Setting Back the Clock

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 520, 24 November 1928, Page 23

Setting Back the Clock

Authors State the Period in Which They Would Have Chosen to Live

a, HE following questions j were recently put to some leading authors: I (1) If you could set | t\me back indefinitely, what century and country would you visit? (2) Why? Below are their answers. Mr. G. K. Chesterton (1) England in the early 13th century. (2) Because I am English and a Catholic. Mr. Conal O’Riordan (1) I would not willingly spend an hour in any previous century. (2) Because the evils of the present century are sufficient for me, while I believe them to be less than those of any previous century. Mr. Warwick Deeping (1) Britain —about A.D. 400 to 450. (2) Because the Roman occupation of this island has always fascinated me. I should like to have seen how deeply Rome had penetrated, what was left when she withdrew, and what happened during the Saxon invasion. Mr. Halliweli Sutcliffe I would return to England in the last decades of the 19th century, because they were on the grand scale of civilisation. Poets, divines, painters were true enthusiasts. their vision clear and starry. Commerce was an imaginative venture, bold and unsordid. English gardens were truly naunts of ancient peace where dreams were born that, translated into vigorous poetry and prose, fed the world with gallant books. Horses—of all animal people, except dogs, the most sensitive, alert and lovable —were common on our roads, and on the grazing margins that were not then defiled by tar. Anglers roved happily up the banks of unpolluted streams. Above all, as I have said, it was an age prodigal of great men, especially in all the Arts —men and women whose whole beings were so saturated with the spirit of Art that they wasted no energy on the craft of self-advertisement. Truly a heroic age. Mr. lan Hay I should be quite content to find myself in England in the time of Queen

Victoria’s second jubilee. There was no more peaceful or prosperous country in the world than England in those days, and no more delightful city than London in the ’nineties. There were no motors, no jazz bands, and no in-come-tax to speak of —and I was twenty-one! Mr. Compton Mackenzie I would without doubt visit the island of Crete in the Minoan age, because we know enough about that period to be enchanted, but not enough to avoid being baffled by the problems of that immense civilisation. I regret that I cannot give a more exact date, but the centuries shrink into years at that distance of time. Mr. R. H, Mottram (1) I would not visit any country but this in any century but our own. (2) Because I should feel that I was “funking” the crucial and sinister problems we have to solve. Because we know the worst, as no other people anywhere have ever known it. Because, with us, now, humanity cannot be lightly pushed beyond a certain point. Mrs. Russell Barrington I would visit the 19th century, which was my own because I am proud of having been a contemporary of the glaxy of great philanthropists, great statesmen, great poets, great artists, great novelists, great singers, great actors, of whom England can boast during the eighteen hundreds. G. B. Stern I should like to have lived in prewar Vienna, valse-time -Vienna, about the Biedemeyer period. For Vienna alone of all the Imperial cities in the past possessed that most elusive, most fugitive, but most purely charming quality of which we seem to have lost the secret: Vienna was gay; Vienna had stimmung—the word cannot be translated. The nearest phrase that approximates to its meaning is “mood of infectious gaiety.” and, as that gifted artist Mr. Hoppe remarked the other day, by the time you have said all that, the stimmung has flown! Miss Marjorie Bowen (1) Holland—any year from 1672 to 1688. (2) Because I have such a strong interest in that period and in the characters living then, particularly William of Orange. I would have liked to live at The Hague and have been a soldier in any of the campaigns of 1672-79. Mr. Frank Swinnerton Tf I could set time back indefinitely.

and could carry with me the advantages of modern knowledge, I should like—(lj To watch the emergence of mankind from barbarism; an ancient civilised stp‘e. such as that of the Egyptians; t .eece in the time of Socrates; i- destine in the time of

Christ: Europe generally at the time of the Reformation; Italy at the time of the Renaissance; England in the days of Elizabeth and Oliyer Cromwell; France at the time of the first Revolution; England again in the midnineteenth century. (2) In order to discover what really happened in those days. Mr. Ralph Straus 1 would like to wander about any times between 1660 and 1760. I should like to play tennis with Charles 11, whom I should probably beat, and Sir Charles Sedley, who might beat me. I should like to dine with Dean Swift (before ho became deaf) and drink a dish of tea with Dr. Johnson. Most of all, I should enjoy pottering about in London and Westminster, finding out my various mistakes in eighteenth century topography. .And when I had had enough of it, I would hurry back to 1928 and enjoy a hot bath. I think I should want it. Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick I suppose 1 should choose to see Ancient Rome when Horace walked there I was often in the Forum during the spring of last year, and no one can be there without wishing to reconstruct it and see it in its old splendour. Mrs. Edith Nepean If the clock were put back? But why should I wish to put the clock back? I am too healthy, possibly too young, to be worried by the anaemic, unsatisfied yearning of psychoanalysis! This is an age of vitality, swift progression: marvels in wireless, in avitaion, in sound pictures, and in television. To-day fills all my needs. My motto is: Go forward!