Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Monday 3 April 1939, page 12


FOLLOWING THE FAMILY TRADITION

Careers Which Are Inspired

By Environment

A SPECIAL course of lectures in business management, primarily for young

people who expect to succeed their fathers as heads of business concerns, has been established recently at the University of Sheffield in England.

Although such lectures have not yet been instituted at the Sydney University, there are a number of girls in Sydney carrying on the family tradition in their profession.

YOU will find them in all walks of life — artists,

actors, florists, jewellers — all carrying on the family tradition as faithfully as eldest sons were once expected to do. They admit that their taste for their profession was probably born in them — and they tackle their respective jobs with all the more enthusiasm for that belief.

Miss Beryl Bryant, of Bryant's Playhouse, was literally born in the shadow of the theatre. Her father, Mr. George Bryant, who is now living in Melbourne, began his stage career as a police-man in a Brough-Boucicault production, after-wards going to the States, where he played in Shakespearean productions by Kyrle Bellew and Mrs. Brown Potter for 26 years. Mr. Bryant also played in the New York production of "The Col-lege Widow," the first of the "college" plays, and then came out to Australia to play in "The Squaw Man" under the direction of J. C. Williamson. As Miss Bryant travelled everywhere with her

parents, she was brought up in a truly stage atmosphere — but she was not at all pleased when she was first offered a stage part. She was to have been a paper-boy, but she stamped her foot so emphatically and whole-heartedly at the

first rehearsal that the part was given to some other young aspirant!

When she finally did make her debut on the stage it was at two hours' notice. She was living in Melbourne at the time, and on receipt of a telegram from Sir George Tallis (then Mr. Tallis) she rushed up to Sydney to play the second lead to Kathleen McDonald in "The Out-cast.'' Afterwards she played the lead with Charles Waldion in "The Squaw Man," with Joseph Coyne in "His Lady Friends," and with Seymour Hicks for six weeks in "The Man in Dress Clothes."

Octopus Profession

"THE stage is an octopus profession," said Miss

Bryant. "When I was married I felt I didn't

|| MISS LORNA SEARLE in her florist shop. ||

really want to go on with my career but gradually I got back again, through one thing leading to another. It began with a school asking me to give voice production lessons. Then I had to find a room to teach in. Then I had to find a stage for my pupils to act on — and now I am at our little theatre nearly all day, It's a wonder-ful profession — and i have always found that if you were willing to learn the leading actors and actresses were always willing to help you. It was only the ones who thought they knew every-thing that they would never help.

"Seymour Hicks was wonderful to me. I took

his wife's place at very short notice when she became ill in Melbourne and I had only four and a half days to learn everything about the pro-duction. But he ame down every day, and went through the play time after time with me. So many leading men would have sent their under-study that I appreciated it tremendously."

Marriage robbed Mr. Jules Joris of the assistance of his daughter in his profession of diamond merchant. She was the first girl in Australia ever to take up the arduous and exacting pro-fession of diamond cutting — but after studying hard, acquiring sufficient skill with patience and prac-tice to be the only girl in Australia to design her own engagement ring and to cut the diamonds for it. Miss Joris was married to Mr Auguste Dalle. Her father taught her this interesting profession after they had arrived from Belgium about nine years ago — and, in spite of the fact that she found the work a strain on both the eyes and the nerves, Miss Joris found her pro-fession an intensely interesting one.

Like Aunt, Like Niece

AND, talking of diamonds and precious stones reminds us of Miss Dorothy Wager, who is carrying on not her father's profession, but that of her aunt, Miss Rhoda Wager. She is naturally very thrilled about the carrying on of the family tradition of making beautifully designed settings for the lovely precious and semi-precious Australian stones as well as those from overseas.

|| MISS PAT LONG-INNES, who at one time

acted as her father's associate. ||

Miss Wager first caught her enthusiasm when she was a small girl, watching her aunt working on her jewellery in a hut on her father's cane plantation in Fiji. Her first experiments were with beads, secotine, and cardboard — but from those small beginnings has grown up an art calling for the greatest patience and self discipline.

One of the outstanding exhibits is a culture pearl set in silver with an unusual arrangement of jewels and an original treatment of the grape and leaf design. Files, shears, round-nosed pliers gravers, punches, mallets and a host of other gadgets go to the making up of Miss Wager's tool-kit — and it is amazing what delicate and artistic work is fashioned with such humble tools. But it is difficult work — so much so that Miss Wager is the only young girl in her twenties in Sydney who has specialised in this onerous art-

craft.

"Most girls won't be bothered" she says. "It takes too much time. They like something that gives quick results, and if you have not patience and plenty of it there is not the slightest use taking

up this work."

With the last Melbourne Cup won by a woman

|| MISS NORA HEYSEN, winner of this years

coveted Archibald Prize. ||

owner with a horse trained by a woman, women and horses are very much in the public eye. Australian horsewomen have been noted for their prowess for many years — and one of the most famous of Australian horse-women is Mrs. Ken MacKay. As Miss Phyllis Skene, of Kilbride, Campbell-town, she comes of a family noted for generations for its riding skill — and for

|| JOAN and BETTY RAY-NER with their caravan in which they have toured many parts of the world, including Australia, New Zealand, America, and the

Continent.

MRS. KEN MACKAY, who comes of a family noted for its riding skill.

(Circle.) MISS BERYL BRYANT "in character." ||

many years she carried on the family tradition

of the training of polo ponies.

Ten hours a day in the saddle was nothing to this girl one of Australia's most daring riders and one of the foremost women polo players in the world. Day after day she used to take out her father's string of thirty polo ponies, riding them all day long, training them to turn on a sixpence and stop dead in the middle of a hard gallop. As soon as one pony tired she would mount another — but her interest in them did not

stop there.

Every year she and her brother used to go to India with a string of the ponies which they sold to Indian princes, Army officers and tea-

planters. Nor has she lost her interest now that she is married — and she is still one of the most outstanding show riders in Australia.

Another girl with a gift with animals is Miss Doris Wirth, who was brought up in an atmosphere of sawdust, elephants, clowns, tight-rope walkers and performing lions. As a small girl she made friends with all the performers — both human and animal — in her father's circus, which she now manages. She has travelled thousands of miles with the circus — through Australia and New Zea-land, and up to the East.

Like Miss Bryant, Miss Wirth says that her profession is one that gets into your blood — "and, though it is terribly hard work I couldn't give it up now. It is everlastingly interesting. You are always meeting new faces; seeing new scenes. And, though sometimes it is worrying (and once or twice it has even been terrifying)

you somehow forget that and remember only that

you couldn't live without it."

Daughters of Artist

TWO other girls following directly in "father's footsteps" are Miss Nora Heysen and Miss

Ida Meldrum, both of whom are artists. Miss Heysen had her first studio in her family's ... at Mount Lofty, but after her first exhibition in Adelaide, when she sold every picture, she went to London to study sculpture as an aid to her favourite branch of her art - portrait paint-ing. She recently came into the news as the first woman to capture the coveted Archibald

Prize.

Miss Meldrum was something of a dark horse. Although she grew up in an atmosphere of paint brushes and canvases she did not take up paint-

ing when she was very small. And, when she did, she kept it to herself, and it was only after her father, not knowing whose pictures he was looking at, gave her a favourable criticism ... she confessed to her family that she, too, was an artist. She is now assisting her father with his pupils.

And so the list grows, proving that interests and talents very often run in families — Mrs Pat Long-Innes at one time acted as her father's associate. After she went to England - sailing in a windjammer — her place was taken by her sister Joan. Miss Lorna Searle carries on the florist's business that has been in her family for several generations. Dr. Jean Edelston Pope has followed her mother's example in taking up a medical career; and Joan and Betty ... the popular "Troubadour" girls, take after their father, Mr. Fred Rayner, not only as actors and as authors, for they recently published ....

of their adventures.