After Dinner Gossip and Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XIX, 9 May 1903, Page 1322

After Dinner Gossip and Echoes of the Week.

Th# Enooura*ement of Art. May one make the subject of the recent art exhibition in Christchurch, and that now being held in Auckland, the text for a few remarks, which are, perhaps, worthy of the “after dinner” attention and discussion of those who have all which affects the interests and advancement of the colony and its people at heart. I refer to a greater local encouragement of art, and refer more especially to the art of painting. Surely in a colony such as this, living beneath unsullied skies, and surrounded by scenery incomparable in the world for its richness aud variety, our people should be a race where love of the beautiful, and rare appreciation of all that is exquisite in Nature and art, was the predominant national characteristic. Yet it will scarcely be contended that this is as yet the case. I’ve no doubt we all, to a certain extent, appreciate our scenic and climatic advantages; and heaven knows we boast about them proudly and loudly enough. But, with many at all events, the commercial instinct enters largely into the matter. We are proud of our geyserland, of our fern gullies, of our stupendous gorges,of our exquisite lakes and matchless fiords, but not for their beauty alone, but because we know they possess a vast commercial value, and attract visitors and residents, and therefore trade and money to our shores. There is nothing illegitimate and nothing to be ashamed of in this way of looking at the matter. It is natural enough. But at the same time it is not from such folk that great artists are torn. The appreciation of beauty for beauty’s sake is really a matter of training and heredity, and training cannot be achieved without teachers. We cannot expeet to secure a race of New Zealand artists while we offer such scant encouragement to those who follow the profession of painting, and until we have the artists who can, so to say, translate,or rather reveal,the hidden beauties of nature to our partially unseeing eyes, it is useless to hope that our generation, or those following us, will be able to fully appreciate the advantages of the land wherein we live and have our being. 4- * * A Wild Proposition. A proposition that the Government should each year vote such a sum as five thousand pounds to the encouragement of local art, and a similar amount to the ace firing of fine pictures by European artists, would, with the majority, be treated either as a joke or as a shocking attempt at wasting public funds. As a fact, not even in railways or “roads and bridges,” or any utilitarian work could the money be better and more advantageously spent. For you want not merely :i prosperous people, but a people who can enjoy their prosperity, and whose ways of enjoyment are elevated. This you can alone obtain through the educative means of cultured taste and art, and you cannot educate without masters i > teach and examples to exhibit. -1- 4' 4? Pity tho Foor Hew Zealand Artist. At present the colonial artist is absolutely without encouragement, save the negative one to become a pot-boiler. Starting out wi«.a a love for art, he quickly finds it is a starving business. He has no time for study, no means of improving himself or measuring his powers. He may work under a teacher a few years older than himself for a month or so, but since this one knows little or nothing himself, and has never had opportunity to learn, it is a case of the blind leading the blind. The pupil soon finds his master is really little more competent than himself, and, taking himself therefore for the finished article, sallies forth to take a studio, and to set up (heaven help art in New Zealand!!) for a teacher himself. A few, a very few push on and strive after improvement and truth and a knowledge of their real imperfections. For a year or two these stronger souls may put heart and time into trying to produce something worthy of their art, but as the

canvasses for which no one will pay even the remotest remunerative price accumulate, the artist sees he must either descend to pot-boiling or starve. And, with the exception of those with private means, the result is, and must be inevitable. Pot-boiling year by year, deterioration, and then of course death so far as real advance in art is concerned. If, on the other hand, Government and the municipal bodies were, year by year, in the possession of funds for the purchase of works of art of the highest standard, and were to expend such sums whenever pictures of sufficient merit came before them (and not otherwise), there would be an inducement for conscientious and ambitious artists to devote to their work that time, study and devotion by which alone excellence is secured. I trust some abler writer will take this matter up when Parliament opens. 4. 4. 4A Story of the Late Hon. W. Swanson, M.L.A. Most people are aware that the late William Swanson, of Auckland, was generous in his donations to any good cause, but few, I imagine, have any conception of the extent of his private benevolences. He wasn’t the man to talk of them himself, having an out-of-date prejudice in favour of not letting his right hand know what his left hand did. After lunch one day this week, chat in a certain smoke-room turned on “Willie,” and I asked my neighbouring smoker if he remembered any stories of the late gentlemen. We had several yarns of the old gentleman’s sense of humour, of his kindliness, and his amazing knowledge of human nature, more especially colonial and colonial political human nature. But then came this yarn, which is the only one I have time to repeat. One Sunday morning, at the club, where we often met, said the narrator, I came across Willie Swanson, and asked him to come a drive- “No, lad, go and yourself while you’re young; take a girl out,” said Swanson. “I’ve got my Sunday morning’s work to do.” “Work on a summer Sunday morning like this? Why, what’s that?” was the natural query. For answer “Willie” put his hand into his poeket, and drew therefrom a liberal handful—literally, handful—of halfsovereigns. “Those are for my pensioners,” he said. “It will take me till past two to get round.” The teller of the story followed the generous donor from humble tenement to humble tenement, till hunger and fatigue cried a halt, but with a reiterated “Go away, lad, and enjoy yourself while you’re young,” Willie Swanson continued his round. 4* 4> 4Suicide. Suicide is a matter on which most of us have thought over on occasion—suicide in the abstract, I mean, of course. And though a trifle gruesome, the subject is, and must always be, one of perennial interest. The question of the right of a man to take a life which has ceased to have any value or attraction for him, is a subject which has been very thoroughly discussed on many occasions, and 1 do not propose to reopen it here, but merely to remark that it is curious to note that not only has the law decided that suicide is a crime, but that there is an unwritten law or convention which decrees that if a man must take his life, he shall do it with as much regard for the feelings of others as possible, that he shall make no scene over the matter, but get through with it with as much secrecy and privacy as possible. Last week a poor fellow blew his brains out at a street corner in Auckland. There was the usual shock of horror and repulsion such an act must ever arouse, but added to this a feeling of absolute outrage was set up because of the thing being done in a busy thoroughfare, with people about. The morale at the bottom of this is wholesome, but, as I say, it is also curious. For, look at it from

the suicide point of view, the world has made itself so mightily unpleasant to him that he must needs be quit of it, and take the stupendous step of facing the unknown. Why should a man so desperately situated be solicitous as to the fine feelings or tender stomachs—it’s as much the latter as the former — of the community he is leaving. On the other hand, would it not be natural and understandable enough if some poor fellow driven to suicide by a succession of miseries were to revenge himself a little by making his exit as unpleasant to other folk as possible. One would reprobate such conduct, but I think some of us, at all events, could comprehend the feelings which inspired it. •fr 4- 4Lack of Originality In Suicide. Have you ever noticed, by the way, how shockingly similar one suicide is to every other. Of all human frailties and sins, this is the one where man shows least originality or inventiveness. One man takes carbolic, and for the next few months every second case of suicide reported will be by this almost incredible means, when its slowness and excruciating tortures are subject of common knowledge. Then, shooting or hanging will have its turn, or “rough on rats”—but, outside of a grim halfdozen means, not one of the hundreds of means of exit from the world, many of them practically painless —are attempted. This is unquestionably well. Deep as is the natural instinct against death, even when life is intolerable, and deep and sincere as are the moral objections to suicide amongst the majority, yet if it were known how easy is the road out of life by certain methods, the temptation would be less often resisted than is at present the case.

From the Venerable Archdeacon Calder comes another of those wails over the decay of manners, and the superiority of our ancestors in this respect, to which we have become so accustomed. “We appear to have lost the graceful courtesy of our forefathers,” says the reverend gentleman. Really, it is time some authority rose in his wrath and smote this idea very hard. Is it not strange that in every age there are people who think that in many respects previous ages were superior to that in which they live, people to whom the past has always a sort of glamour, and to whom the present is generally in a state of inferiority? What grounds has one for saying that we seem to have lost the graceful courtesy of our forefathers? If we judge by the standard of Sir Roger de Coverley, perhaps we have, but is it a fair standard? All the fine courtesies of the Georgian days—what are they beside the coarseness, the brutality, the snobbish arrogance of the times? No doubt Sir Plume, in his “complete conceitedness” (as Austin Dobson puts it neatly) handed My Lady Cloriander into her Sedan chair, or her couch, with a finer air than the modern gallant displays, but what was Sir Plume’s conduct to his valet, or even his chaplain? Courtesy is not merely the grand air of the salon, the ball-room, or the park, but a kindliness of heart and an unselfishness which is to be found, in varying degrees, among all classes of peopleWhen such a sentiment as Archdeacon Calder makes use of occurs to one it is well to remember that it was in our forefathers’ time that the chaplain could not sit a whole dinner through with his patron, and that the man of letters, after slinking past the gallant in his ruffles, waited for hours the haughty pleasure of some nobleman, who might or might not deign to cast the light of his countenance upon him. The glitter of these days is fascinating, no doubt —• the glitter attracts us, and we forget the coarseness and brutality which are plainly marked on them. This judging of the past from the world of romance is delightful, no doubt, but there are plenty of reliable sources of information whose records of the lives of our forefathers must make us pause before we commit ourselves to the statement that we have not the courtesy of old. Praise be to Allah, the old notions of a gentleman are slowly going out, and the new and enlightened notions are coming in. But we have not the slightest doubt that to the end of time there will be any number of people to mourn the loss of the courtesy of “the good old days.”

Are World’s Fair Exhibitions Valuable?

The British Government has voted £30,000 for its representation at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, for which gigantic preparations have been in hand for some two or three years baek. The amount—to individuals a nice little fortune—is of course the merest flea bite to Britain, and will, as is usually the ease at such exhibitions, be devoted to the erection of a British pavilion, which will probably take the form of an imitation of one or other of our great castles. But one must sometimes have wondered if nowadays the incredible sums of money lavished on these exhibitions have really been satisfactorily spent. Do they pay—not in the commercial sense, I mean, for one knows there was a gigantic deficit on the last Paris Exhibition —but in a better, wider sense, by the encouragement of the manufactures and the arts, do they pay? If you had ever lived (and perhaps you have) in a city where one of these great exhibitions was being prepared, you would understand what I mean when I say they often shock one in their apparent waste of money. For two years, perhaps, one sees the buildings, gigantic in size and splendid in proportion, going up. Then comes the opening day, then for seven months perhaps the place is thronged by night and day with pleasure seekers. Then closing day, and next day demolishment commences. It is then the sense of waste energy, waste power, waste brain, and waste money strikes one. All that work, all that money spent for seven months, and then all destroyed again. No doubt the point of view is a wrong one, but even so, it is a point of view, and right or wrong it is open for argument if exhibitions are not over-done, and if much of the money lavished on them is not wasted.