Things From Empire City

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIV, Issue VIII, 23 February 1895, Page 182

Things From Empire City

BY TK6 RUTOGRRTIG IDGGR-

The Seamy Side of Stage Life.

The recent revelations of how theatrical companies are conducted have, unfortunately for the profession, attracted considerable attention. 11 is useless for men to attempt to raise the

standard of the stage by stirringlecturesandeloquent speeches when all the world is made aware of the laxity of morals in business matters. Mr Bantley has many friends, and the reports of the trials were almost as unpleasant reading for them as they must have been for Mr Bsntley himself. And this is saying a good deal, for the actor has announced his intention of giving up the stage and devoting himself entirely to lecturing. And in this Mr Bentley is certainly very successful. His monologue on • Our Best Friends ’is really as good as anything of Charles Clark’s. As a lecturer he indeed ought—if he can secure a good manager —to rival Charles Clark.

•Our Best Friends.’

But our best friends, who are they really? Shakespeare and Milton, Robert Burns, even the New Zealand Times are all well enough

in their way, but none of these will stand firmly by a man in the hour of trouble and adversity—and that is precisely the hour during which man wants the warm grasp of the hand of a fellow-creature. If one is in good position, in prosperous circumstances, and has plenty of money, it will take him some time to enumerate all the friends he has, or can have. But he only finds out who * the best ’of these are when some shipwreck strands him on the desolate beach of this world, and when he looks round for these friends then, he may perhaps find one or two of them ; the probability is that he won’t see a solitary soul about him except, maybe, his wife, who doesn’t at all count—being part of himself; and perhaps some little children, who don’t know, and can’t understand, what calamity is. In the course of some thirty years of colonial life I have more than once looked round for my 'best friend,’ but I couldn't discover him nohow. Shakespeare wasn’t a penn’orth of use when one hadn’t half-a-crown in one’s pocket, and was 600 miles in the interior of Australia. The best friend, and the most reliable in the time of need, is one’s purse—if there be anything in it. If there be little or nothing in it, the case is often a very hopeless one. Still it is not always so; and I can think with warm emotion of countless kindnesses which I have known extended to people who were bent down like a sapling in a storm, under wreckage of fortune, or under scandal (which is worse than any wreckage), or under grief of various kinds —of which there is plenty in the world. And isn’t it a somewhat curious thing that our 'best friends’ in such cases, often turn out to be persons in no way allied to us in kinship—in no way related to us at all ? I remember a Rev. James Taylor, minister of the Baptist Church in Collinsstreet, Melbourne. He was a most eloquent man; quite sixty years of age and grey—and yet neither his cloth, nor bis eloquence, nor his years, prevented him from getting into some trouble about a woman. I forget now, exactly, the facts—if I remembered them I would not state them. But there was, of course, an awful howl : the scandal mills of Melbourne were set grinding ; and they ground the Rev. James Taylor and the lady, until nothing of either, not a shred worth picking up was left I The lady died—probably that was about the wisest thing she could have done. But the Reverend gentleman didn’t die. He grew from grey to white—and shrank up and turned yellow like a withered leaf. Often and often have I seen him, doubled up ; sitting in a corner of a scantily furnished room—his eloquence was quite gone now ; he hadn't a word to throw to a dog ! What he felt most of all was the desertion from him, in his trouble, of his * best friends.’ One or two men, but not a single woman, remained of all those countless people who for decades of Sundays had hung upon his words I Sir Charles Dilke was another prominent man who got into trouble—also about a woman : it seems to me that there isn't any trouble worth calling trouble at all, unless a woman is in it. Well, there was Sir Charles Dilke in the House of Commons : He sat on

a bench white as a ghost, and qnite as lonely—his best friends gave him a wide berth immediately. I always thought a great deal of the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain for the courageous and kindly and humane way in which he walked up to Dilke, sat down beside him, and carried on a friendly conversation with him for half an hour in the face of the whole House of Commons. There was true bravery in that generous action—and Chamberlain didn’t in the smallest way identify himself with wrong, or at all compromise himself by sticking to his friend, just at the moment when he ought to stick by him. Women, however, fare even worse than men do, when they get into scrapes. They haven’t trot any best friends, they haven’t got any friends at all, then. The most merciless critics women have are women ; the best friends men have, when disaster overtakes them, are generally women.

A Pleasant Public Service Picnic.

A number of Civil servants chartered the s.s. Duco on Saturday for a Lowry Bay picnic. The vessel was crowded with a very nice lot of people. I don’t remember enjoying a picnic so much for a long time; and this

perhaps was because I had an idea that it was almost hopeless to expect the Civil servant—who always, almost, is at freezing point—to thaw. I went to the picnic as a matter of social duty; and fully expected rigidity and frigidity. However, there wasn’t either the one or the other. Everybody was quite affable and agreeable ; and as the day was also delightful, and the vessel a smart and a swift one, with a most obliging captain and crew, we spent a very pleasant afternoon. There were people aboard from quite distant places. I had myself some Sydney children with me : there were ladies from Napier, from Auckland, from the South Island, and Civil servants from every flat of the huge edifice known as the Government Buildings. Lowry Bay is an exceedingly pretty spot: we had the use of the grounds surrounding the house of Mr H. D. Bell, M.H.R., and close by is the residence which some of the Governor’s family at present occupy. The trip home in the moonlight was especially enjoyable. One could sincerely wish that these reunions, and reunions such as these, were more frequent. There are gentlemen in the Government Buildings, who, I believe, have been going up and down the same staircases together for ten and even twenty years. And yet they hardly know each other—don’t often speak to each other. A trip or two in the Duco, and a picnic now and then, would make all these people better known to each other; and I think the better and the more people are really known, the more we think of them—and justly so. Human nature isn’t a bad sort of thing on the whole, at all, even when it gets tied up with red tape; and there is no reason at all why a man who is always calling himself • your most obedient servant ’ should, on that account, either give himself airs, or suppose he was some poor insignificant being.

Wellington City.

A good many Wellington citizens do not like Wellington. Some of the main streets are narrow, and, in wet weather muddy—so

muddy that one wonders where the great quantity of mud comes from. The residences, in many cases, are difficult of access; I myself climb about 150 steep steps, sometimes ten times a day to reach my abode. Rents are high, and the city itself has some other disadvantages. But the harbonr is pretty and the harbour arrangements of the Harbour Board are really excellent; while the country round abont Wellington is often picturesque and generally pleasant. The climate is healthy but disagreeable. Wind, dust, and

rain are frequent troubles, and fine weather for a whole consecutive week is an infrequent occurrence. Despite all disparagements and some disadvantage, the Empire City can hold its own with any other New Zealand town, and is, on the whole, more prosperous than any one other of them. The people are orderly ; there is very little larrikinism, and almost an entire absence of rudeness or coarseness at large public assemblies, such as theatres and election meetings. If it be right to speak of a place as one finds it, then it is right to say that Wellington isn’t a bad place at all to reside in.

Wellington People.

To speak of a man as one finds him is an old injunction—but this isn’t so simple a motto as it looks on the face of it—highly proper although it may be. For a man isn’t always the same man. Reverse of fortune, drink, and a variety of other calamities alter men’s natures totally—and this, frequently, in a very short space of time. A community also, as well as a place, changes its nature utterly in the course, even, of a few years. At one time the best people perhaps on the face of this globe were to be found at Ballarat. They arn’t there now. Somewhere in the year 1872 I was at Bendigo. Going home from (newspaper) work at midnight I happened to meet a poor woman coming into the city with a string of ragged children after her. She and they had tramped many long miles without a shilling. I forget her exact story now ; but at all events it was so pitiful, or so desperate, that I went back to the office and drew attention to her case—stating where the people were to be found—in a short paragraph. Next morning there was a regular procession of Bendigo ladies carrying baskets with ample supplies for the destitute family ; at that time no one would tolerate poverty, even one case of poverty in Bendigo. I am afraid there are many poor and very poor Bendigodians now ! The very pick of the population of these islands, I think, was to be found on the WestCoastsome years ago. Bad times, changes in circumstances for the worse, have completely altered the character of many and many a good West Coast man since I Who can be open-hearted and generous when the world seems determined to go against one, and even to rain one ? And jnst as there are Wellington citizens who do not like Wellington, so there are Wellington citizens who do not like Wellington people. They say they are unsocial —and this is, to some extent, true. But the unsociability is simply a habit, and does not rise from any moroseness or want of kindness. If one were to speak of the Wellington people as one found them, there could really—speaking generally, of coarse—be little said except in their favour. In the musical world of Wellington there may be two or three cads—there are such cads in all the musical firmaments. But the citizens are really kind people ; and I know of no place in which the public institutions, the charitable institutions especially, are so numerons and so well managed.