REFLECTIONS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16722, 24 April 1920, Page 5

REFLECTIONS.

(By “John Doo.”)

ART AND RELIGION. , MAGGIE AND SMOKING. PROFITS AND POLITICS.

11l a country hardly 80 years old we cannot expect either to have many examples of the tine arts or to have produced artists ourselves; pictures worth looking at are at present almost entirely confined to the larger cities. It is a pity tile lino Joan collection recently at Wanganui was not taken to other toiv-ns. However, X recently had Hie opportunity ol seeing examples of the work of one of the great Spanish artists and havo teen reading an interesting 1 book, "Stories of the Spanish Artists," by Sir W. Stirlin.g-Maxwell. On reading such a hook and looking at the reproductions of what these uld Masters painted, one realises the stern check Kept on them Ijy the Church, whieli also was the best patron of many of then). In many of them, to quote the hook referred to, there is "a grave and almost brutal insistence upon the more facts of things which seemed so terribly important'’; the Agony of Christ stated frankly with an almost unbearable insistence: the painter "illustrates his subject without any freedom, since in a picture of the Crucifixion, for instance, there must bo four nails, not three, the cross must be just so high, so broad, made of flat wood, nut round.” Mark Twain, in I think his "Innocents Abroad,” notices- this subjection to a set typo and form, whore lie says of the Old Masters in picture galleries; "My researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in vain. 1 have striven hard to learn. I have had some success. . . . When 1 see a monk going about with a a Hon and looking tranquilly up to heaven, I know that that is St. Mark. When I see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven and trying to think of a word, I know that that is St. Matthew. When 1 see a monk skiing on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a hum.in skid! beside him and without any other baggage, I know that that is St, Jerome.” And with a little more research one fools lie might have recognised tho painters from the type of martyrdom or other unpleasantness they paiuied. ilibeni, I think, was an expert in liieso things, a "Flaying of frit. Bartholomew,” or ".Martyrdom of St. Sehastir.il,” with arrows sticking in and through him everywhere, any human being, if a saint, in most hideous pain is what he liked to paint. I suppose painting, unlike poetry, has given greater material rewards and still does to the artist than any other of the arts. Kings, cardinals, popes, the earthly great, have always patronised artists, for they could paint portraits of themselves, or their wives, or mistresses, or thoir groat deoils of valour, or adorn their monasteries, churches, or palaces. But very few great ones write poetry that a musician can set to music, or that anyone cores to read. In our day successful painters such ns i.eighton, Sargent, Basic, Constant, must make money beyond the dreams of Shelley or Keats, or what Swinburne, or their contemporaries Kobort Bridges, Thomas Hardy, Mrs. Meynell—perhaps tiio truest poet of them all—John Masefield, Alfred Noyes, or William Watson can hope to earn by their poetry. 1 hope you havo a copy of Pepys' Diary. Tito Globe edition is very handy ; tho price used to bo 3s Gd net and is now i think only 6s in this country. It is amusing to turn to tho Diary at whatever day it may happen to bo and to see what Pepys was thou doing: On April 17, for instance, I find Pepys in 1604 says: "17th (Lord’s Day). Lip and 1 put cm my best cloth black suit and my velvet cloak, and with my wife in her best laced coat to church, whore wo have not boon these nine or ten weeks. A young simple follow did preach; slept soundly all the sermon. Our parson, Mr. Mills, his own mistake m reading of the service was very remarkable, that instead of saying

“Wo beseach Thee to preserve to our use the kindly fruit of tho earth,” he cries “Preserve to us our gracious Queen Katherine.” Wo find ourselves c;<remely interested in Pepys, because he is engrossed, not 'by himself as are bo many diarists, but in anything and everything that turns up: Politics, Court gossip, a scientific experiment, a pretty woman (he was very partial to pretty brunettes!), a musical party, and especially tho play-house. No trivial detail is too little to bo jotted down; no important event is passed over. On January 23, 1660, ho takes his wife and her maid to sec “The Humourous .Lieutenant,” a , silly play, I think. ; : . Hero in a box above wc spied Mrs. Pierce, and going out they brought to ns Nolly, a most pretty 'woman, who acted the great part of Celia to-day very fine. I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a inighty pretty soul she is. . . . And so away thence, ’pleased with this sight, and specie llv kissing of Noll.” Noll was flic famous Noll Gwyn, the orange girl favourite of the King's later on. His wife —“the wretch” as ho generally terms her—“occasionally worries him.” “24th (April. 1609). Mr. Shores dining with ns; and my wife, which troubled me, mighty careful to have a handsome dinner for him; but yet I see no reason to bo troubled’ at it, he being a very civil and worthy man, I think; but only it do sebui to imply some little neglect'of me.” Isn’t that just like a husband? And only tile day before Mr. Shores bad helped Pepys “to.choose a summer suit of coloured camlet, coat and breeches, and a flowered tabby coat verv- rich.” Men could show themselves off in those days! Women nowadays have certain—well let me say habits—which they did not have in Pepys’ time. ' ( Smoking for instance. “The incrcased rouse motion of tobacco,” says | t!ie British Chancellor of the Exchequer, | “is unprecedented and due, inter alia, to greater smoking by women,” There is, 1 believe, no argument or reason against smoking by women that cannot apply equally to men, as in the matter of votes for women: Tho only really valid argument from a man’s point of view to tho woman’s “Well, why shouldn't I smoke? you do,” is simply “Because you are a woman.” Smoking is ns yet more common amongst women in Britain than in New Zealand—it is one of the few things in which wo don’t lead the world!—but a large number of women do smoke. Is there any connection between the unquiet articles about the decreasing marriage-rate and women who smoke? -Mas indeed the wheel come full circle since the day of Kipling’s “Maggie,” when the man had to choose between tho girl and smoking? ‘A million surplus Maggies are ready to bear the yoke, A woman’s only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoko!” To-day it may ho man is deciding between celibacy and matrimony plus a smoking wife in favour of tho former. With his usual selfishness ho is. quite willing and rather likes to see a woman smoko a cigarette with him—provided it isn’t ids wife or sister or his, cousin or his aunt, but someone elso’s. Anyway smoking in a woman is preferable to the foul language only too commonly used by men, which magistrates by heavy tines and occasionally by imprisonment arc trying to stop. Swearing, even on the golf links,.is one tiling; what brings a man into the grasp of tho .police is quite another thing. .“The Man’s Story,” by H. B. Somerville (Hutchinson and Co.: Avery, New Plymouth). For some time the motordriver was a favourite hero in this class of fiction—a. lineal literary descendant of Onida’s lifeguardsmen. Recently tho airman has taken his place and at present is in high favour—who can tell who tho next favourite will be? And another sign of the times is to bo noticed in certain novels I have read recently, dealing with the case of tho son or less commonly the daughter of the.wealthy “self-made” man. Stephen M'Kenna’s “Midas and Son,” is an attempt to portray this position. Ho is of course far bettor educated than his profiteering father, but blood genoially proves to be thicker—and nastier —than education and environment. There must bo a good many sons of the newly rich in England who have difficult social problems in their lives—the problem of the permanent as opposed to tho “temporary gentleman” of the war. He is even found in this country, where the only social scale, if there is one, is marked tho moit incrcasjligly in ,£.s,d.. as education and manners tend to bo of less importance. The neighbouring, election campaign is a cheering exhibition of the full flower of democracy and of democratic politics, when the candidates have to come and bawl their virtues in flic market place, trying to convince the hesitating elector that “Codlin’s your friend, not Short.” One might ho pardoned for thinking that no one wanted to hear any more of the recent petition and court proceedings, even from the respondent to the petition, while the other side show up glaringly one of the worst features of our actual political systems of doles, by harping on local votes for public works, and by treating them as outward and visible signs of favours to come, inferring that the fact of the local member being in the Cabinet may have something to do with the fact of tho vote being given at all; the actual legitimate needs of the district arc ignored. Do we really get the Parliament we deserve? Are wo- really as bad as all that? A reader of this column inveighs against the Public Trust Office and its delays and asks “John Doe” to call attention to it. Well, really I sometimes think this column has vagaries enough, but if 1 am to use it to call attention to shortcomings in our Publico Service, I fear the whole issue of this paper would not contain the tilings that should he written. My informant, who seems to bo a solicitor, perhaps thinks my motto is “humani nihil a me alienum”—yes, but there is little “humane” about the Public Trust Office. Tho existence of that office shows a presumptive decline in private trust. Not so long ago it used not to be difficult to find a friend who would be ready and willing to act as trustee for another man when tho latter was dead, and would not expect pecuniary payment either for so doing—“a trustee may not benefit from Ids trust” was and is a first principle of private trust law. And the difficulty of finding trustees willing to act led to the formation of that contradiction in terms, a public trustee. “One of the duties of a trustee,” said a wise judge of the Supreme Court in England, “is to commit judicious breaches of trust.” This is just what the Public Trustee won’t do. With an enormous office, overworked in part.and understaffed, it is impossible for the Public Trustee to be x trustee in any personal sense. The public Ins wards, those who are supnosed to trust in him, usually ‘ don’t mow his name. In fact the only/trust’

is the surety that at any rate your money is safe, however much your business may bo delayed as compared with a private trust and private solicitor, and however dear you may pay for that security. The Public Trust—far from not making a-profit out of its trust, an offence sternly discouraged and punished by the Courts of Equity in cases of private individuals —makes a sound and increasing profit, so much so that it might obviate the delays my reader complains of (except insofar, as they are inseparable from Government democratic offices) by increasing its responsible officials and paying bettor salaries to better men. The Public Trust Office probably deprives solicitors of more work than any other agency or any simplification of law has done or will do.