A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3861, 13 March 1928, Page 67

A LETTER FROM HOME.

• By

Sheila Scobie Macdonald.

(Special tor the Otago Witness.) January 22. I am writing by the fire on a dreary Sunday afternoon, having resolutely drawn the curtains and shut out the view of the row of dripping red-brick houses across the dull street, also a disconsolate, robin huddled mournfully in the leafless boughs of the one and only tree that adorns the patch I call my front garden. There is no sign of a Mrs Robin, but .every morning now, when the faintest gleam of sunshine succeeds in penetrating the late January gloom, a splendid thrush, his mottled breast swelling with rapture, sings a love song to a drab little lady who hops about on the lawn unconcernedly looking for a stray worm the while? I feel so sorry for him that, his song finished, I scatter some crumbs in his neighbourhood, and try to make him understand that a human who is longing for the spring appreciates his effort.

But except for the song of my thrush, and the fact that the green of the bulbs has pushed through the cold earth, spring seems as far away as it did last November. It is difficult to believe that in two or three weeks’ time, given a few days of warm winds and bright sunshine, soldierly rows of purple, yellow, and white crocus will have sprung up in every border, starring lawns and odd patches of grass with the lusty vigour of a common weed. Wherever crocus bulbs drop they seem to bloom, and last year I even found some sprouting out from the side of my rubbish heap, minus care or attention, or even any earth to cover them.

Last Sunday I picked a tiny bunch of snowdrops in a nearby wood—a very small, raggle-taggle bunch, but more precious than orchids for all that. The dreary northern winter has its charms after all, for without it one could never revel in that first sweet stirring of the suddenly warmed earth dr appreciate the rush into life and beauty of those bare twigs and branches, which, drenched and storm-tossed, have waved so dismally before our eyes for months. The fortnightly shows of the Royal Horticultural Society are enormously popular during the winter months, and after one experience of the crowds that throng the hall, one is forced to the conclusion that though it may or may not be true that we are a nation of shopkeepers, we certainly are a nation of gardeners. The 'last show was packed with exhibits from the Scilly Islands—a perfectly marvellous sight,' since every bloom was grown out of doors, and, after all, it is still round about mid-winter. If it weren’t for the crossing, the Scillies might rival the Riviera in the eyes of those with time and money to escape from fog and gloom, but I am told that no Channel crossing ear. equal the horrors of tackling those few miles of Atlantic in a small “ flower " boat.

But those who have risked it contend that even Holland can show nothing lovelier than th e flower fields of the Scilly Isles. I remember as a girl going to Haarlem, which town is the centre of the Dutch bulb trade, and the train tak-' ing us there threaded its way between fields upon fields of tulips and hyacinths, in which labourers were picking flowers for market as unconcernedly as though they had been reaping wheat or oats, rhe air was heavy with the almost overpowering scent, and the whole flat countryside for miles around was one riot of colour. I remember, too, how cold it was, and how keen the wind that ruffled the water of the canals, sending the great wooden arms of the windmills slowly turning, and fluttering the petals of those acres of scented blossoms until the whole countryside seemed to sway and dip around one. A beautiful sight and one I feel sure I could appreciate much more now than then.

I saw next to nothing of Thomas Hardy’s funeral procession—the crowds in spite of the grey threatening day were too great—but I had the great luck to be standing beside a “ know all and everyone ” of the most pronounced type, who, as the mourners and pall bearers and invited members of the public streamed out of the Abbey, informed all and sundry who and wliat they were. Mr Baldwin and Mr Ramsay Macdonald were known to almost everyone, and I could have recognised Rudyard Kipling’s face with its square chin and shortsighted strangely intensive eyes anywhere. Bernard Shaw was there, very tall and patriarchal with his white hair arid flowing white beard. He and John Galsworthy stood out pre-eminent amongst the great literary lights, by reason of their inches and a great firmness and dignity of manner and movement. Barrie is a very small man with a big head which he tilts well back, and a wide forehead and rather kindly grey eyes. He seemed so very much older than I expected—partly, I suppose, because any published photographs are generally those taken manv years ago. I gazed at Arnold Bennett with round eves of wonder, as my loquacious neighbour put it somewhat too audibly for my comfort, “ You’d never think to look at him that he was a brainy bloke at all.” There was a buzz of comment as T. P. O’Connor came past—an old man now, but very alert, with a birdlike quickness of look which took us all in and seemed to infer that he wasn’t much impressed by üb.

He, by the way, has written a short article on his old friend Hardy, whom he considers to have been misunderstodd and

hampered in' his work by that first wife to whose memory he was so devoted. T. P.’s picture of the first Mrs Hardy is somewhat depressing. According to him—and he knew her well—she was stout, robust, self-confident, and not too sympathetic. Onoe, discussing her husband, she said:

“ Tom is very vain. When he comes to London the women increase his vanity. That is the poison. lam the antidote.” T. P. ends his article thus: ‘‘l have always remembered that conversation as being quite as tragic as any of the many tragic passages he himself wrote of the conflict between man and woman. I was so disappointed when I read that —why I don’t know—but I most assuredly was.

I dropped in at a meeting of protest against any further attempt, at altering the Prayer Book, or any question of uniting with the Church of Rome, the other day. It was a stormy meeting, for though the vast majority of the audience, as is the vast majority of the nation, was solidly against the question of reunion a small party of Anglo-Catholics continually interrupted, to hold up excessive Protestantism to ridicule, and the said interruptions were not lightly endured. However, towards the end, antagonism died down in a ripple of laughter and tumultuous applause as one old fellow in the audience got to his feet and said: “ I can’t argue. I’m just a plain spoken man as knows his own mind and the minds of a good many other folk, too. I don’t rightly remember when I last went to church, and maybe I won’t be going again, but this I do know, we don’t want any foreigner, be he Pope o’ Rome or a-i archangel from heaven, mixing his self up in our affairs. And if so be as the bishops think different, then we’ll learn th e bishops—that’s all.”’ But what no one can understand—when I say “ no one ” I mean the vast rank and file of th e community—is why with so much feeling astir over the alterations in the Prayer Book should such a moment be seized for talk of ' union with Rome. At any time such a suggestion would meet with fierce opposition, and just at present it’s putting a match to tinder. V hat a pity it all is though, and why, if union there must be, don’t the Protestant Churches unite and show a solid front. It’s a strange world. * * *

We have been enjoying a week of waltz music on the wireless, for Johann Strauss —the third of th-e namj and a nephew of Johann I—has been in London with his V lennese orchestra and innumerable waltzes. In many houses, elderly and sedate couples have been delightedly revolving night after night, to the complete contempt of the younger generation, who describe it unromantically as a “ seasick twiddling.” Shades of a past generation ! But even the young people had to admit that as music jazz wasn’t “ in it ” with the Blue Danube and its compeers. / The latest danc e tun € played ad nauseum in streets, kinemas, and at dances is a rather lilting thing called “ Souvenir, ’ and if it weren’t already ouite so hackneyed might have a long life* Anyway, it is a vast improvement on Charleston or Black Bottom music, as also is the dance the Yale Blues—which it accompanies. If you are even mildiv up-to-date at present you must achieve the Blues or else content yourself with a fox trot. Anything else simply isn’t “ done.” Not that I “do it ” one way or the other but the young things who kindly enlighten my abyssmal darkness on such, matters assure me that to dance even the most refined of Charlestons these days i s unthinkable ana quite three months behind the times

I went to a tea house-warmin" at such a wonderful little house the other Ja.l house so full of labour-saving conti iv anees that I feel sure no selfrespecting domestic .would ever consent to remain in it one day. To begin with, the kitchen had porcelain shelves, and the gas cooker, raised high above the floor, was also white. No more black metal either to be cleaned or allowed to rust, and into the bargain the cooker was fitted with a self-regulator which does marvellous eeonomiearstunts when the food within is cooked and onlv requires to be kept warm. There were “no sticky-out places,” as our hostess said, to collect dirt or grease; the kettle whistled cheerily when it boiled, and at the back door there was a built-in receptacle for t: adesmen’s goods, so that that irritating rush to the kitchen door to take in driblets of groceries, etc., was for evermore unnecessary. / The whole design of the house was on the old English cottage lines, with oak beams and block floors, and the staircase (also of oak) was completely devoid of carpet. This last is an idea that has come to stay, for in many new houses now one finds earpetless stairs and consequently considerably less dusty houses. An oak or ash staircase is a beauty in itself, and rising up from a blocked floor on which one or two small Persian rugs are laid, is most attractive. One special feature in our hostess’s bedroom and the guest room charmed me. Let into the wall on a level with the bed was a small sort of tray or drawer. On pressing a button the drawer slid out, revealing a tiny, electric kettle, teapot, two cups and saucers, a little tin of china tea, one of biscuits, and ditto of sugar. For an early eup of tea all one has to do is to see that the kettle is filled with water overnight, and in the morning sleepily press a button. Every bedroom had its porcelain builtin basin, with porcelain taps, and in a tiny cupboard under the basin a minute cleaning outfit with which to wipe down the basin after use. I y • ” '

I came home and surveyed my high, narrow, three-floored, labour-making house with concentrated gloom.