AS AN AMERICAN NOVELIST SEES NEW ZEALAND LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20284, 19 April 1934, Page 8

AS AN AMERICAN NOVELIST SEES NEW ZEALAND LIFE.

An Amusing Picture of Our English Gentility and State School “Louts.”

By

Nelle M. Scanlan.

To see ourselves as others see us is often interesting, if a little disturbing. But to see ourselves as others imagine us is sometimes a fruitful source of entertainment. An American writer has just written a novel, in which she has taken three characters from the ends of the ' earth and brought them together in a triangular drama in Paris. One of the heroes is a New Zealander—an artist. Here are a few samples that will give you an idea of how we appear to the literary minds of the United States. Christchurch, in particular, take notice:

44 EVAN GARRETT was born in Christchurch. . . . 11 is father called himself a composer, but he was, as it happened, only a professor of music, who gave instruction in a girls’ school. He composed music suitable for military bands, marches that were an imitation of Sousa’s, and they were sometimes played when there was a parade of the City Rifles or the City Guards.” His mother had “ a wonderfully pure profile, which might have been Diana’s . . . but she had one shoulder higher than the other. . . . She was, fortunately, very well educated, that is, for a woman of her generation. She had even earned a degree. So she eked out the small income of her husband by opening a modest day school for the young children of well-to-do families. She would have preferred to reject the daughters of tradesmen.” That sets the pitch. To be English conveys some vague relation to a lord; and this class-consciousness is accentuated, apparently, in British Dominions. Poor old Pa Garrett drinks, and so disgraces the family, but what is worse. “ he would come out of a pub on the arm of a carpenter or a grocer’s assistant and be hail-fellow-well-met with him.” The small boy is ashamed of his father because these “ common workmen ” with whom he foregathered were the “ fathers of the louts ” “ Evan, with reason, hated the low-born intensely. They were his persecutors, the coarse-featured Government school scholars who wqxe designated as ‘ the louts.’ ” English Gentility? His mother, I am afraid, was at least 350 per cent English, according to American standards. “ From England came an elegance he recognised The English ladies were, most frequently, the ones who drove about the streets in high carts, and with liveried servants, grand as generals, upon the rumble seats. There was a polite insolence, which he admired, for which he had no name. The boys in college who had English families were nearly all superior like that.” And again: “Nearly every laudatory phrase employed by either Mr Garrett or his wife referred to something English in its derivation. The English spirit, the public school spirit, it isn’t cricket, and so on. . . . Mr Garrett was proud of his son’s prowess, but sighed and remarked, ‘ New Zealand Rugger isn’t what good English Rugger is. Not bad, of course, but, like the cricket, it’s not quite the same.’ ” Had she never heard of the All Blacks? “When the Volunteers paraded, Mr Garrett, in a uniform which would have graced an Admiral, directed the band.” I am afraid she is confusing them with the Elks and the Shriners. No wonder the poor boy was “ confused as to what constituted the mysterious distinction between the conduct which could be expected from a lout and what was gentlemanly.” One year an English aunt sent them out a box of bulbs. “ When Mrs Garrett opened the parcel in the garden she glowed with sentiment. ‘ Children,’ she called, 4 come,

plant your feet on English soil. There, put your feet on it,’ she said, her rapt face turned towards them * And when you do, say your own little silent prayer, that you’ll be worthy of the Mighty Ones gone on before. Shut your eyes tight, and think of all the brave and noble deeds performed for centuries by ENGLISHMEN.’” In more colloquial phrase, she would probably say: “ Here, pass me the spade, and then clean up that mess.” The Southern Cross. But we musn’t forget our Star. Being English (according to American standards), liis mother always spoke to the children in chunks ot literature. No star is ever lest that once has been! ’ Mrs Garrett quoted, in her usual undertone. ‘ And, Evan, turn your head and look! We dwellers here in the Antipodes have special constellations to watch over us! Look through the window at the stars, my dear, and see what we have flashing there. No wonder you have been inspired ; for, unlike the people in the humdrum latitudes, you have been born under the Southern Cross.’ ” His Uncle Michael had married a Maori, and her relatives all “ sat round and talked their gibberish.” Young Evan, who wants to be a painter, is put into a bank. He hated it. and one day, when he was sorting and filing away correspondence, he “ took the entire bundle of letters, approached the stove, opened the cold, clanking door, and stuffed them deep inside its metal belly, and struck a match Something was wrong with his head. That made it ache. Ilis spine felt hot. His solar plexus burned. He felt queer, warped, and stamped with failure, and crude and hideous—just like a Lout ” Not Christchurch Love-making. But his Star, the Southern Cross, stood to him. He came to London, then went to Paris, and became a painter, but, unfortunately, his early, though remote, association with the Louts, those awful Government school boys, had corrupted his language. All those fruity expressions that may be published even by a broad-minded publisher are there, but his conversation is starred and marred by rows of dots, representing much more that was quite unpublishable. These phrases did not slip in. in that easy, conversational way, with that natural fluency of the bullock driver or the drover. They broke up the rhythm of even his exotic love-making, which, I am sure, he did not learn in Christchurch, but must have been acquired in the Bohemian circles he frequented in Paris. This book was praised by an eminent English critic as giving “ a magnificent picture of New Zealand.” But we must not be too hard on the Americans, who have not seen us at home. Recently, at an oflicial New Zealand gathering in London, a well-known Englishwoman—a very distinguished Londoner she is—asked with perfect sincerity: “Have you any hospitals in New Zealand?” Oh, tut, tut!