Casual Impressions of Colonial Life and Character

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 22

Casual Impressions of Colonial Life and Character

OUR LADS AND LASSES.

THE COLONIAL GIRL-SOME OF HER POINTS.

I DON’T know who said ‘■'absence of occupation is not rest.” 1 suppose it was i’ope, it sounds like him: certainty it was somebody who did not know New Zealand; for we find tlial change of occupation very often isn’t. “If all one. had to do was to get one’s bath and one’s breakfast before one came to business, it would be a different tiling,’’ said a young lady who belonged to a family where the day at the ofliee for the girls was preceded by a course of work at home —an no uncommon thing. Whateevr wo may be accused of as a community, no one can say that we lack variety—of occupation at least. “I’m going to calcimine a room.” said a bright faced girl graduate, when discussing her plans ■for the holidays. Judging by her air of girlish buoyancy, one would not have guessed that to a capacity for calcimining rooms and doing any amount of drudgery in connection with the social life of her coniinop-room, she added distinct ■ ihelilal ability-;: Yet she did- In (fact, to the casual observer, (Hie really notable thing about our girl graduates’ is the fact that they' wear their weight, of learning so lightly. Not that there is any sense in wearing it otherwise, or any reason to do so, for, as a girl student said to the writer, “one realizes how •much one doesn’t know,” which remark, by the way, betrays a capacity for the spirit of reverence and humility, a quality in which we arc reputed to be deficient. We are, probably, somewhat deficient here (indeed, when the truth is told, so ’is every people more or less). How has this arisen? Partly, perhaps, from the fact that the attitude of reverence has not been rigidly enforced in our childhood. Where our cousins at Home were confined to schoolroom and nursery, we, by the necessities of the situation, were admitted to the companionship, even the councils of our seniors. Familiarity bred —familiarity, The same thing has been .more or less true of our dealings with circumstance. For .us life has not been so much a traversing of ruts as it must bo where competition is keener and conditions lived. When cither ‘'Nature” or circumstance ■has essayed to say: “Plain ‘no,’ to some yes' in us,” we have not waited for her to “walk over us.” "With gorgeous sweeps of scorn,” but bidden her a polite good morrow, and tried another path cany road to Rome—that, was our pioneer blood. Yet wc do possess the faculty' of imagination and reverence. "I should like to go Home some day,” said a colonial young man; “it does us colonials good. Ito go and sec those old historic building-." On the other hand the writer heard Of a young New Zealander, just back from Home, who said that the bragging Spirit of many New Zealanders when in England had secured for them the odium of those whom they bad met. “Oh! but iwc have so mid so in New Zealand!” as a. comment upon the beauty spots of the old land is apt to be more tedious than convincing, ft, al. least, lays us open to the accusation of insularity, the very charge which We were so fond of bringing against the Home people.

By- all means let us be as loyal as we like; we are none the more truly so for being self-absorbed and exclusive. Only the other day a little girl, in selecting some picture postcards, after looking through Raphael Tuck’s album of Scottish fiords and English country scenes, glowing with the most exquisite colour, chose two New Zealand scenes. In view of the fact that the child lives iu the New Zealand country, and ean see its beauty every day, I call that flat insensibilitv.

But. to return to the point whence 1 started. We do not laek for variety of occupation. lam speaking more particularly of the colonial young women. I know a business woman who used to keep the family supplied with vegetables of her own growing. Indeed, I know more than one. A friend of mine, whose vocation is music teaching, is “mother of us all” to her family, and to half the undertakings of the church with which she is associated. Not for our girls the simple life, with its necessarily delegated task ' and toil. But many-sided and strenuous as their lot aften is, it still is Life, and by its very pressure and achievement, a much finer thing than lotus eating.

I forgot who said that life is a disease (which, by the way, is nonsense), mid that we catch it early. Our sisters of this country catch work early it is true. A girl of twelve, who, when her mother is returning from a long visit to town, refrains from driving to the station with her father to meet, her, in order to stay at home and cook the dinner, is an example of this fact, and, if one thinks properly of it, a somewhat heroic example. A child of six who ean dust the stairs and skirtings, and one a little older who (thanks, by the way, to heir father’s instructions) may be deputed to iron pocke't-handkerchiefs, afford further illustrations.

But our girls know how to play likewise. Indeed, they bring to this phase of their existence* an energy and grit which is commensurate with their capacity for work. Whether their recreation be found in gardening, music, or sheer play, such as hockey or tennis, one observes the same intentness. I have known spade and mowing machine manipulated with a purpose which no young man need be ashamed of, and that by bands whose skill was often in demand at surgical operations. I have heard Beethoven rendered by a maiden who was housemaid in her mother’s home, a two storied house of nine rooms. I have a friend who varies the monotony of daily work in a shop by tennis ill summer, and by gardening at various times, to say nothing of milking. I am inclined to think that we put a very liberal interpretation upon the doubtful Statement that “absence of occupation is not rest.” But one thing one must observe, and that is that all this strenuousness of work and play has not dulled the edge of the New Zealand girl’s wit and spirit. A ready wit is almost as entrancing as beauty. The spontaneous sally is so irresistible.

Spirit is no less to be admired. The hockey enthusiast who can so far forget an accident which sent her io bed for days, as to say that she had been singularly fortunate in escaping injury, is a girl with some grit in her compositon. No less so she who can successfully pass an examination in music, in addition to holding the post (no sinecure) of eldest daughter in a family of ten. Yet this is what comes under one’s observation, if one docs not go about with (dosed eyes. It is telling, of course: I mean the strenuousness of it all. “ ‘So-and-so’ is not as strong as I was,” says the mother, noting with perplexity the symptoms of “fag” iu her daughter. Where is the remedy? Partly, of course, in an abatement of (hat headlong attitude, that unwholesome tendency to “rush,” whether at work or play. Partly, too, in choosing among one’s recreations some form

of sheer relaxation. And also somewhat earlier to bed and earlier to rise, all round. Who knows but their incorruptibleness on this point is one reason of the entire nerve soundness of bird and beast! Sleep is a thing in which it is sheer madness to economise, and the tender exhiliration of the dawn is better than wine to the rested senses. To watch the May moon, full-orbed, setting in a soft sky of hydrangea blue and rose, over the wakening hills or shimmering harbour, is a vision not to be lightly exchanged for hours of electric light in crowded halls of pleasure.

THE LADS

So much then for the colonial girl! Now what is to be said of her male compeer of the same age. upbringing, education, and social status? Amongst the. youth of the colony, does the lad equal the lass? Frankly .and briefly, the answermust be an emphatic NO. . Some little detail of reason is demanded by so flat, so uncompromising, and so sweeping an assertion. As a class, the colonial girl, of, shall wc say, sweet sixteen, to the usual marrying age of twenty-five or thereabouts, is not merely more manysided, more useful, and more generally attractive (apart from sex) than the corresponding male, but she is also the better citizen. After the age mentioned, more especially if he marries, the colonial young man develops and improves in so striking a degree that it seems, entirely to falsify the old adage of the child being father to the man, for in truth the, majority of colonial lads .carry a certain part' of objectionable childishness right into the early twenties. Asked straight out for the chief indictments against the lad, I think one should reply: — A disregard (or, perhaps, a disbelief) in the ordinary courtesies of higher civilisation; a seemingly fixed conviction that gentle manners are a sign of unmanliness. A general apathy and unwillingness to take an active part in anything much, save in the role of critic or onlooker. An apparent hatred of home life and an entire unwillingness to recognise that Home and parents deserve any place in the scheme of time as he lays it out for himself.

A contempt for reading, or whatever makes for that which, for want of a better word, one must call culture. And last, but worst and most mischievous and contemptible, of all, an aping of vices for which he really has little or no inclination.

Take the average youth of eighteen or thereabouts, who goes to office during business hours (emphasise the average, mind, because there are some, nay, many honourable exceptions). What is the course of his day, and what does he expect? In nine out of ten homes the domestic life is the strenuous life, yet he never offers, never dreams of, “ lending a hand.” He, gets down to breakfast at the last possible moment that will enable him to get to the office, without risking reprimand for lateness, and turns up again in the evening just as late as his knowledge of his power of “keeping back dinner ’ will permit. In one family I knew well, a few years ago, the father, an elderly man. who for economy’s sake took but the smallest mid-day lunch, and a large family of girls, would night after night be kept waiting an hour or more for a rapidly spoiling dinner in order that the Benjamin of the family might not sit down alone. This, of course, meant that the girls were kept till all hours washing up, etc., etc. Yet the respectful suggestion once put forward that it might be well to put Benjamin’s dinner on a plate in the oven, and let him wash up for himself, was received almost as a blasphemy. The boy would possibly then not come back to dinner at all, arid, certainly, as he was out of the house four minutes

after the last mouthful was swallowed, this eventuality seemed likely enough, though to the unsympathetic mind of a casual visitor this consummation was one which the family might have borne with resignation. This selfishness (or thoughtlessness, if you wish to tone it down; but, after all, thoughtlessness is the worst form of selfishness) means that the colonial boy is only a mealtime asset of the family, and enjoys the smallest possible amount of intercourse with his parents, sisters, and. in brief, the, domestic circle. And this is, in his case, the beginning of all evil.. His womenfolk being mere chattels, mere ministers to his appetite for food and convenience, are to bo treated with no more regard than any other household requisite, so he develops a lack of courtesy and disregard of the niceties of good manners to women in general. Watch a crowd round the tramears, who fight , most savagely for places, elbowing and thrusting out not merely girls of their own age, but matrons who might be their mothers. Is it not the Youth? Not of necessity the alleged larrikin or hoodlum, but nine times out of ten, the well dressed, well educated and well housed youth, who, as the phrase goes, “ should know better! ” Do these ever give up their seats to a ladyt, I at least have never seen it, 1 " they levae that to an older generation. Observe them, too, at a dance. They smoke up to the last minute before filling their programme, and at intervals during the evening, and their general • manner of treating the girls with whom they dance is as a ride execrable. ' They ' sprawl about, they show not the smallest deference. anil if they.think they dare, they approach, not the fast, but the risque, in their conversation and stories. At private houses, where -bedrooms are of necessity used for men’s cloakrooms, .1 have, times out of number seen through a dense fog of poisonous cigarette smoke, the lads of eighteen and twenty-two, sprawling over furniture, chairs and lounge, and two or three lying on their backs on the bed. smoking and dropping ashes on the quilt, and setting reeking the curtains and hangings of the apartment where, perhaps, the host and hostess, or daughters of the family had to sleep. It is not many hosts in the colony who ean afford champagne at a dance. This is also fortunate, for in nine, cases out of ten it is abused.. The lads don’t particularly like it, but it is free, it is expensive, and it is out of the common, and (to do them justice) they forget that in sufficient quantities it is potent. At one dance—well remembered to this day—magnums of champagne were taken into the roadway and drunk out of the bottles, more were purloined in overcoats, and at least two young dandies of the alleged smart set stumbled and floundered so in attempting to say good-night to their hostess, that they fell headlong before her. One wondered she ever entertained again! - Unwise, too, is the generous host who wishes to give, his guests a cigar “ to walk home with, as the saying goes. His hospitality is almost certain of gross abuse. At a certain well-known Aucklander’s house the writer saw an amusing instance. There! was, in addition to his supper saloon, a small room for men's refreshments of a liquid nature. There were whiskies and soda, claret, and some magnums of champagne, flanked by two large boxes of really superb cigars. Enter a young buck who, after doing himself well on a couple of tumblers of champagne (he had had much before) plunged his hands into one of the cigar cabinets: “May as well have some of old ’Arry’s cigars, to keep me warm on the way home,” he remarked, taking a full fistful of perhaps a dozen; “ Certainly, certainly,” said a suave young fellow present; “and,” catching up a paper which happened th by lying about, “let me wrap you up a Couple of bottles of old ’Ary’s champagne to take homo, too.” “Who th* blazes are you? ” queried the youth, nt-

tensively. “One of old ’Arry’s sons; you don’t lraj*pen to have - - seen Before,” was the grim answer; "and now,” shoving the package with force into the other’s arms, “Good night!” Severe, but well-deserved; and, singular to relate, it “ touched the spot,” as they say of a certain well-advertised ointment. •

Now, as to his stupid pretence to vices which happily for himself and the community he does not possess. Dispite the fact that he will occasionally misbehave himself if allowed unlimited champagne, the colonial youth is pre-eminently a temperate individual. As a fact the very reason he gets “tight” as he would call it, on champagne, is, that he bakes it in large quantities, and is unused to much alcohol at a time. But he does love to pretend to himself and his fellow-sinners that he is the very devil of a fellow. A certain temperance fanatic, one of the type who do their cause untold harm by exaggeration, stupid “bogie stories,” and unconscious untruth, set, some time since, a watch on the doors of certain city hotels on a’ Saturday night.

Then they told of a state of affairs which had they spoken of fact, .would

have been appalling. But everyone knew it was exaggerated, and not to put too fine a point on it, untrue. So many hundreds of lads were said to be seen under “the influence.” The figures were absurd on the face of them. But had they been been divided by say, 90 per eent, even then the watcher would have been wrong. ' You will see few, very few drunkards amongst our colonial youths, even on a speci’al occasion, but you will see scores pretending to be more or less “on” or “squiffy.”

It is absurd, it is pitiful, it is contemptible beyond words, but at all events, it ia better than real vice. The sudden change from this stage of general unpleasantness to the very charming fellow the colonial lad becomes, when he puts away childish things, ia just so sudden, or seems so sudden, that one can never tell when it happens. Naturally it is a girl or rather, not a girl, but THE girl. However, that as Kipling would say is another story, and must be left for another “Impression.”