B —— J STREET FRONTS. B 1 . «•

Otago Witness, Issue 2848, 14 October 1908, Page 86

B — — J STREET FRONTS. B 1 . «•

By Jessie Mackat. f Shall I aonnet-sing you about myself? Do I live in » house you would like to see? l Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? Unlock my heart with a sonn«< key? j Invite the world, as niy betters have done, ■ t j Take notice : this building remains on view, 3 Its suites of reception, every one, "t" t Its private apartment and bedroom too. For 9 ticket apply to the Publisher. Ko: thanking the public, I must decline. A peep through my window, if folks prefer; ■But please you, no foot over threshold of mine! ; i ••••-*« f Hoity-toity! A street to explore, ii Your house the exception! "With this 1 same key r Shakespeare unlocked his heart once more!" 5 Did Shakespeare? If so, the less''Shakeis sri«a<re hel * — Browning. The' street front, as we- knW it in its free diversity, is a thing wholly of the 1 independent West. The unchanging East; * that drapes the human form in ' grey, ' ghostlike uniformity, when not as , effectually disguised in the golden trapfc pings of State, walls up her civic life in i the same blank opaqueness. And thie | ■ opaqueness is but a symbol of the serpenx tine mystery that baffles the European . mind in its dealings with Asiatics. Yet it is the Asiatic -who, hiding hie "human 9 life behinS a veil of stone, makes on the house-top and in the street a puppet- _ show of his spiritual life, by pa,g«da 1 shrine and praying wheel. The silences and fortitudes of the West are- not tho silences and fortitudes of the J£ast ; and 1 oiu> had almost thought this had been in - the mind of Lord Chesterfield when he 1 penned that humorous saying : "A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men ; I mystery is the only eecrecy of weak and cunning ones." : "Sir," said Dr Johnson, "let us take r a walk down Fleet street.*' "Courteous _ "reader," 6ay me, "let us take a walk i down Blank street, cutting Christchurch i, from belt to belt." For we boggle a - little yet, in our old-fashiefted way, at * the upstart flavour of "avenue," however linked with pioneer association. Now, as i, we fare seaward, let the spirit of Jacques, the melancholy-;- moralist of Arden. be our quids and symbolist. Here begins our * life-street, a stone-throw from the daisye starred terraces of the hospital, or the f grand and gracious expanses of th© park. •" iVie eye gathers in a picture-flash from the f School of Art-, a white thought of noble- .' ness from the Rolleston 6tatue, a dew- - bright gleair of ivied college walls. We c are in the Land of Childhood, if you 6 please, where all is green, towering, \{ grand, and old, leaving out our small c eager selves. Not long may we pace n here — only from loop to loop of the dumb dreaming river runs the child-road | sooir j the bridge is reached between the daffodil ' lerraca and the dusty city ward, where waggon, tram, and motor puff and hoot and hustle and hurtle, and every vindovf > is a shop window, full of common goods and common needments. No dew falls on this dust-thick Gideon's fleece of worldlings. For this city block, you perceive, is the battle-ground of life, it where Romance dies every day, and lives n again at sunset, like the heroes of Val- (°( ° I lialla in their heavenly tournaments. And it now that midmost battlefield gives ty way again to greenness and quiet as we it fare on. Only the greenness is broken, ')» and the quiet is the hush of memory, and J there is the muffied boom of Eternal Waters ahead. No loftiness, no wonder :a now in thes? homely frontages that line s 6 our way to the Avenue of Age ; the worst 13 of them and the best of them lie 10 pathetically open to our neighbourly h gaze. j rs And yet they are not alike, these fronts, s j though here and there, indeed, a Philistine s > ' row of replicas may look conventional [* j defiance of originality. "Conform, O r . I man !" they 6ay in duplicated brick ; — j "conform! Humanity's one unforgivable

| 6in is not to swim with the stream, nofi ito act v and think with the eacredi majority !" How stolidly thoy sit vl\ in • cheir scrawny pridf of uniformity, gable) for gable, chimney-pot for chimney-pot !' There is a dogged British prejudice in every sun-twisted board, some unlovely fetish enthroned back of every wellbarred ; and worm-eaten window-froine-, and yefc . th-ey are homes that shelter' men and; i women, now as in the past. Here is a brand-new mansion with! pointed turrets, and filigreed balcony, and j kaleidoscopic panels of tinted glass at the door, the walls tricked out in hearty red or sprightly green. A gay self-satisfac-tion sits up elf-like on. the turrets ; everything is fanciful, experimental, "end of the century."' Somewhere we have heard \ that these debonair mansions do not fight Time 'as well as the grey square Philistines of the earlier style; but let that be 1 proved by those who dwell within. 1 Here, again, is a trim bijou of a little villa with piquant bow windows thrown , out to the side, and saucy white steps. • and a "who-dare-meddle-with-me" air of ' perfect modernity over it all. And over ! It looks down a square motherly., two 5 , j storey brown' house, weather-tested, and ! ! seasoned by many a year of life and ■ ttir and solid duty within its substantial walls. 1 Far back from the road, lies A tragedy lin old white pine — a tragedy in fojur rooms , t built about the sixties, mouldering and > (leprous, jnder the curse of mildew and ■ darkness from the trees that once were { breezy shade to it. Like some paralytic ' ! peasant among his alien great-grand-I children, the lichened thing lives on, t bereft of gladness. i And still, though we pace the street five hundred times a year, it has always a- surprise for us. Some high, jealouft gate is thrown open, revealing a parterre, a portico we never noted before, like a . proud man's aeart that a lightning-flash of sorrow opens once andi never again tous. Some modest cottage, tying back behind holly and lilac, is discerned Uy a suddenly inquisitive eye r a thing like the violei lives our careless feet brush past every day till jome sunny waft in the wake of rain guides us to , their lowiy fragrances, and they ;ax© ■ entities henceforward. They are solid thoughts of men, after all, these street fionte ; not blind forms of chance". What _ a dark and straitened soul had the man who built thit forbidding and overhung duelling, with its dead windows and earCh-pointing eaves, like beetle brows eat in a frown ! What a tinging soul had he who let this octagonal bower of light into his plan ! And, truly, when we have learned to live beautifully we shall a 6 a. itatter of course build beautifully. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul! - , will be a" command prefigured in the grand homogeneous simplicity of the street fronts yet to-be.