NZHistory, New Zealand history online - writing

Anthony Trollope arrives for NZ tour

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), one of the Victorian era’s most famous novelists, landed at Bluff at the start of a two-month tour of New Zealand. Trollope had spent the previous year travelling around Australia and in 1873 published a two-volume book of his travels, Australia and New Zealand.

Overall the impression he gave of New Zealand was positive and consistent with views of the time. To Trollope, New Zealand had all the potential to become a new and improved version of England, though clearly as part of the British Empire rather than as a separate nation. Māori were seen as a dying race, on the brink of ‘melting away’ in the face of inevitable progress.

Australia and New Zealand, which was commissioned by Chapman and Hall, was aimed squarely at the popular travel-book market. Even apparently critical comments would have appealed to aspiring visitors and emigrants wanting the reassurance of familiarity: ‘The great drawback to New Zealand … comes from the feeling that after crossing the world and journeying over so many thousand miles, you have not at all succeeded in getting away from England.’

What distinguishes Trollope’s book from some travel books of the time is the quality of his writing. Here he describes bathing in the Pink and White Terraces:

The baths are … like vast open shells, the walls of which are concave, and the lips ornamented in a thousand forms … I have never heard of other bathing like this in the world.

He claimed New Zealand colonials were generally better read than Englishmen at home. There were less-positive aspects to their character as well, however:

I must specially observe one point as to which the New Zealand colonist imitates his brethren and ancestors at home,—and far surpasses his Australian rival. He is very fond of getting drunk. And I would also observe to the New Zealander generally, as I have done to other colonists, that if he would blow his trumpet somewhat less loudly, the music would gain in its effect upon the world at large.

Image: Anthony Trollope (Wikipedia)

Dan Davin and Winifred Gonley

A portrait of Dan Davin and his wife Winifred Gonley taken in London.

Davin’s short story ‘The Hydra’ was based on the life of Alex MacLure, a communist who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. It was later published in his collection, The gorse blooms pale (1947). Davin fought in Greece and Crete during the Second World War. He wrote a novel and a collection of short stories about his wartime experiences, as well as the official history of the Battle for Crete.

Read more: Biography of Dan Davin in the DNZB

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-6304-40
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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John A. Lee

A charismatic ex-soldier, orator and propagandist, John A. Lee was a dynamic figure in the Labour Party from the 1920s until 1940, when he was expelled for attacking the leadership of M.J. Savage. Lee had a parallel career as a writer and later bookseller. His best-known novel, the largely autobiographical Children of the poor (1934), was described as a ‘sensational book on vice, poverty, misery’.

Lee was born in Dunedin in 1891. His family's desperate poverty was described in Children of the poor and in his mother Mary Lee's later autobiography The not so poor (1992). After leaving school, he drifted into petty crime and in 1906 was convicted of theft for the second time. The magistrate declared him ‘incorrigible’ and sent him to Burnham Industrial School. Lee subsequently took to the roads, tramping much of the country and working in a variety of unskilled jobs. During these years he chanced on Upton Sinclair's socialist novel The jungle and also devoured the works of Jack London. After being arrested twice – for smuggling liquor into the King Country, and for breaking and entering – he was sentenced to 12 months in Mount Eden prison.

In 1916 Lee enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, serving with distinction in the Wellington Infantry Regiment. Known as 'Bolshie Lee' for his socialist views, he wrote regular items from the front for Clutha Mackenzie's Chronicles of the NZEF. In June 1917 he was awarded a DCM for single-handedly capturing a German machine-gun post at Messines, Belgium. The following March he was wounded and had his left forearm amputated.

Lee joined the Labour Party immediately on his return to New Zealand, and served as MP for Auckland East (1922–28) and Grey Lynn (1931–43). His ability as a writer, propagandist and orator saw him become a well-known public figure, but the party leadership were suspicious of his ambition and populist tendencies. His bitter disappointment at not gaining a place in Savage's first Cabinet following the 1935 election victory soured the relationship further. From 1936 to 1939 he was Under-Secretary to the Minister of Finance and responsible for the successful introduction of Labour's landmark state housing programme.

The 1930s also saw Lee achieve fame as a novelist and writer on socialism. He wrote his first novel, Children of the poor, in response to the despair of the Depression and the Queen Street riots of April 1932. Although the book was published anonymously, excellent reviews and widespread interest prompted Lee to include his name on reprints. It was soon followed by The hunted (1936), the story of his Burnham days, and Civilian into soldier (1937).

In 1938 Lee published Socialism in New Zealand, which championed socialism as New Zealand's only political tradition. Now one of Labour's best-known figures, he was increasingly critical of the orthodox, cautious approach of Savage, Peter Fraser and Walter Nash. In 1940 he was expelled from the party for attacking the terminally ill Savage in an article in the left-wing journal Tomorrow. Lee's political career was destroyed. He founded the Democratic Labour Party but was never re-elected. He continued to disseminate left-wing views through John A. Lee's Weekly (1940–8) and other journals, and from 1950 became a successful Auckland bookseller.

Lee outlived his enemies, continuing to fight old battles. He found a new lease of life as a writer in the 1960s. Simple on a soap-box, his version of the events of the 1930s, was published in 1963. Rhetoric at the red dawn (1965), Political notebooks (1973) and The John A. Lee diaries 1936-1940 (1981) provide a fascinating – if highly subjective – view of Labour's rise in the 1920s and 1930s. Lee died in Auckland in 1982.

Further information

Biography of John A. Lee (DNZB)
John A. Lee (NZ Book Council)

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Ngaio Marsh funeral address

Hear Reverend Simon Acland's address at the funeral service for Dame Ngaio Marsh on 24 February 1982. The service was held at the Christchurch Cathedral.

Transcript

There are three things I would bring before you the confidence with which we can commend Ngaio Marsh to God's hearth and keeping: Ngaio the person, and the public figure, that she undoubtedly was. Ngaio Marsh was essentially a very private person, that so many are here and so many throughout the world mourn her dying shows that there was a very public aspect of her life. Her writing and her work with the theatre of necessity were very public activities. But the person we remember today and who we commend to God doesn't easily fit the images we have of famous people.

St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians writes of a still more excellent way, the way of love. But he doesn't leave it there; he spells out what he means by love. Love is patient and kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude, never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no store of wrongs, does not gloat over other men's sins but delights in the truth. I have used here the new English bible translation. I was going to have that version read, but it was pointed out to me that there could well be a thunderbolt from heaven, from Ngaio if I did. Such was Ngaio's love of the English language in its greatest beauty.

But the love which St Paul spells out is no vague thing; St Paul is direct and to the point. In Ngaio's life we who knew her saw this sort of love expressed. She was kind and generous. She did not envy others their gifts, and was certainly not puffed up about her own. While she enjoyed knowing what everyone was doing, she was never malicious in speech or act. And as for love never behaving itself unseemly, the King James version, Ngaio never behaved herself unseemly. It's because Ngaio lived and showed the sort of love that St Paul described - though I wish he'd included in his list a sense of humour or fun, because Ngaio certainly had that. But it's because Ngaio showed this sort of love, that I believe we can, in good faith, commend her to God.

Though Ngaio had no immediate family of her own, her young cousins the Mannings were very close to her, our sympathy today is with them, especially John Dacres Mannings and his family. But our sympathy is also with all who were given time and kindness, support and love. In fact all who were treated by Ngaio as family throughout the years. It is because I am one of these that Ngaio asked if I would conduct her funeral. If she'd wanted her achievements listed here on this occasion she wouldn't have left instructions for me to do her this service.

As a very small child I would help Ngaio in the garden at Valley Road making small streams down the hillside to water the plants. I was convinced that she was the same age as I was; in fact I was four and she was in her forties. This experience of being treated as a contemporary is shared by many. It doesn't surprise me that her neighbour's small children came to home with flowers on Saturday, weeping at the death of a friend. In the children's parties she held each Christmas many discovered the living reality of tradition. And in more recent years the grandchildren of those who had themselves once been guests experienced Ngaio's generosity and the warmth of being treated as a very special person. There is something of a paradox in this. Ngaio treated each person as being special, and that was genuine, and yet she treated everyone the same. She wasn't exclusive in her friendships.

Ngaio Marsh

Many of these friendships were made through the University of Canterbury Drama Society. Anyone who endured the bitter cold of rehearsals in the old boat sheds was bound to share a certain comradeship. Being a very shy person, or as Lili Kraus said of her, she had a chaste reticence, and this reticence shows in her autobiography. Ngaio rarely made the first overtures of friendship. But those who first met her as adults, and who moved past her shyness, discovered a great loyalty, and a very good friend. Many of her students moved from awe at her presence to close friendship. Somehow people find it difficult to believe that someone who is tall, and has a voice of depth and resonance, her voice was never gruff, can be shy. The same attributes of graciousness, loyalty, warmth and generosity were shown to those nearer her own age. Friends of long standing, and friends of more recent years, were welcomed without a trace of pomposity or self importance. Neither of which she tolerated in herself, or in others. She enjoyed the benefits of fame as being really good fun. Mrs Behrens, her housekeeper of recent months, when first employed asked the gardener: ‘But will I get on with Dame Ngaio?' He replied: ‘there'll be something wrong with you if you don't’. That wasn't just a loyal word, it was a true one.

It would almost be unfitting if there weren't something of a mystery about Ngaio. There is, it concerns her birth, the year of it. Her father was absent minded and forgot to register her birth, then, when he did, some years late, he again absent mindedly wrote down that year, instead of the year of the event. Various official documents bear various years of birth; the day and month are always right. Ngaio never bothered to sort it out. What was the point? To put the record straighter, she was nearer 86 than 82.

The books Ngaio wrote were important to her because of what they enabled her to do. Nevertheless through them she undoubtedly gave enjoyment to many. We in New Zealand sometimes fail to appreciate that her following in North America was enormous. And in South America her books are there, in translation, on the bookshelves in the most unlikely small towns. Ngaio's true love was the theatre, and Shakespeare in particular. In this field she was both an enthusiast and a scholar. As a director she avoided [unclear word] but had great flair. She exercised great discipline in her writing and her directing and her expectation in others, and her faith in them, was great. She never displayed that temperament she so often associated, wrongly I think, with two very demanding professions.

So publicly in her own right Ngaio Marsh was a great person. Privately I believe she was an even greater one. She began her books by considering a group of people. In her work in the theatre she was working with people, in bringing to life on stage other people in their depth and full range of emotions. In her life she had and showed a great love of people. That for me is where my thanksgiving is today. And in the midst of sadness that is what we can reach out to. A great thanksgiving to God for giving us a share in the life of a person of love.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Charity doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. There abide these three: faith, hope and charity; but the greatest of these is charity.

Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of copyright. To request a copy of the recording, contact Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero. Reference number sa-tx-0972-pm.

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Portrait of Ngaio Marsh

Standing portrait of artist, playwright, actor, director and crime writer Ngaio Marsh taken c1935.

Read more about Ngaio Marsh

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-8163-04
Photographer: Henry Herbert Clifford
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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Ngaio Marsh

Newsweek described her novels as 'the best whodunits ever written'. Ngaio Marsh was also an artist, playwright, actor and director. The New York Times called her New Zealand's best-known literary figure.

Marsh was regarded as one of ‘Queens of Crime’ in the 1920s and 1930s. Her international acclaim was based on 32 detective novels published between 1934 and 1982, all of which featured the British detective Roderick Alleyn. All but four were set in England; in the four set in New Zealand, Alleyn was on secondment to the New Zealand police.

In New Zealand Marsh is also remembered for her theatrical work. Her first play was written and performed in 1913 while she was a student at St Margaret's College in Christchurch. Between 1913 and 1919 she studied painting at the Canterbury College School of Art before turning to acting during the early 1920s. From 1928 on she divided her time between living in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

In 1942 Marsh produced Hamlet for the Canterbury University College Drama Society and in 1944 her productions of Hamlet and Othello toured New Zealand to great acclaim. During the 1950s she was involved with the New Zealand Players, a short-lived attempt to maintain a national professional touring repertory company.

Ngaio Marsh was knighted as a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1966. She died in February 1982 at her home in Valley Road, Cashmere, Christchurch - now a Category I Historic Place open to the public.

Grave of James K. Baxter

Jacquie Baxter (wife) and Stephanie Baxter (granddaughter) at the unveiling of the gravestone of James K. Baxter at Jerusalem on the banks of the Whanganui River. Baxter died on 22 October 1972 and this stone was unveiled a year later.

Read more about James K. Baxter

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-2146-002
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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James K. Baxter in 1971

James K. Baxter in March 1971.

Read more about James K. Baxter

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Evening Post Collection
Reference: EP/1971/1098-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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James K. Baxter

James K. Baxter was one of New Zealand's best known and best loved poets. In his short life he produced a huge number of poems, as well as plays, literary criticism, and social and religious commentary. A hugely influential figure, Baxter was as well known for his life as for his writing.

Baxter was born in Dunedin in 1926, the younger son of the well-known conscientious objector Archibald Baxter. He took an interest in poetry from an early age, writing his first poem at seven and composing three or four a week by the time he was in his teens. His first collection of poems was published in 1944 when he was only 18, and a new collection was published every few years thereafter. He was soon regarded as the pre-eminent poet of his generation.

He was deeply influenced by the Romantic poets, by classical mythology, and by the British modernist poets of the 1930s. Like many of his contemporaries he explored the character of New Zealand society through his poems, contrasting the wildness and grandeur of the New Zealand landscape with the ‘human daydream’, the ‘short fever’ of human life. In the face of the Franz Josef Glacier, which dwarfed all human endeavour, Baxter pondered ‘What sign / Can I leave on cairn or tree to tell / The next comer that my thoughts were human?’

Baxter spent several years trying to commit to university study and then working on farms in Canterbury, before settling in Wellington with his young family in 1948. He struggled with alcoholism, but the poems continued to flow. Christian theology had been an important influence in his life, and he was baptised an Anglican in 1948 and then as a Catholic in 1957.

He visited India in 1959, and returned to New Zealand with a critical eye for poverty and social inequality, an impulse which found voice in his poems. Poems such as ‘A Rope for Harry Fat’ and ‘A Bucketful of Blood for a Dollar’ expressed Baxter's despair about a society which prioritised financial gain over spiritual values, and his growing dislocation from ‘the long Jehovah faces / Above their Sunday suits’ who ran the country. He developed an interest in Maori culture, regarding Maori as marginalised and persecuted by mainstream society.

Speaking at a writers' conference in 1951, Baxter had argued that it was ‘reasonable and necessary that poetry should contain moral truth, and that every poet should be a prophet according to his lights’. The poet ‘should remain as a cell of good living in a corrupt society, and in this situation by writing and example attempt to change it’. These ideas found their full expression in 1968 when Baxter decided to form a spiritual community, centred on ‘spiritual aspects of Maori communal life’, to ‘try to live without money or books’. For Baxter, who thought Auckland a ‘great arsehole’ and Wellington ‘a sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats’, this meant retreating to the countryside. A community was established on the Whanganui River at the remote rural settlement of Jerusalem in 1969.

Baxter now referred to himself as ‘Hemi’. In addition to his time at Jerusalem, he periodically lived with drug addicts in an Auckland commune. His bearded and shabby appearance, and outspoken attitudes towards the authorities, earned him a dubious national celebrity. He viewed middle-class society as a specious and hypocritical ‘civilized coma’, fenced off ‘From the forces of revolt and lamentation’ by the police. ‘How can I live in a country where the towns are made like coffins / And the rich are eating the flesh of the poor / Without even knowing it?’, Baxter lamented in 1972. His infamy made life at Jerusalem complicated, and his indigent and haphazard lifestyle seriously affected his health. He died of a heart attack in Auckland on 22 October 1972, at the age of 46.

Baxter's output was massive, his Collected Poems (1979) running to over 600 pages. The quality of his work and his public stature made him one of his era's defining voices. Poet Ian Wedde wrote in 1985 that Baxter ‘is probably the nearest we have come this century to a "folk poet" whose circumference our reading does not seem able to reach.’

Tim Shoebridge

Duck hunting in New Zealand

The push-out mobile hide is one solution to dealing with the tidal flats of the Invercargill estuary. Greg Blomfield's family has been hunting there since the 1940s and have 'a trump card' for dealing with low water – a manuka-thatched metal frame with a suspended plank for the hunter to sit on. Add plastic wheels and some steady pushing from determined hunters and you have achieved step one of the six steps to successful wildfowling: 'Go where the birds are.'

Out for a duck

Duck hunting for many brings to mind family stories of uncles working on their mai mais in the lead up to opening day, only to get drunk on whisky in the mai mai without firing a shot on opening morning. Mixing alcohol and weapons is frowned upon by modern hunters, who are more safety conscious than their forebears. Contemporary duck hunters also use non-toxic shot (it used to be lead), as hunter Gary Girvan explains in his book Duck hunting in New Zealand (David Bateman, 2007).

Most duck hunters only shoot on opening day, but the dedicated hunt throughout the autumn season. Gary Girvan is one such hunter and his book outlines how to be a successful duck shooter. It builds on a surprisingly sparse New Zealand duck-hunting literature. Most duck-hunting books are how-to guide books with some anecdotes thrown in.

Compare this with the wealth of trout-fishing and deer-hunting books, which are filled with stories and anecdotes from the backcountry and riverbank. Purportedly these are non-fiction. Auckland's Halcyon Press is a major publisher of fishing and hunting tomes and many other publishing companies have realised there is a market for outdoor tales. In fiction Barry Crump's novels A good keen man (1960) and Wild pork and watercress (1986) have mythologised deer and pig hunting. A good keen man is one of New Zealand's top-selling books, amassing sales of 400,000 by 1992.

Some 30,000 Kiwis from all walks of life (mainly men, but some women) purchase a game-bird hunting licence each year. Duck shooters flock to ponds, lakes, swamps and rivers to enjoy the annual ritual of opening morning – the first Saturday in May. Girvan's book provides advice for successful hunting, recounts the social history of the sport, explores the environment in which it takes place and explains the behaviour of birds in the wild.

He notes in his preface that writing a book enabled him to justify the travel and expense of meeting all types of contemporary duck hunters – and he could even 'call it work!'

By Dinah Vincent and Carl Walrond

Further information

Duck shooting (Te Ara)

Credit:

Image courtesy Gary Girvan

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