“THE COLONIAL”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 10, 2 September 1908, Page 46

“THE COLONIAL”

THROUGH ENGLISH GLASSES

AN INFORMAL INTERVIEW.

(Special London Correspondence.)

The smoking-room at Die Club was empty save for my friend the Englishman and myself, and it was raining heavily. “No exhibition for me to-day,” said he, gazing out on the rain-swept street. "Hallo! that's a man I know. Wonder what's brought him out in this downfour? He’s soaked through.” "Who is it?” "Oh, an Australian ehap—nather a queer card. Got a wonderful invention of Borne sort which is going to make him a millionaire—by-and-bye.” "You meet lots of Colonials, do you not?” “Yes, for the last five-and-twenty years or thereabouts I’ve been meeting them almost every day.” It oecurred to me that the Englishman might be “drawn” upon the subject of lAntipodeans he has met. The task was easy. “Do you like them?” “Like what ? Oh, Australians and New Zealanders. On the whole, yes. Of course, there have been exceptions, but on the average they’ve panned out satisfactorily, and I’ve got quite a big muster of real friends ‘down under? I honestly believe I could travel all over Australia and New Zealand without paying a cent on hotel bills. I've never been out there, but my business brings me in contact with more Colonials than English people, and I can fairly claim to know as much about Australians and New Zealanders as any man who has not lived amongst them.” b "Any particula r class ?” “No, all sorts and conditions —every grade in size and intellect, every trade and profession under the sun almost, (stand an hour at this window on a line day, and for every man that passes up or down this street—and lor a good many of the women—l_eould call to mind an Australian or New Zealand counterpart. . . . Yes, 1 have seen some rum customers front the other side, and some splendid specimens of humanity too.” “fell me about some of the oddities.” “There were very few. The last specimens were two old farmrs from Australia. They had been taken out to the colony from some out-of-the-way German village as youths, and had lived on the land for 50 years without, so far as I could make out, taking a day's holiday. They were dear old chaps, all hay-seed, humility and rank innocence. How (l n earth they had managed to get Home without losing themselves 1 don't know. But there they were and in their own fashion enjoying life immensely. Their great desire was io go to a music-hall, but they didn't cgi-e to go alone. They had heard some weird and wonderful stories of the wickedness of London's variety theatres. I went with them to the Alhambra. They sat in their seats from the time the band began to play till the very end of the programme. I couldn't make out whether they were enjoying themselves or not, for both seemed to be in a sort of trance, and they didn't really wake up till 1 landed them at their lodgings. A couple of days later they wrote thanking me for the great treat I had given them, and asking my acceptance of a cigarette holder. Decent of them, wasn't it? “Another weird specimen I remember Well was an ancient Maorilander. He came Home quite convinced that the chief want of us poor benighted Motherlanders was real worsted socks. He had some dozens of pairs with him and assured me they could be made in New Zealand by hand cheap enough to sell here at less than eighteenpenee a pair, lie spent his holiday, 1 believe, in visiting hosiers’ shops trying to create a trade in New Zealand socks; at any rate, I couldn’t discover that he had done anything else.” "Have you any pet aversions?” “Really, it’s hard to say. There's the callow youth who refuses to enthuse over anything; the elderly bore who seea ‘change and decay* in everything in the Sid ('ount ry; the man who talks Australia 11 you’d think there was no other place on earth : and there is the cocksure fellow Who asks you to take it for granted that

he is an authority on every mortal thing.' You know the sort. We have him at Home of course, and I suppose he’s more or less’ a common object in every country-. But the worst case I’ve ever come across was a man from the other side. No matter what you talked—politics, literature, art,’ drama, sport,, road-paying, anything—•’ he would bob up serenely, lay down the’ law, and explain to you that if he seemed to be making you out to be a fool he was’ really doing it out of kindness. He loved’ 'dear old England,’ and meant for her own sake to ‘wake her up? I tried hard to find out something we did right here according to his notions, but failed miserably. . . . No, I don’t think he was ever kicked or assaulted. At e are a long-' suffering people, we English. Beside”, provided you didn’t get too much of him, he was by way of being amusing. The colossal egotist often is. There's.another brand of fault-finder that I can’t stick, at any price. That’s the man who declared everything here to be wrong because its not the way it’s done in Auckland, Adelaide or whereever he comes from. “ That wouldn’t do for us out there,” is a.remark ever on his lips, alternating with “ Why don’t you do this, that or the other?” without regard to the fact that the conditions hede are entirely different ... Of course, I recognise the fact that England supplies the Colonies with a good) many- of this class. Australasia doesn’t run a cornerin them any more than in other nuisances. “ Quaint complaints? Plenty. One old chap who was visiting the Old Country for the first time could find nothing to admire in London. Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, the Houses of Parliament, all hurt his feeling because they were “ so dirty.” He wanted them washed down and painted! As-they were, he declared them “ a disgrace to England'.” Tliev would not, he assured me, be tolerated in Nowhereawera—or wherever it was he had vegetated—and he made scornful comparisons between them and! the five-year-old Town Hall at his New Zealand Home." He gave me a good halfhour of his ideas of Haussmaiinizing London with the help of five engines and paint pots, and left me with a mental picture of “London Beautiful,” in which St. Paul’s was painted a delicate pink, picked out with gold, the Abbey a study’ in greens, and tiie Houses of Parliament personating the Union Jack. He was in such deadly earnest, too, he really believed that we shamefully neglected our publie buildings because we didn’t wash off the black and grey on the stonework and cover up the traces of Time’s hand with paint. s “ The ‘ nil admirari ’ type makes one rather tired. Sometimes they are elderly men, but mostly they are young ones. You know the sort of new chum from Home whom the Australians and New Zealanders love so much? Well, for conceit and! egotism he is well-matched by some of the specimens of the ‘ native born” I have come across during the last 20 years. I remember one specimen in particular, because it was my painful privilege to shepherd him round. At the National Gallery he assured me the paintings “ weren’t a patch ” on those hi his native city’s gallery, and he nearly gave one poor old art student, an apopletie fit by his outspoken condemnation of Turner's masterpieces. It was the same at the Tate Gallery—most of the pictures were ‘ piffling things? ' badly drawn,” etc-.’, etc. . I took him to Epsom. No,,he wasnT pleased at all, in fact, everything was wrong. The horses were a "lot of weeds,” the jockeys “ could’nt ride for nuts,” the paddock was too small, the crowd' on the. hill nothing remarkable, andi—there was no'tote! This fact condemned Epsom utterly. . . Of course, we went to Wimbledon, and, believe me, there wasn't a man there who knew how to hold a racquet. Exaggerating? Not a bit of it. That youth knew all there was to know about lawn-tennis, and named half-a-dozen Antipodean players who could give H. L, Doherty two sets in five and beat him. And Norman Brookes wasn't one of them; in fact, so far as I could! make out, they were all members of clubs in his township. ...

Hords? Yes, and the Oval. Poor Hayward! Tom made 68 in his best style, but the number of “ shocking strokes,” according to my young friend, was legion.’ . . Theatres? Yes; Irving in tragedy, Hare, Eorbes Robertson, Wyndham, and George Alexander in comedy, Grossmith and Penley, and all the best in musical comedy and faree, but not an actor amongst them up to the level of Australia’s talent, and) not a theatre in London superior to those of his own little town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Newspapers? Oh, of course, they were beyond condemnation. No, he didn’t read them; in fact, he knew they were ‘ rotten ’ before he came Home. Somebody had told him they didn’t give any Australian news, and that was quite enough for him. Also he wa.s quite sure that they were all edited by fools, because when some local journalistic celebrity was at Home he couldn’t get his articles published'. . . . Yes, he was the worst case I ever struck, but there were others nearly as bad. “Journalists? A few, but very few, and they were for the most part journalists by ‘courtesy? Yon know the brand —contributed weekly notes from Inkyville to the " Whakarawatta Sentinel ” — polite note from Editor commissioning him as Special Correspondent during his travels, etc. Some of them very amusing. Take themselves so very seriously, and get their backs up because the Editor of the ' Times ’ isn’t standing on the doormat at Printing House Square to usher them into his sanctum, and doesn’t seem anxious to publish articles on ‘ The Ignorance of the Englishman.’ Had one in the other day. He was a real terror, with a self-imposed) mission to teaeh editors in particular and the public in general Australian geography and “the value of Australia to England.” He had met several men. it seems, who laboured under' the delusion that Sydney was the capital of Australia, didn't know that Bendigo was in Victoria, had never heard of the great scheme for locking the Murray, and were actually ignorant of the vital fact that if the Commonwealth was planked down upon. Europe she would blot out France. Germany. Spain and a few other sizeable countries. Also he had seen in a London newspaper an Awful Blunder. He told me with bated breath that he had seen in print “ Adelaidle, New South Wales!” I thought he was going to faint. . . . Oh. yes, he corrected the scorpions. You should have seen the letter he wrote. It would have filled a couple of columns—but didn’t—and was a beautiful jumble of aleged “biting sarcasm” and ''genial banter? geographical items and statistics. Heaps of statistics —rabbits, wheat, wool, gold, and all the rest of it No, as a rule the journalist from “ down under ’ —Hie real thing—isn't like that. He may gird things a bit at first, because they're different to what he would like them to be, but he recognises that there are other places besides Australia and New Zealand, and that the editors of London’s big papers are not asses, and all the folks here ignorant coons.” ■'What,” I asked, "do you most dread in the way of Antipodean visitors?” He mused a while. ''Well, I can only say, ‘May a kindly Providence keep me eelear of the man who discovers that he's ‘‘not wanted here.” ’ He embraces pretty well the whole crowd of undesirables —the 'young ‘bounders? the elderly bores, the journalistic missioners, and all the rest of them. But there is one particular brand of ‘not wanted’ whose ease, is pathetic. He finds himself cold-shouldered all the way round, and can't fathom the reason why. He is the reason, top, bottom, sides, and middle. But he is not in the least aware of the fact, and it's no good your hinting thereat. There are several varieties of him. hut the particular one in my mind is the Johnny who arrogates to himself the right to do and say whatever seemeth good to him anywhere and everywhere, regardless of custom, fashion, or other people's feelings. “Inventors? Scores of ’em. There’s something in the atmosphere down yonder that brings out the inventive faculty. Some of the notions brought over have proved gold mines, and some of them have been really weird. One old fellow imagined that he hail a fortune in a domestic contrivance. He had thrown up a decent berth to come over and exploit his patent Poor old chap-! he was foredoomed to ■ failure, and had to work his passage back in a capacity that was a daily reminder of his folly. . . . Yes, 1 know, the Patent Office doesn't hustle, and the fees are ‘thick? and there is a lot of redtape about it, I daresay. But it’s the same for all, and Home talent geU no bet-

t«r «haw. . . .That’s a weakness iwith many colonials. Homehow they think they’re entitled to better treatment because they have come so many thousands of miles.' Take the case "ol X. He’s brought Homa a notion, and he’s trying to get it patented here. Now lie discovers, for'the first time, that about 50 years ago somebody else actually took out a provisional patent for doing practically the same thing in the same way. The Patent Office authorities are querying- his right to protection. To hear him talk, you would think the P.O. officials were in league to rob him of his invention. I’ve met several of his kind.” T- mentioned ‘‘dead beats.” The Englishmen laughed heartily. “Know them? Rather! Get them every other day of the week. Queer fish some of them, and queer tales they tell. There was one the other day. He wanted to ‘borrow’ half-a-sovereign on the. strength of being related to an ex-Minister of Victoria, and having once been connected with one of my business friends in Adelaide. Finding I’d never been to Australia or New Zealand he started to pitch yarns. As a liar he was really first chop—quite a De Rougemont. But his geography was very quaint. I led him on, of course, till he had ridden from Auckland to Brisbane, planted Collius-street in Adelaide, and sailed from Bendigo to Kalgoorlie. Then I sent him empty away. Of COURSE, he cursed me. . . . No; as a rule, the ‘dead beats’ are not genuine colonials. Usually they are ‘returned empties’ with a little knowledge of the colonies. The average colonial who finds himself in Queer-street here doesn’t go round telling tales of woe for small silver. He goes round to his Agent-General perhaps, but, usually speaking, he hangs round the docks doing casual work till he gets a chance of working his passage home again. “Of course, there are exceptions. I know one man—an intelligent young New Zealander—who came Home some 10 or 12 years ago to ‘see a bit of life.* Handed with between £9O and £lOO, and meant to do a month in London arid go 'back via America. He reckoned £2O 'would see him through here, and that the rest would just about see him home I counselled him ’to ’ get his ticket at once for the return trip, and he said he’d do so next day. Next day. he caxne to see me. It was a tale of the Alhambra, a fair-haired .'girl, «nd a . house ‘somewhere near Waterloo,’ that he told, and all that remained to him was a few shillings. I lent him a sovereign to go on wjth,- find he wentedown to the docks to see about working his passage back. He was one of scores on the .same tack, and had to take to casual labour. ’ Then he got hurt badly, and for a long time was only fit for the lightest kind of porterage Wo.k, and earneu a very precarious existence. I helped him several times, but there was a bad streak in him somewhere, and in the environment of the casual docker' he began to degenerate rapidly. He ceased to look for work, and became a ‘pub.’ lounger and cadger. Then he drifted up to London, and started the ‘dead beat’ fay. - For a time he apparently found this quite a profitable business, but he soon worked out the charitable vein.- By tlrtit time he had become a bopeless degenerate, yand had got mixed,up. with a set.of Jio.uthwark ‘toughs ’ .The police had .'him through their hands —six weeks, I tliiiik he got. Anyhow; -hd spent the tmie: iff the infirmary, interested the chaplain or someone, arid was given a chance. Tea merchant offered him a job as soon as he came out, buj after a couple of days’ work be turned it up, and went back to the street life. I last saw him in the Strand. He was a pitiable sight, wandering along the gutter, slobbering and muttering to himself, almost bootless, hair and beard tangled and matted, and dirty beyond description. . . . -“Yes, that’s the worst case within my ken, but there's another that promises to end much the same. Came over here five or six years ago to take up a decent position. .Several hundreds a year, and every prospect of making double that inside a couple of years. ... I don’t know what started him on the down line. He didn’t like the work. It wasn’t hard, I know, and it didn't entail long hours; in fact, it should have been for a man of his attainments a very easy job. But he didn’t play the game, and there wera complaints—not serious ‘jackettings,’ only mild remonstrances. lint he took umbrage and resigned. . . 1 found out afterwards that he was heavily in debt when he threw up the job. Had borrowed right and left from men who could ill afford to lose the money, in order, I fancy, to pay card debts. . . . Whera ia he now? Knocking about London bor-

rowing shillings where he can, sleeping in Salvation shelters when he can raise the price, or ‘dossing", on the Embankment. I suppose drink is at the bottom of it, that, and lack of mental ballast. ... It’s a ghastly tragedy, for he was one of the most likeable men I’ve met. and had the knack of making friends. Clever? Man alive, if he would only really work a couple of days a week lie could earn enough to keep himself very comfortably, and if he stuck to it he could make an income that would make most men envious. It's a queer case, and I’m afraid a hopeless one. . . . His people out yonder are, I believe, well-to-do, but I doubt whether he had even asked their assistance. He has a funny kind of pride. Doesn’t mind “borrowing” shillings from people whom he has no call upon, but apparently won't make his plight known to his blood relations.” “It’s a sad case. But what’s your experience of Colonials, taking them all round?” “They’re very much the same as Englishmen; in fact, my experience lias convinced me that the average Englishman and the average Australian or New Zealander ean be treated on the same lines with equally satisfactory results. I consider that the greatest mistake that an Englishman can make is to treat the Colonial as being modelled after a different fashion to himself. And the biggest blunder the Colonial can make is to come Home imbued with the notion that he is going to meet with some set type of fellow-creature. The 'typical {Englishman” of French caricaturists is purely a creature of imagination, and, as you know, bears no more likeness to the average Englishman than the ‘haw-haw Johnny” of the ‘Sydney Bulletin.” or ‘lie corpulent publican of ‘Bunch.’ The ‘typical Englishman’’ or the ‘typical Colonial” should be the man who embodies the best physical and mental characteristics of his countrymen, not the man in whom the natural peculiarities and faults are exaggerated. The socalled ‘typical Colonial’ of the ignorant Englishman seems to be a long, rowboned, self-assertive, swashbuckling hybrid, a sort of cross between a California forty-niner’ and a Texan cowboy. I’ve never met that brand in the flesh, and don’t want to. The average Colonial is quite good enough for me, and I find that the average Englishman and the average Antipodean have so much in common that a brick heaved at one is likely to hurt the other.” “But Australians and New Zealanders are surely less reserved tlran Englishmen?” “Not to my knowledge. You see, I’ve never met them on their native heath. Al! my men have travelled, and you can’t compare the man who has had his eyes opened by travel with the man who lias never been beyond Brighton beach. And the man on his travels has this big pull over the other chap —he can always shake off any undesirable he may chance to pick up: the man who is at home can’t. Then, again, the man who is at homo has none of that hideous sense of loneliness which is apt. to overwhelm * v, e Colonial visitor to the Old Country, and make him anxious to talk to the first man he meets. I know the feeling, for I've been alone in Paris. Bless you, I’d have fraternised with the road-sweepers if they could have talked English! It’s as much a matter of environment as anything. I lunched yesterday with two Colonials who would hardly speak to one another in the city where they both live, and I left, them calling one another “old man,” as though they’d been bosom friends for years. Both ate really fine fellows in their way, but 1 doubt very much whether, if they hadn't met in the Great Lone Land called London, they would ever have dreamed of associating. One is a shopkeeper, the other a professional maxi. Both are well-to-do and—well—l’m wondering whether it will be ‘old man’ when they meet again on the other side.” “Why not?” “I really don't know, but I often wonder if there iwn't perhaps just as much ‘snobbery’ over there as there is here,” There was a note of interrogation in his voice. “It’s left off raining,” I answered.