CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 417, 27 July 1928, Page 14

CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS

BOOKS REVIEWED

A BRILLIANT AUTOBIOGRAPHY A SMALL boy, aged eight, unable to speak a word of English, left Copenhagen with his parents in the year 1875 for Napier, in New Zealand, then chiefly noted in Denmark for the activities of the Hau-Haus. Years later he returned to, Hawke’s Bay to take his seat, for the first time, as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Oscar Thorwald Johann Alpers was that Danish lad, destined to play so romantic a role in life. His memoirs, published posthumously under the title “Cheerful Yesterdays,” have just been issued. It was preordained that “0.T.J.,” as he was known to hundreds of his friends, should occupy the centre of the stage —and with distinction. Those who knew him in the heydey of his success as a leader at the Bar know what charm of manner he possessed, what powers of oratory and what an irrepressible sense of humour. No other banister could hope to say such bril-liantly-daring things to the sacrosanct occupant of the Bench and emerge scathless, not infrequently with a chill judicial smile as his reward. Alpers was a law unto himself in these things. When the gallant little Danish family arrived at Napier, Alpers p&re decided that his son shou.d learn English, not from text-books, but from association with other boys. Soon the youngster was able to inform an admiring family that “dat lamb haf ver-r-i fine vool.” Four years later he was a pupil-teacher in a State school! Subsequently he became, in turn, a tradesman’s clerk, a university lecturer, a journalist and a schoolteacher. As a university student he leaned toward the Humanities. The study of mathematics was anathema to him. “I cannot but think,” he writes, “that in the next generation mathematics will rank among the things that are ‘simply not done’ by cultivated people: we shall by that

time have invented perfect machines for doing it instead.” At the conclusion of his course at Canterbury College he occupied, temporarily, the Chair of English. In his class were the present Attorney-General, Sir Apirana Ngata, Sir William Marris (administrator and scholar), and Sir Ernest Rutherford—all sitting at the feet of a man who, some years previously, had known no word of English! At the age of 16 the future judge brought into being the Alpers’ Night School for Working Men, teaching everything from polite letter-writing to German. He had but one pupil for

German, and by keeping six lessons ahead of him in Cassell’s “Self Educator” was able to take tbe fees with a clear conscience. “At the end of it,” he writes, “my pupil knew quite a good bit of German, and I knew more—six exercises more, to be exact.” Mr. Alpers’s first appearance as a working journalist was made on the Christchurch “Press.” He describes amusingly his particular bete noire —the “genteel” proot-reader who, in the absence of the leader-writer, will emasculate the most virile piece of prose:—

In the course of a controversial leader I had occasion to refer, not without point, I hope, to the famous apology of the midshipman who had told the bo’sun he w-asn’t fit “to carry guts to a hear.” Next morning, to my horror, I saw that “offal” had been substituted for “guts." The genteel proof-reader had adapted Captain Marryat’s breezy story to the vocabulary of the self-respecting nursemaid.

Throughout his life Mr. Alpers maintained an unflagging interest in the theatre. Himself a keen amateur actor —he would have made an excellent professional one—he was friendly with most of the great players of other days who visited New Zealand—J. L. Toole (“the most lovable 'of them all”), Irene Vanbrugh (in her teens), Charles Warner and Genevieve Ward, to name but four. He recounts a good anecdote of the irrepressible Mr. Toole. Seeing a postcard of two Maori girls standing naked from the waist up, in a hot pool, Toole had himself photographed in like fashion and superimposed on the postcard between the two dark beauties. The whole was then rephotographed and reprinted and sent to Sir Henry Irving and others with the inscription: “This is how I take my bath every morning in this wonderful country.” One wonders if Irving so relaxed his dignity as to raise a smile. Thousands of New Zealanders today must owe much of the knowledge of English they possess to Mr. Alpers, who taught at the Boys’ High School in Christchurch until close on his 40th year, when he decided th." the emoluments of that profession were not commensurate with the energy expended, and decided to embark on a new calling. . Back to the University he went, this time as a law student, and there followed a brilliant career of 20 years as an advocate, crowned by his appointment to the Bench. Strangely enough he had been honoured by his own country not many hours before being called to the Judiciary, and he was able to function for a whole 18 hours as his Danish Majesty’s Consul in the South Island before becoming his Britannic Majesty’s Judge! Lord Birkenhead, in a foreword, describes Mr. Justice Alpers’s career as valiaut; his book is that, too, for man’s deadliest enemy—cancer—gripped him shortly after his accession to the Bench and he set to work, in bed, to dictate to his wife this volume of memoirs—richer by far than hundreds that have been produced in older lands. Reading these pages one forgets that the man who wrote them was under sentence of death. They are so effervescent, so studded with drollery, so filled with kindly goodnature that one feels, closing the h°ok, that once again one has been listening to its author narrating, in his well-modulated voice, some of his favourite anecdotes, and that the effective removal (or dropping) of the monocle which punctuated such tales so effectively has duly emphasised the point of each. Living pages, these, and the book one that will he treasured by New Zealanders. “Cheerful Yesterdays.” John Murray, London. Butterworth and Co., Ltd., are acting as honorary distributors for the Dominion.

The Sources of Laughter It has always seemed to us that to analyse humour and to reduce a joke to a formula is rather like dissecting a butterfly with a chisel and mallet. Freud once produced such a book and it made very ponderous reading. Dr. C. W. Kimmins is the latest psychologist to enter this field of publication and in “The Springs of Laughter” he lias, it must be confessed, given a conscientious and interesting study of the sources of glee, starting with the infantile response to prods in the ribs and working up through the laughter of the small boy at the fat man in distress,. and the youth and his smack-and-tickle jests, to the appreciation of the mature mind of the subtleties of humour and wit —two very distinct things. The eariy-Victorian child, we are told, laughed less heartily than the neo-Georgian, the explanation being that the range of laughter-provoking elements has extended. Looking back on some of the Victorian institutions, we are not so sure of that. Dr. Kimmins also tells us (quite needlessly in our case) that a joke about seasickness to a man suffering from the complaint “meets with no suitable response.” An interesting case-list has been compiled to illustrate the author’s theories as to the laughter of older children and there are very readable chapters on “English and American Humour” and “The Laughter of Coloured Children.” There is a thoroughness about the book that connotes an inexhaustible patience. A praiseworthy endeavour to catalogue that which practically defies cataloguing. “The Springs of Laughter.” Methuen and Company, Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers direct. Murder . • . And Very Good Whose were “The Footsteps at the Lock?” Yes, still another mystery story, but one which will gain a large following. The author, Ronald A. Knox, can always be relied on for an interesting tale, mystery or otherwise. His delightful sense of humour, his flair for creating a good situation, and his general attention to detail will always place him far above the heads of the usual writers of the fiction in which detectives, sudden death and baffling situations play the most prominent parts. In “The Footsteps at tho Lock” Mr. Knox has excelled himself; so much so that the mystery vo ry nearly becomes a-mathematical problem. There are two cousins, Derek and Nigel, one of whom is to inherit a fortune if the other dies. One dies—-in a mysterious way. And if we tell you that both the cousins are eminently murderable, for they both are provoking and rather unsympathetic characters, you will realise

I that Mr. Knox has given the mystery | story a new turn. It certainly gave | us one, hut we may he prejudiced. I However, try him for yourselves, i “The Footsteps at the Lock.” Our I copy comes direct from the publishers, j Methuen and Co., Ltd., London. Desert Romance ; From Deauville to the Riffian ramj parts in Morocco: such is the ample stage selected by Miss Rosita Forbes ! for her latest stories of adventure and j romance. There are two tales in the j new volume —one too short and the j other not too long. Each is packed | with so many audacious adventures j that the reader cannot help but wish I for more of the same excellent enter- ! tainment. The author, as a bold exj plorer, has trekked across the desert places in North Africa, and, in addition to acquiring material for an exercise of her skill as a descriptive writer, apparently found inspiration for a lively expression of the modern woman’s rom%ntie love for a sheik. In the second tale “King’s Mate,” the

sheik happens to be an Englishman whose experience in the world war gave him a passion for conflict, so that as the mysterious Kaid for the Riffs, he was an invaluable military adviser of nomadic tribes in their guerrila campaigns against Spanish and French forces. And a wilful English girl rode into the desert. She was fortunate in her sheik, even though he made her beg for his love. In “Account Rendered,” the longer story, the core of the tale is a baffling crime mystery. It is a splendid narrative. Those who want a feast of the primitive passions of war, love and revenge, need only look for a red-and-black jacketed book with a crimson splash on a white vest. No end of thrills. “Account Rendered and Ring’s Mate,” by Rosita Forbes. Cassell and Company, Limited, London. Our copy from Whitcombe and Tombs, New Zealand.