mind reproducing the episode, or giving the gist of it? ■ —l am, etc., ■ Enquirer. The famous episode in question is now less of scientific interest than of psychological—like the later contest between Fundamentalists and Evolutionists at Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. Pieced together from various sources, the English story is not one that can be told within the limits of one Passing Note. Darwin’s “ Origin of Species ” appeared in 1859, and the Church was in its most militant mood. Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, the Bryan of the English controversy, attacked Darwin in the Quarterly Review, with the assistance of Professor Owen. At a meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1800, a paper read, by Dr Draper brought the controversy at once into the forefront. In an early discussion Huxley jumped to liis feet and flatly contradicted Professor Owen, who had stated that the brain of a gorilla was less like the brain of a man than it was like the brain of the very lowest quadrumana. On the last day of the meeting the bishop was to take* part in the debate. The excitement was intense, for a battle royal was expected. A solid phalanx of clergy occupied the middle of the hall, which held from 700 to 1000 people. Every inch of space was occupied. Ladies sat on the window ledges, ready with handkerchiefs to wave the bishop on.

The Bishop entered late, pushing his way through the dense crowd to his place on the platform. On the other side of the platform sat Huxley, pale-cheeked, black-haired, with an ominous quiver on his lips. Wilberforce spoke for fully half an hour “with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness” —says a report. He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely, but all in dulcet tones, a persuasive manner, and in well-turned periods. In a slight scoffing tone he assured them that there was nothing in the idea ot evolution; rock-pigeons were now what rock-pigeons had always been. He then turned to Huxley and used words which he must in after years have wished he had left unsaid: I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is about to demolish me when I have sat down, as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claims his descent? At this foolish question, Huxley turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, and clapping his knee, said, “ The Lord hath delivered him into my hand.” When called upon

to reply he rose, stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, and gave his crushing reply: I have asserted —and I repeat that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man —a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not.. content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

A witness of the scene describes the effect of Huxley’s reply:— A gasp and shudder ran through the room, the scientists were Uneasy, the orthodox were furious, the bishop wearing that provoking smile which once impelled Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, to an unparliamcnt- , ary quotation from Hamlet. As we passed through the crowd we- felt that we were expected to say, “How abominably the bishop was treated,” or to be considered outcasts and detestable. But at the soiree given that evening by Dr Daubeny another tone prevailed. Huxley was congratulated on all sides. The battle was intellectual, and to picture it as one between Faith and Science is to distort its character. There was no more truly religious man than Thomas Henry Huxley, though for him all dogmas and creeds and articles were lost in the words of the Hebrew prophet. “ What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? ” ,

It was at the same) place, at the Oxford Diocesan Conference of 1804, that Disraeli, with a politician’s tact and aptness, gave his view of the controversy: “ The question is this: ‘la man an ape or an angel?’ I, my lord, am on the side of the angels.” Dear " Civis,” —Could you tell me the origin of the expression “There but for the grace of God go I? ” I have a vague recollection of seeing it attributed to John Bunyan.—l am, etc.. Reader.

The words have been attributed to several men, of whom John Bunyan is one. The most authenticated opinion attributes them to John Bradford, the Protestant martyr, who was burned at Smithfield in 1555. The story is that once, on seeing some criminals being taken to execution, he exclaimed, “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.” Investigation of the source of many household phrases reveals many surprises. The Biblical turn which many such phrases have taken is itself the cause of much confusion. “ Cleanliness is next to godliness,” scriptural in its lofty sentiment, comes really from a sermon of John Wesley. And its cruel and caustic corollary “The great Unwashed,” was first used by Chancellor Lord Brougham. By their Shakespearian ring many phrases are placed wrongly to the credit of Shakespeare. It is to Colly Cibber’s “Richard III,” not Shakespeare’s, that we owe “ Off with his head! So much for Buckingham,” and “ Conscience avaunt! Richard’s himself again.” Richard Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin, first said, “ Honesty is the best policy.” And he qualified it with the correction, “ But he who 1 acts on this principle is not an honest man.” Sterne in his “ Sentimental Journey” (1708) wrote “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.” But the world of proverbs—English and foreign—had already expressed, long long before him, much the same sentiment in much the same way. An old English proverb has “ To a close-shorn sheep God gives wind to measure.” And early French had “ A brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent.” The now forgotten Susannah Centlivre, who married Queen Anne’s chef, is responsible for that apt name of a paragon, “The real Simon Pure.” And it was Thomas Morton (1797-1836) who first introduced to us Mrs Grundy in his “ Speed the Plough ”: Always ding-donging Dame Grundy into my ears. What will Mrs Grundy say? Or what will Mrs Grundy think? Cms.