Mr. Hector Bolitho And The Older People He Has Met

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18865, 16 November 1935, Page 9

Mr. Hector Bolitho And The Older People He Has Met

ONE of the best atitobiographical books lately is Mr. Hector Bolitho's "Older People." After describing his youthful days in i\ T ew Zealand, he .writes of his life in Great Britain, and of the "older people" and others .he has met in the course of his literary career —in which as a biographer he has made his mark. His sketch of the late Canon Daltori, of Windsor, is one of the best features of the volume; indeed, his glimpse of Windsor and its life is as moving as it is readable. "Even those of us," Mr. Bolitho writes, ''who were young walked about the castle with a mute upon our tongues, for we were intimidated by the history of a thousand years. . . . All Down the Tears. "The thousand years tilled the castle with spectres; they pressed in on one almost, so that ' one was conscious of their shape and breath and movement. There had been so much Jife in the 10 centuries that one's own existence was a mere joke. . . . "The Confessor, who 'lisped his prayers and cured the halt and blind'; the Norman Conqueror, hunting in the great park where the Saxon Kings had hunted before him, and John returning from. Eunnymedo. gnashing his teeth, rolling his eyes and gnashing sticks and straws as he 'gave vent to rage and curses against the Charter.' Chaucer, the 'father of English poetry,' .walked in the Chapter garden when he was Clerk of Works at St. George's, and Shakespeare went to Windsor to write 'The Merry Wives' for the Queen. His initials are scratched upon a wall in the Chapel. "It was from a window in his prison at Windsor that King James of Scotland first looked down and saw Joan Beaufort walking in the garden below. " 'And therewith cast J down mine eye again, Where .1. saw walking under the tower, Full secretly, new comyn her In plain The fairest, and the freshest youn;.; flower That e'er I saw, methnnglil, before that hour; For which sudden abate, anon did start. The blood of al! my body to my heart.' "Pepys had listened to the music in St. George's arid Walpole had written some of his letters to Horace Mann from his house in the cloisters. The procession was always too magnificent for me to dare to raise my voice or write anything of my own.'

The Birth, of a Sonata. Mr. Bolitho has made many friends, and his story of how Sir Edward Elgar persuated him to play "Home. Sweet Home," on the piano with hit nose—lie had confessed his ability in this direction—is entertaining, but of Elgar himself he writes:— "We were talking .of the Second Movement of the Violin and Piano Sonata and Sir Edward told us howlie came to write it. One day he was out fishing from the bank of a river, when he saw millions of dragon flies rise out of the water, making the air alive with color and sound. The place where he sat was lonely, and he made quick notes which afterwards grow into the second movement of the sonata. Pride over the day might have shaken Sir Edward's humility, but he came down from the pedestal upon which we had placed him and ho talked as a lad at the beginning of his life, more than as a master. living in the glow of fame and recognition. He talked of his beginning; of his first playing in an orchestra, and then .of his childhood love for the river bank, upon whicsh his mother would find him 'trying,' he told her, 'to understand the sounds of Nature.' " The Peer and His Gardener. "I would forget many sermons I have heard," Mr. Bolitho says later, "to remember one story told t.o me of Lord Inchcape by his forester in Scotland. The man was walking on the fringe of. a plantation of trees as Lord Inchcape passed iu his ear, having returned from a journey to India. He stopped the car and called the man over to him. 'I have been driving ab.out for some time, to see all the changes,' he said. 'You have made the place very beautiful. ... It is very kind of you.' " VI believe there is something more important than fashion or taste in the public wish to read more and more biographies," says Mr. Hector Bolitho, and as he is a biographer of note his views are worthy of consideration.

Towards the end of his book Mr. Hector Bolitho writes of his return to New Zealand after nn absence of some years. He had looked forward wistfully to seeing the old things, but in his absence the world had progressed in many directions, and like others who had gone 'back to old haunts, found it impossible' to put the clock back ami recapture all the intangible things of .one's memory. Mr. Bolitho does not wish his book to he considered mere "reminiscences" — he is right—it is a commentary on life.