Bruce Mason’s cricket satire on Viscount Cobham

Another book I picked up at the recent Downtown Community Ministry Book Fair in Wellington is well-known New Zealand playwright Bruce Mason’s book of songs and parodies, We Don’t Want Your Sort Here (1963). Mason (1921-82) is the author of the classic New Zealand play, The End of the Golden Weather. I hadn't come across the book before. His satirical book, his only book of verse, certainly serves as a reminder of the ‘good old, bad old days of Kiwi culture’, however, it’s still a lively read.

One of the satires concerns English cricketer and former Governor-General of New Zealand, Charles Lyttelton (1909-1977), the 10th Viscount Cobham. Cobham played for Worcestershire and MCC and scored over 3,000 First Class runs, including a top score of 162 vs. Leicestershire in 1938. He played cricket between 1932 and 1961. By most accounts he was a popular Governor-General and was friends with the New Zealand cricketers of the period, for instance a number of "the '49ers" like Sutcliffe, Wallace, Donnelly and Reid played for Cobham's Governor-General's XI against MCC, a memorable match of the 1961 season.

If you’re a regular at book fairs in Wellington, you can still spot Lord Cobham’s Speeches (1962). The front cover features Viscount Cobham batting at No. 10 for his Governor-General’s XI and launching a shot down the ground for six at Eden Park, Auckland. Like Merv Wallace, it was Cobham's last First Class match and he made a surprising 44. Cobham in that photo seems to like attacking shots. Well, here’s a quick delivery from Mason which I suspect he might leave. It seems Mason took a note of Cobham’s dislike of abstract art and thought to send up Cobham’s traditional taste a little. It’s a light-hearted piece which does raise salient points about the arrival of modern and modernist art and literature in New Zealand:

BRUCE MASON

An Ordinary Man

CHARACTER: A Governor-General. A few notes on this number,

performed privately, but for obvious reasons, never publicly. In

1958, the author sat two seats away from the Governor-General of

New Zealand, His Excellency the Viscount Cobham, at the opening

of the Auckland Festival. He listened with respect and admiration

to His Excellency’s address, which showed a knowledge of and

sympathy with the visual arts never before, to his knowledge,

evinced and expressed by a Queen’s representative in this country.

His Excellency referred more than once to the duty of modern

artists to recall that their vision must be communicated to and be

above all, intelligible to, the Ordinary Man. He then drew from

his own experience as an ordinary man in being surrounded as a

boy in his Worcestershire home, by the great masters of the past,

an experience, however valuable and nourishing to the spirit, not

generally available, one would have thought, to the ordinary man.

His Excellency returned in the later days of his term of office, to

this theme again and again. He could be heard at Art Exhibitions,

talking of abstract art in a manner which suggested that its area

was not one that the ordinary man need concern himself with, and

he made similar pronouncements upon modern music and literature.

The author devised the following parody as a good-humoured

tease of His Excellency’s attitude, and it is to be thought of as

being performed at the opening of the New Zealand Academy

of Fine Arts Winter Exhibition, or at the formal opening of the

Kelliher Prize landscapes.

AIR: I’m an ordinary man, from My Fair Lady.

I’m an ordinary man,

Who desires nothing more

Than to see your work in paint

Charming landscapes by the score

Freed from any modern taint.

An average man am I

And though I hold vice-regal reins,

In my veins

There is nothing but decorum and restraint.

A very ordinary man.

But

Let

An

Abstract in your house,

And your peace of mind is through!

Its parabolas and curves

Will affect your optic nerves

And the colour combinations

Will result in complications

Too!

Oh let an abstract in your house

See it gibber on the wall!

You can glare at it or frown

Turn it round or upside down

Try and search for inner meaning

From this chaos overweening:

None at all!

You want to think of Tintoretto

Of a Rubens or Vermeer,

Of Titian, Canaletto,

Where at least the meaning’s clear!

But have an abstract in your house,

And you’ve the judgment of a louse!

There’ll be no vice-regal truck

With this stupefying muck

I would find it just as thrilling

To be trussed and sent for killing

As to ever have an abstract in my house!

I’m a decent sort of man,

Who will find himself in clover

Stalking grouse behind a thicket

Or an off-spin googly over

Bowled upon a sticky wicket.

A simple chap am I

Of very plain and simple joys

Who likes to fish a bit

Dish a bit

Of commonsense towards my girls and boys!

A very decent sort of man.

But

Let

An

Abstract in your house

And you declare yourself a clown!

I hate men of talent flimsy

Who display their latest whimsy

And erupting arty jargon

Will declare that it’s a bargain

Upside down!

There’ll be a slosh of deep vermilion

And a mess of purple bars

A nose on the Wellington carillon

And a tuft of tussock grass!

Oh!

Let an abstract in your house

You might as well divorce your spouse!

I will not be a subscriber

Nor my patronage will bribe a

Single clot, betraying sense

With the heady recompense

Of my benison vice-regal

For an art that’s barely legal!

No!

I will

Never

Have

An

Abstract

In

My

House!

© Bruce Mason 1962

(Sources: Wikipedia; We Don’t Want Your Sort Here by Bruce Mason (Auckland/Hamilton: Paul’s Book Arcade, 1963); Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master by Joseph Romanos (Joel Publishing, Wellington, 2000); and Lord Cobham’s speeches: a selection from the speeches made by the Rt. Hon. the Viscount Cobham, G.C.M.G., T.D., during his term of office as Governor-General of New Zealand, 1957-1962, edited by O.S. Hintz (Auckland: Wilson and Horton, 1962).

We Don't Want Your Sort Here
by Bruce Mason
(Paul's Book Arcade, 1963)