By Isle of Wight Observer
This week we have two pieces from the Isle of Wight Observer of 28th August 1920. The first describes a play which looks at one of the problems after the end of World War I. The second gives the editor’s hope that a local word to describe Island visitors will fall out of use. It hasn’t!
“A TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN.”
The subject of the return of the soldier—particularly of the officer to civilian life is one which offers ample chance to the satirist, and Mr. H. F. Maltby, the author of “ A Temporary Gentleman” to be produced at Ryde Theatre Royal on Monday afternoon and evening next, has seen this, and has written his comedy round the career of a young fellow of a working class family who before the war was a junior clerk in London, earning £75 a year. The play is a sermon against the snobbery sometimes displayed by young military officers who have risen from the ranks and may come as a useful lesson to such individuals now that the demobilisation problems have to be faced. There used to be a favourite legend which greeted us from every hoarding “Your boy — what will he become?” Mr. Maltby’s problem is rather “Your temporary officer — what will be his future? Will he go back to his old office stool, or will he strike out for himself and make good?” All who have worn khaki will chuckle at the shrewd hits aimed at the little ways of the officer or the supercilious nurse and the callous army doctor. Every soldier will shriek with delight over the play, and we are sure it will be highly amusing to civilians as well.
***
That ugly word “overner” — those who come from the mainland to the Island — appeared in a paragraph concerning bowls at Ryde in the columns of a big London Daily.
Surely with the march of civilisation this petty, selfish word might be expunged for ever from the local dictionary, but jargon, like custom, dies hard. It is scarcely complimentary to our visitors to say the least.