The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1922
Interviews with Great Men
Interviews with Great Men.
(1) President of the Students' Association.
I met the .great man in his private smoking-room. He was faultlessly dressed and groomed, his hair brushed back from the forehead in the manner known as "bringing out the intellect," his mouth ornamented with a Con Amore cigarette. Around the walls I noticed many portraits of beautiful damsels. Several there were of one young lady in particular; I inferred she was his sister. An elegant cigar-box reposed upon the windowshelf. His table was bestrewn with papers and hooks; thousands of dance invitations had been consigned to the wastepaper basket. Particularly impressive was his famous collection of works on Education, bound in exquisite Morocco, the leaves goldtinted, the titles embossed in gold. Along one wall were sevexal rows of pegs upon which a confidential valet, with an artist's eye for colour, was arranging ties alongside appropriate pairs of socks.
All this I took in at a glance—then he exclaimed: "I'm busy." A boot was raised, and I found myself examining the stars from the landing on the staircase.
(2) The Captain of the Football Team.
His room was spacious and Spartan. In one corner his golf clubs, in another a cricket bat, in a third his football boots, while the fourth was reserved for applecores. Around the walls all manner of decorations, a racquet, an oar, a punch ball, and a pair of V's in which he once won a fiftyyards breaststroke. I felt I was in the presence of an extraordinary man.
"Yes," he remarked pleasantly, "these boots are a trophy worth having. I won them in a scrum at Dunedin. You can see they were made in Capetown and are labelled Spratt's Special Springbok Sprinters. I feel very proud of these."
"How frantically fascinating," I murmured. "I suppose you have been winning such trophies throughout your whole life.'
"Pretty well," he answered, "I was always regarded as a bit of a prodigy. At the age of two I tackled by the toes an old rooster we used to keep. I pulled about a dozen feathers off him, and since then the thing has become a habit. Did you see me dump Teddy Roberts the other Saturday?"
I remembered the incident, but I wanted to know how he kept fit enough to do these things.
He admitted that the training was pretty exacting. "I get up at 5.30 a.m. and do halfanhour's skipping to start with, followed by an hour or so in the Gym. with dumbbells and boxing. After a cold plunge and breakfast—four eggs, three' chops, and a couple of plates of porridge—I set out for a long walk over the hills. I find sprinting uphill the very finest of exercise. The afternoon is devoted to linekicking and tackling practice, and the evening to reading books on football and working out stunts on paper Ligjht meals and plenty of sleep—I always retire at 9.30—are essential parts of my training."
It was then I discovered that I had wandered into the wrong room. I was talking not to the 'Varsity skipper, but to somebody else's hero.
(3) George.
He greeted me with his usual sad but friendly smile, and after obligingly laying aside the "World's News" placed himself entirely at my disposal. He had not, he said, been very long at the 'Varsity but nevertheless he had played in his time many parts. He had dried the dishes, marked the tennis-courts, acted as audience for the Dramatic Club, and once he remembered he had asked one of the young ladies for a dance. She didn't dance very well either, although she had got a first-class pass in Physiques.
Yes, he liked the life. His quarters were very comfortable, and Extravaganza choruses saved the expense of a gramophone to send him to sleep. He had grown to like what a well known Judge called "the atmosphere of academic calm." He could appreciate that the more, because football and hockey practice was often held in the Gym. Mr. Brook was a fine goodhearted colleague, while he had the greatest admiration for Mr. Ward's organising abilities and jaunty bonhomie. Yes, he had nothing to complain of. The boys were good chaps, every one of them, and always ready for a yarn and a smoke. The only trouble was the girls. He couldn't 'understand why they were allowed about the place. The She Club was the noisiest meeting that he had to sit through; the way they tried to play tennis fairly sickened him; and did I know that when he was in Auckland with the team, one of them asked him why he didn't wax his moustache—
He spluttered with indignation. I discreetly tipped him a wink and left for other huntinggrounds.
(4) The Editor of "The Spike."
He wore a wet towel about his head; his eyes were red and tired; and barricading his chair stood piles of Latin, German, and Polynesian dictionaries, works on synonyms, on philology, on the dative case and other kindred topics. He looked upon me with a hopeless stare.
"What a loves tricken lot of loons we keep up here," he ejaculated. "Nothing but love poems, thousands and thousands of spring epics, greener and more distasteful most of them than spring onions. Calflove, too, I'll wager. Look at this lot."
He snatched a manuscript from the top of his bundle and read:
The little archer called one day,
His arrow took my heart away;
He shot it at your feet, and then
Went laughing after other men.
It still lies bleeding. Tortured so,
'Twill bleed to death ere love can know
If it was shot is vain, or dies
To escort yours to paradise.
"You know a chap has to be a bit of a mugwump to turn out stuff like that. Besides the last rhyme's not a rhyme at all. Why can't finish off his heartthrobs decently?
"Oh, of course, the job has its compensations. You sometimes get sidelights on the old history of the College, and it's good to think that before the War, at any rate, the Muses sometimes loitered here. I suppose the shipping-fares are too high now for them, poor dears.
"For instance, the other day I noticed an effort that came in too late for one of the issues. Do you remember the row between the Students' Association and the Haeremai Club anent having claretcup at dances? The Students' Association reckoned it was alcoholic liquor or something, and shouldn't be allowed in the Gymnasium. Some bean wrote an "Ode to the Haeremai Club," which reads like this:—
Oh, modest one and diffident!
Thou violet, scarcely evident,
That blooms as if by accident
Along the river's brink!
Remember, oh thou modest one,
That it is never, never done
To have that "daughter of the sun,"
The claretcup, to drink.
Such things will soften up the brain,
You'll never be the same again,
Your lips will mutter things profane,
The while your eyes grow bleary;
You'll shave the doorway, stagger on
Hat all awry, and try to fon—
Dle policemen, find the keyhole gone—
You know you'll do so, dearie.
*Joseph has said so. Just succumb.
"The Licensing Referendum
†
Should compensate with quite a sum
Poor mortals such as you are.
Besides, you'll grow a big strong man,
Muscles and frame Olympian,
A brain that scorns the tippling clan
Who end at Porirua.
"There isn't anything wonderful about that, but I wish some of the present crowd would try and write something to keep their memories alive. Don't seem to have an original idea amongst them, and when they're supposed to be the brightest intellects of the country—gadzooks, it makes me swoon."
My hand got writer's cramp, and I couldn't get a word in edgeways. I left.
* Still,[we trust, the "impeccable Eltham lawyer."—(Ed. Spike.)
† Accent on the "fer."