Anyone who goes to concerts in Wellington more than once in a while must know the face of Professor Cecil Sweet Allen. Professor Allen, the Chocolate Nightingale, Human Submarine, Pearl Diver and Coral Fisher, Submerged Posing Model, Deep-Sea Monster Imitator, waterside worker and celebrity concert attender, under the Royal Acknowledgement of some crowned heads of Europe, one uncrowned one, and one half-uncrowned, is easily the most colourful figure round Wellington.
To one half of his familiars, he is the man who sweeps in with a majestical flourish to the front row of the dress circle at any good concert, dressed in his finest things — full evening dress, silk hat, satin-lined opera-cloak, white gloves and monocle, and countless medals and orders. To the other half (or perhaps they are the more numerous) he is the man who swims at the Te Aro baths all the year round, often on Saturdays, diving in and disappearing for a long time, then coming to the surface far away.
The Professor is over ten, but under a hundred (this is all the answer you will get if you ask him his age). His mother came from County Wexford in the West of Ireland. His father was a full-blooded Negro from Barbados. He was the last of 13 children, some of whom died in infancy. He does not drink and never smokes, except under water. He is slight, lithe and very fit. His hair is short, and greying. On the street he wears a black pin-stripe suit, spats, a velour hat (sometimes a pale pink felt), two-colour leather gloves, a silver chain from breast-pocket to side-pocket, and a silk scarf, sometimes a huge white one with green divers all over it. All the visible upper teeth are solid gold. As he puts it, on his printed letterhead, he is a ‘Subaquatic Scientist, Phenomenal, Fascinating, and Unique — Must be seen to be believed ’.
One way to get in touch with Professor Allen is to write care of his private box number. I decided, instead of writing, to inquire for him on the waterfront, where I understood he worked. I went at first to the Wharf Police, who were bound to know him well by sight; probably they would know where he was working that day, and I could approach him in person.
A sergeant and a constable were standing in the sun in the doorway admiring some importer’s brand-new truck. I made my business known. ‘Can you tell me,’ I asked, ‘where to find the Chocolate Nightingale — you know, the underwater swimmer.’ ‘Little Jimmy Allen?’ said the constable; and he said he would ring the Labour Foreman. The sergeant went on balancing on his heels on the doorstep in the sun. Just to make conversation, while the constable made inquiries as a result of something he had been told, I said to the sergeant: ‘He does work on the wharves, doesn’t he?’ ‘Who?’ said the sergeant. ‘The Chocolate Nightingale,’ I said. The sergeant had been concentrating on something else. ‘Oh,’ he said, with a toss of his head towards the constable at the telephone. ‘Thrush’ll find him for you.’ And he turned away and went on balancing on the edge of the step. Little Jimmy Allen wasn’t working that day, the Labour Foreman said, so I thanked Constable Thrush and left.
A couple of days later a letter arrived at the Listener office, on pale green paper, headed: ‘Under Royal Acknowledgment — Professor Allen (The Chocolate Nightingale) — Light Baritone Vocalist, Teacher of Voice Culture and Theory — Concert Programmes Arranged, Musical Numbers Prepared — Radio Speaker to the New Zealand Government.’ This had been applied with a rubber stamp, as also another heading: ‘With the compliments of Professor Allen.’ Below, under a Royal Crown, it said: ‘Professor Allen is the only showman in the world today, eating, drinking and smoking underwater against every internal and external pressure.’ The letter said that Professor Allen had heard the Listener wanted to see him, and he would be glad to give it any information that might be desired about underwater swimming. It only remained to make an appointment.
There are two main divisions in Professor Allen’s interests in matters pertaining to this world. One division includes royalty, gentry, and in general all persons of dignity and bearing. The other includes things done, seen, and imagined beneath the surface of the waters of the globe, whether oceans, harbours, standing waters, or swimming baths. lf he begins, as he did with me, on the first division, one of the first things he will tell you is that the greatest honour ever done to him in this country was done by the Duke of Gloucester before whom he had the privilege to swim.
When you have got Professor Allen to sit down, he will lay his hat and cane on the table, and peel off his gloves with meticulous care; he does not merely pull his gloves off his hands. He makes the process a little ceremony of dignity and composure, peeling each one slowly down, with a look of fastidious detachment on his face. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I went to a lot of trouble to see if the Duke of Gloucester would receive me, and his Chief of Staff was very nice — very nice indeed. And I swam before him, and wished him a Happy New Year, and he wrote me some very charming letters.’
The Professor opened a leather case full of letters, his ‘Royal Acknowledgments’. Letters from High Chamberlains, Lords Privy Seal, Aides-de-Camp and secretaries, mostly of painful brevity. ‘You understand they all write very short letters,’ the Professor said, handing me ‘a very nice note’ from a Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Kent, thanking him for his letter. The letters were mostly acknowledgments of his expressions of loyalty and regard. There was a black-edged one from Brussels, in reply to a letter Professor Allen had written ‘when His Majesty lost Her Majesty’. It said ‘Le Roi a été touché profondément.’ There was another from the High Chamberlain at Doorn: ‘His Majesty the Kaiser permits me to send you his best thanks for your loyal thoughts.’ ‘Yes, I had some very adverse comments for communicating with the Kaiser,’ the Professor explained. ‘But of course after I meet them I always thank them for the dignity with which they receive me — I’m only a poor common man.’
He produced a letter from Count von Luckner. ‘I incurred serious disfavour for communicating with that gentleman. Of course there was no war then. But I’ve never been a soldier, so I suppose I view these things with a civilian mind. I’m an international, really.’ We finished turning the letters over. The Professor put on his gloves again and arranged his wrist-watch over the gauntlet. A misty, distant look came into his eyes. He tapped his fingers on the cover of the lettercase. ‘I do wish I could get a position somewhere, a little position of dignity, just three or four pounds a week. I don’t need much, so that I could occupy myself with dignity until such time as I can leave New Zealand. I don’t like labouring work, you know.’
He seemed almost to have forgotten my presence. His heart was far away in some grand palace, among noble people, gold and jewels, and fine things. But, in a moment, he came back. He took out his wallet, and began to show me clippings and papers mounted on cloth. His own letterhead is unique: Under Royal Acknowledgment of — The late King George V of England, King Leopold II of Belgium, Ex-Emperor of Germany, Duchess of Kent, Duke of Gloucester King George VI of England, Duke of Windsor ‘Professor Allen — The Human Submarine, ’ etc., etc. Then follow six lines of names, the Professor being under the ‘distinguished acknowledgment’ of these persons; the list reads like the list of Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity on page 281 of James Joyce’s Ulysses:
The late Lord Jellicoe, Lord Bledisloe, Lord Galway, the late Lord Rutherford, Admiral de la Périere, Sir Douglas Mawson, Sir Thomas Sidey, Sir Michael Myers, Professor Brown, Professor Hunter; Professor Shelley, Professor von Zedlitz, Herr von Papen, Herr Bactilius, Count von Luckner; Herr von Haast, Lex Macdonald, J. E. Lovelock, Douglas Fairbanks, Yehudi Menuhin, Shion Chaskassky, Bishop Sprott… Mary Pickford, Fraulein Beinhorn, Ellas Shields, ]une Barson.
The reader’s attention is called to the careful system of grading employed in this list. The Right Hon. M. Savage, in the full original, comes between Bishop Sprott and Mary Pickford. Down the side of the paper (which is pink, the printing red) are the following epitomes:
Demonstrating Blood Pressure and Breath Control —Submerged Posing Model — Expositions of a weird, supernatural artistic act which is wonderful, amazing, adroit, and supreme — Must be seen to be believed — In the civilised world he now stands alone.
This document naturally opened our conversations in Division II of The Professor’s interests, topics connected with the water and its denizens, the most remarkable of whom is Professor Allen himself, strange monsters of all kinds notwithstanding. He showed me clippings from the papers, reports of occasions when he had rescued watches from swimming baths, given demonstrations of underwater swimming, and so on. One, a short report of a coroner’s inquest, referred to ‘a very sad incident — I went over to Blenheim, you see, and gave a demonstration there, and most unfortunately a young boy afterwards said that he could do what I had done, and tried to imitate me. He met his death trying to do it. That was how I came to go on the air.’ The Professor flicked some dust off the table and leaned back in a pose which he later told me was ‘The Professor in a mood of nonchalance.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘when the boy was drowned, Mr Savage wrote to me. He asked me to go on the air to warn the people of New Zealand against the dangers of underwater swimming. I went on the air. My number was: “The Dangers of Underwater Swimming.” I was also on the air later, as Mr Cecil Sweet Allen and the title of my talk was “A Diver Amongst Monsters of the Deep.” You see, not only do I eat and drink and smoke under water, but I also do imitations of all the sea—monsters I have seen...’
Professor Allen rolled the names of strange monsters from his tongue. He leaned forward, and looked into the distance beyond my shoulder. His eyes were half-closed, and his mind again was far away from the little room we sat in. It’s when this mood comes on him that The Professor is at his best — ordinary existence here and now is transcended, he is in another world; and the chief characteristic of life in this other world is that nothing told there is a lie. His genius for the fantastical has full play and you believe, you must believe, every word he says. (Later you readily agree with him when he tells you that he never deceives the public. He may be fantastical, imaginative, he told me later, but he will never speak an untruth.)
The names of a dozen weird monsters rolled from his tongue in his cultivated, sonorous voice. ‘Ah, Professor,’ I said, ‘you're going too fast for me.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ he said very dreamily, without so much as a glance at me, ‘I didn't know you were taking it down.’ He closed his eyes, and began the list again. This time it was totally different — the baby whale, the sea snake, the devil-fish, the Javanese death-crab, the giant octopus . . .
‘And I also do what I did for the Duke of Gloucester — it’s very rare. I do imitations of the sculptures and paintings of the world’s greatest artists, under water — I do the poses and give replicas of these great works. I do The Boyhood of Raleigh — very pretty under water.’ And the Professor leapt on to his chair and sat with his arms round his knees, an innocent boyish smile on his lips. In a moment he was facing the other way — he was the Elizabethan sailor, pointing out to sea. He straightened up, and took out his wallet again. ‘My agent,’ he said, ‘has told me that this act is unique.’
He showed me the letterhead of his agent, Dave T. Meekin, who ‘Annually searches the Universe for strange humans, freaks and novelties.’ Then he found the document ‘Pose and Mien, by Professor Allen,’ which is a list of the Great Masters imitated by him under water:
(1) I awake from Love’s Sickness to Fly, by Fraser-Grange, the English painter of the A.R.A. fame.
(2) A Virgin Worship the Sun, by the Great Dutch Painter Van Dyck, R.A.
(4) The Sleeping Beauty, by the world’s greatest painter Michaelangelo, R.A.
(7) Youth’s Golden Hours, by the Austrian Sketch artist, Herr Adolf Hitler (The artist made two sets, Opus 1, Opus 2.)
(9) The Coward of Form II, by the Scottish painter McGruer R.A.
(20) Beware of that Woman, by the Great Greek Sculptor, Lastisus.
PROFESSOR ALLEN IS THE ONLY EXHIBITION SWIMMER CAPABLE OF PERFORMING THESE STUDIES UNDER WATER. ANY DEPTH AT ALL.
New Zealand Listener 26 June 1946 AA
[This amazing story was taken from The Listener's book of interviews, published in 2004. I've posted it here because there is no other copy of it on the web. Any copyright issues? Please let me know and I'll remove it. BBBB]
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