Publicly accessible
URL: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/collections.html
copyright
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line, except in the case of those words that break over a page.
Some keywords in the header are a local Electronic Text Centre scheme to aid in establishing analytical groupings.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600, Wellington
© Editor and contributors 2004
ISBN 0 86473 475 1 First published 2004
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair
dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright
Act, no part may be reproduced by any process
without the permission of the publishers
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Creating a national spirit: celebrating New Zealand's centennial / edited by William Renwick.
Includes index. ISBN 0-86473-475-1
1. New Zealand—Centennial celebrations, etc.
I.
993.032—dc 22
Printed by PrintLink, Wellington
Creating a National Spirit
is dedicated to the memory of
John Mansfield Thomson, 1926£1999
The contributors to this book were assisted in many ways in their researches but some people warrant particular mention.
Vincent O'Sullivan, the director of the Stout Research Centre at the time, warmly supported the proposal to hold a conference in November 1999 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the Centennial Exhibition, and he, Sarah Upton, the centre's administrator, and residents at the centre at the time did much to ensure its success. Lydia Wevers, the current director, kept a watchful eye on the book's progress toward publication. The Stout Research Centre met the costs of copy-editing the text of the book for publication. A generous grant from the Stout Trust ensured the book's publication.
Margaret Calder, the Alexander Turnbull chief librarian, supported the project from the time it was first mooted and her advice smoothed its path at important stages; and librarians at the Alexander Turnbull Library were a continuing source of advice and guidance to the book's authors. Members of the staff of Archives New Zealand provided ready access to the official records of the centennial celebrations, as did staff of Wellington City Archives to records of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd. The Hocken Library responded helpfully to requests for access to some of its holdings.
Dame Janet Paul and Emeritus Professor Tim Beaglehole generously shared their knowledge of
Emeritus Professor W.H. Oliver read the completed text of the book and gave helpful advice. Janet Hughes copy-edited it and compiled the index. Fergus Barrowman and Sue Brown prepared a handsome publication.
This assistance is gratefully acknowledged.
It is appropriate that this book is dedicated to John Mansfield Thomson who died on 11 September 1999. John was an enthusiast for exhibitions and, only a few days before his death, was engaged in planning a conference which would be the basis for a subsequent publication. 'I'm glad Bill Renwick is organising the conference,' he said, 'but I hope he doesn't think he's editing the book.' He was a determined editor right to the end.
John was born in 1926 in his grandmother's house in Blenheim. He was educated as a boarder at Nelson College, an experience which left him with a lifelong abhorrence for spinach and rugby. He worked for a time in the Blenheim branch of the Bank of New Zealand, managed by his uncle, and often referred to in the family as his uncle's bank.
Towards the end of World War Two, he went to Britain with the Fleet Air Arm, although he was too late for active service. After demobilisation, he decided that he really wanted to work in theatre and was employed as an assistant stage manager in a provincial theatre company, and for a time at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, with Michael MacLiammoir.
On his return to New Zealand, he completed a degree in history at Victoria University. With a number of friends, including Alistair Campbell and Bill Oliver, he founded a small literary journal, Hilltops and edited the first two issues. He also studied the flute with James Hopkinson, principal flute of the New Zealand National orchestra. The flute and the recorder remained lifelong interests.
In 1949, he returned to London, where he studied social anthropology at University College with Raymond Firth and typography at Camberwell School of Art. During the 1950s he maintained something of an itinerant existence, with a period in Sydney, where he began research on his first major work, the biography of composer Alfred Hill, A Distant Music, published in 1980.
By 1961, John had returned to London where he lived for more than twenty years. This was the period of his greatest success. His editorship of the journals Composer, Recorder and Music Magazine, and his work as a music books editor at Barrie and Jenkins and later at Faber and Faber, built him a substantial reputation.
He was very much part of the scene at Aldeburgh around Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, becoming a lifelong friend of Britten's librettist Eric Crozier. With the New Zealand Music Society in London he did much to foster the cause of his country's composers and performers in London, and he was founding chairman of the National Early Music Association of Great Britain. From 1978 to 1981 he served on the Music Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain.
Undoubtedly he reached the peak of his career as founder of the journal Early Music, which he edited for ten years. His skill as an editor, his ability to engage and encourage talented writers and his taste and knowledge of typography produced a most exquisite and scholarly journal. Reading the tributes to him in the 100th issue of the journal (November 1997), it is tempting to say that he was much more highly regarded in England than he was in his native country.
John was also a mentor for many young musicians. He relished the company of lively and talented young people, and helped many of them on their careers. One of these friends, Peter Phillips, founder and conductor of the Tallis Scholars, wrote recently in the Guardian, 'His magnetism was just what early music needed to establish itself in the first years and to draw together and rationalise the conflicting theories and idealisms of those pioneering days.'
Another Guardian correspondent, Professor William Roff, made a lovely comment on John's help for young people.
More than 20 years ago my elder daughter, who much later became a German scholar, was introduced to the language by John discoursing on the extraordinary amount of information on the labels of German wine. He specialised in a thoughtful and much relished enrichment of the life of others, and left the young his own as a model.
He returned to New Zealand in 1982 to undergo heart surgery, which unfortunately meant an end to his career with Early Music.
In his late fifties, he was now faced with beginning his career again back in New Zealand. The then newly established Stout Research Centre came to the rescue and he was appointed, in 1984, as the first Stout Centre Review (now New Zealand Studies) which he built into what is now a handsome scholarly journal. He was the most meticulous editor. In one of the early issues the text on a couple of pages was printed slightly too high; John demanded that the entire issue be reprinted, despite my protestations, as Director, about the parlous state of the Centre's coffers. He won, of course, which was only right. He also kept a watchful and critical eye on the quality of the wine at Stout Centre functions and lunches.
As J.D. Stout Fellow, John did the major research for his Oxford History of New
Zealand Music, published in 1991. His work on behalf of New Zealand music resulted in the Biographical Dictionary of New Zealand Composers (1990). He was awarded an honorary DMus in 1991. He was founding editor of New Zealand Books. His last book, Farewell Colonialism, was, like this one, the record of a Stout Centre Conference. Among his voluminous papers there are at least four uncompleted books.
I first met John at the Darmstadt Festival of Contemporary Music in 1962. At the time he had been at Bayreuth and was fleeing from the heady world of the Wagner family. It was then that I understood John's great love of the whole world of music, of mixing with performers, composers, writers, librettists and editors, even when at times he didn't much like the actual music. I never heard him express any great enthusiasm for the music of Michael Tippett, but, when that composer visited New Zealand, John was the most congenial of hosts in the vineyards of his native Marlborough. His world was the baroque and the classical, music of balance and style: Purcell, Rameau and especially his beloved Haydn.
John had many gifts, but probably his greatest was for friendship. Even when his health was precarious, he would stagger out on a foul Wellington night to a concert to support the performers or the composer. In his last few weeks he turned the Cardiac Care Unit of Wellington Hospital into a salon. The nursing staff had never seen anything like it and remarked that he must know everyone in Wellington. One of my most cherished memories is of an evening a few days before he died. He had had a good day and was in fine form. The latest report on the National Library had arrived: he was suitably outraged by it and the word 'gobbledegook' came frequently to his lips. With his sister Janet, his niece Gillian and a few friends, we downed a bottle of good red wine and ate strawberries. It was an archetypal John occasion, full of good cheer and lively, if at times acerbic, conversation. It saddens me to think that there will be no more of them.
John was unique, and there are many people who miss him greatly.
How to celebrate the centennial of a founding colonising event? The stock answer in the 1930s was to combine pageantry with an international fair. Pageants paid homage to the pioneers by re-enacting the founding moment. A trade fair in the capital city displayed the fruits of progress and prosperity for the world to see. Melbourne had held an acclaimed international trade fair in 1934 to mark its centenary. Adelaide held one in 1936. Johannesburg hosted an Empire Fair in 1937. Spurred on by the success of Dunedin's New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in 1926-27, some influential Wellingtonians saw 1940 as their year of opportunity. In January 1936, the mayor of Wellington, T.C.A. Hislop, led a deputation of civic and business leaders to the Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, to present the case for Wellington to stage an international exhibition as the main event of the country's centennial celebrations. Auckland and other centres, he said, would have their own celebrations but these would be 'on a much smaller scale and of a local nature'. Savage encouraged Hislop to enlist the cooperation of the mayors of the main cities. It was a big idea, he said, and he liked people with big ideas. His ministerial colleague, Minutes of meeting of Prime Minister with deputation led by
Ernest Davis to Parry, 10 November 1935, J.S. Permanent Secretary, Auckland Centennial Committee, to Parry, 14 December 1935, Heenan memorandum, 7 January 1936, IA 1, 62/2.
A centennial exhibition, he was equally convinced, would do little to that end. He had attended the South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin and felt certain that the nation's centennial would be trivialised if an exhibition were to be its main focus.
The only things that people would remember would be what they did in the amusement park.
Heenan had a kindred spirit in Parry, and Parry, when he needed it, could call on support from the Deputy Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, and the Minister of Finance, Walter Nash. Heenan to Parry, 27 January 1936, IA 1, 62/7; Heenan to Parry, 25 March 1936, loc. cit.; Memorandum, W. Nash, Parry's opening address to the National Centennial Committee, 18 June 1936, Ms-Papers 1132-288, Heenan Collection.The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997), pp.110-11.
Most of these principal events were held during the early months of 1940. The government initially expected the Centennial Exhibition to open halfway through the year after most of the principal events had been held. But the Exhibition was planned and managed by its own board of directors, which upstaged the official programme of events. The official opening of the Centennial Exhibition was on 8 November 1939. The Exhibition became, as Jock Phillips observes in his afterword, the centrepiece of the centennial celebrations. Not only was it the first event to take place. It housed its own enticing world, a total experience for the family, and it ran for six months. Most of the other events lasted a day or two, but the Exhibition was something that people could return to, and many returned more than once. Its eyecatching Centennial Tower became familiar throughout the country through photographs, posters, and mementos, and its succession of events caught the ear of the public through daily broadcasts of events. The total number of visitors to the Centennial Exhibition far exceeded New Zealand's total population.
The six chapters of Part I assess the Exhibition's contribution to the centennial. It was a showcase for the country but it was also, as Gavin McLean explains, first and foremost a business venture, one from which, in the end, it had to be rescued by the government. William Toomath analyses Edmund Anscombe's striking architectural solution and shows how he expressed it on the Rongotai site. Playland, the Exhibition's fun park, was what people remembered more than anything else, and Gavin McLean discusses its strategic importance to the Centennial Exhibition Company's plans. John E. Martin examines the image of New Zealand society that the government presented in the Government Court. Patrick Day recounts the role of the new medium of radio broadcasting in making the Exhibition a lively presence in the lives of New Zealanders in many parts of the country. Bernard Kernot's discussion of Ngata's centennial building projects includes the Maori Court in the Centennial Exhibition as an example of Ngata's sponsorship of a distinctive Maori architecture as an expression of Maori identity.
Many Pakeha who played prominent roles in the celebrations could claim grandparents or other family members who had come to the country as pioneers.
They felt close to those forebears and were proud of the opportunity to honour them. They took pride in what they thought of as a century of progress. But the centennial was a time for looking to the future as well as to the past. In particular, Parry underlined, it was a time for rethinking relationships with the 'motherland'. British influences were everywhere to be seen, he said, and remained important, but New Zealanders should not cling to leading strings: the time had come to stop labouring the point that 'we are a young country'. The once-dependent child was no longer an 'infant country' but a 'virile son': the centennial would mark its 'coming of age'. New Zealand had 'become a grown up nation with something to celebrate.. . . Our little country' had made 'wonderful progress'. There was much for New Zealanders 'to show the world'. Address by
As one sign of maturity, therefore, the centennial celebrations were to be a time of national 'stocktaking'. Certainly, there had been great progress but it had come at a cost. Parry particularly deplored the destruction of the natural landscape and made sure that there would be a strong emphasis on its conservation in centennial activities. There were also important respects in which the country still fell short of its own expectations. Its achievements in 'learning, science, and art, [had] naturally been but those of National youth'. He acknowledged that it would have been too much to expect 'a separate national culture' to develop in less than a hundred years, or for New Zealanders to 'have added much to the age old English culture'. So the best memorial that New Zealanders of the present generation could give to those who had gone before was 'to hoist a national standard for our second hundred years'. Ibid.
This emphasis on the cultural dimensions of nationalism was one of the two respects in which the New Zealand centennial celebrations differed from the centennials of Victoria and South Australia and the sesquicentenary of New South Wales. The Maori dimension was the other. Parry began talking to Sir Apirana Ngata almost as soon as he had discussed his proposals with his cabinet colleagues. Michael Bassett, p.110.
The involvement of Maori leaders in the planning of what would be a predominantly Pakeha enterprise was a new departure for a New Zealand government. The success with which Maori were assimilating to Pakeha ways was a major theme of the centennial for the government and the National Centennial Council. This was the unvarying message of speeches by the Governor General, the Prime Minister, members of his cabinet, other politicians, and civic dignitaries. None
Ngata did not see the relationship in those terms at all, and the centennial celebrations gave him opportunities to impress his views which he was quick to take up. It was as Maori and Pakeha living together in the same country but in important respects according to different cultural norms that he wanted Pakeha to see Maori, not as a people in the process of becoming brown Pakeha. The purchase of the Busby property at Waitangi and its dedication as a national reserve in 1934, had already given him the chance to re-establish a Maori cultural presence on that site. Creating his own opportunities, he ensured that, in preparation for the centennial, a whare runanga was built to stand alongside the Treaty House and form with it and the flagstaff the symbolic relationship of the Treaty itself. He also ensured that a number of community development schemes he already had under way were accorded the status of centennial projects and were opened with due ceremony during the centennial year. The opening of one of these, Wahiao, at Whakarewarewa, was given the honour of being the last of the national centennial events and, as Ngata intended, focused national attention on the Maori cultural revival.
Not everything, however, was plain sailing in working relations between the government and Maori. Nga Puhi tested Heenan's diplomatic skills in the run up to the Waitangi ceremonies. More serious, because it could not be resolved and resulted in the Maori King's decision not to attend the Waitangi celebrations, were disputes between the government and the Kingitanga tribes in Waikato and Taranaki. King Koroki's absence tarnished the Pakeha image of racial unity at the one ceremony which, more than any others, was intended to demonstrate that unity. Ngata's speech at Waitangi expressed the ambivalence with which Maori viewed their experience as British subjects. Ngai Tahu also made their political point at the Akaroa celebrations, the only national event in the South Island. These, however, were blemishes on festive occasions which otherwise went extremely well. Descendents of Te Puni who, with Te Wharepouri, had welcomed the Tory in 1839 had an honoured place in the celebrations at Petone to commemorate the beginning of organised British settlement. The functions at Maketu and Whakarewarewa for which Arawa were the hosts were demonstrations of racial amity and loyalty to the Crown. The East Coast tribes played an active part in preparations for celebrations that would have re-enacted Cook's first landing in New Zealand. But the war intervened, many of their young men flocked to join the Maori Battalion, and the celebration was cancelled.
The principal centennial memorial events are discussed in the thirteen chapters of Part II. An afterword, written by Jock Phillips, reviews those events from the perspective of a present-day historian. The concept of a centennial memorial was given a broad meaning. It included the commemoration of important historical events, the creation of memorial buildings and sites, and the building of new civic amenities, an array of centennial publications, the centennial musical and dramatic festivals, musical and dramatic contests, literary contests, a travelling exhibition of New Zealand art, and a centennial film.
From beginning to end, the centennial celebrations were undertaken in a spirit of evident cooperation and goodwill. The National Party put aside political differences and readily endorsed the government's plans. Newspaper proprietors and editors throughout the country kept the public well informed and made good use of the many historical pieces made available to them through New Zealand Centennial News, a newsletter issued by the Department of Internal Affairs. Centennial committees, with advice from
The men who conceived and managed these celebrations were men of their time. Women played little part in them. Following the announcement of the membership of the National Centennial Committee and the National Historical Committee, a woman wrote to Parry noting that all the members were men and expressing the hope that women would also be given prominence. Parry saw her off by saying that women would be members of other committees still to be formed. When the full list was published, Te Puea was the only woman member.
Parry, as Minister in Charge of Centennial Celebrations and the government's principal spokesman, was most ably supported behind the scenes by his dynamic undersecretary, Joe Heenan. Heenan had the trust of ministers, worked well with Ashwin, Secretary of Treasury, and with the heads of other government departments, and enjoyed the loyal support of officers in his department. Above all, he was enthusiastic about the responsibilities that went with the opportunity to celebrate the centennial, had clear views of his own about how it should be celebrated, and was quick to recognise other people's good ideas. The Centennial Music Festival, discussed by Allan Thomas, was first proposed by the Royal Wellington Choral Union. The Centennial Drama Festival, discussed by David Carnegie and Sue Dunlop, was proposed by Professor James Shelley soon after his appointment as
Making New Zealand series was the brainchild of
These and other proposals enjoyed Heenan's formidable support but the centennial historical publications were his own idea and were closest to his heart. A book man himself, he believed in the power of the word, and the historical publications were to be the enduring centennial memorials. Of these, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was itself an historical landmark, and the historical surveys included a handful of titles of enduring value. Shirley Tunnicliff discusses the Dictionary in her essay. Rachel Barrowman reviews the centennial surveys. Heenan's nationalist agenda encompassed every aspect of publication from the choice of topic and the selection of authors to the physical appearance of the publications themselves; and it was his good fortune that, as Sydney Shep explains in her essay,
The centennial celebrations, centrally directed and encompassing the whole country, were an example of the Labour government's willingness to use the levers of the state in what it considered to be the public interest. It was not just a matter of organising events to celebrate an important national milestone. Heenan seems to have seen no objection in principle to a department of state commissioning and publishing what were planned to be definitive works of national history. Nor did experienced journalists and writers and up-and-coming historians have qualms about accepting commissions to write them. But even in the benign climate of centennial celebration and with sympathetic ministers there was the possibility, remote as it may have seemed, that there might be political objection to what a writer of an officially sponsored centennial survey might propose for publication.
The centennial celebrations benefited from and in their turn contributed to the state's intervention in other aspects of the nation's life. Film and radio were the lively forms of popular culture of the 1930s. The government's active involvement in the making of officially sponsored films made it possible to take on the ambitious project of producing a feature-length centennial film; and the management of the
A Hundred Crowded Years and of other film projects led to the creation of the National Film Studios in 1941. Nationwide state broadcasting, Patrick Day explains in his chapter, gave New Zealanders the experience of sharing in the same events, regardless of where they were held, and centennial events gave the two rival networks many opportunities to build nationwide audiences. Under Colin Scrimgeour's direction, the ZB network quickly created a national popular culture. Patrick Day, Allan Thomas, and David Carnegie and Sue Dunlop make it clear that, under Professor Shelley, the YA stations of the National Broadcasting Service catered to the interests of serious listeners. Shelley also promoted the cause of a national symphony orchestra and a national conservatorium of music and the spoken arts. The proposed conservatorium came to nothing. The Centennial Festival Orchestra proved to be the decisive step towards the formation of the National Orchestra in 1947.
Also national in influence, the Patrick Day, New Zealand Listener, first published in June 1939, was a watershed in the nation's cultural life. Oliver Duff, its first editor, who had had a hand in the centennial historical publications and was the author of one of the most popular of them, New Zealand Now, quickly established its reputation as a well-informed, high-minded publication. It had a circulation of 40,000 at the end of its first year.The Radio Years: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, vol.1 (Auckland: Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting History Trust, 1994), p.256.Listener that the works of Frank Sargeson, Roderick Finlayson, Monte Holcroft, and Douglas Lilburn, the winners of the centennial literary and music composition competitions, became more widely known.
The outbreak of war in September 1939 put a serious dampener on centennial preparations. Visitors to the Centennial Exhibition from Britain, Canada, and the United States were much smaller in numbers than had been expected, with heavy financial consequences for the Centennial Exhibition Company. The government reviewed its centennial plans and decided to proceed with the programme of national events. Provincial committees also reviewed their arrangements, and many provincial events were cancelled. The visit of the Welsh Guards Band was cancelled. The Canadian government decided not to build a pavilion at the Exhibition but to lease space for its exhibits instead. Aucklanders, as Russell Stone points out in his essay, were saved the embarrassment of not being ready to unveil the Sir John Logan Campbell Memorial to the Maori race on the summit of One Tree Hill in January 1940, as intended. The great national gathering of Maori planned for the unveiling on Auckland's anniversary day was not held. The memorial obelisk was commemorated seven years later. The re-enactment of Cook's landing at Kaiti beach, Gisborne, was cancelled. The centennial film missed its moment. Its production was already running months behind initial expectations when war broke out. When,
"Whether New Zealanders' response to the war would have been as united and intense without the emphasis on the national spirit that was the focus of the centennial preparations is impossible to say. Certainly, the sentiments animating the centennial were the same as those that sustained the New Zealand war effort. The presence at Waitangi of a contingent of the Maori Battalion—the outcome of one of Ngata's initiatives—gave powerful expression to the conviction of a nation united in its own defence.
National feeling feeds on itself. During the late 1930s, Pakeha up and down the country reflected on what the centennial meant for them and identified the main strands of their sense of nation: their links through the pioneers with sturdy British stock, their vigour as a people who had tamed what had been for them a virgin land, their record of economic and social progress which, they believed, was an example to the mother country and their sister dominions, and their unflinching loyalty to king and commonwealth—which many, perhaps most, still referred to fondly as the British Empire. Savage's famous statement when he announced that New Zealand was at war expressed national sentiment perfectly.
For Pakeha, being a New Zealander was inseparable from being British and as natural as the air they breathed. Maori, as Ngata pointed out at Waitangi and Arawa demonstrated in their celebrations, were also thankful to be British citizens despite unresolved grievances. But there was something more, and the centennial celebrations brought it to the fore. The experience both of being born of British stock and of making a success, as they believed, of living in New Zealand convinced Pakeha New Zealanders that they had something valuable to give in return to Britain, other members of the British family of nations and, indeed, to the world. Parry and Heenan, with their preference for masculine imagery, thought of the country as a virile son who had reached maturity. But in visual representations, it was as female, as Zealandia, Britannia's handmaiden of the South Seas, that the nation was represented. That was the image, published in hundreds of thousands, that graced the certificate that was given to visitors to the Centennial Exhibition.
Might there, perhaps, be an even greater future for Zealandia? The Deepening Stream, thought it not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that, when the war was over, New Zealand and Australia might be called upon to put on the mantle of Britannia herself. What would happen, he speculated, if Britain were to be broken and exhausted by the war. One possibility would be 'to create a new centre for the British Empire in the comparatively isolated and fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand'.The Deepening Stream: Cultural Influences in New Zealand (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1940), p.34.
Wellington had not hosted a major industrial exhibition since 1895 and, in 1930, the mayor, Sir George Troup, began a campaign for the city to hold a centennial exhibition. The depression intervened but his successor, Thomas Hislop, revived the idea and led a deputation to
The Centennial Exhibition fell short of Dunedin's in that it could not claim the coveted 'international' status. Before 1928 no rules had governed the running of international exhibitions. As these events grew in frequency, cost and political significance the need for minimum standards and sensible scheduling arrangements became obvious. In November 1928, therefore, many nations signed a convention on the use of the term 'international' for exhibitions. Signatories could not attend 'international' exhibitions not endorsed by the Paris secretariat. New Zealand was not a signatory, but Australia, Canada and Britain were, so the New Zealand High Commissioner urged caution in August 1937 when the Wellington company directors began talking about their exhibition as 'international'. The word 'empire' was acceptable, but Directors' Minutes, Book 1, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd (NZCECL) Archives, box 10, file 456.
The Wellington promoters followed the Dunedin model and formed a limited liability company to organise the exhibition, the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd (the exhibition company). Its articles of association provided for up to fifteen directors, one to be nominated by the Wellington City Council (WCC), three by central government and the remainder to be appointed by shareholders.
The directors (initially styled provisional directors), all men, came from the greater Wellington area. They were:
The government directors were:
The provisional directors met for the first time on 25 September 1936 at the city council offices. One of their priorities was the appointment of key staff. They could not make permanent appointments, but quickly secured the services of Charles P. Hainsworth on a temporary basis as 'organiser' for £15 a month. Hainsworth had plenty of experience. A former general manager of the Glasgow City Corporation's Department of Exhibitions and Trade Affairs, he had come to New Zealand in 1924 to manage the Dunedin exhibition. Early the following year the full exhibition company board confirmed him as general manager at £1500 a year and hired
When the company directors met for the first time on 16 March 1937, it was not a smooth meeting. The chairmanship was contested keenly, Hislop having to go to a second ballot to beat Todd by a single vote. Nevertheless, the directorate appears to have settled down and to have worked efficiently. It had to. Much of the work fell to committees of directors and coopted volunteers.
One of the provisional directors' first priorities had been selling shares to raise funds. They issued their prospectus on 30 September 1936, setting the company's nominal capital at £150,000, distributed in £1 shares. These could be paid for at 2s 6d
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd: Shareholding
The share register shows that average New Zealanders kept their wallets firmly shut. Many of the small businesses and the petty proprietors who took shares seem to have hoped for a direct spin-off from the exhibition. Hotel keepers, carriers, electrical firms and other contractors bought parcels of five to twenty shares, five being more common than twenty. There were some non self-employed investors, but virtually all buyers of single shares were described as foremen, labourers, builders,
Few Aucklanders or South Islanders invested. True, many of the_contractors were nationwide operators, but the overwhelming majority of corporate and personal investors came from the capital. The exhibition may have carried the name 'New Zealand Centennial', but the people who bought shares were largely Wellingtonians. There were few investors outside Wellington, although a number of large Dunedin corporate investors may have had something to do with memories of that city's 1925-6 exhibition.
One of the first decisions to be made was the selection of an architect. Among a number of applicants there were two main contenders. The first, a consortium of Atkins & Mitchell, Crichton, McKay & Haughton, J.M. Dawson & King, and Gray, Morton & Young, wanted a panel of architects, something Alan Mitchell had seen work successfully at the recent Century of Progress exposition in Chicago. Opposing them was Edmund Anscombe, who had designed the 1925-6 Dunedin exhibition. Anscombe invited company officials to inspect his offices, where he had laid out the bait of 'a comprehensive exhibit depicting the practical side of Exhibitions'. E. Anscombe to NZCECL, 17 March 1937, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 27. E. Anscombe, The Inside Story of the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition, Dunedin 1925-26, fifty pages of festering, wounded pride.The Inside Story of the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition, Dunedin, 1925-26 (London, 1928).
The appointment subcommittee favoured a panel, but the wider board leaned towards Anscombe and, by six votes to three at the 5 April 1937 board meeting, invited him to participate in a panel. The subcommittee was clearly unhappy with that decision and the panel declined to add Anscombe, 'a gentleman whom three of them had met for the first time only that afternoon'. Architects' Subcommittee, 12 April 1937, Directors' Minute Book no.l, NZCECL Archives, box 10, file 456. NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 27. Ibid. Interestingly, in a letter to Hislop dated that day, Anscombe wrote 'regarding the statement that I am a difficult man to work with', and appended letters of endorsement from Dunedin as well as a promise to forfeit £1000 if he ever failed to carry out the directors' instructions to their entire satisfaction.
Selecting the architect was child's play compared with building the exhibition complex itself. The site, at exposed Rongotai, has fairly been described as a 'dreary place' whose 'amenities included a rubbish tip in one corner'.
R. Wilson to
Evening Post, 8 November 1939, quoted by Greg Bowron, 'A Brilliant Spectacle: the Centennial Exhibition Buildings', in John Wilson ed, Zeal and Crusade: The Modern Movement in New Zealand (Christchurch: Te Waihora Press, 1996), p.40.Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives, Department of Industries and Commerce, 1941, H-44, p.22. According to Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition (Wellington: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, 1940), p.117, 'of the 154 operating days, 105 days were fine and 49 wet or windy; of the wet or windy days thirteen were Saturdays or holidays.'
The real problem was the site's proximity to the Wellington aerodrome, which had almost as much influence on the finished buildings as Anscombe's design. The official history skated over this rather lightly NZCECL to WCC, 21 April 1937, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 15. NZCECL to Controller of Civil Aviation, 27 April 1937, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 15.
Anscombe, who freely admitted 'the Exhibition as a whole is a menace to flying', E. Anscombe to NZCECL, 27 June 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 15. E. Anscombe to NZCECL, 27 June 1939. His Majesty's Trade Commissioner to NZCECL, 22 December 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 50. Ibid., 4 January 1939.
Hainsworth and Avery could draw on the technical services of WCC employees, but much of the work fell to directors and coopted volunteers. The committee structure followed established practice. The seventeen formal committees were: accommodation, admissions, amusement park, catering, ceremonial, electrical, executive, finance, furnishings, horticultural, music and entertainment, publicity, space and exhibits, sports, traffic and transport, works, and the London advisory committee. In addition to these there were also informal and ad hoc committees. Subcommittees were formed between mid-1937 and mid-1938 as needs arose. Few began as informally as the Women's Committee, which was set up in June 1937, formed from among the directors' wives. In two areas the company's work was simplified. The National Art Gallery's decision to run a centennial art exhibition saved the company the trouble of organising one; and although the company formed a sports subcommittee, its role was limited to helping to prevent calendar clashes. Wellington held sporting activities in conjunction with the exhibition, but the Centennial Games took place in Auckland.
Two of the more important committees were the transport committee and the accommodation committee. Because Wellington's hills restrict transport, serious thought had been given to locating the exhibition in the central city area on the Thorndon reclamation. The site was too small for this, however, so the organisers selected the more spacious Rongotai site, which had been made more viable by the completion of the Mount Victoria road tunnel in 1931.
Nevertheless, planning for the exhibition required careful cooperation between the WCC, which ran the trams and buses, the Eastbourne Borough Council, which operated the harbour ferries, and the Wellington Harbour Board, which controlled valuable shore fringes suitable for parking. The transport committee supplemented its numbers with representatives of the New Zealand Railways Department, the Union Steam Ship Company, the council tramways and the Automobile Association. Tramlines were extended, the harbour ferries were given the use of the Miramar oil jetty and the aerodrome was made available for parking each evening after 7.30. For the first time in New Zealand's exhibition history, car parking became a major issue. The exhibition car park offered 1,262 spaces. The company estimated that motorists could find another 5000 in the streets nearby but advertising emphasised the wisdom
Transport Committee minutes, NZCECL Archives, box 10, file 446.
Dominion, 2 November 1939.
Accommodation was even trickier, for Wellington was not a traditional visitor destination. At first the exhibition company looked to the private sector to meet the challenge, but it came to realise that it would have to provide some itself. State housing construction was booming in Wellington, but a request to allow state house tenants to take in billets during the exhibition received a frosty response from the State Advances Corporation. The corporation replied to the effect that granting a concession for the exhibition would set an undesirable precedent. Nor did the expanding bureaucracy help. In November Internal Affairs declined a request to delay the demolition of the Hotel Arcadia, whose site was needed by the fast-expanding Social Security Department. Undersecretary Department of Internal Affairs to NZCECL, 9 November 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 6.
The accommodation committee had little more success with alternatives. It discovered that the secondary schools and the dental school used their accommodation over the summer months. Plans to have the Winter Show building owners operate it for the city council as a hostel, car park and motor camp dragged on for months without result. The company failed to interest the Automobile Association in building a motor camp (despite seeking quotes for tents and stretchers for a 'canvas camp'), although one was eventually opened in Miramar under council control. A photograph of the first campers using the motor camp appeared in the S. Holm to NZCECL, 23 March 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 6.Dominion on 1 November 1939,Holmwood for conversion to an accommodation ship at the Miramar wharf.
The company was involved directly in two accommodation ventures: an accommodation bureau which opened in the central city in early 1939; and an attempt to take shares in the Exhibition Hotel at the exhibition site, seeking funding for this purpose from the bank. By now, though, the Bank of New Zealand was alarmed by the company's indebtedness and refused to support the hotel project, which had to be funded by the City Council, the exhibition company, Fletcher & Love, Anscombe and 'the Misses Scott'. It exceeded its £36,500 construction budget by almost £10,000. NZCECL to Department of Industries and Commerce, 18 May 1940, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 4. Directors' Minute Book, 17 May 1940, NZCECL Archives, box 10, file 458.
The high profile of the company and its close links to the government obliged it to be particularly sensitive to the social and political environment in which it operated. A by-law under the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Act 1938 prohibited attendance by 'common prostitutes and persons who habitually consort with thieves
By-law Under New Zealand Centennial Act 1938, See NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 26.New Zealand Gazette, no.145, p.3578.
The company's deepening relationship with the organs of state influenced every aspect of its activities. From the very start officials and civil servants had interacted comfortably, both seeing the exhibition as a project of national importance. When the company was considering running large fireworks displays, for example, Avery sent a memo to Hainsworth that 'in conversation with Mr Heenan I understand that Mr Perryman of the Govt Explosives Dept will be glad to assist with any advice in regard to Fire Works Displays etc.' Secretary to General Manager, 22 September 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 94. Keith Sinclair, Comptroller of Customs to NZCECL, 2 June 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 2, file 53.Walter Nash (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1976), p. 170.as far as practicable,' he wrote in June 1938. This is somewhat indefinite and I shall be glad if you will inform me, for the information of the Minister of Customs, what steps are being taken to ensure that in the construction of the Exhibition buildings New Zealand materials will be used wherever such are available in suitable quantity . . . '
From then on company and architect dutifully reported high usage of local cement, wallboard and timber products, but Anscombe drew the line at locally produced urinals. He liked neither Otago manufacturer McSkimming's price nor their product, which he considered would have a £400-500 lower salvage price than English ones. Throughout the second part of 1938 architect, company, manufacturer and the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Industries and Commerce exchanged letters about the purchase of 100 urinals, pans and basins. When Anscombe held his ground, the department nudged McSkimming, noting that 'the Department is anxious that
F. Johnston (Department of Industries and Commerce) to E. Ansombe to NZCECL, 12 January 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 2, file 53.
Those lavatory fittings were merely one example of trade politics rippling through to Rongotai. Throughout 1938 the Labour government had been dithering over how to control the exchange crisis. Import controls, finally imposed in December, reduced the exhibition's attractiveness to overseas exhibitors. This was not so bad for the Australian and British governments, which had already agreed to erect buildings to house non-commercial exhibits, and were not looking to recoup costs. It was a different story, however, for Canada. The senior dominion had been embarrassed by cost overruns on the 1939 New York World's Fair and needed commercial exhibitors to pay its way. Already it had held back until British participation had been confirmed. C. Hainsworth to
War, of course, dealt a harsher blow than even the toughest exchange controls. The outbreak of hostilities between Germany and the British Empire cast a dampener over everything and brought the cancellation of an expected exhibition highlight, the visit by the Welsh Guards Band. The world-famous band had already weathered one challenge from the New Zealand Musicians' Union, which had sought coverage of the bandsmen—all enlisted British soldiers—while they were in New Zealand. However, by the time that Industries and Commerce relayed the Department of Labour's decision that the soldier-players were employees of the Crown and therefore could not be compelled to join a union, Department of Industries and Commerce to NZCECL, 11 August 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 2, file 41.
Briefly it even looked as though the entire exhibition might have to be cancelled. On 31 August 1939 directors had held a special meeting to discuss contingency plans should war break out. They recommended continuing and sought the guidance of
The war was merely the last blow to the company's struggling finances. In February directors had formed an economy committee to scrutinise expenditure.
This razor gang conceded that Anscombe's costly fountain was essential, but it pruned lighting and maintenance costs and called for more economies, especially in construction, which at £246,735, was running nearly 10% above estimates. Economy Committee Minutes, Directors Minute Book no.2, 27 February 1939.
But it would have taken more than trimming and pruning to prevent the need for a government bail out. The company had relied on share sales and public subsidy, but with construction costs rising and share sales tapering off, it became clear that the overdraft would balloon before the gate takings began to flow in. In October 1938 the nervous Bank of New Zealand opined that 'as the Exhibition is a National one, and one that should benefit the City of Wellington, it is only reasonable that it should be guaranteed by the Government or by the Wellington City Council'. Nevertheless, the bank agreed to meet up to 75% of the amount required 'from time to time', but with a strict upper limit of £75,000. It also demanded a mortgage on the assets. Manager Wellington BNZ to NZCECL, 4 October 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 2, file 44.
Hainsworth and Avery readjusted their estimates again, but could not avoid the conclusion that they needed government help. The original arrangements were a subsidy of £50,000 (one pound for every two pounds worth of shares sold) and an interest-free loan of £25,000. The Crown had later replaced the loan with a straight purchase of £25,000 worth of shares and had agreed to double the share subsidy, but its acquisition of shares had also reduced the value of the last move. Late in November 1938 the company warned the Minister of Industries & Commerce that the company's overdraft would probably hit £100,000 in July or August 1940—£25,000 above the Bank of New Zealand's limit. Would the government cover the gap? In January 1939 Sullivan agreed, offering £25,000 at 4% interest.
But this was not enough. A month later Hislop reported that the situation had again deteriorated. The company had optimistically budgeted on selling all the floor space but sales had stalled at 34.8% sold, with a further 33% reserved. It now seemed that much of the reserved space might not be taken and that it would be unwise to bank on selling more than 75%. This would cut the projected space revenue by £27,000 and help push the company's overdraft to an unsustainable £127,946 by September 1939. To make matters worse, this would technically breach its accommodation with the Bank of New Zealand for the overdraft, which depended on selling all the floor space. In view of this, Hislop asked Sullivan to cancel the recently agreed £25,000 loan and to guarantee the BNZ account for up to £125,000 in return for a debenture over the company's shares and physical assets. Thomas Hislop to
It was wise to exercise caution about sales. In September 1939 Hainsworth reported that nearly half the exhibitors had not begun to build. Some were leaving it
Directors' Minute Book no.2, 2 October 1939.
At least the show went on. Governor General Lord Galway opened the exhibition on 8 November before 40,000 people. He and his family made numerous promotional visits, opening key pavilions and Playland in stages in order to maximise publicity. The company also brought in other celebrity visitors, politicians, members of diplomatic circles and heroes such as General Freyberg and US Admiral Byrd, who visited on 29 December. The loss of the Welsh Guards cost the company a £600 broadcasting fee but the National Commercial Broadcasting Service, the city council and the company went to great lengths to ensure that the service's huge railway broadcasting car got to Rongotai.
The company's promotional efforts were also helped by those of others. The shipping companies and the railways had been including the exhibition in their
T. and W. Young to NZCECL, 13 July 1939, box 1, file 14.
But the war limited visitors from overseas and, hampered by an uncooperative climate, visitor numbers fell well short of the 4,250,000 that Avery had crudely estimated by adding a million to Dunedin's 1925-6 tally. The final gate of 2,641,000 was disappointing given that each 100,000 admissions represented an additional £3100 in revenue.
Major Sources of Income
|
Admissions/car park fees | £99,014 | 10s 3d | |
Fees | £80,827 | 6s 5d | |
Amusement park activities | £24,117 | 3s 2d | |
Government grant | £50,000 | | |
Concessions (catering, film, cinema etc) | £5265 | 3s 9d | |
Other | £7335 | 17s 6d | |
Publications | £354 | 5s 10d |
In the event the government continued to bail out the company. Its March 1939 decision to guarantee the overdraft left it little room to wriggle and, as the holder of £30,949 of the £136,903 capital, it was by far the largest investor. Besides, there was a war on and the roomy complex, strategically located next to the airport, could be readily adapted to defence purposes. On 26 February the government issued a Treasury advice note for £70,080 19s 10d, taking over the assets and liabilities of the New Zealand International Exhibition Company Ltd. Liquidation, Transfer to Government, Treasury Advice Note, 26 February 1941, NZCECL Archives, box 16, file 536.
Major Liabilities
There were would be nothing left over for distribution. For a short time directors and politicians explored the possibility of distributing £5000 amongst the smallest shareholders, but that would have created insurmountable administrative difficulties. The government took over the buildings in June and began adapting them for the use of the Air Department.
Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, Department of Industries and Commerce, 1941, H-44, p.21.
The site chosen for the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition offered a near-flat barren wasteland of dunes in suburban Wellington, on the sandy Kilbirnie isthmus which had been raised above the waves by earthquakes in the preceding 500 years. It had about as much environmental quality as the adjoining airfield and dirt-track speedway, and was lapped by a sea of bungalows. However, the architect for the project, Edmund Anscombe with his associates, managed to achieve a precinct of buildings in which the outdoor spaces, in particular, created a special atmosphere whose qualities were recalled with pleasure long after the event.
Edmund Anscombe (1874-1948) had long been an ardent enthusiast for World's Fairs, having set out from his Dunedin home and made his passage to Melbourne at the age of fourteen to see the 1888 Exhibition there. He probably also visited the 1889 New Zealand & South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin after his return. English-born, he went from Dunedin to the United States in 1901 for architectural studies, where he gained experience by 'being actively engaged in the building' of the 1904 St Louis Exhibition buildings. He returned to Dunedin in 1907, and subsequently was both instigator and architect of the New Zealand & South Seas International Exhibition held there in 1925. Records of New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd (NZCECL), at Wellington City Archives (WCA): series 1995/4, files 646-47.
The aim of the Centennial Exhibition in 1940, as of all the centennial events, was to display the nation's progress and achievements. This was very much in keeping with the themes of the major international exhibitions and fairs of the time. Despite the omens of war in Europe, and the recent bewildering economic depression, an unquestioning pride in the country's past and a limitless faith in progress seemed to prevail. An American designer involved in major exhibitions during the 1930s, noting the Utopian cast of their 'World of Tomorrow' theme, wrote in 1944: 'The New York World's Fair, 1939-40 and the Paris Exposition, 1937 were the last Roman holidays, aiming to overcome our fears of war, relieve unemployment, and divert the public's mind from chaotic economic disturbances . . . 'New Architecture and City Planning (New York: Ayer Co Publishers, 1944), p.108.
The exhibition site of 55 acres (22.5 hectares) was next to the city aerodrome at Rongotai. The buildings amounted to seventeen acres (seven hectares) in — which
See table in Wiener, c
World's Fairs', p. 109.
The key to the exhibition's design lies in the form of the outdoor space layout. The main central avenue, a quarter-mile long (0.4 km) from the entrance, ended in a large open court below the principal tower and was flanked by two similar courts, all arranged on a simple axial cross plan. 'Records' op. cit., at WCA, 1939 Block Plan in file 160. Kingsford Smith St. was later relocated to the west, where the open Courts of 'Progress' and 'Pioneers' lay. The main entrance was at the present-day airfield tarmac in front of Westside Hangars. Tirangi Rd. was later extended to the south where the reflecting pools are shown between the main complex and the two overseas pavilions. The central avenue may be imagined crossing just north of George Bolt St.
The sleek exterior walls of all the display halls were built to a uniform parapet line, with their flush top edges set at a 30-foot (9-m) height. These plain walls, unbroken by windows, were the important background to the fully contained external space. On their blank surfaces the hallmark of the 'streamline' art deco style—repeated horizontal bands—appears everywhere, either flowing continuously across the walls or as short staccato accents on particular features.
To place Anscombe's adoption of this decorative device in context, it is worth considering here the origins of this distinctive art deco 'streamline' emblem so widely used by 1930s designers in all fields. There is evidence that it stems from the famous prophetic building designs sketched in the Great War trenches about 1915 by the young German architect Erich Mendelsohn. His dynamically contoured building images dramatised the contemporary worship of speed by means of closely repeated horizontal lines as used by the Futurist group of artists. In his 1920s buildings he developed these sweeping and curving lines as an expression of the modern age— not without criticism from the hard-line functionalists who dismissed them as merely superficial ornament. F. Kieslcr, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display (London: 1930), p.43.The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941 (New York: Harry Abrams, 1986), p.57.
The Centennial Exhibition design stands as a prime application of this streamline insignia. Anscombe exploited it in bands of vibrant lines located along the base of the walls, along an upper frieze and sweeping around curved corners. What is more, this stylish device disguised the universal use of the cheapest available material— painted asbestos-cement in flat sheets and battens—successfully avoiding any impression of meagreness.
Within the open court spaces Anscombe introduced several rows of free-standing components, to be seen against the foil of the enclosing walls, whose repetition in lines and layers of differing density enlivened the artificial landscape. Square lighting pillars with lance-like ribs and repeated pagoda caps stood in two rows down each of the avenues. Other lighting standards along both sides of the reflecting pools were topped by triple fluted 'ice cream' cones—motifs popularised in the decorative sconces often seen lighting cinema walls in the 1930s. The flaring cone idea of indirect lighting was originated by Hans Poelzig, the German Expressionist architect, in his 1919 Grosses Schauspielhaus, Berlin: see illust. in C. Robinson and Skyscraper Style: Art Deco New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p.58.
Anscombe's masterly adaptations of art deco forms, in a wide range of conspicuous ornamentation on various scales, acted as a unifying keynote throughout the exhibition buildings. Two decorative pylons with curved fluted shafts, 75 feet (23m) high, faced each other across the central avenue. Strongly directional with their stepped planes, and with those persistent horizontal bands emphasising their rounded crests, they acted as stylish and effective markers. Elsewhere, touches of scarlet against the creamy buff colour of the buildings enlivened the pagoda caps of the lighting pillars, the free-standing letters on the entrances, and the short horizontal accent caps on the corners far up the main tower.
A fashionable multi-arched soundshell was inset at the end of each of the outdoor side courts, bordered by curved ranges of fins with koru-like tops. It was in the northern 'Court of Pioneers', sheltered from a brisk nor'wester, that the opening ceremony took place before 3000 invited guests (nearly all wearing hats) and a reported throng of 40,000 on November 8, 1939.
The focal point of the whole scheme was the powerful Centennial Tower standing at the head of the 1300-ft-long (400 m) central avenue. It was a distinctive and successful feature, its crest emblazoned simply '1940' in bold scarlet deco-style letters.
It became a memorable symbol of the exhibition, of good profile, subtly tapering from 36 feet square at the base to 27 feet just below the crest block. Contract working drawings, WCA.
The tower's main lines somewhat resemble those of the city's War Memorial Carillon of 165 feet height (50 metres), designed by Gummer and Ford in 1931; but at Rongotai soaring ribs elaborated only the front and back faces, whereas the Carillon has precast concrete pierced grilles between its ribs on all four faces. The Exhibition tower was timber-framed throughout, with heavy posts near its corners, and was sheathed with quarter-inch (6mm) asbestos-cement sheets, flush jointed, and without wall openings. Massive concrete foundations tied it down against the gales. Ibid.
There was magic everywhere in the grounds at night, with the flame-red illumination of the tower, colourful floodlighting of all the building walls and glowing light from the rows of standards which colour-coded the main and lateral avenues— doubling their images in the reflecting pools down the central avenue. The effect
The exterior illuminations were planned and carried through by the city's Electricity Department with spectacular success. See 'Records' op. cit., at WCA, file 486. See also
Looked at broadly, it now emerges that the general concept adopted by Anscombe to organise his overall layout was the time-honoured system employing a long focal axis and a cross-axis—that of the cathedral church, no less. The system was cleverly adapted to suit the context here by inversion—that is, the normally interior spaces of the cathedral were opened to the sky, their enclosing walls being those of the exhibition buildings themselves. The metaphor continues, with the nave columns represented by the two rows of lighting pylons, chapels at the transept ends becoming soundshells, the vault or dome over the transept crossing inverted as a pool with a soaring fountain, and the climax of chancel and altar supplied by the dominant tower. (Evidence is lacking, however, that Edmund Anscombe had such intentions.)
Among the 'furnishings' which lent scale to these major elements of the design were the lesser towers, pylons and canopies which provided emphasis around the entrances to the major display courts, such as the Government Court and the General Exhibits Court. These clusters of vertical accents, on diminishing scales, were all part of the designed play of incident that kept up the festive interest around the outdoor spaces. Prominent at the central crossing of avenue and side courts was the Centennial Fountain, enlivening by day, and lighting the night sky with a spectrum of colours which played on varying patterns of powerful jets. (The mechanism still operates the fountain, now rehoused in a different basin, on Kelburn Park.)
Facing the main entrance from the far end of a reflecting pool stood the large-scaled Aotea sculpture group, a 'noble savage' image of explorer Kupe and his companions on their first sighting of Aotearoa. The three figures stood composed against a curved backdrop wall (with one outstretched arm steadfastly pointing in the direction of the amusement park). This was the largest of several major sculptures by William Trethewey set around the Exhibition grounds. It was commanding in scale and presence, and well-remembered in its later relocation in the railway station foyer. First modelled in clay by Trethewey it was then, like some of the other sculptures, hollow-cast in fibrous plaster of paris—an odd choice for out-of-doors but an inexpensive material deemed durable enough, given a coating of bronze-coloured paint, to last for the required time. (An assumption which, as it turned out, underestimated the public's capacity to embrace an evocative work of art—whence its recent reincarnation in 2000 on Wellington's harbour-front as a full-size replica cast in real bronze!)
Across the foot of the main tower ran a bas-relief frieze designed by Alison Duff and carved in set stucco, 8 feet high and 100 feet (30 m) broad, extending over the entranceway to the assembly hall which lay beyond. The subject, as of most of the art works around the site, was of course 'Progress'—rather predictably portrayed by two streams of familiar characters and pioneers from our past, converging on some aspiring demi-god. On the terrace below were raised two sculpture groups by William Trethewey depicting on the left 'Pioneer Men' and on the right 'Pioneer
Some of the premier areas inside the main exhibition galleries, such as in the Government Court, rejoiced in fully panelled ceilings and linoleum flooring, as the background for highly finished artificially lit displays. Typical was the novel stand of the Government Printer, constructed with laboured visual puns and Tourist and Publicity Department thoroughness. In most other parts, however, an intricately strutted and braced wooden structure was fully exposed to view overhead. Each exhibit hall was divided by rows of heavy posts into five broad aisles, set out with a nominal bay span of 30 feet (9 m) square and a wider central aisle of 42 feet (12.8 m). Flat roofs stepped down from the central aisle, forming tiers of clearstory windows to distribute daylight throughout. The atmosphere in this forest of raw wooden posts and trusses lay somewhere between that of a factory and a vast woolshed—an impression intensified by the footfalls resounding on bare unvarnished boards. The contrast between sophisticated stands and their utilitarian surroundings could be extreme, as seen in a stylised version by architect Bernard Johns of a standard form of General Motors display.
At least the precedent for exposing the structure internally was set by London's 1851 Crystal Palace—though the local timberwork lacked the delicacy of Paxton's glass-clad iron framework. Likewise, standardised columns and roof trusses were also prefabricated here—they were made off-site during the period of preparatory groundworks and foundations. This enabled the economical assembly and rapid erection of the framework of the main exhibit buildings by the joint contractors, Fletcher & Love, in just under three months. Fletcher Construction Co Ltd and Love Construction Co Ltd combined forces as
contractor for the two stages of the main Exhibition building contracts under the name of 'Fletcher and Love'.
Some exhibitors localised their own ambience and scale, as in the Ford stand, designed by architects Walker & Muston, with draped muslin ceilings. Ronald Muston was also responsible for the ingenious model dioramas which made an unforgettable impact in the Dominion Court. Remarkably convincing representations of landscape, countryside and the major cities were modelled in plaster of paris and paint, while teams of technical college students helped to make 10,000 separate scale-model buildings of phenomenal accuracy. Ships glided miraculously across their glassy harbours, farms and factories were in operation, and virtually every house and building was there—truly a tour deforce of magical effect. (The Dominion Court also had ceilings, but without clearstory lighting, to suit its dramatically lit displays and the replica Waitomo Caves, lit by 'artificial glow-worms.')
In other displays an emphasis on higher-speed transportation underlined the spirit of progress and echoed the sharpened excitement at the time about rapid advances in communications and mobility, especially for a solitary island nation. The exhibition period coincided with the first services across the Tasman by TEAL Empire flying-boat and the Pacific by Pan American Boeing Clipper, the inauguration of airmail to the UK, and the introduction of long-distance streamlined railcars—the last word in modernity. In the Government Court, New Zealand Railways showed magnificent large-scale models of their trains, as well as engineering achievements in bridges, viaducts and the like. The British Pavilion was almost totally devoted to transport by land, sea and air, by means of vehicles and models displayed in its two-level main hall as well as by low-relief plaster murals at the top of its plain exterior walls.
It is interesting at this point to compare Anscombe's highly controlled scheme for housing the Centennial Exhibition with that of his earlier New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition in Dunedin's Logan Park.'New Architecture and City Planning (New York: Ayer Co Publishers, 1944), p.108.
However, the genealogical path lying behind and informing the Centennial Exhibition design does not end there. In the background to Anscombe's exhibition layouts was the plethora of world fairs and major expositions held about the turn of the previous century and up to the Great War, numbering at least fifteen of which ten were in the United States. Anscombe was very familiar—indeed enthusiastically engrossed—with these, as is well documented. E. Anscombe, The Inside History of the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition (London: 1928); (in 'Records' op. cit., at WCA, file 647).
Further, many of the components of the St Louis central court design had already been brought together at Chicago's momentous and influential Columbian Exposition of 1893, under Daniel Burnham's general planning guidance. Here the concept of a vast central axial court became established, with a broad lagoon flanked by promenades and terminating in a monumentally scaled domical building. Interestingly, there were cross-axial transept courts part-way down the main court, similar in spatial intent to Anscombe's side courts at the Centennial Exhibition. Burnham's axial Court of Honour plan at Chicago, which had facilitated a homogeneous relationship among the buildings around it, was for years thereafter the favoured form in a series of exhibitions in the USA (Omaha 1898, Buffalo 1901, Charleston 1902, St Louis 1904, Portland 1905, Seattle 1909) and worldwide.The American Architecture of Today (New York: Scribner, 1928), pp.42-56, esp. fig. 42 plans.
The pavilions of foreign governments in international exhibitions overseas were normally located separately from the main or local theme buildings, as their purposes generally differed. Anscombe proposed that this practice be followed at Rongotai and provided two suitable sites opposite each other, flanking the visitors' approach on the main entry axis and ceremonially marked by echelons of inclined lance-like flagpoles. The United Kingdom and Australian governments were approached during 1938 seeking their participation; and their pavilions were designed—very late in the project—by separate overseas architects, Anscombe playing no part in their design, detail or character. 'Records' op. cit., at WCA: see file 50 for UK Pavilion; file 32 for Australian Pavilion.
The British government's pavilion, its white walls conservatively topped by flat-relief friezes and gilded flutings, and dignified by groups of pilasters backlit in green at its angles, was designed by George Pratt of the Exhibitions and Fairs Division, UK Department of Overseas Trade. The remarkable Australian pavilion, standing tall and white and severely elegant, was the work of Arthur Stephenson, who had designed Australia's display for the New York World's Fair which opened in May 1939. Ibid., statement in correspondence, file 32; and see P. Goad below. P. Goad, 'Pavilions and National Identity: Australia and Finland at the 1939 New York World's Fair' in
Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Architecture of the British Empire and Commonwealth: Paper from 13th Annual Conference (Auckland) of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (University of Melbourne, 1996).Evening Post, 3 November 1939.
It needs to be recalled that, at this time, two opposing standpoints had acutely divided the world of architectural ideas during the 1930s: those of art deco and of the modern movement. The first, largely Vienna-seeded and Paris-promulgated, was an imaginative style continuing from crafts of the past, fired afresh by dynamic machine-age glamour and exoticism, and was primarily decorative and populist in its sources and broad appeal. The second, more an international doctrine than a style, broke away from historical continuities and adopted abstract geometrical forms, functionally pure and freed to meet the needs of its occupants, and was primarily rational as well as symbolic of machine-age efficiency. By 1939 the battle between these two attitudes was raging worldwide. Over the following dozen years the art deco idiom would gradually fade under the disciplined creativity of the dominant modern movement. But remarkably, and visibly in Wellington in 1939-40, a direct confrontation of the factions was played out in the Centennial Exhibition grounds between Anscombe's smoothly decorative main buildings and Stephenson's Australian Pavilion, the boldly radical interloper.
To some observers, conscious of the rapid advance of functionalism in European architecture, Stephenson's crisp design in the strictly modern manner made the nearby
In America, in the aftermath of the depression, surprisingly few buildings other than shopfronts and interiors had been erected in this late streamlined form of the art deco style.American Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), p.211.
Recently I unearthed an exercise book of mine from about 1940 in which I had commented on works by local architects, with supreme confidence in my judgement as a 14-year-old enthusiast of design. For whatever value it may have, I quote verbatim my brief appraisal of Anscombe's architectural works at the time:
One of the successful exponents of the contemporary 'streamline' style, Edmund Anscombe maintains a high standard of design in this rather hackneyed field. His works are characterised by rounded corners, curved glass and a considerable amount of rich surface ornament, often Maori. This ornamentation, however, is usually restrained and not superfluous or jazz-modern. Besides his greatest work—the Centennial Exhibition—he has designed several high-class flat-buildings and houses, as well as several other buildings, large and small.
About his Centennial Exhibition buildings, I went on to proffer observations from my youthful visits.
14 acres of very modern buildings. Construction temporary—timber frame covered with asbestos sheathing. Main feature massive Centennial Tower. Several subsidiary towers of excellent design. Main building in plan of three Us enclosing three courts. Most of the smaller buildings were dismantled after the Exhibition closed; but the main buildings are now used as quarters for Air Force trainees. (Brilliant Australian Pavilion was the most outstanding building, with glass used very extensively. British Pavilion was very dignified and impressive.) These last two were finished white, remainder dark cream. Colourful lighting effects at night.
W. Toomath, personal papers; unpubl. [1940].
Mention of Maori ornament above is a reminder that, in the 1930s, a number of architects adopted motifs based on koru spirals, tukutuku stepped repeats, chevron notching and looped rafter patterns. On art deco buildings overseas, rectangular
Devices of this nature were widely applied by Anscombe, often in full relief, as light-catching rhythmical ornament throughout the Centennial Exhibition. On the base of the Kupe sculpture group, for instance, Maori motifs were blended with art deco devices in an effortless eclectic mix. Both soundshells were bordered by spiral-topped deep fins; and one of them had moulded frieze bands of interlaced rafter pattern. Areas are noted on the working drawings as 'carved Maori motif' below the ribs on the tower face as well as on two unusual upright features, vaguely resembling carved meeting house poutahu centre poles, which were attached above the 'Pioneer' sculptures on the terrace below.
Anscombe's Wellington flats at 212 Oriental Parade (built in 1938) have discreet panels of low-relief ornament in the US manner, based on motifs very close to Maori forms. The Wellington architects Crichton, McKay & Haughton designed numerous Bank of New Zealand branches throughout the 1930s featuring direct Maori motifs, extensively and respectfully, on both internal and external surfaces. An outstanding 'Maori deco' example is their BNZ branch in Napier (now the ASB Bank), dating from the reconstructions of 1932. Painted Maori rafter patterns adorned the banking hall and were also skilfully converted into bas-relief panels outside, where the essence of poupou wood carving as well was translated to moulded plaster motifs. Both patterns are closely similar to painted rafter patterns in the Maori carving school at Rotorua in the 1930s, clearly shown in Maori Carving Illustrated (Wellington: Reed, 1955), p.5. Significantly, the fine photograph was taken by
In the Centennial Exhibition design Edmund Anscombe showed his ability to handle large-scale projects with confidence and skill, evident in his conceptual clarity as well as in his controlled elaboration to meet particular purposes. This was allied with the administrative strength to organise and command all aspects of the project, if at times with a certain testiness on procedural matters. Structural engineering and the design of electrical and mechanical services were handled within his own firm. Perusal of the Centennial Exhibition Company's voluminous files 'Records' op. cit., at WCA.
The show was over by May 1940. The central buildings remained—more or less— for the next decade, being taken over immediately for wartime uses. The Air Force utilised many of the facilities to house barracks and an initial training school for aircrews from mid-1940 onward. Other areas were used by the de Havilland aircraft factory, set up in 1939 across the aerodrome (and still there until 1999 as Wellington's airport terminal). At least one of the stripped main exhibition halls Illust. in The Weekly News, 1 November 1944 (unidentified in illustration title). See also reproduction in Those Were The Days: The 1940s (Auckland: Hodder Moa Beckett, 1988),p.l04.
The Hon D.G. Sullivan, Minister of Industries and Commerce and chairman of the directors of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, presented New-Zealand's centennial exhibition in the context of the Labour government's social reforms.Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, 1939-1940 (Wellington: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, 1940), p.54.
Jock Phillips, reflecting on the place of the Centennial Exhibition in our history has suggested that it proclaimed New Zealand to be an 'economically progressive welfare state because the Labour government wished to announce its success in pulling New Zealand out of the depression'. Jock Phillips, 'Our history, our selves: the historian and national identity', New Zealand Journal of History', vol.30, no.2,1996, p.l 16. This approach is manifest in the centennial part of Te Papa's 'Exhibiting Ourselves' installation.
In this essay we shall consider the extent to which and how New Zealand was represented as a renewed social laboratory. It is not immediately evident, at least from the Government Court in the Exhibition itself, that it was represented in this way—in strong contrast to the Christchurch Exhibition of 1906-7 which was determined to demonstrate that New Zealand through its progressive social and labour reforms had tackled and avoided the evils of the Old World. John E. Martin, 'The "social laboratory" writ large? The Department of Labour's court'; Jock Phillips, 'Exhibiting ourselves: The exhibition and national identity', both in John Mansfield Thomson ed, Farewell Colonialism: The New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch, 1906-7 (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1998).
Why did the organisers of the Government Court fail to dwell upon the achievements of the Labour government? Was it because the court was more intent on looking at the full one hundred years of progress? The centennial was of course
Or should we look for simpler explanations? Was the new Social Security Department, formed in April 1939, just a little late to take its place amongst the twenty-six other government departments in the court? Or did it have too much on its plate—with the creation of a new state department, the destruction of its brand new offices in Wellington by fire shortly before their completion, and the need to establish a new comprehensive system of social security benefits? It was not listed amongst the committees involved in preparing the Government Court. I have checked Industries and Commerce and Internal Affairs series lists in National Archives in some depth for relevant policy discussions but without success.New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, 1938, p.451.
The shape that the Centennial Exhibition took, together with other decisions related to the centennial celebrations, meant that the specific social and labour reforms of the Labour government got very little exposure indeed. It would appear that Joe Heenan, who as undersecretary for Internal Affairs had charge of planning and promoting the centennial celebrations, had not been directed to highlight Labour's reforms. Indeed, perhaps the reverse was the case—that there was a conscious effort to highlight broader national progress over the full century.
Such an effort was evident in the pictorial surveys. They underlined national progress, from the days of immigrants, colonists and pioneers, through the development of the land and infrastructure, to modern-day industry, buildings, electric power, housing, recreation and sports—but did not include anything on health, education or social services.
The centennial surveys too, as the dust jackets noted, were to present 'a comprehensive picture of the nation's development' with an underlying theme of adaptation. The common vision was 'that New Zealand today is the result of a century's struggle by a British community to adapt itself to a new environment', and that the country was 'Old World still in our politics and culture, New World in our attitude to material and social questions'. But this combination did not translate into statements about recent social reforms. Chris Hilliard, 'Stories of Becoming: The Centennial surveys and the colonization of New Zealand', Hilliard, 'Stories of Becoming', p.8. Hilliard, 'Stories of Becoming', pp.6-7.New Zealand Journal of History, vol.33, no.l, 1999, p.15, citing Duff's advice to authors.Educating New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1941), p. 183 and chapter 1, 'Geography and history' (written by
The overall tenor of the Exhibition had little to do with the social laboratory, at least overtly. It spoke of an apolitical national integration, modernity, infrastructure and productive and technical progress into the future. As Lord Galway, the Governor General, stated at the opening of the Exhibition, New Zealand was on the eve of arrival at maturity and the Exhibition would 'present a clear, unified and comprehensive picture of a century of modern progress and civilisation'.
Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, p.57.New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, 1938, p.451.New Zealand Centennial News, no.l, 15 August 1938, p. 1, foreword. The sentiments were endorsed by Prime Minister Savage in issue no.3, 25 October 1938.
The assertion of a future-oriented 'national spirit' was not deflected by the declaration of war. The original motives for the centennial, agreed upon in 1936, were reaffirmed in September 1939 and it was agreed that it would be 'a most valuable aid in strengthening that national spirit so necessary in time of national crisis'.
New Zealand Centennial News, no.ll, 30 September 1939, pp.1, 3, 6.
The Dominion Court—an exemplar of national integration—was designed as a single display, in order to get away from previous parochial 'provincial' efforts at self-promotion. Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), New Zealand Centennial Exhibition newspaper clippings 1937-40, 20 July 1939.
Simplicity and modernity went naturally with this approach. As one newspaper feature suggested, 'at the Exhibition visitors will see set out for the first time the full material proof of New Zealand's progress . . . [the Exhibition] will truly epitomize the New Zealand of the present day. Its architecture will be modern, clean-cut, simple, the vision of New Zealanders'. ATL, newspaper clippings 1939-40, 9 December 1938, feature, 'New Zealand prepares for her 100th birthday'.
Centennial News commented, the Exhibition would follow international trends in exhibition techniques, involving architects and technical experts 'for the designing of buildings and spectacular expression of ideas, as distinct from the "shop window" method of yesterday'.New Zealand Centennial News, no.l, 15 August 1938, p. 16.
These design elements created an impression different from that of previous exhibitions held in New Zealand, of being confronted head-on by the overflowing of primary produce or of mineral resources. Gone were the days of cramming in all available examples of nature's bounty as might be experienced in a wharf shed full of goods ready for export. New Zealand was now producing and exporting instead a carefully constructed visual and symbolic image for itself. Visitors were able to look down on the entire country from on high, to gain an overall impression of integration, order and civilisation, combining the economic and productive base with the social dimension.
Now, to turn to the Government Court itself. Here we need to understand the image of the state portrayed in the court. Parry, when introducing the New Zealand Centennial Bill in 1938, had gone so far as to suggest that the centennial itself commemorated organised government: 'The year 1940 marks the centennial, not of private effort or of private enterprise in New Zealand, but of organized government-It is, above all, a centennial of government'.
New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, 1938, p.448.Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, p.83.
In order to demonstrate this a range of government services were provided within the court so that visitors could 'book a tour, make a will, telegraph friends'. ATL, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, newspaper clippings 1937-40, 6 July 1939.
The design of the Government Court was intended to promote this impression of coordination and integration, firmly anchored in development. The main entrance
Within the court at large the emphasis was on simple modern lines, models, movement and light. The Air Department had a large revolving globe showing air routes and a map with lights; the Housing Construction Department included revolving models of houses and life-size models of the kitchens of today and yesterday; in the centre of the Hall of Progress was a large model of New Zealand and the various departmental displays included models of, for example, a sawmill, bridges and viaducts, the entire province of Canterbury, Arapuni hydro station, mineshaft head-gear and the Waihi underground gold mines. The Railways Department's exhibit was based around probably the most ambitious model of — a railway system with 1000 feet of track.
Health and education featured as the social equivalents of the physical infrastructure necessary for a modern nation. The Health Department's exhibit was
Every thirty minutes his consulting-room door opened automatically for the assembled visitors and the Doctor, 'looking the part in every way', walked out the door and in a 'pleasant and cultured voice' invited the visitors to join him in a tour of fifteen minutes.
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition: Official Guide to the Government Court (Wellington: 1939), p.ll. ATL, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, newspaper clippings, 1937-40, 3 November 1939; newspaper clippings, 1937-40, volume with photographic clippings, p.32, n.d.; newspaper clippings, 1939-40, 1 November 1939.
The Doctor attracted large numbers, with small crowds waiting for him to emerge and do his round. While a model of probity throughout the Exhibition, its closure proved too much for him. He was 'discreetly silent, ashamed perhaps of his closing night behaviour, when he was seen staggering round his stand attired in a straw boater, singing "Roll out the barrel" and other intemperate ditties' as 'some of the young attendants in the court had prepared for the occasion with some more hilarious if less educational records than the usual repertoire'. ATL, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, newspaper clippings, 1937-40, 7 May 1940.
The bays mentioned focused on the healthy family (using the modern exhibition technique of 'a theme worked out in stages'), and were divided into six dealing with how to develop good health—hospitals, health at school, at home, at play and at work, culminating in 'the healthy family in the happy home'—and another five on how to protect your health: prevention of diseases from entering the country, immunisation, TB, and personal hygiene.
Official Guide to the Government Court, p.ll.
Attached to the health exhibit but in no position of prominence and not part of any display, was an information bureau for the new Social Security Department's monetary benefits and a bookstall with books and pamphlets on health and welfare matters. ATL, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, newspaper clippings, 1937-40, p.144, n.d.
A Labour Department exhibit, tucked away in a corner of the Court, was not imaginative and did not attract a great deal of attention. Although the department was the means by which the Labour Government implemented its progressive labour legislation, it had become something of an organisational backwater during the depression and would remain so until after the war. The Social Security Act had torn away the core of the department's employment functions, and the war would soon create a new manpowering agency that marginalised the Labour Department further.
The department's exhibit was a series of static displays, dealing with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and a range of administrative measures— the Factories Act, the Scaffolding and Excavation Act, weights and measures, and the footwear regulations, for example.
Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, p.88. We have only the barest description of the exhibit, together with a single photograph. It attracted very little attention.
The major emphasis was on the ILO, consistent with the general approach of underlining New Zealand's relationship to the world. Following the election of the Labour government New Zealand had belatedly begun to take an active role in the ILO, quickly ratifying a large number of conventions. Prior to that New Zealand
The Education Department's exhibit was much more spectacular. It was dominated by an eye-catching revolving five-ton globe of the world some twenty-four feet in diameter, 'reminding people of the unceasing course of educational progress, and of its world-wide scope'.
Official Guide to the Government Court, p.8. ATL, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, newspaper clippings, 1937-40, 8 September 1939.
The globe was designed with a winding stairway outside and up to the North Pole, and a circular stair around a column in its centre for visitors to return to the ground via Antarctica but this appears to have been abandoned because of difficulties in constructing the globe.
New Zealand Centennial News, no.l, 15 August 1938, p. 16.
The stated purpose of the exhibit was to ensure that the visitor would 'realise what the education system of New Zealand is doing to prepare our children for
The flavour of the Education Department's exhibit was consistent with the major initiatives of educational reform that were taking place at that time under the Labour government. Roger Openshaw et al., Challenging the Myths: Rethinking New Zealand's Educational History (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1993), chapter 9, 'Towards common schooling'.
Walter Nash's Walter Nash, New Zealand: A Working Democracy', published in 1944, perhaps captures the feeling of the time, as it was expressed in the Exhibition.New Zealand: A Working Democracy (London:
Looking back over a hundred years Nash observed, 'New Zealand has been transformed from a rugged wilderness into one of the most productive and prosperous areas on the face of the globe'. The project of providing a model for and leading the world was to be exemplified by painting with a broad brush the extent of development from that rugged pioneering wilderness to a modern prosperous economy and society, and by complementing it with a positive and modern image of an efficient, integrated and coordinated state providing social services that promoted health and happiness.
Hence the focus was on health and education, and particularly on their modern, rounded and integrated nature as part of community life, which affirmed and enhanced the image of prosperity and a sense of moving into the future. The social security provisions and labour reforms did not convey the same sense of looking
Peter Fraser as Minister of Education articulated these centennial sentiments well. In a speech to primary and secondary school teachers in 1938, after reviewing the government's achievements and referring to those of the pioneers, he suggested that the country had become great 'because it is offering educational, social and economic opportunity and security to all its citizens in return for loyal service William Renwick, 'Fraser on education', in Margaret Clark ed, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, 1938, p.451.cbuild Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land'.Peter Eraser: Master Politician (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1998), p.87.New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, 1938, p.451.
Māori interest in the Dominion centennial celebrations had been clearly signalled well before 1940. Lord Bledisloe had gifted the land at Waitangi to the nation in 1932 and in the same year Sir Āpirana Ngata had urged Nga Puhi tribal leaders to have a whare whakairo (decorated meeting house) built on the Treaty site. Northern Māori dairy farmers who were receiving state assistance began contributing five shillings per annum from their cream cheques; these deductions were estimated at over £1000 in late 1938. Tau Hēnare MP and Ngāti Hine supplied the timber valued at £700 and Te Arawa and Tūwharetoa tribal leaders also supported the project financially. Balneavis to Langstone, 9 December 1938. Internal Affairs IA 1, 62/25/1, National Archives (NA).
Further south in the Waikato, Te Puea Hērangi had begun an ambitious canoe-building project in 1936, the completion of which was intended to coincide with the centennial celebrations. Her plan was to launch seven large ceremonial canoes, representing the major founding canoes of the tribes, on the Waitemata Harbour for the centennial celebrations in Auckland. It also included rebuilding the historic Tainui canoe Te Winika from a surviving fragment.
The project failed to gain full government support and ran into funding difficulties. It was never completed and eventually Te Puea and Waikato withdrew from all participation over differences with the government. Michael King, Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), pp.204-5. For general discussion of Te Puea's canoe-building programme see pp.188-92.Te Winika was completed in time for the opening of the house Tūrongo at Tūrangawaewae in 1938, when it was used to transport Lord Galway and the vice-regal party across the river from Ngaruawahia to Tūrangawaewae.
A year earlier, while fundraising with her concert party in the north, Te Puea had designated one of the canoes for Northland and sent a team of canoe builders under the old tohunga tārai waka (canoe builders) Ranui Maupakanga and Ropata Wirehana and the younger Piri Poutapu to supervise its construction. Supporting this project with men and materials were the five northern tribes of Nga Puhi, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Kahu.
Waikato Times, 23 September 1937.Ngā-toki-matawhaorua, named after Kupe's great canoe and completed in time for
Ngā-toki-matawhaorua is still the ceremonial canoe of Waitangi.
Kupe, believed to be the founding Maori ancestor of Aotearoa, featured strongly in other historical representations of the Centennial. Not only was he represented as the tekoteko, or topmost figure on the Waitangi centennial whare rūnanga, Hohepa Heperi and three others to Savage, 11 March 1940. IA 1, 62/41 Part 1. 'War Canoes-Princess Te Puea\ NA.
In Wellington the Centennial Exhibition provided another venue for Maori participation in the national celebrations. The centrepiece of the Maori Court was a carved and decorated whare rūnanga, or council house, with adjacent stalls for the production, display and sale of handicrafts. Visiting tribal parties, but especially the local Ngāti Pōneke Young Māori Association, provided entertainment at various Exhibition venues. Elsewhere in the Exhibition the native schools and Maori women exhibited crafts as part of other displays, and borrowed carvings were used at the entrance to the Government Court.
Māori participation was organised by a National Maori Centennial Celebrations Committee chaired by the Acting Minister of Native Affairs, the Hon Frank Langstone. Membership was fairly evenly divided between Pākehā and Māori politicians, officials and community and tribal leaders. However Sir Āpirana Ngata, as the Representative of the Native Race on the National Centennial Council, was the most influential member and kept an oversight of all national Māori projects.
This unwieldy body was to advise the government through the National Centennial Council on suitable Māori projects and their cost to government. It was also to advise on a suitable national Maori centennial memorial. It met only once, in August 1938, when it made a number of crucial decisions not all of which were carried through. The Centennial Memorial to the Native Race for instance was to have been a conservatorium of music. The suggestion came from the composer Alfred Hill and had been taken up by the Rotorua Mayor, T. Jackson, who was also a member of the committee. Discussions were initiated with Professor James Shelley, Director of Broadcasting, but nothing came of the proposal, and eventually the Waitangi meeting house, or whare rūnanga, became the national Maori memorial with the government meeting the greater part of the cost. Cabinet Paper signed by
Other events of national importance were to be ceremonies at Waitangi and Akaroa, the latter to mark the exercise of British sovereignty in the South Island. In the event of a royal tour a national Māori welcome was planned for Rotorua. The war intervened to prevent such a tour but at Waitangi a staged re-enactment of the signing of the Treaty took place on 6 February, and on the same day the Whare Rūnanga was opened. The Akaroa ceremonies, which were the South Island's national centennial celebrations, took place over the weekend of 20-22 April. They included religious commemorations, and re-enactments of the arrival of the French colonists
The Press, 22 and 23 April 1940.
The Māori centennial buildings were part of the architectural developments being promoted at the time by Sir Āpirana Ngata. Ngata was instrumental in having the government establish the School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua in 1927 which began a major cultural renaissance that extended into all aspects of community life. As Minister of Native Affairs between 1928 and 1934 he initiated the great land development schemes which underpinned the cultural and social revival then gathering momentum. The school in Rotorua spearheaded marae redevelopment throughout the North Island and the art and architectural revival became an integral part of his land development programme. By means of the school, which he closely supervised, a new era in meeting house construction was inaugurated, and a new generation of artist-craftsmen and women emerged whom he encouraged to look back to the old masters for their inspiration. The so-called 'Ngata revival' brought to an end the era of figurative painting in house decoration that had flourished in the fifty years from the 1870s. Roger Neich, Painted Histories: Early Maori Figurative Painting (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993), pp.24(M.
The common perception of Māori art and architecture by both Pākehā and many Māori was of a timeless unchanging tradition, popularised around the turn of the century by a group of Pākehā ethnologists, and espoused by Ngata himself. Roger Neich, 'The Veil of Orthodoxy: Rotorua Ngati Tarawhai Woodcarving in a Changing Context', in Deidre Brown, The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', Art and Artists of Oceania (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1983). For discussion of Maori and Pākehā attitudes to Maori architecture in the early twentieth century see B. Kernot 'Maoriland Metaphors and the Model Pa', in John Mansfield Thomson ed, Farewell Colonialism (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1998), passim.Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol.108, no.3, 1999, p.242.
Many of these innovations were necessary to meet fire, health, building and earthquake regulations. Others were introduced to serve the buildings' new functions as community centres, especially in meeting the social needs of young people. Some features were adopted from the European community hall but adapted to suit a Māori context. The introduction of side windows, side entrances and stages, the removal of central columns (pou tokomanawa), the use of concrete foundations and new methods of construction transformed many buildings into something resembling the European community hall. In such cases the distinctive Māori character was achieved through the use of decorative detail derived from traditional sources, most notably from the nineteenth-century Gisborne house Te Hau ki Tūranga re-erected in 1935 under Ngata's supervision in the Dominion Museum. In particular the whakairo (carving), tukutuku panels, the painted kōwhaiwhai designs and the use of toetoe stalks (kakaho) for interior lining became the primary decorative media.
Ngata viewed a bicultural society as one in which Māori, as a people, were equal partners with Pākehā, as a people, in the Treaty. A fully carved house on the Treaty
Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives 1878,1-3, no. 139. For further discussion see Claudia Orange, The Treaty ofWaitangi (Wellington: Allen and Unwin/ Port Nicholson Press, 1987), pp, 197-8 passim.
The Bledisloe gift gave Ngata the perfect opportunity for creating a building that would be a symbol of and for the Māori people on the sacred site. Here all the tribes could be included in ancestral representations and regional carving styles in a Maori building that complemented the Busby House.
Bledisloe had held an unrealistic expectation of the building being completed before his term expired in 1934. Letter, Bledisloe to Ngata, 16 July 1932, MA 51/16/148, NA. Letter, Ngata to Bledisloe, 2 August 1932, MA 51/16/148, NA. Letters Ngata to Hamilton, 23 February 1934; and Ngata to Wills, 26 February 1934, MA 51/16/148, NA.
Ngata planned every detail of the Waitangi Whare Rūnanga. His correspondence with Richard Wills, his builder, and Harold Hamilton, the director of the Rotorua School, shows him deciding on the dimensions of the building, the width of the tukutuku panels and windows, and the width of the rafters, and setting the wall height and the pitch of the gable. He instructed Wills not to include side porches or recesses, Ngata to Wills, 26 February 1934, MA 51/16/148, NA. Ngata to Hamilton, 23 February 1934, MA 51/16/148, NA.
Ngata distinguished between superior houses, which were the fully decorated whare whakairo, and community halls modelled after the Lady Arihia Memorial Hall built on his own marae at Waiomatatini and opened in 1930. Community halls, often referred to as dining halls, were intended to meet the needs of local communities for places of entertainment and hospitality for which the formality of superior houses was unsuitable. However, the distinction was frequently blurred in practice, especially where stages were introduced in superior houses.
While in the early planning stages he thought of the Waitangi House as a museum and picture gallery for the display of Māori materials Ngata to Bledisloe, 13 July 1932; Ngata to Wills, 26 February 1934, MA 51/16/148, NA.
Inside the house tukutuku panels of traditional patterns are rendered exclusively in the traditional materials of pīngao and kiekie set on frames of vertical toetoe stalks (kakaho) and horizontal laths (kaho). These were devised by Ngata who prided himself on his expertise in tukutuku work, and the panels represented his notion of 'tradition' in both pattern and materials.
The ceiling is lined with toetoe stalks, an innovation of the Rotorua school, while rafters and ridgepole carry painted kōwhaiwhai patterns. These were arranged by Ringatū Poi, the school's kōwhaiwhai expert, and based on the patterns illustrated in Hamilton's Maori Art.
Brown, 'The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', p.249.
Planning the Waitangi house led to a significant development in the education of the carvers at the school. Before proceeding to Motatau the carving team were required to spend several weeks at the Auckland Museum studying and copying characteristic examples of Northern carvings, and classifying the work of all the old regional schools following the system established by the museum's ethnologist, Gilbert Archey. Ngata 'considered that the time has arrived for students to get above the technique and with the experience of the last few years to be able to interpret and appreciate the ideas of the old carvers as expressed in the many models collected in the Museums'.Na To Hoa Aroha: From Your Dear Friend (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1988), vol.3, p.138.
The Waitangi Whare Rūnanga was a high point in the architectural and artistic renaissance promoted through the school. It is a fully decorated house (whare whakairo) incorporating carvings representative of all the regional tribal styles as well as advances in the presentation of tukutuku panels, kōwhaiwhai designs and use of kakaho lining. The carvings display the impressive technical virtuosity acquired by the craftsmen in the school and in their museum research. It was a carefully planned house of great dignity and worthy to stand as a National Māori Memorial.
By contrast the whare rūnanga erected in the Māori Court at the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington was a rushed affair. Waitangi had been the focus of Māori centennial activity and there were no plans for a special Māori exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition. Judge Harvey of the Native Land Court had circulated a paper at the August 1938 meeting suggesting a Māori village at the Exhibition with marae and carved meeting house. He thought visiting tribal groups offering entertainment could be rotated on a weekly basis. Invoking the rhetoric of the time he also thought that visiting tribes could benefit from demonstrations of 'modern conveniences of life that go to the making of a healthier and happier nation; sending them back as it were adherents of a higher culture'. Unsigned and undated document IA 1, 62/50/4. 'Maori Centennial Celebrations
Committee-meeting and minutes of', NA. Minutes, National Maori Centennial Celebrations Committee, 16 August 1938, IA 1, 62/50/4, NA.
The decision to feature a Māori Court as an exhibit was made in late September 1939 when last-minute decisions had to be made to use space that would not be taken up by commercial exhibitors. Some of this space was quickly taken up by the Native Department. Special funding of £11,040 was voted by cabinet and Ngata's regular builder Richard Wills began drawing up the plans. Memo Mulligan to Heenan, 29 September 1939, IA 1, 62/50/4; letter Avery to Seff, 20 April 1940, Wellington City Council Archive series 00023, box no.4, item 142 Maori Concerts.
The Court eventually opened on 14 December, some weeks after the official Exhibition opening, and with every sign of haste. The centrepiece whare rūnanga was still incomplete. The threshold (paepae) and door lintels (kōrupe) had still to be added, and some of its other carved features had been borrowed from the museum. The carvers remained on site throughout the Exhibition demonstrating their art while completing the panels.
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition: The Maori Court Souvenir (Wellington: Native Department, 1940), pp.12-14.
Occasional entertainment in the soundshell and Exhibition Hall was provided by a number of visiting tribal concert parties from Rotorua, Whanganui River, Taranaki and elsewhere. Regular concerts were given three times a week inside the
The Maori Court souvenir booklet states that the house was designed, carved and decorated under Ngata's close supervision. Ibid., p.14. I am indebted to Mrs Riria Utiku and Mr Jock McEwen for this information. Brown, 'The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', p.249.
Maori Court Souvenir', p. 12.Official Guide to the Government Court: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition 1939— 1940 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1939), p.33.
The government used the Exhibition to present its own image of a happy, healthy and egalitarian nation, particularly in the Government Court exhibits. Māori policy was directed towards assimilation and racial equality through Maori land development, as well as housing, health, education and social welfare programmes.Maori Affairs: Nga Take Maori (Wellington: GP Books, 1990), pp.79-80.
At first Ngata had been optimistic that the new Labour government would benefit the Māori people. In the aftermath of the 1935 election, which his party lost, he wrote to Buck: 'With regard to the social legislation ... I have every confidence that Savage, Peter Fraser and Co will do better than our old friends Forbes and Coates. We shall share in the good things Labour has promised to the poor and needy ... I have told our people there will be no direct attack on the Maori interest . . ,' Sorrenson, Ibid.Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.3, p.206.
However, by 1940 he had become bitterly disillusioned with Labour's welfare programmes and electoral reforms, which he saw as undermining tribal ties and communal values, and leading to individualism. The Labour emphasis on economic solutions to Māori social problems ignored his drive to retain a separate and distinctive racial identity, or 'individuality' as he was fond of calling it. That year he wrote in a major essay, Tn the tribal organization as it still persists we clearly have evidence of a desire among the Maori people to resist absorption into western civilization and to preserve some degree of Maori individuality.' Āpirana T. Ngata 'Tribal Organisation', in The Maori People Today (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs and New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1940), p. 170.
There was another reason too for Ngata's despondency. From 1937 Savage left most of the responsibility for his Native Affairs portfolio to his acting minister, Frank Langstone. Langstone was a dogmatic socialist and less sympathetic to Māori cultural aspirations than Savage. He had little appreciation of Ngata's marae-building programme, preferring to see the money go directly into land development. Brown, 'The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', p.252. See also Butterworth, pp.79-83 in Butterworth and Young.
The Māori Court souvenir booklet that accompanied the exhibit presents their opposing viewpoints. Although the text is anonymous it bears the unmistakable imprint of Ngata and he begins by debating alternative representations. An assimilationist representation that would show only 'those things which the Maori had acquired and adopted from the
Ibid., p.4. Ibid., p.5.pakeka, thus implying that the standard of progress must be judged wholly against a background of western culture'Maori Court Souvenir, p.3.and pakeha elements combined in it; and it must be something that indicated the persisting individuality of the Maori people.'maraes on which they stand are a necessity in the present-day social life of the Maori people, and a sign of their continuing individuality.'
The whare rūnanga built for the Māori Court was a community hall rather than a superior house and it incorporated many of the architectural innovations introduced by the Rotorua school. It retained the facade of a traditional meeting house with amo, maihi, kōruru and tekoteko, all borrowed from the Dominion Museum. It also kept a front porch but the upper part was closed over and covered with tussock grass (wl) held in place with manuka battens, and it had a side entrance. The interior construction made use of crossbeams and tie-rods that eliminated the need for central columns, and it had a stage. The proscenium for the stage replicated the facade of a meeting house, deliberately suggesting a house within a house, or a marae and house. Ibid., p.ll.
As an architectural form the whare rūnanga displayed at the Centennial Exhibition had very little that could be described as distinctively Māori. Only the porch and facade appear recognisably Maori in a traditional sense, notwithstanding the introduction of two front doors and a ticket box between them! This impression is confirmed in the Maori Court souvenir booklet that commented on modern adaptations in Māori architecture. 'The present type of house represents a blending of the features of its ancient proto-type with those of the assembly hall of the pakeha.' Ibid., p.9.
The decoration itself largely followed the practice of the School of Arts and Crafts in keeping to motifs validated from older nineteenth-century buildings, such as Te Hau ki Tūranga and other museum specimens. The booklet refers to the 'massive Ibid.,p.l2. Brown, 'The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', p.248. Ibid., p.249.
Letter Campbell to Heenan, 9 May 1940, IA 1,62/4/44 'Maori Meeting House, Disposal of, NA.
poupou' which 'faithfully portray the traditional Māori art motives'.The Press, 3 July 1939.Maori Court Souvenir, pp.13-14,
Ironically, it never made it to the South Island. With the close of the Exhibition the dismantled house went into storage in Wellington as the property of the Department of Native Affairs to await the war's end. However, after seventeen years in storage, and with the approval of Sir Eruera Tirikātene the art works were given to Ihaia Puketapu to be used in the decoration of his meeting house, Arohanui ki te Tangata, then being built at Waiwhetu.
I am indebted to Mrs Nellie Carkeek for permission to view and photograph these panels.The Story of 'Arohanui Ki Te Tangata' the Meeting-House of 'Goodwill To All Men' (Lower Hutt: Hutt Valley Tribal Committee, n.d.), p.17. I am indebted to Mr Teri Puketapu for pointing out to me the 1940 panels incorporated into Arohanui ki te Tangata and for his explanations.
In discussing Ngata's revival of the arts and crafts Brown follows Neich in arguing
Brown, 'The Architecture of the Maori School of Arts and Crafts', p.254. Ibid., p.266.
Neich Neich,p.241.
The unnamed whare rūnanga built for the Exhibition Mr Jock McEwen thought the house did have a name, though he was unable to remember it (interview, 4 September 2000).
Ngā-toki-matawhaorua were the major Māori architectural contributions to the celebrations. Nevertheless Ngata took the opportunity to design
Maori Court Souvenir, p. 12.
In radio the Centennial Council and the government had a powerful new medium to publicise and record centennial events. Radio broadcasting, an innovation from the 1920s, enjoyed popular appeal in the 1930s and was accepted into most homes. By 1939, 84% of households had a receiving set and radio was spreading into other venues, from hotels to workplaces to schools. In 1939, 50% of primary school children living in the main centres were able to listen in at school.
Day, New Zealand Listener, 16 February 1940; Patrick Day, The Radio Years: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, vol.1 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994), chapter 8.The Radio Years, p.215.
There was widespread acceptance throughout New Zealand of the inherent importance of the centennial celebrations. The government, in what was clearly a bipartisan understanding, desired the strengthening of a sense of nationalism during the centennial year and radio was much engaged in the task. This desire and the perceived importance of the celebrations were increased by the declaration of war in September 1939. As the Governor General later noted, the celebrations now served 'not only as historical and commemorative functions but as a means of cementing the national spirit so vital to the country at the present time and of strengthening the determination of our people to defend and safeguard their inheritance'.
New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.257, p.3.
Private broadcasting ended with the first Labour government. It was replaced by two government departments, the National Broadcasting Service (NBS), headed by James Shelley and the National Commercial Broadcasting Service (NCBS), headed by Colin Scrimgeour. The broadcasting response to the centennial was two-pronged. Shelley and Scrimgeour disliked each other and this was a factor in their cooperation, normally as minimal as was compatible with their duties. But more importantly
The Centennial Exhibition was the first of the centennial events to get under way, the most varied and longest running. Each broadcasting service had its own centre at the exhibition. The NBS broadcasting studio was small and known as the 'goldfish bowl' because of its large soundproof windows through which the public could observe. From it broadcasts were relayed through 2YA, the country's most powerful station, giving as extensive a coverage as possible at the time from a single station. The NBS string orchestra opened the studio with its first broadcast on 14 December 1939. But the lively presence of the NCBS had the greater public impact, with Scrimgeour taking the opportunity to promote his department while serving the needs of the celebrations.
The NCBS broadcasting studio was the commercial station, 5ZB, resident at the exhibition for the entire six months of the exhibition and first broadcasting on the opening day of 8 November 1939. The 5ZB studio was built into a railway carriage and from April to June 1939 had toured those North Island centres which were on the railway network but did not have commercial radio stations. The carriage was returned to the railways after the centennial exhibition and the station dismantled. The station's senior announcer and manager was Ian K. Mackay. He was joined by Annas (Jill) Gale, previously an announcer at 4ZB, and 2ZB technician
National Archives (NA), AADL, 563 36 2/26 Pt.2.Standard, 23 November 1939.
Broadcasts from 5ZB began daily at 3 pm with its theme song 'Heigh Ho, Come to the Fair', and continued until 9.30 pm. Its programmes were a mix of regular features interspersed with advertising and interviews with important visitors to the exhibition. It began with a daily radio tour which highlighted a stand or exhibit from the exhibition's various courts. Exhibition news and information was broadcast at 6.30, relay broadcasts from exhibition displays at 8.30 and, to end the day, another bulletin of exhibition news and highlights of the next day's programme. The studio presentations ranged from The Three Hill Billies in costume (Very popular') to the Ngati Poneke concert party and Bessie Pollard, the 3YA pianist, whose fifteen-minute recital went 'quite well'. Programmes were deliberately kept 'bright and light'. One weekly report made special mention of the 'repeated requests ... for Billy Russell's "On Behalf Of The Working Man". This was played on Friday evening and held a very large crowd outside who expressed their appreciation in no uncertain manner.' Ibid.
The station operated on low power and had limited coverage. To compensate,
Ibid. Day, Fred and Maggie Everybody was a highly popular ZB serial. The Howells' visit to New Zealand in January 1940 was a huge public success and many thousands attended their reception at the exhibition.The Radio Years, pp.305-6; New Zealand Listener, 19 January 1940.
After the summer holidays attendances at the exhibition lessened and the NCBS took the lead in continuing promotion of the celebrations, in opposition to what it regarded as 'a defeatist attitude that the war is making the exhibition what it is' on the part of the National Centennial Publicity Committee. Perhaps the major example was the NCBS promotion of a New Zealand Centennial Beauty Competition 'to discover Miss New Zealand'. With the active support of Aunt Daisy the competition was planned for Easter so as to attract crowds at the end of the long celebrations. NA, AADL 563 36 2/26 Pt.2.
Scrimgeour's other major contribution to the centennial celebrations was the nationwide broadcast by the ZB stations of the celebrations at Waitangi on Tuesday 6 February 1940. The broadcast from Waitangi was a public recognition that the century being celebrated dated from the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and it was conducted as one of the centennial year's highlights. It was fitting that this broadcast was made by the NCBS, for Scrimgeour was the single senior broadcaster in the country who had considered the relationship between the Maori people and broadcasting and had developed a policy on the topic. Eager as always to promote the NCBS he also considered his department could benefit Maori and encouraged them to become radio listeners. He promoted a policy of correct pronunciation of Maori, an innovation in itself at the time, and appointed Maori staff including one Maori announcer to each of the four commercial stations. Three of those announcers, all but 4ZB's Airini Grenell from Dunedin, were at Waitangi for the 1940 broadcast.
The arrangements were an organisational feat.
New Zealand Listener, 23 February 1940.
The Waitangi broadcasts were the most technically difficult of the centennial radio celebrations. They drew attention to the theme of progress that was central to the celebrations and reinforced the public understanding of radio as a popular expression of technical innovation. Outside broadcasts had been pioneered in the late 1920s, covering sporting fixtures such as rugby commentaries and reporting major public events such as the arrival of Kingsford-Smith after the first successful flight across the Tasman. In the 1930s they became more commonplace, the first Labour government's introduction of parliamentary broadcasts being the example par excellence of regular outside broadcasts that attracted a large and appreciative audience. By 1940 outside broadcasts, even at a considerable distance such as those from Waitangi, were no novelty, but they still presented real challenges technically and the occasion showed the competence and innovative spirit of the NCBS management and staff in a good light.
The favoured technique for outside broadcasts was to send the signal via landline to the broadcasting station. Although the best option, this was never particularly successful as the standard telephone lines of the time, with their narrow bandwidth, were not good at transmitting music. But no landline was available north of Auckland, and the less-preferred option of short wave transmission was adopted. The call sign of Whangarei's 1ZA was assigned to Snow's transmitter for the signals from Waitangi to 1ZB in Auckland. The signal was also transmitted by Paparoa's Frank Hart on ZL1NH and Waipu's Cliff McLean on ZL1A1, giving 1ZB a choice from three alternatives. The transmissions consisted of signals from twelve microphones giving the official speeches and ceremonies along with a re-enactment of the 1840 signing of the Treaty. The broadcasts were played on all four of the commercial stations.
Scrimgeour and his staff made good use of the day to get listeners to tune to a ZB station and stay tuned. A 'Stop Press' notice in the
Listener told them of a 'last minute programme change. Watch for the Waitangi centennial broadcast from all ZB stations ... Keep your set tuned to your ZB station on that day for a unique and historical broadcast.'New Zealand Listener, 2 February 1940.Listener to the feat. Under the heading 'Waitangi on the Air' he contended that New Zealanders were becoming
New Zealand Listener, 9 February 1940.Listener returned to the topic and noted the application of the newly available recording technology. 'We shall never know exactly what was said at Waitangi in 1840 but every speech at the Centennial celebration had been recorded and could be preserved for all time.'New Zealand Listener, 16 February 1940*
Scrimgeour's task was to develop a commercial broadcasting system and generate advertising income on the back of assured audiences tuned to the ZB stations. Shelley worked in a different world. Educating listeners was a major broadcasting purpose for the NBS. The centennial gave a focus to this purpose, and the array of programmes generally in 1940 was much informed by the celebrations. Talks programmes, particularly the
Broadcasts to Schools and the talks in the Adult Education series, included many matters pertinent in centennial year. In the era before national programming, stations had separate schedules. 1YA, 2YA and 3YA produced their own programmes with 4YA and 3ZR Greymouth rebroadcasting 2YA's programmes. The 2YA programmes were the most comprehensive, reflecting good cooperation between its producer and David Hall who, as publicity officer of the centennial branch, was heavily involved in preparing the Making New Zealand series. Throughout the school year, under the title One Hundred Years, it broadcast 30 fifteen-minute programmes for children from standard three to form two. These were episodic in form, giving an historical account of the country's settlement and development since British occupation. 'Settlement' was the theme for the first term, 'Resources' for the second, and 'Communications' for the third.Education Gazette, 1 December 1939, p.253.
For adults, throughout the year, usually in the early evening, the YA stations included centennial subjects in their regular talks programmes. Radio talks were circumscribed by the radio regulations which prohibited the broadcasting of 'propaganda of a controversial nature', so radio could not address the majority of contemporary issues. One of the few exceptions in centennial year was a Saturday evening debate broadcast by 3ZR Greymouth, between teams from the Federated Catholic Clubs and Societies of New Zealand (South Island) on the proposition: That a Nation's Commerce is Greater than its Culture. Notably this broadcast was from a station of tiny transmission power (0.1 kW) well away from the main centres. Generally the emphasis of the talks was historical. 2 YA did a series of talks by church leaders on the men and, in the case of Rev Mother Aubert, women who brought Christianity to New Zealand. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's role in the creation of the New Zealand Company was recalled by National Archives (NA), AADL, 563 36 2/26 Pt.2.
Our
Early Colonists. The largest series of programmes, also mainly on the pioneering period, was broadcast by 2ZJ Gisborne, a station owned by the NBS but operating privately under contract. The centennials of the founding of Otago and Canterbury
New Zealand Brains Abroad, which dealt with New Zealanders who had distinguished themselves in the larger world.Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives, F3, 1941.
The NBS also made outside broadcasts of events. On 22 January 1940, 2YA broadcast the opening ceremony of the Wellington provincial ceremony from the Petone foreshore. 3YA broadcast the two pageants performed at the official South Island celebrations at Akaroa in April. But most of the outside broadcasts made by the NBS were of musical events associated with the Centennial Music Festival. Indeed, in spite of its efforts in other areas, its music festival broadcasts were the major contribution of the NBS to the centennial programme. Shelley chaired the Centennial Music Committee and the NBS played a central role in planning the music festivals to be held in the four main centres and the celebrity concerts which visiting overseas soloists and selected New Zealand instrumentalists later gave in fifteen provincial towns. An extensive programme was prepared, the cost of which was borne by the Department of Internal Affairs and the NBS, the NBS's share being £13,243. Ibid.Celebrity Concert series in provincial towns. The centennial year ended with a YA relay broadcast of a concert in which the prize-winning entries in the Centennial Music Composition Competition were given their first performance. In that broadcast New Zealanders had their first opportunity to hear orchestral and choral works by Douglas Lilburn.
Within the NBS the aim for the Centennial Music Festival was to do more than celebrate the centennial. For Shelley the occasion was an opportunity to advance the grand dream he had for broadcasting and New Zealand, the establishment within the NBS of a conservatorium of music and the spoken arts, including within that establishment a national symphony orchestra. The desire did not originate with Shelley. Alfred Hill, the doyen of New Zealand musicians, had written to the Prime Minister in 1936 advocating a national conservatorium of music. It was time, Hill argued, that New Zealand took over from England the teaching and examining of its musical talent. That would happen with a conservatorium which would also lift New Zealand 'from the status of a village to that of a full-grown city'. John Mansfield Thomson,
A Distant Music: The Life and Times of Alfred Hill 1870-1960 (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 189-90.New Zealand Listener, a weekly magazine devoted to 'programmes, interesting articles and
Dominion, 26 January 1937; Day, The Radio Years, p.249.
The Listener was established, though not until 1939. Under Oliver Duff's editorship it immediately established itself as a significant national voice for music, drama, literature, film and informed comment, as well as for the NBS. Its publicity for the centennial did a great deal to focus public attention on the music and drama festivals, the literary and other centennial prizes, and the centennial exhibition of New Zealand art. Its extensive, well-informed reviews of the centennial publications were invaluable.
However, the conservatorium, translated into Shelley's vision of a broadcasting house that would be the hub of a national cultural centre, did not become a reality. The government called for tenders in August 1938 and construction started but was stopped in 1940 as a war measure with the foundations only partially completed. . The building was never completed and the conservatorium of music and the spoken arts died on the vine. It remained a conversation piece in musical circles but foundered in the postwar world on provincial loyalties. The Auckland Musical Council entered the lists in 1950 with a proposal for a conservatorium of music at Auckland University College, and an 'executant diploma course' in music began there in 1956. Keith Sinclair, A History of the University ofAuckland 1883-1983 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1983), p.249.
However Shelley was successful with the symphony orchestra. It was born at the celebrations and is one of the enduring manifestations of his sense of purpose for broadcasting. Shelley's desire for a national orchestra was one he shared with Fraser and Heenan. The three were a powerful group and in 1939, many months before the centennial celebrations began, the first practical step towards that orchestra was taken. Permanent and full-time employment was offered to thirteen musicians and the National Broadcasting Service String Orchestra was formed under the direction of the English violinist Maurice Clare. As the opening of the centennial celebrations drew closer a thirty-four member National Centennial Symphony Orchestra, the nucleus of which was the string orchestra, was also formed. While the war interrupted the plan to make the orchestra permanent, its existence was determined at the centennial, and it was restarted soon after in 1946. Similarly its funding and administration—via the broadcasting fee with the musicians employed by the NBS— were established in 1939 and maintained for the next half-century.
Shelley was also, through his active promotion of drama in Canterbury and his close involvement with the British Drama League, one of the acknowledged leaders of drama in New Zealand. Soon after he became Director of Broadcasting he concentrated the making of all NBS drama productions in Wellington, and appointed Bernard Beeby as play producer. This was the beginning of New Zealand drama on a professional footing. It included the encouragement and performance of radio plays
Day, The Radio Years, pp.251-2.
In their separate but complementary ways both the NBS and NCBS publicised the centennial events, keeping New Zealanders aware of and involved in the celebrations. Both broadcasting services substantially influenced the styles and formats of the celebrations. Radio broadcasting was acknowledged as playing a pivotal part in the great success of the celebrations. This was as it should be, for the then-recent innovation of radio was a life-changing technology that epitomised the achievements of the century. Radio was itself one of the reasons for celebration.
Politicians, educators and businessmen promoted the Centennial Exhibition for its propaganda, educational or commercial potential, but most of the 2.6 million people who filed through the Exhibition turnstiles went there simply for entertainment. Even officialdom liked to let down its hair and be taken for a ride. Governor General Galway and his family rode the big machines while the press watched and took notes. Architect Edmund Anscombe's colour movie of the exhibition, one of the first shot in New Zealand, largely passed over the Government Court displays, the overseas pavilions, and even his own architecture. Instead he captured happy, jerky images of civilians and off-duty soldiers riding the Octopus and the Cyclone or cavorting amongst the collapsing floors, mazes and distorted mirrors of the Crazy House, one of the star attractions of Playland, the exhibition's big amusement park.
The New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd always knew that it had to put on a good show in the fullest sense. The politicians' speeches may have emphasised imperial unity, national identity or educational and scientific advances, but British and American exhibition organisers had known for decades that 'education did not pay, but that entertainment did'. Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universalis, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p.20.
In 1937 the exhibition company sought the advice of the German and American consuls, wrote to a couple of concessionaire companies 'in the Old Country' and sent its chairman and general manager to the Glasgow Empire Exhibition. See New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd (NZCECL) Archives, box 1, file 19. In October 1937 the Amusement Committee recommended the following arrangements:
Class A—at least one or two new major rides were required in addition to proven
favourites. Class B—in Dunedin the company ran these smaller attractions. Class C—kiddies, devices, which should be erected by the company. Class D—leased stalls rented out on a weekly basis as done at Dunedin. General Manager's Report, February 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 94. See NZCECL Archives, box 3, file 120.
But it was the big rides that really counted. In October 1938 the company awarded the concession to the Double Grip Tubular Steel Amusement Devices Company Ltd, subsidiary of the equally clumsily named London & Midland Steel Scaffolding Company Ltd. Double Grip offered three choices: purchase of large rides outright; purchase eight, but be guaranteed an agreed salvage cost refund after the exhibition; or give Double Grip exclusive rights to operate the main rides, paying the exhibition company a percentage of the gate. The package included the letting out of sideshows and special attractions. Double Grip also offered, if required, to 'include an Empire Lilliputian village, and several novelty attractions of a type not previously seen in New Zealand'. Lord Strabolgi to Secretary NZCECL, 10 August 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 268.
The company directors chose the third option. They haggled over terms (inserting a 'war clause', to the surprise of the British), but had little room to manoeuvre, because the expected liquidity problems made it easier and less risky to bank Double Grip's £10,000 down payment than buy costly rides and build stalls. Not everyone
G. Mitchell, memo 17 October 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 270. Lord Strabolgi to Secretary NZCECL, 10 August 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 268. Edmund Anscombe to Secretary NZCECL, 26 September 1938, NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 270.
Anscombe failed to rain on Double Grip's parade, for the deal had been cut. The terms for income sharing were for Double Grip to pay 25% of gross receipts over £80,000 and up to £150,000, rising on a sliding scale to 50% on gross receipts over £150,000. In addition, the exhibition company would get half the salvage proceeds, minus a deduction of £10,000 if gross proceeds did not exceed £150,000, a deduction of £7500 if they exceeded £150,000 but not £160,000 and a deduction of £5000 if they exceeded £160,000 but did not exceed £170,000.
Those big, noisy rides turned in mixed performances. Mechanical troubles sidelined the Highland Fling for weeks and when it got going it enticed few paying bums onto seats. Also disappointing was the large helter-skelter, the Jack and Jill. This device had done well elsewhere but local enthusiasm seems to have dampened after some patrons slipped off their mats and suffered friction burns. Seff dismissed as impractical the NZCECL's suggestion of strapping patrons to their mats. The amusement company earned £28,183 from the sale of space and collected another £11,702 from sublicensees in addition to the £78,057 that it received from its nine feature
rides. Under its agreement with the exhibition company, it paid a further £9,485 12s 11d in addition to the 1938 deposit of £10,000. N2CECL Archives, box 11, file 463. Adult ticket prices were 1s 6d. (Cyclone, Is for repeat rides), 1s (Speedway, Dodgems, Ghost Train and Crazy House) and Is, children half price for the rest. It is difficult to assess the profitability of Playland. The official history gives costs of £114,692 to build and another £50,000 to buy the imported rides and materials, but Double Grip would have been able to dismantle and use the rides elsewhere; nevertheless, it cannot have been happy with the results.
Dominion, 8 November 1939, reported that the sailor had a ginger-headed girlfriend who could deputise for him if required.
The sailor had a lot to promote. According to the official history, Playland's 40 hectares of grounds were 'the largest that had been built in the Southern hemisphere, and though smaller than some overseas amusement parks, it had just as varied attractions'. Ibid., pp.116-17.Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, 1939-1940 (Wellington: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, 1940), p. 116.
Double Grip's bigger devices captured public attention but there were plenty of other attractions to soak up its shillings. A large cast of operators leased and ran Double Grip's lesser rides, as well as the regular attractions found on the Australasian Christmas carnival, agricultural show and winter show circuits. Sixty of them plied their trade in Playland, not always in harmony with big brother. In March 1940 Double Grip took several stallholders to court for non-payment of fees. Edwin Lay of Hastings, the owner of a fish-pond game, countersued, claiming misrepresentation by Seff. He told the court that Seff had assured him that there would be just thirty-five stalls, not the ninety that Lay alleged had opened. See the Dominion and the Evening Post, 2 March 1940. Lay alleged that a stallholders' association had been formed within five days of the exhibition opening to protest about the proliferation of stalls, many of which competed directly with each other. The official history (p.117) said that there were sixty sub-concessionaires.
Playland also included a Devil Plane, Wall of Death, a Shark Pool (displaying live sharks caught off Sydney Heads), Waitomo Caves, a graphology stand, Pat Gamble and May Wong the 'Daredevil International lady Stunt Motor-Cyclists', and human freaks in the 'Odditorium'. Heavyweight superstar of the freak show was 54-stone [343kg] Mexican Rose, 'the world's fattest girl'. Mexican Rose had come direct from America on the
Mariposa and her advertising boasted that 'a sling
Dominion, 6 November 1939.
Elsewhere more conventional artists competed for the public's shillings—these included the popular 'St Moritz' skaters as well as the usual range of magicians and variety acts. Some operators attempted to bridge the gap between amusement and education. Figures have not survived for the sub-concessions. A statement of gross receipts to 2 March 1940, however, gives an indication of their relative popularity. By that stage, Double Grip's nine star rides had taken in £50,405, with the Cyclone leading at £16,148. The sub-concessions totalled just £6,710. Within that large group, the Scoota Boats (sub-let) had pulled in £1,315, the Chinese Theatre £1,079, the Waxworks £734, the Shark Pool £640 and the St Moritz Skaters £554; low, but still respectable when compared with the company's high-profile Highland Fling (£212), Jack and Jill (£1,212) Whip (£1,405) and Octopus (£1,466). Letter from 'Old Fashioned Girl', 27 November 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 270.
Bowler had many more people shuddering over another of his exhibits, the
A list of items survives in NZCECL Archives, box 6, file 278: 1 Pyjama Girl Mystery, Australia; 2 Mrs Dean, baby-farmer; 3 Lionel Terry; 4 McMahon, Auckland; 5 Etienne Bosher, Petone Salvation Army; 6 Cooper, Newlands baby-farmer; 7 Tui, Johnsonville murderer; 8 Frederick Mouatt, killed and burned wife, Christchurch; 9 Kinsella, beheaded mate, Wanganui River; 10 Manly, killed Miss Gladys Cromarty, Wanganui; 11 Petone Police Station; 12 Diva Kala, beheaded Bill Barrett, Pahiatua; 13 Dennis Gunn; 14 Kirk, Harding and Coles to NZCECL, NZCECL Archives, 21 November 1939, box 6, file 270. General Manager NZCECL to Double Grip, 29 January 1940, box 6, file 278. NZCECL Directors' Minutes, no.2, 4 September 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 10, file 456.Guilty on the Gallows: Famous Capital Crimes of New Zealand (Wellington: Grantham House, 1998).
In addition to the fixed displays, exhibition organisers put on a range of games, competitions and small daily events to encourage return visits and to add to visitor interest. They used newspapers, brochures and the new medium of radio to push their activities. Occasionally even the war, which cast such a heavy shadow over proceedings, could be harnessed to breathe a note of topicality into Playland. Much was made of the visit of the victorious crew of the cruiser HMS Achilles, and also of the U-boats: 'Death-Dealing Monsters of Hitler's Hate. See these weapons that our Navy has to face day after day while at sea. Showing at Playland', the Dominion's 'Exhibition Highlights' column advised its readers on 2 March 1940. The night before the newspaper had sponsored a 'Mystery Man' competition. Winners had to carry a copy of that day's Dominion and accost the mystery man with the words 'Hurrah for Playland!' They do not seem to have been very good at it. The mystery man entered Playland at 8 pm, but was not accosted for 45 minutes, when a woman at the Shark Pool forgot her lines. Fifty minutes later in the Crazy House a youth got the greeting right, but had forgotten his newspaper. Not until 11.10 did the first Dom-toting patron get her lines right.
By then the crowds must have been thinning out, for Playland closed at 11.00 each night. By that time anyone with the energy to burn would be at the exhibition cabaret where Manuel Raymond and his all-star radio orchestra had made it the 'Rendezvous of the Bright Young People'.
Ibid., 1 December 1939. General Manager's Report, February 1939, NZCECL Archives, box 1, file 94.Dominion, 11 November 1939.cDustin the Pieman
The newspapers reported big turnouts at Playland on all but the wettest days but said little about how individual patrons enjoyed their experiences. The happy faces in Anscombe's film and the absence of complaints to the newspapers strongly suggest that most did enjoy themselves. In 1939 and early 1940 correspondents to the Dominion were more worried about a threatened tea shortage than any goings on down at Rongotai. During November and December 1939 the Dominion printed just two letters about the exhibition—one man complained about the company not replacing the season ticket that his wife had accidentally thrown in the fire, the other about the exhibition cabaret catering only for modern dancing.
The purchase of the Waitangi site by Lord and Lady Bledisloe and its dedication to the people of New Zealand at celebrations on 5-6 February 1934 renewed interest in 'the cradle of the nation' after decades of official indifference. Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Allen and Unwin, Port Nicholson Press, 1987),p.234.
My familiar use of 'Maori' and Pakeha' does, however, need to be qualified. In the late 1930s these were not necessarily the words that non-Maori New Zealanders used when referring to themselves and Maori New Zealanders. They were as likely to call themselves 'white', 'English', 'British', or 'European' as 'Pakeha'. This was a sign of an as-yet uncertain sense of themselves as New Zealanders. 'White' was to be expected as a verbal marker in a country where race was a defining characteristic. 'British' was constantly reinforced by taken-for-granted facts of everyday life. People of English, Welsh, Scots or Irish descent made up 91% of the population. New Zealanders travelled overseas on British passports and, despite the opening that had been provided in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster, most wanted to keep the British identity. A. Smithies, Australian Supplementary Paper no.2, in Contemporary New Zealand: A Survey of Domestic and Foreign Policy (Auckland: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1939), p.184.
But the centennial was conceived as a coming of age and a national stocktaking, and it posed a new question: apart from their sense of Britishness, what did it mean to be New Zealanders? The poets, writers, and scholars who wrestled with that question did not find it easy to speak of themselves as New Zealanders. When they referred to the people of New Zealand they usually spoke of 'New Zealand', shifting the subject of their remarks from the inhabitants to the country. It was as if the sense of their British identity kept crowding out formulations of themselves as New Zealanders. J.C.Beaglehole, New Zealand in the Commonwealth: an attempt at objectivity, in Smithies, New Zealand Now, was also uncertain. 'The pioneers,' he wrote, 'knew who they were and where they were going. Their grandchildren stand bewildered at the crossroads, not sure whether to advance or retire, whether they are strayed Europeans or white Polynesians; immigrants, travellers, or natives.'Contemporary New Zealand, op. cit., p. 13; Allen Curnow, 'Attitudes for a New Zealand Poet III: The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch' in Enemies: Poems 1934-36 (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1937), p. 166; Oliver Duff, New Zealand Now (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1941), p.116.
But these were the thoughts of three literary men. The popular image of identity remained unambiguous and was graphically expressed in the certificates issued to visitors to the Centennial Exhibition. These portrayed a beautiful young Britannia draped in the Union Jack, commanding the picture plane and holding each recipient in her kindly gaze. Tens of thousands of these images found their way into family memorabilia. 'Where [Britain] goes, we go; where she stands, we stand,' Savage famously declared when he announced that New Zealand was at war.
There was a growing sentiment among Pakeha New Zealanders that the country could take pride in its race relations. Opinions of overseas visitors and commentators were rehearsed from time to time as confirmation. But there had never been any doubt in Pakeha minds about the basis on which relations between Pakeha and Maori should develop. It was Pakeha standards that were to be met, all changes of any importance were to be made on the Maori side, and progress was to be measured in terms of the proportions of Maori living according to Pakeha norms. The careers of Pomare, Ngata, Buck, and other Maori of their generation were pointed to as evidence that progress was possible. Ngata's political initiatives for the Maori people had won the respect of Pakeha political leaders and some moderation in the tone of newspaper editorials. Pakeha language habits reflected these changes. Among Pakeha speakers, 'pakeha' was beginning to rival 'white' when referring to themselves as an ethnic group. 'Maori' and 'Maoris' were coming into more common usage alongside 'native' and 'natives' in references to Maori New Zealanders.
Maori were no longer a dying race but, as Buck had shown in the early 1920s, the percentage of full-blooded Maori was decreasing with each generation. The future, as Condliffe and Airey viewed it in the 1938 edition of their widely read J.B.Condliffe and Willis T.G. Airey, Short History of New Zealand, would be one of racial fusion. "Gradually,' they wrote, 'as Maori become absorbed into the dominant white race, there will grow up a people rich in the stories and traditions of both races, looking back with equal pride to the Maori explorers and navigators and to the great leaders of the British people.'Short History of New Zealand, 6th edition revised (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1938), p.2.
Maori leaders viewed these matters of identity very differently, however. They did not think of their people being absorbed into the 'dominant white race'. Nor were they in any doubt who they were, where they stood, and where they were leading their people. Pakeha might think of themselves as antipodean Britons but Maori did not think of themselves as displaced Polynesians. Ngata, Buck, Henare, Te Puea, Ratana, and other leaders knew their whakapapa and they appealed to a shared sense of collective identity and cultural pride as defences against the assimilative pressures of the Pakeha world. See generally Sorrenson, Na To Hoa Aroha, From your Dear Friend: The correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50, 3 vols
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986); Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977); Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.1, pp.85, 123.
Ngata's sense of Maori identity had another important layer which he shared with Buck. Buck's ethnographic work in the Pacific supported their belief that the Maori of New Zealand were the 'leading branch of Polynesia', and this validated their efforts on behalf of their people. They saw the recent sufferings of the Maori people as a dark episode in the much longer cultural history of a people skilled in voyaging into the unknown. More than that, Maori were being pathfinders once again. Alone among Polynesian people they were 'struggling to maintain their individuality as a Race and moulding European culture to suit their requirements'. Ibid., p.144.
The essential features of Ngata's programme of cultural renewal were well established when the Bledisloes gifted the Waitangi site to the nation. He was the driving force and the cultural mediator who carried Pakeha politicians with him. The programme had been conceived twenty years earlier as the joint product of the efforts of the four Maori MPs—Pomare, Buck, and Henare as well as Ngata Sorrenson, J.B.Condliffe, Na To Hoa Aroha, vols 1, 2, passim.New Zealand in the Making, published in 1930, alerted Pakeha readers to what he described as the 'Maori renaissance' that was in progress. 'One foot on the Pakeha brake and the other on the Maori accelerator' was how Buck described the programme.New Zealand in the Making: A Survey of Economic and Social Development (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1930), pp.60-90; Sorrenson, Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.1, p. 144.
Land development schemes and community development schemes undertaken in conjunction with the School of Maori Arts and Crafts at Rotorua were proving to be vital means of cultural renewal. Carvers from the arts and crafts school were available to build community houses wherever local communities had an approved project and local commitment to see it through. Between 1927 and 1940 Pine Taiapa, the master carver at the school, oversaw sixty-four community projects. Angela Ballara, Tineamine Taiapa', in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.4, 1921-1940 (Auckland: Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books and Department of Internal Affairs, 1998), p.511.
Ngata was a master at creating opportunities for such gatherings and then using them to further his political objectives. Marae were his starting points but his inspiration was Maori unity—unity on a tribal basis, not, as Ratana would have it, on a religious basis that subordinated tribal affiliation. He worked painstakingly, first to win the confidence of Te Puea and then to bring her into a working relationship with Coates and other leading politicians. The high point of his efforts was getting the Governor General and Coates to attend the ceremonial opening of Mahinerangi at Ngaruawahia in 1929. It is an example of his using community development projects as opportunities for tribal groups to come together to mark ceremonial occasions with appropriate cultural activities, and to draw Pakeha leaders to those occasions so that their eyes could be opened to the renaissance of the spirit that Maori were experiencing. Six thousand were at the hui and all the tribes were there. Ngata thought it 'the most historic assembly of tribes since the Maori wars of the sixties'. Waikato's seventy years of isolation was ending.Te Puea, p.142.
The next time that all the tribes would come together again would be for the dedication of the Waitangi National Reserve. Bledisloe had insisted that the Waitangi Trust Board be Declaration of Trust, in Ibid., pp.25-6.'national' in its composition and he took great care with the representation on it of Maori.Waitangi Ninety-Four Years After (New Plymouth: Thomas Avery, 1934), p. 16 (emphasis in original).
By the eve of 5 February 1934, Te Ti marae had become a temporary township of 6000 people. Pakeha swelled that number by another 4000 for the ceremonies on the next two days. The official party arrived next morning and included most members of the government and fifty MPs. The presence of the young King Koroki was welcomed by Pakeha and Maori alike. The welcoming ceremonies for Governor General and Lady Bledisloe which Ngata and Henare had masterminded were remarkable demonstrations of Maori unity and goodwill. Some 1200 dancers took part. Pakeha were riveted by the power of the peruperu, the traditional Nga Puhi challenge led by Tau Henare, and by a succession of dances from all tribal districts.
Otago Daily Times, 6 February 1934; Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi, pp.234-5; Michael King, Te Puea, pp. 180-1.
What you have just seen represents the Maori speeches of welcome. It is the spirit of Waitangi. It may be misunderstood, but the Maoris of New Zealand would like to retain some of their ancient culture and let Parliament today realise what that means. There are plenty of Pakehas in New Zealand without us. I think the people of New Zealand would regret the loss of their Maoris and the best of their culture.
His speech was greeted with loud applause. The Pakeha audience was deeply impressed with what they had seen and heard, as Ngata and Henare had hoped they would be. 'Nothing,' Ngata wrote to Buck, 'could be more timely to weld the race together and convince our Statesmen and others that policies based on goodwill and sympathetic consideration are still necessary and profitable to the State.' A reporter wrote that the day 'crowned the crusade for the renaissance of Maori culture'. Sorrenson, Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.3, p.130; Otago Daily Times, 6 February 1934.
The dedication the next morning on the grassy slope below the Busby house was celebrated as a great defining moment in the history of the British Empire. The symbolism of the occasion was unreservedly imperial. Two ships of the Royal Navy, Dunedin and Diomede, were standing offshore. For the occasion, a great flagstaff— at ninety-four feet tall thought to be the largest in the country—had been erected on what was believed to be the spot where the Treaty signings had taken place. At its base stood a commemoration stone with the following text:
On this spot on the sixth day of February 1840 was signed the Treaty of Waitangi under which New Zealand became part of the British Empire.
A naval honour guard of 150 fired a royal salute. Lord Bledisloe pulled the halyards and released the huge Union Jack to fly from the masthead. 'It affords me great joy,' he declared, 'to unfurl this Union Jack over the cradle of this Dominion. . . . May this flag, the symbol of British Sovereignty, ever betoken justice, equality and peace between the two races which inhabit this Dominion. God save the King.' The assembled crowd sang the national anthem accompanied by the bands of the visiting warships. Three cheers were called for and given. A Maori haka party did 'Ka mate'. Ships' horns sounded around the bay. A form of service steeped in imperial symbolism had been invented that would be the basis of commemorative services at Waitangi for a generation or more. Vernon H. Reed, The Gift of Waitangi, pp.53-5; The Weekly News, 7 February 1934; Otago Daily Times, 7 February 1934.
The assembly moved up the slope for the laying of the foundation stone of the whare runanga, on which was inscribed: 'Ko te paepae tapu o te tiriti o Waitangi' (the sacred threshold of the Treaty of Waitangi). This was more than a dedication of the wharenui. It was an invocation of the Treaty itself and an affirmation that the Maori people were a party to it. Bledisloe also spoke of that larger meaning. The 'old British Residency', he said, 'the Meeting House and the flagstaff would
Reed, The Gift, pp.55-6; Otago Daily Times, 7 February 1934.
The ceremony ended with the tribes formally asking Bledisloe to convey to the King a resolution they had passed reaffirming their 'allegiance and loyalty to the British Throne'.
Sorrenson, Otago Daily Times, 7 February 1934.Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.3, pp.135-6.
When planning the dedication ceremonies the trust board were also foreshadowing the centennial. The flagstaff was already in place. The renovation of Busby's house, now renamed the Treaty House, was well in hand. Ngata and Henare went to work to have the whare runanga, the third symbolic feature of the Treaty grounds, ready for a ceremonial opening on 6 February 1940. The Centennial Council played its part by declaring the celebration of the Treaty signings at Waitangi to be a national centennial event and the main one for the Maori people. The government spent £26,300 to ensure the completion of the whare runanga and the upgrading of facilities at Waitangi for the large numbers who would be there. There was a moment of uncertainty when war broke out but the government decided to proceed. Internal Affairs IA 1,62/25/1,
The celebrations, as we shall see, were not the occasion of entirely united celebration but were nevertheless a great bicultural occasion. As with the celebrations of six years earlier, the imperial theme was ever-present but so, too, was its counterpoint, harmonious nationhood. Working behind the scenes, Ngata had
The celebration had two main events: a re-enactment of the meetings of 5 and 6 February 1840 that culminated in the first Treaty signings; and the opening of the whare runanga, the centennial memorial of the Maori people. The pageant was a dramatic representation of Colenso's
Authentic and Genuine History of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. This, the Herald reported, was 'presented with the utmost faithfulness to historical fact', and 'was a conspicuous success'. The European members of the cast played their parts with 'evident enthusiasm', and cthe Maoris' natural oratorical gifts were utilised to the full'.New Zealand Herald, 7 February 1940.
The pageant was played out on a square facing the Treaty House, where a stage surmounted by Union Jacks and other flags of empire had been built. A large table covered with a Union Jack was the only stage prop. The pageant began with the lowering of the Union Jack from the Treaty flagstaff to indicate that sovereignty had yet to be conceded. Captain Hobson seated himself behind the table, supported by the other members of the official party. The Maori chiefs gathered in a rough semicircle on the ground in front of the stage, and the meeting of the 5 February was re-enacted. Actors and audience then moved down the lawn to the base of the flagstaff for the Treaty signings of 6 February, the shaking of hands, and Hobson's declaration: 'He iwi tahi tatou.' The Union Jack was raised again.
Northern Advocate, 6 February 1940; New Zealand Herald, 3, 6, 7 February 1940.
The celebrations were completed with the official opening of the whare runanga by the Governor General. Pakeha may have seen it as just another beautifully carved house but to Maori it was much more than that. Its siting was important. It stood side by side with the Treaty House: the two buildings were to be seen as standing together, as the Treaty had intended the Crown's representatives and the Maori people to stand. The house was, as Ngata had intended, a symbol of tribal unity: the carving styles of all tribal areas were represented in the fourteen pairs of poupou inside the house. The carving and weaving of the house, and the cooperation and organisation that had brought it into being were expressions of a vibrant cultural revival. It was thus a place where all Maori could stand in the familiar surroundings of their own cultural identity.
The plaque which Galway unveiled inside the whare said:
I TOMOKIA E LORD GALWAY TE KAWANA TIANARA I TE 6 O PEPUERE 1940 I TAIA AI TE KAWA I TE AROARO O NGA IWI E RUA MAORI PAKEHA
Waitangi Carved Meeting House Whare Runanga,Waitangi National Trust, 1981, [p.5.]
There is no translation but it says in English:
Opened by Lord Galway on 6th February 1940 following the ceremonial rites performed in the presence of the two peoples, Maori and Pakeha.
As there will have been few Maori speakers among the Pakeha present, the message of the plaque will have remained mute. Translated, it is very clear. Two messages were inscribed in the symbolism of the centennial celebration, both of them, ironically, in Maori: one, Hobson's statement 'He iwi tahi tatou' (Now we are one people); the other, Ngata's 'Maori and Pakeha'. In Pakeha perceptions New Zealanders were one people but in Maori perceptions they were 'two peoples, Maori and Pakeha'.
But there was also, both in 1934 and in 1940, another thread in the weave of Maori responses. On both occasions Pakeha political leaders began to learn that great ceremonial occasions that brought Maori and Pakeha together in demonstrations of national unity also provided opportunities for Maori to remind Pakeha of their grievances. Only Ngata's last-minute efforts had prevented a Maori boycott of the dedication celebrations in 1934. Maori throughout the country had been outraged by the auditor general's report on Ngata's department and wanted to demonstrate their support for him by staying away. Ngata spent much of January 1934 crisscrossing the North Island in what proved to be a successful attempt 'to put all resentment aside and so make of Waitangi a convincing demonstration of the progress made since 1840'. Sorrenson, Na To Hoa Aroha, vol.3, pp. 129-30.
The welcoming ceremony at Te Ti on 5 February 1934 nevertheless included expressions of Maori protest. In the course of their performance of a traditional haka, for instance, Ngati Porou, led by Ngata, lamented the loss of tribal lands and called on the Treaty of Waitangi for protection. Reporting this,
Ibid.The Weekly News added that, because Maori was the language of these performances, the Europeans present were able to get only a general idea of what was said.The Weekly News, 14 February 1934.
There was disquiet within Nga Puhi in the run-up to the Waitangi centennial celebrations. An issue of mana had erupted following the release of the centennial stamps in November 1939. One of these depicted Kawiti signing the Treaty. Hone Heke's whanau at Kaikohe took this as a slight on their forebear and threatened not to take any further part in the preparations for the centennial celebration at which his namesake was to play the part of his famous tipuna. Heenan had to work very hard behind the scenes to smooth things over. Closer to the day, the issue of surplus lands—lands that the Governor had retained when the pre-1840 land claims had been adjudicated—surfaced again. Judge Acheson, the native land court judge, counselled Nga Puhi that if they did not draw attention to the sanctity of the Treaty and the question of surplus lands at the celebrations 'the British Government would assume they were a satisfied people'. This was reported to the government, and Fraser went to Waitangi forearmed. IA 1, 62/25/1, New Zealand Herald, 7 February 1940.
The politics of Pakeha-Maori relationships had entered a new phase. The Waitangi celebration had been highlighted as the most important event in the centennial calendar. The image of exemplary race relations was so important to Pakeha conceptions of themselves that any evidence of Maori discontent was bound to be damaging. Maori leaders knew that, too, and it weighed in their decisions. Koroki's well-publicised decision and those of the Waikato and Taranaki tribes not to go to Waitangi were clear evidence of grievances that still hurt. A press statement issued for the Maori King stressed that he intended no disrespect to King George VI: his quarrel was with the government on a matter of mana and over the lack of an assurance of compensation for the raupatu. Michael King, Te Puea, pp.203-5.
Nga Puhi were the host tribe but that did not stop them from making their own passive protest. Some of their members wore red blankets to draw attention to the surplus lands issue. The nature of their grievance was scarcely known outside Maoridom, and very few Pakeha would have got the point, but Ngata, in his speech at the opening of the whare runanga, ensured that those present were alerted to it by directing attention to the blankets and why they were being worn.
Marae are places for plain speaking, and Ngata claimed that right as the first
New Zealand Herald, 7 February 1940.
The contrast between the two main events of the day is more obvious to non-Maori New Zealanders today than it could have been to those experiencing them at the time. To Pakeha the historical pageant re-enacted the decisive moment when the Treaty was signed, sovereignty was ceded to Queen Victoria, and the New Zealand nation was born, bringing benefits to Maori and Pakeha alike. To Maori the whare runanga, standing side by side with the Treaty House, symbolised a distinctive Maori identity. They had not been absorbed, fused, or assimilated into an undifferentiated Pakeha community, and they wanted the Pakeha majority to recognise that fact and respect it. They were regularly being told by Pakeha leaders that they must look to the future—and both the Governor General and Peter Fraser, speaking after Ngata,
The next day the Ibid.New Zealand Herald reported the cautionary as well as the comforting parts of Ngata's speech but its leader writer put the emphasis on the comforting parts. Ngata, the leader writer wrote, had not 'gloss[ed] over' the existence of grievances; in fact, he had stated them with considerable emphasis, but transcending them was his declaration that 'in the whole world [he] doubted if any native race had been so well treated by a European race as in New Zealand'. His 'confession' was 'proof that, whatever failures there may have been on either side, the balance after 100 years was on the right side. So much must be counted as gain in an imperfect world.' Ngata's plea for recognition of the cultural distinctiveness of Maori New Zealanders did not get a mention.
It was not the first, and it would not be the last time that Pakeha and Maori, sharing the same moment of national celebration, would talk past each other. Waitangi had become the site of two competing narratives of the history of the nation's first century. The celebratory Pakeha narrative of one people living together in equality and friendship would be repeated annually at Waitangi until the early 1970s, when a new generation of politically active Maori began to challenge the country to come
Northern Advocate, 6 February 1940
Not until 1974, with the enactment of 6 February as a public holiday to mark New Zealand Day, did Waitangi again become briefly the scene of a national celebration of nationhood. Some of the younger Maori who were at Waitangi in 1940 were by then leaders in a new generation advocating Maori recognition under the Treaty. James Henare, son of Tau Henare (who had died less than a month before the Waitangi celebrations), had been secretary of the Nga Puhi committee in charge of the Waitangi celebration. Whina Cooper had lifted the tapu from the whare runanga at a dawn ceremony a few days before the official opening.
Northern Advocate, 31 January 1940, 5 February 1940; Reed, The Gift, p.97.
The whare runanga gave Maori their place to stand at Waitangi. But the Treaty, as Jock Phillips notes in the afterword of this book, was not prominent in the centennial celebrations. The Treaty was part of a passive display in the Treaty House with other memorabilia but no one seems to have remarked that it was written in Maori. It would be thirty years and more before the Treaty became the focus of public attention and New Zealanders found that they must learn how to interpret it in the light of the meanings of its Maori as well as its English version. Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi, pp.238-54.
The government, on the recommendation of the National Centennial Council, approved the holding of seven national events to commemorate the beginnings of British settlement and government in New Zealand. Soon after the beginning of the war, however, one of these was abandoned and another transferred to a different venue when the Auckland Provincial Centennial Council cancelled most of its centennial programme. The national gathering of Maori planned for the Auckland anniversary weekend at the end of January was not held. That cancellation, as Russell Stone notes, saved Auckland the embarrassment of not being ready to unveil the as-yet unfinished Sir John Logan Campbell Memorial to the Maori Race on the summit of One Tree Hill. The re-enactment of Hobson's arrival on New Zealand soil, which was to have taken place during the Auckland anniversary weekend celebrations, was transferred to Russell, where he had come ashore on 30 January 1840. Unsigned, undated memorandum, late 1939, Internal Affairs IA 1, 1, 62/50, National Archives (NA).
The loss of the Auckland celebrations left a big gap in the planned festivities. Auckland's location meant that the Maori gathering would have been the largest of the four such gatherings planned and a spectacular prelude to the Waitangi celebrations a week later. What was Akarana's loss, however, became Arawa's gain. The celebrations they were planning for 2 January to re-enact the arrival at Maketu of the Arawa people six hundred years earlier became the first major gathering of Maori people for the centennial year, and it added another layer of historical significance to the centennial year itself. Maori participation in Centennial, undated memorandum [1939], IA 1, 62/50.
As rearranged, the centennial events commemorating the nation's beginnings were: 2 January, the arrival of the Arawa canoe at Maketu; 7 January, the Day of National Thanksgiving; 22 January, the beginning of organised British settlement with the arrival of the first New Zealand Company settlers at Petone; 30 January, Hobson's stepping ashore on New Zealand soil at Russell; 5-6 February, the first signings of
The honour done to Arawa of opening and closing the official celebrations was a fitting climax to their relations with governments which had begun during the wars of the 1860s when some hapu had stood with the governor. Over the years, all royal visitors and most governors, governors general and prime ministers had been welcomed on to Tamatekapua at Ohinemutu and entertained. Historical sketch by Tai Mitchell, C.M.G., Rotorua, [1943], IA 1, 62/10/283.
One of the Arawa leaders, Tai Mitchell, was, with Ngata, Tau Henare, and Te Puea, well known in Pakeha circles, and was a member of the National Maori Celebrations Committee and various provincial and local centennial committees. He and Ngata worked closely together and were quick to advance Arawa's interests, and the restoration of two meeting houses and a dining room became centennial memorials financed by local effort and the one-for-three pound government subsidy.
Bay of Plenty Times, 19 December 1938.
The Bay of Plenty Centennial Committee were agreed that the unveiling of the memorial at Maketu would be 'a Maori function'. Maori were not 'to be looked upon as entertainers but [would take] an equal part with Pakeha'. Invitations were sent out by Tai Mitchell, as secretary of the Maketu Centennial Committee. The Arawa Memorial, he informed them, would 'commemorate the landing of the Arawa Vikings of the Southern Seas at Maketu in 1340 and the introduction of law and order by the Pakeha Vikings of the Seven Seas, under the Treaty of Waitangi in 1940, 500 years later'.
Times, [Te Puke], 8 August 1939; Bay of Plenty Times, 13 December 1939.
The estuary of the Kaituna at Maketu had great spiritual importance for Arawa. Among Maori, Tai Mitchell wrote in historical notes for the ceremony, 'the bow of the Arawa is at Maketu and stern-piece is Mount Tongariro'. Handwritten notes, Tai Mitchell, [November 1939], IA 1, 62/10/38.
Morning Post, Rotorua, 12 December 1939.
About 4000 gathered in front of Whakaue for the welcome and speeches that preceded the unveiling. All branches of the Arawa confederation were there, as were tribal leaders from the Bay of Plenty and East Coast tribes. Among the Pakeha were some old settlers from Tauranga who had arrived 60 years ago on the Lady Jocelyn. Hon Frank Langstone, as Acting Minister of Native Affairs, and
New Zealand Herald, 3 January 1940, p.9.
Langstone spoke before the unveiling and his thirty minute resume of Maori history gave full vent to his oratorical ability. The unveiling, he said, 'touched the very dawn of our Maori history in Aotearoa'. He recounted the exploits of Toi and Whatanga and their reunion in Whakatane. New Zealand, he said, was at the time peopled by the Morioris whom the newcomers referred to as 'Tangata Whenua'. They 'married these simple folk, and this was the origin of the mixed tribes'.
Peter H. Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), New Zealand Centennial News, no.13, 1 April 1940, pp.41-42.Vikings of the Sunrise (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1938), p.270; Manifest Duty: The Polynesian Society Over 100 Years, Memoir no.49 (Auckland: The Polynesian Society, 1992), pp.50-1, 65, 75.
The visits of Toi and Whatanga, Langstone continued, were the prelude to the great migration of 1350 and the arrival of Tama Te Kapua and his Arawa people at Maketu, where they 'married and multiplied and have remained in possession of this land as their ancestral home'. Centuries of adaptation followed. 'The tribes were anything but idle. They had stamina, intelligence, fighting qualities, and outstanding ability. They did not have schools and colleges in the pakeha sense of the words [but] these children of Nature learned the rule of life'.
Then came the pakeha, who 'superimposed a new economic order within these shores'. 'Unsophisticated' Maori became easy prey to traders, land speculators, and liquor merchants. Only when Britain intervened to establish law and order was it possible to 'check the swindle'. The Treaty of Waitangi was 'the Maori Charter', 'It reserved the food supplies and fishing rights and the proper legal disposal of lands by way of approved sale, and full legal and national protection against molestation by individuals and invading powers.' Relationships between Maori and pakeha had not always been 'harmonious'. '[B]ut it can be truthfully said that wise administration has brought about a very high and sincere regard between the races' who in peace and war, in good times and bad, 'stand together ... as a united people'.
Langstone then praised famous men. Those in positions of authority had from the beginning 'been high-minded, capable, and humanitarian administrators'. Sir George Grey, 'beloved by Maori and pakeha alike', headed a list that included Edward Fitzgerald, Maning, Fenton, Marsden, Selwyn, Williams, Kendall, Busby, Hobson, Wakefield, Martin, Featherston and McLean. Many Maori 'gifted with great understanding of the new era' had also used their influence to 'weld together' Maori and Pakeha interests. He mentioned Tamati Waka Nene, Pokiha (forebear of Hemana Pokiha, one of his hosts), Ropata Waha Waha, Kemp, Carroll, Pomare, Te Rangihiroa, Ngata, Henare, Bennett, Ratana, Tirikatene, and Paikea.
Langstone lauded the Arawa land development schemes, whose 'glory', he said, those present could see all around them. Native land was no longer being sold but was being 'utilized and made productive'. He invoked the spirit of the Maori warriors in the first world war 'who were baptized in the blood of supreme sacrifice that this nation might live' and then brought his speech to a resounding close. Young Arawa men had spontaneously responded to the country's call in its 'hour of travail'. 'And so as the years pass along in civic life and culture, in sport and pastime, in work and industry, in marriage and worship, we unite in one indivisible whole. Be it yours to hold high this great heritage we are proud to own.'
Ngata was prevented by ill-health from being at the celebration and did not hear Langstone's reference to Maori and Pakeha joined together in one indivisible whole. But he was well aware of Langstone's assimilationist views and would respond to them at Waitangi a few weeks later.
The paramount chiefs of the tribe, Te Naera Te Houkotuku and Hemana Pokiha, lifted the tapu. Bishop Bennett dedicated the memorial in Maori. The national anthem
New Zealand Centennial News, op. cit., pp.42-43.
The National Thanksgiving Day, designated by the National Centennial Council to be held on the first Sunday of the centennial year, was organised by church communities and celebrated in religious services throughout the country. Anglican, Presbyterian, and non-conformist denominations combined in services held in mid-afternoon in the four main centres and elsewhere. Ten thousand gathered at the Auckland domain, 5000 in the southern band court of the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington, 3000 at Lancaster Park in Christchurch, and 1000 in the Dunedin town hall. The Wellington service was the most broadly representative, with Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Churches of Christ, and the Salvation Army taking part. There and elsewhere the Salvation Army band provided the music.
Roman Catholics gave thanks separately. Their main contribution to the centennial, Zealandia reported, were the Catholic pavilion at the Exhibition, which was being used 'as a medium of catechetical instruction', and the National Eucharistic Congress which would be held in Wellington in early February and would do homage to the paramountcy of the Blessed Sacrament. For Thanksgiving Day, Bishop Liston celebrated Pontifical High Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral at 9 am, and other Roman Catholic services were held in cathedrals and churches throughout the country.
'As we look back over those 100 years', Bishop West Watson said in Christchurch, 'what a marvellous vista of progress and development opens up. Would that the pioneers could stand with us today and see many of their dreams come true.' The principles that had 'so powerfully influenced our national past', Archbishop Averill said in Auckland, 'would be essential for its future progress and real welfare'. This generation would be 'the pioneers of the next century'. Wellingtonians were awakened by an earthquake at 6.20 am on National Thanksgiving Day but that event was unlikely to have influenced the choice of text for the address at the Dunedin service: 'Things which cannot be shaken', from the Letter to the Hebrews.
Although Roman Catholics congregated on their own, Bishop Liston spoke of the sense of unity that they had with other New Zealanders. 'A united day of thanksgiving like this,' he said, 'expresses and deepens the joy, the comfort, and the hopes of hearts that love New Zealand.' He emphasised, too, that, unlike millions of 'our co-religionists' in other countries, New Zealand Catholics were able to 'practise our holy religion freely and openly'.
Zealandia, 11 January 1940, p.4.
Heenan and his colleagues in his centennial branch made new discoveries about the country's history as they prepared to celebrate it. Heenan himself had a moment of revelation when the Prime Minister passed on to him a letter he had received from Ivor Te Puni of Waikawa pa, Picton. Ivor Te Puni was a direct descendent of Te Puni who, with Wharepouri, was one of the two Atiawa chiefs with whom Colonel Wakefield negotiated for land in August 1839. Ivor Te Puni wrote his letter in December 1937, at an early stage in the planning of centennial events. To Heenan it was a 'remarkable' letter and it 'reorientated' his ideas about the part Maori should play in the centennial. Ivor Te Puni to
Te Puni urged the Prime Minister to raise memorials to the Maori as well as the Pakeha leaders through whose efforts the British established themselves in New Zealand. New Zealand was about to follow the example of all other 'English speaking countries', he wrote, by erecting memorials 'to the memory of Great Empire Founders'. But they were the people who 'received'. Should there not also 'be some token of appreciation to those wonderful warlike people of my race who gave?' He then instanced his great forebear who gave a great 'parcel of land . . . for a value which seems paltry in the eyes of Christianity'. Ivor Te Puni knew that the 'transaction' had taken place because he had documents that proved it. What would have been the outcome, he asked, if he and other Maori leaders had refused to 'to give his land?' The 'hardship' and 'bloodshed' had been forgotten and Maori and Pakeha were now 'locked together "Tatou,Tatou"'. Te Puni appealed to Savage to erect a centennial monument to his 'worthy forebear the late Chief Te Puni, the head and representative of his tribe'.
Heenan took the point. The literal meaning of 'Tatou,Tatou', he informed Parry, is '"us, us", or in the liberal sense, "working together"'. That was exactly the national spirit in which he hoped that the centennial would be commemorated. Heenan summarised Te Puni's record of steadfast support for the Wellington settlers until his death in 1870 'when he was granted practically a state funeral'. He 'heartily supported' Ivor Te Puni's call for a monument to honour his great ancestor. He proposed to the Wellington Provincial Centennial Committee that 'the original Te Puni be featured in one of the memorial windows to be placed in the Wellington Provincial memorial to be erected at Petone beach'. Ibid.
For Wellington, the arrival of the first New Zealand Company settlers on Pito-one beach on 22 January 1840 was the founding moment despite the fact that they had come in defiance of the British government. The flag they flew that day had pointedly not been the Union Jack but the flag of the confederation of northern tribes. Aucklanders had long disputed Wellington's claim to primacy, claiming Hobson's arrival in the Bay of Islands on 29 January 1840 as the definitive day, although he did not visit Auckland until October. But Wellingtonians would not have been surprised when the
Evening Post reported the re-enactment of the arrival of the first of the company settlers under the banner headline: 'Centennial of New Zealand.'Evening Post, 22 January 1940.
Under threatening clouds, 5000 assembled for the unveiling of the Wellington provincial memorial, the work of the Auckland architect Horace L. Massey, and in Heenan's opinion a model of what an architectural memorial should be. It was a monumental hall of memories set in lawns and rock gardens on the Petone foreshore, incorporating, in answer to expectations of practicality, changing rooms for bathers. The official party was comprehensively large: the Governor General, the Marquess of Willingdon, the representative of the British government, the British High Commissioner, a representative of the Australian government, the Deputy Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, representing the ailing Prime Minister, several cabinet ministers, the Chief Justice, and mayors and representatives of local bodies in the Wellington province. Descendants of Gibbon Wakefield and Te Puni had honoured places. Before the memorial service began, Walter Nash, the local MP laid a wreath in honour of Te Puni's memory on behalf of the New Zealand government. An image of him would become visible when the memorial window was unveiled. Hapi Love, one of Te Puni's great-grandchildren and other members of the Love and Barrett families were present and played important roles in the festivities. Maori and Pakeha, the Heenan to Leicester Webb, 23 July 1940, Ms-Papers 1132-250, Heenan Papers, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL); Evening Post commented, 'foes a century ago, joined as one in gratitude for the past, hope for the present, and hope and steadfastness for the future'.New Zealand Centennial News, no. 18, 1 April 1940, pp.12,16; Evening Post, 22 January 1940.
That hope was also tinged with anxiety. Only a fortnight earlier the harbour had been filled with troopships embarking members of the First Echelon for the European war zone. It was army greatcoats that members of the haka party took off as they prepared to challenge the official party. It was a military band that played the national anthem and 'God Defend New Zealand'.
The absent guest of honour was Gibbon Wakefield. Some of the younger historians associated with the centennial historical publications harboured sceptical thoughts about the great systematic coloniser. Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, was likely to be challenged 'to a duel with rapiers'.Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, 1 (April 1940), p.21.
Galway unveiled the monument. Parry presided over an official luncheon. In the afternoon 10,000 assembled in the Petone Recreation Ground for a pageant re-
Aurora was the backdrop for the three scenes that told the story. The sale of Whanganui-a-Tara on board the Tory in September 1839 was followed by the hoisting of the flag on Pito-one beach, and the last scene depicted friendship between Maori and 'the white man'. The pageant ended with Wharepouri's injunction to his people to 'care for my Maori and European people when I am gone' and the singing of 'God Defend New Zealand'. Before the last scene the spectators were treated to a feast in the 'old Maori manner' prepared from two bullocks, two pigs, and half a ton of potatoes.
It was not to be expected that the pageant would give an exhaustive account of the arrival of the first New Zealand Company settlers. A note in
New Zealand Centennial News some months later provided the important additional bit of information that the flag flown at Pito-one in January 1840 had 'no connection with the present New Zealand flag'. It was the flag of a 'rebel government', and it had been one of Hobson's first acts when he heard about the British settlement at Port
New Zealand Centennial News, no.13, 1 April 1940, p.17.
Hobson's arrival on New Zealand soil was re-enacted with a pageant at Russell on 29 January. The Hon H.G.R. Mason, Minister of Justice, represented the government and played the role of Hobson. It was a beautiful, calm morning, the Northern Advocate reported, and music played by the Whangarei Pipe Band and the church organist gave the town an 'air of commemoration'.
Hobson and his party were rowed ashore in a whaleboat and were welcomed by singing 'Maori maidens' who rushed into the water to greet him and by a haka party of 'stalwart Maori warriors' on the shoreline. He was escorted to the historic church where 800 Maori and Pakeha were assembled for a service in the open air. There, with the Maori welcoming party seated at his feet, the Lieutenant Governor recited the Letters Patent extending the boundaries of New South Wales to include New Zealand and the Commission appointing him Lieutenant Governor. He then read two proclamations: one declaring that he had entered into his duties as Lieutenant Governor; the other that Her Majesty's Government would not acknowledge titles to land in New Zealand that were not purchased from or confirmed by the governor. There were three cheers for Hobson. Archbishop Averill gave an address and the service was over.
In the afternoon, Mason led the pipe band and 500 people up the hill for a service at the flagstaff from which were flying the Union Jack and the flag of the United Northern Tribes. He ordered the flags to be lowered, addressed the crowd. The ceremony was concluded with Maori doing haka and poi dances around the flagstaff, and the flags were raised again. Festivities went on into the night with a dance in the town hall and the crowning of Russell's carnival queen.
Northern Advocate, 29 January 1940; New Zealand Centennial News, no. 13, 1 April 1940, p.40.
But there was more to this celebration than met the uninstructed eye. Members of the public enjoyed the pageantry but constitutional lawyers and historians
book New Zealand's Constitutional Development in the Decade 1839-1849. Foden differed sharply from Buick on the status of the Treaty of Waitangi in the acquisition of sovereignty and from those who argued that 'sovereignty was proclaimed
The Constitutional Development of New Zealand in the First Decade 1839-1849 (Wellington: Watkins, 1938).
Historical sketch by Tai Mitchell, C.M.G., Rotorua, [1943], IA 1, 62/10/283.
J. Rutherford, The Treaty of Waitangi and the Acquisition of British Sovereignty in New Zealand 1840, Auckland University College Bulletin no.36, History Series no.3, 1949,pp.5-8.
Foden, p.190
In Foden's view, the Treaty signings at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 and elsewhere had no constitutional status. Buick, he argued, was in error in his National Historical Committee. New Zealand Centennial 1940, Tentative list of Dates, Department of Internal Affairs. [1937], pp.17-8 and, for Treaty of Waitangi and in his advice to the Centennial Historical Committee in referring to 6 February as the date for the acquisition of sovereignty.The Treaty of Waitangi: How New Zealand became a British Colony, 3rd edition (New Plymouth: Thomas Avery, 1936).New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney General in 1987.
The formal annexation of the South Island dates from Hobson's proclamation of 25 May 1840 asserting British sovereignty. Captain Stanley raised the Union Jack at Akaroa on 11 August, eight days before the arrival of the French and German settlers of the Nanto-Bordelaise Company. The Centennial Council's thoughts turned not to 25 May as the centennial of the annexation of the South Island but to 19 August and the French connection. It decided, however, that the possibility of bad weather in Akaroa at that time of year would deter people from travelling there in large numbers. It began planning for a ceremony on 30 March, but Savage's death forced a postponement until 20 April. The celebration before the largest crowd ever seen at Akaroa was followed by two more days of festivities. Five hundred Maori, including 100 from the North Island, took part in the welcoming ceremony. This made it the largest and most representative Maori gathering ever to have taken place in the South Island. For most of the Pakeha present it would have been their first experience of an official function hosted by Maori. The important part played by the Maori people,
The Press reported, gave the celebrations 'an unusual and memorable character'.The Press, 22 April 1940.
The ceremonial of the day went well. Tirikatene challenged the large official party who were led on by the Governor General and then accompanied them. As the host tribe, Ngai Tahu were there in numbers, and they hoped that the Prime Minister would make announcement about their land claim. Their negotiators had recently held a round-table conference with Langstone, the Acting Minister of Native Affairs, and believed that they had an agreed basis for a settlement of their grievance over the Kemp purchase of 1848.
From the The Press, 22 April 1940.Akaroa Mail reported, 'assembled on the edge of the ground and did not repress
Akaroa Mail in New Zealand Centennial News, no. 14,15 August 1940, p.5.
That set the stage for the speech of welcome by Temairiki Taiaroa, the paramount chief of Ngai Tahu. After courteously acknowledging the presence of the Governor General, the Prime Minister, and others, he said that he was an old man and he had been waiting since he was a boy to see the claim attended to. All Ngai Tahu were present and wanted a reply, whether for or against them.
All that Fraser could say in response was that the government was considering the matter: it wanted to 'smooth away all differences' so that both races could 'march forward together on a greater scale than ever in the past'. That could not be other than disappointing to Ngai Tahu. Then H.T. Armstrong, Fraser's cabinet colleague and MP for Christchurch East, made matters worse when he spoke. Was the Maori claim to the land any greater than that of the Pakeha? he asked. Who were the original owners of the land, and did they really own it? What the government wanted was for 'Maori and pakeha to live side by side as brothers', and it would always 'treat Maori and Pakeha in all problems on an equal footing'. Nothing could be fairer than that, he said, and on that basis 'the claim would be given all the consideration it was entitled to'.
The Press, 22 April 1940.
Ngai Tahu were deeply hurt. They conferred after the ceremony and made a statement to The Press which the newspaper reported. In that statement,
No unexpected incidents marred the enjoyment of the dedication of the memorial to the French and German settlers during the afternoon ceremony. The French Consul M. Andre Pouquet hailed the good sense of the rival British and French captains a century earlier as the beginning of the entente cordiale between Britain and France; Oscar Natzke, returned to New Zealand for the centennial music festival, sang the Marseillaise, and the Governor General unveiled the monument.
Earlier accounts of the French at Akaroa had told it as a race to claim sovereign possession but Lindsay Buick's The French at Akaroa had relegated that to myth. The doyen of the French descendents, New Zealand Centennial News. That, however, was not how M. Pouquet put it in his speech at the unveiling ceremony. Rather it was that by getting there first Stanley had made no race of it! There was, he said, 'not the slightest doubt that from the outset, the French Government shared the hopes of the Nanto-Bordelaise Company and encouraged the settlers.' A recent New Zealand historian has reached the same conclusion.The French at Akaroa; An Adventure in Colonization (Wellington: Book Depot, 1928), pp.325-52; 'Old Days at Akaroa Recalled. An interview with New Zealand Centennial News, no.5, 20 January 1939, p.11; Peter Tremewan, French Akaroa: An Attempt to Colonise Southern New Zealand (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1990); John Dunmore, Visions and Realities: France in the Pacific 1695-1995 (Auckland: Heritage Press, 1997), chapter 8.
Wahiao, ten feet longer and with all its original carvings installed, was officially opened by the Governor General, Lord Galway, before a very large crowd at
New Zealand Herald, 16 November 1940.
Hon Frank Langstone, who by then was Minister of Native Affairs, led a widely representative official party which included, as principal guests, the Governor General, Lord Galway, Lady Galway, and members of their family, and leaders of all the tribes of the central plateau, Hawkes Bay, East Coast, and Bay of Plenty. A contingent of Maori soldiers and a party of returned soldiers from the first world war were present. Te Hatu Pirihi, speaking in Maori, welcomed the visitors. Sir Apirana Ngata explained the significance of the occasion. Mita Taupopoki, for whom Wahiao was dedicated, was a chief who was second to none in his time for what he did for the Maori people. 'No one,' he said, 'had had a greater part in welcoming distinguished visitors to the Dominion.'
New Zealand Centennial News, no. 15, 6 February 1941, p.5, quoting from a report in the Rotorua Morning Post.
Langstone, in what by now was a well-rehearsed speech, reviewed Maori history from Kupe and Toi to the renaissance of the present day. Tn a hundred years,' he said, 'they have kept the best of their culture and discarded the worst. Now it is not a matter of Maori versus pakeha, but New Zealand as a whole. We will be able to hand down to posterity the best of both cultures.' His speech was reported under the heading: 'Fair treatment for the Maori now.' Ibid., pp.5-6.
Te Hatu Pirihi presented the Governor General with a Loyal Address to the King on behalf of the Maori race. It was, the newspaper report commented, 'an eloquent message'. There was no doubt, it said that, despite 'difficulties and misunderstandings', the Maori people would 'have been broken and destroyed' but for 'the protecting mantle of the Sovereign powers'. The Maori soldiers now in England, 'the very flower of our race', were a sign of the loyalty of the Maori people and their preparedness to make sacrifices in defence of civilisation. 'God Save Your Majesty, Your People, and the World.' Ibid., pp.6-7.
It had been thanks to the combined political skills of Heenan, Ngata, and Mitchell that the whare runanga at Waitangi, Rangiaohia at Maketu, and Wahiao at Whakarewarewa had become centennial building projects. Pressing on with the restoration of Tamatekapua and ensuring its continuing upkeep was their next challenge. Wahiao and Tamatekapua, furthermore, were two of many Arawa meeting houses in need of restoration or rebuilding.
Heenan could not persuade the Native Affairs Department or the Tourist and Publicity Department to take responsibility for this work so he took his own initiatives. His department was responsible for the programmes of distinguished visitors to the country, and Rotorua was regularly on their itineraries. His department also administered the Dominion Museum, which had an ethnographer, IA 1,158/19/3, passim; IA 1,158/19/1; WJ. Phillips, Carved Meeting Houses of Arawa, Dominion Museum Records in Ethnology, vol.1,1946; Carved Houses of Arawa, Dominion Museum Records in Ethnology, vol.1, no.2,1948: Ms-Papers 1132-180 Heenan Papers, passim, ATL.
Heenan also persuaded the government to fund Arawa restoration projects. Soon after Tamatekapua was opened in 1943 he negotiated an arrangement under which Arawa District Trust Board, with an annual government grant, became the custodian and provided guides for distinguished vistors to Wahiao and Tamatekapua. That placed them on a similar basis to the Waitangi Trust Board, and these arrangements became in their turn precedents for Pompallier House and other historic buildings when they were restored.
A new era of government involvement in the restoration of old meeting houses and the building of new ones was being inaugurated. Once the Japanese entered the war there was a steady stream of overseas visitors. High-ranking Americans in particular were taken to Rotorua and it is probably from that time that distinguished guests received formal marae welcomes. Arawa's role as a provider of hospitality had entered a new reciprocal phase as they welcomed government guests as well as
The terraced volcanic cone in the centre of the Tamaki isthmus called Maungakiekie by Maori, and One Tree Hill by Pakeha, dominates the Auckland metropolitan landscape. It is an honoured landmark. For the background to this paragraph, see Russell Stone, 'Exotic tree image of united cultures', New Zealand Herald (NZH), 17 September 1999, A13.
But through the twentieth century the hill had another tree which 'stood alone'. This was the sole survivor of a group of radiata pines which John Logan Campbell, famed 'Father of Auckland', planted in the late 1870s. Sadly this tree had its life prematurely shortened, too, when Maori activists, who claimed it was a symbol of colonial oppression, attacked it with chainsaws during the 1990s. See vertical file of newspaper clippings on the attack on the tree, in the Auckland Public Library (APL), especially the articles and letters in Mana.
These facts are generally known. But what few realise today is that the obelisk that now stands alone on the summit is a celebration of the Maori race and a belated memento of New Zealand's first hundred years under the British Crown.
As early as November 1931, three local historians, John Barr, city librarian, George Graham, and James Cowan, each with a respectable record for historical publications, alerted the Auckland mayor, Report of Auckland Historical Research Committee (AHRC), 4 August 1936, NZMS 1128, APL.
But the prevailing mood of the council, immersed as it was in the slough of economic depression, was that 'branching out into new endeavours . .. would have been madness'. The chief reviewer was Decently and in Order: The Centennial History of the Auckland City Council (Auckland: Collins for Auckland City Council, 1971), p.555.New Zealand Herald. The last three, incidentally, were all respected amateur historians. In its first year, this committee made what it called an 'authentic compilation' of the events leading to the Crown's assumption of sovereignty over New Zealand and to the founding of Auckland. This work, painstakingly done, was based on primary sources and where possible official documents, and, before circulation, was subjected to what we would
Planning for the centenary picked up pace in Auckland during 1936. As elsewhere, effort was invigorated in the province by the new course charted by J.W.A. (Joe) Heenan, the dynamic undersecretary of the Department of Internal Affairs, who encouraged local groups to press on with their preparations for 1940. It also helped that Auckland's new mayor, Ernest Davis, was historically minded. Chappell's historical committee, seized by the conviction that 'a history of the Province of Auckland is urgently necessary' proclaimed, predictably enough, that such a publication 'would form the most fitting permanent memorial' of Auckland's first hundred years. Report of the AHRC to Auckland City Council, 25 November 1936, NZMS 1128.
The committee of Auckland historians did get their centennial book, nevertheless, though its conception was essentially serendipitous, and even though it ultimately turned out to be a much more modest tome than the one for which they had originally hoped. This book had its unexpected beginnings in 1936 when the National Historical Committee in Wellington made an appeal in Britain for a return to the dominion of records dealing with New Zealand's first hundred years, which they suspected might be lying, unregarded, in private hands. Among those who responded to this appeal were the descendants of Felton Mathew, the colony's first Surveyor General. They wrote offering a substantial holding of letters and journals not only of Mathew himself, but also of his intelligent and perceptive wife. Rutherford to Ibid.
Convinced that the cache of Mathew manuscripts were of 'extraordinary interest and value to Auckland', Rutherford to Auckland Provincial Centennial Committee, 21 February 1939, NZMS 385. Ibid.
With this government sanction, Rutherford negotiated an agreement with the
Rutherford to Auckland Provincial Centennial Council, 21 February 1939; Rutherford to The Founding of New Zealand. This title, for what turned out to be a book as useful as it is entertaining, is something of a misnomer, since the Mathew letters and journals are primarily concerned with the founding of Auckland. But the title pleased the Wellington committee which, understandably enough, had a dominion-wide perspective. It was also considered an 'excellent' one by the publishers who, eyeing the national market, believed that 'the title should help us in selling the book'.
As early as 1936, the Auckland mayor, on the urging of the Department of Internal Affairs, had attempted to convert the city's preparations for the centenary into a province-wide activity. On 11 August 1936, Davis convened the first meeting of the Auckland Provincial Centennial Council, to which he invited representatives not only from every local body in the province (and they were legion), but also from a sweeping cross section of community organisations: lodges, trade unions, employers' associations, choral societies, gardening groups and so on. The multiplicity of representation in a province the component parts of which were notorious for their particularism, seemed in the months ahead to make effective, coordinated action impossible. But it was not inaction that came from lack of trying. Committees multiplied like rabbits. In March 1939, the month that he completed his Mathew book, Professor Rutherford complained:'... we are all tremendously busy with all our Centennial projects just now. I find to my horror I am on no less than twenty-six different committees'. Rutherford to
The records seem to show that where the city council had close participation in or control of a designated centennial activity it was able to act most efficiently. Together with the Auckland University College it effectively financed the publication of the Mathew journals. It also provided much of the impetus in the formation of the Centennial Memorial Park Board which, since 1941, has built out of the landed benefactions of various people and groups an enviable reputation for preserving the forested and coastal lands of the Waitakere Ranges and its adjoining west coast. Bush, pp.275-344.
Yet back in 1938, with the centenary a mere two years off, Auckland (already the most populous city and province in the dominion) still lacked a major centennial project. Then salvation came from an unusual quarter. It arose out of the decision of the Sir John Logan Campbell Residuary Estate Trust to realise at last Campbell's dream of erecting an obelisk as a memorial to the Maori race.
To understand the origins of this unusual proposal to put a monument on One Tree Hill, one must return first to 1906, and then go back even further, to the mid-
The Father and his Gift (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1987), pp.252-3.Young Logan Campbell (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1982), p.150.
Upon Campbell's death, and burial on the summit of Maungakiekie in 1912, the executors of his will were directed to spend up to £5000 in erecting an obelisk. But because of the war and financial considerations related to the development of Cornwall Park, no action was taken until May 1924 when Alfred Bankart, chairman of trustees, instructed Arnold & Abbott, the trust's architects, to prepare plans which 'would give effect to the monument clause in the will'. Abbott to Campbell Trustees, 12 May 1925, fol.310. Abbott to
In August 1933, Bankart and his fellow trustees decided to postpone their obligations no further but begin acting on a further and more detailed set of plans prepared by Abbott. The chief features of the new proposals were a hundred-foot column made of reinforced concrete with a granolithic face, standing on a reinforced concrete base that would be buttressed and lined with hand-cut basaltic bluestone. Ibid. Gross had sculptures throughout New Zealand, such as the figure 'Endeavour' at the Auckland Grammar School, and the equestrian group on the Wellington City War Memorial; NZH, 24 November 1930, Supp. p.ll.
These changes led to an escalation of costs which were to have two not unrelated consequences in the years ahead. First, the Campbell trustees were obliged, on two separate occasions, to persuade the new Labour government which came to office in 1935 to sponsor legislation that would empower the trust to depart from the original provisions of the will so that, not £5000 but £10,000, and then later £15,000, could be spent in order to erect the memorial and 'complete the approaches thereto'. Russell McVeagh (lawyers) to
The local Maori community responded to the enlarged scheme with enthusiasm. As early as 1935, Te Akarana had written to the trustees to point out that since a large number of rural Maori planned to be in Auckland in 1940 for the centennial celebration, that occasion would provide an ideal opportunity 'to publicly open the obelisk'. George Graham (secretary) to
The new Labour Government, aware that the Auckland efforts were in danger of flagging, was equally supportive of this new focus for celebrations in the northern city. A newsletter from the Department of Internal Affairs spoke of the 'happy circumstance' that 1940 would also 'mark the 100th anniversary of the landing in Auckland of the late Sir John' and could thus 'be honoured in the thanksgivings, rejoicings and celebrations with which our Centennial is to be commemorated'. Newsletter in CP, fol.312, undated. It is not clear whether this effusion originated in Wellington or Auckland. Bollard to
The only opposition to the memorial to manifest itself came from an unexpected quarter. At the centennial Maori ball held in Auckland on 2 September 1938, the chairman of Auckland's Centennial Council, Sir Ernest Davis, delivered a speech inviting representatives from all Maori tribes, far and wide, to take part in the ceremony of dedication of the Campbell monument in 1940. He was taken aback when Sir Apirana Ngata rose to express misgivings about the proposed ceremony on One Tree Hill. Nothing should happen in 1940, he said, that would 'subordinate Waitangi as a national shrine'. Davis to Ngata, 9 September 1938, CP, fol.313.
New Zealand Centennial News: 'Despite many past misunderstandings' between Maori and Pakeha, 'those rejoicings will... mark the present-day happy relations of the two races'.NZ Centennial News, 25 October 1938, p.18.
In a letter which Ngata wrote to Davis shortly after, he explained why he had spoken out as he had on the night of the ball.
Auckland City has not occupied a very high place in the esteem of the Maori People, and I will explain why. Historically it was the centre of events which led to the confiscation of Native lands; it became associated with the pressure of European settlement at the expense of Maori communities. I did not say this at the Town Hall, but it was at the back of my question, 'What has Auckland meant to the Maori people?' If you have any doubt about this aspect of the queen city's reputation in past years, read the leading articles in the NZ Herald. We who are on the margins of the Province, do not forget these things, and our tribes cannot be expected to get up the necessary enthusiasm on receipt of a formal invitation to come and partake in the celebrations to be held in the Provincial capital. Ngata to Davis, 20 September 1938, CP, fol.313.
These opinions would be looked on as unexceptionable among historians today. But they must have seemed sulphurous and incendiary to the city fathers of that era. Early in 1939, the Campbell trustees commissioned Thomas Clements, contractor, to construct the monument, and Richard Gross, sculptor, to prepare the plaster model of the chief. It was expected that this work would be completed in ample time for the Governor General to be able to conduct an unveiling ceremony on 28 January 1940.
Ibid.; Provincial Maori Subcommittee resolution, 29 June 1939, CP, fol.314. Campbell Trust Board resolution, 28 June 1939, CP, fol.314.NZ Centennial News, 29 April 1939, p.3.
By mid-1939, however, serious doubts were surfacing as to whether construction of the memorial would be completed in time for a ceremony on 28 January 1940. Gross's full-scale model of a Maori chief, which was to be cast in bronze in a British foundry, was unlikely to arrive in London before the end of July 1939. Jordan to Campbell Trust, 13 September 1939, CP, fol.314.
The decision of the New Zealand government to follow Britain in declaring war on Nazi Germany extricated the Auckland Centennial Celebrations Council from
J. Rukutai to Campbell Trust, 26 October 1939, CP, fol.314. Ibid.; the phrase cited is from In the Shadow of Maungakiekie (Auckland: One Tree Hill Borough Council, 1989), p.21.
That was the official (and unofficially very convenient) explanation given for the decision not to unveil the obelisk, showpiece of the centennial celebrations in Auckland, in January 1940. The monument, which cost the Campbell Trust £15,436 (a huge sum at the time) to construct,
And even when the war ended no one hurried to carry out the opening ceremony. That function, in effect the unveiling of the pedestal,
For the programme see Manukau Progress, 8 November 1962.cMokau ki runga, Tamaki ki raro'; 'Mokau [north Taranaki] above and Tamaki below'. And it must be
Nevertheless, it was regrettable that representation should have been confined to Ngati Whatua and Waikato. No tribes north of Orakei and south of Ngaruawahia were invited to take part because, according to the chairman of the trust, 'the Maoris the late Sir John had admiration for belonged to the tribes in those districts'.Poenamo, and his voluminous memoirs, reveal that the tribes whom he knew best and admired most were members of the Marutuahu confederation: Ngaitai, who built his first home on Motukorea, and Ngati Tama-te-ra, from whom he had bought that island and among whom he lived for some months on 'Hauraki's shore', both come to mind. The chiefs he admired most were also from Hauraki: the aged Te Horeta, Kanini of Tama-te-ra, and Taraia Ngakuti Te Tumuhia, whom he respected even while he called him 'an old warrior of dread renown'.
But an incomplete invitation list to the unveiling is, after all, no great matter. And it is surely in character with the many misconceptions that have clouded the true story of One Tree Hill down to the present day.
The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was the largest and most important of the centennial historical publications and, for
The work that Scholefield described in his proposal was already almost complete. His views on the sorts of people who should be included in a dictionary of national biography and the manner in which their biographical entries should be written up were also well considered. Biographies, in his view, should be essentially factual, a life record, not critical accounts or character sketches, and should include authorities consulted and a general bibliography to assist further study. People still alive would not be included.
People to be included as a matter of course were governors of New Zealand, cabinet ministers, members of parliament and of the former provincial councils, judges and important magistrates, bishops and other heads of churches, and, rather quaintly, New Zealanders who had been 'elevated to the peerage' and those who had been decorated for services to New Zealand. All of these would require 'exhaustive treatment'. Below these eminent personages were to be those who had distinguished themselves by public service, or who were prominent in the social, intellectual and economic life of the country; prominent mayors of the chief cities, some early missionaries, explorers, soldiers in New Zealand wars, public servants of distinction, professors of standing, leading educationalists, scientists, writers of prose and verse, including journalists and lastly, 'women of particular prominence'. Among Maori it was to include those most notable in pre-European times, leading chiefs since the arrival of the missionaries and Maori leaders of the last hundred years.
Space should be allocated to subjects in order of their importance. Those of the first rank, for example, Seddon, Grey, Vogel and Marsden, would get 5000 words each. Those of second rank—about 50—would get 800 words. Another 100 would warrant 400 words, and more than half of the entries would need only about a hundred words. 'The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography', he concluded, 'is intended to be a handbook to the history of New Zealand. It will fill a gap that has long teased the patience of scholars and students. It will prove a work of the same value and permanence as Dr Hocken's famous Bibliography ... It should be as worthy of the occasion it serves to mark as the rest of the Centennial publications.' Scholefield's proposal was, of course, a description of work already completed, 'as a fitting counterpart to the British Dictionary of National Biography'.
Autobiography, typescript, Ms-Papers 0212-67, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), p.224.
Guy Hardy Scholefield had developed his passion for biography around 1900 when, as a young journalist on the staff of the New Zealand Times in Wellington, he wrote a series of articles about early New Zealand personalities which were then published throughout the country. Living in the capital brought him into frequent contact with various public figures, including Richard Seddon, but it was Gorst's Maori King and Adventures in New Zealand, and other classics of New Zealand history, bought with prize money won at Victoria University College in 1903, which really fired his enthusiasm. Another stimulus was the public lecture Sir Robert Stout gave on James Edward Fitzgerald in 1906 and later published. Scholefield was then twenty-nine. He wrote to all the surviving members of the old provincial councils (or their relatives), of whom there were still many, among them John Logan Campbell of Auckland, John Roberts and James Mills of Otago and
He became aware, during this undertaking, that it was difficult to find accurate information about his subjects and was thus led, in 1908, to set about publishing the first Who's Who in New Zealand. A record of public service to New Zealand was the essential criterion for inclusion. In contrast with the compilers of contemporary Cyclopaedias, he set his face against including subjects who provided their own material and paid for inclusion.
He acquired a decade of overseas experience as the London correspondent for the New Zealand Associated Press, and as a war correspondent. Returning to New Zealand in 1919, he became editor of the Wairarapa Age and by 1924 sought to extend his biographical writing with a new edition of Who's Who, including material on expatriate New Zealanders he had met abroad. He had learned a great deal about the necessity for accuracy in dates and spelling of names, and for caution in accepting family recollections at face value. Struck by the dearth of information about the then Prime Minister, William Ferguson Massey, he set about preparing material for a short biography which he published the following year on Massey's death.
Scholefield's real breakthrough as a professional biographer came with his
Ibid., p.222.
He made good use of this rich resource as year by year he added to his card catalogue with new entries, corrections and death notices. He was now, in 1933, preparing the third edition of Who's Who. As he did he envisaged 'the publication in a decade or so of a National Biography of New Zealand. That now became a feature of my work.'
Scholefield was a member of the National Historical Committee but took no part in its deliberations on his proposal. A subcommittee accepted the proposal and work began on the writing of additional entries and the preparation of the completed text for publication. McCormick to Heenan, 27 September 1937 and committee notes, Internal Affairs IA 1, 62/9/2, National Archives (NA)..
McCormick to Heenan, 13 October 1939,1A 1, 62/9/2.A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.xv.
The Department of Internal Affairs called for tenders in November 1938 and the following February the government authorised Whitcombe and Tombs to produce 1000 sets of two quarto volumes bound in buckram of approximately 500 pages each in double columns for a total cost of £1500. It is clear from a thank-you letter that Beaglehole drafted for Parry to send to the printer, Whitcombe and Tombs, that he was exacting in his requirements. The task of producing the Dictionary' he wrote, Beaglehole to Heenan, and Heenan to Parry, 30 March 1939; Parry approved on 14 April 1939,1A 1, 62/9/2.chas been a long and arduous one and has, I know, called for a great deal of patience and care, in typesetting, correcting, paging, printing and binding, and I know too that Dr Beaglehole, in charge of the production has not been remarkably easy to please, but the interest taken in the job by your people, as well as their solid work over a long period, has been a very pleasant feature of this phase of the Centennial/ All associated with the job from an apprentice printer to the works manager were mentioned. Beaglehole himself considered the production 'the finest set of volumes on this scale that has ever appeared in New Zealand'.
The first volume was published in April 1940 and the second soon after. They were priced at £2 10s a set and by July were selling well. From the time of publication the Parry signed the contract on 18 December 1939, IA 1, 62/9/2.Dictionary of New Zealand Biography has been known as 'Scholefield's Dictionary' or simply as 'Scholefield'. It was his conception, his compendium of the country's political and public figures, and his greatest claim to be remembered. It quickly became a collectors' item. He received £300 for his efforts.
Scholefield's favourite political subjects were well represented in the Dictionary. Vogel and Grey have seven pages devoted to them; Wakefield and Stafford, six;
Eight women writers range from Lady Barker in the 1860s to Esther Glen who died in February, 1940, just before the dictionary was published. They include the poet Jessie Mackay, the novelist Edith Grossman, Robin Hyde, Louisa Baker, Susan Wood, Anne Wilson and, of course, Katherine Mansfield. The artists included were mainly watercolour painters: Dorothy Kate Richmond, Margaret Stoddart, Frances Mary Wimperis, Kate Emma Clark, Rhona Haszard and Mary Elizabeth Tripe. Drama was represented by Marjorie Hannah. The four teachers were pioneer headmistresses of girls' schools: the formidable Mary Gibson of Christchurch Girls' High School, Maria Marchant and Margaret Burn from Otago, and Kate Evans of Nelson College for Girls, who also had the distinction of being the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree, not only in New Zealand but also in the British Empire.
Six women won recognition for their pioneer efforts in achieving political status for women: the earliest, Mary Muller, whose passionate pleas for women's franchise were published in thel860s under the pseudonym Temina'; then Harriet Morison, early trade unionist and suffrage worker; Kate Sheppard, who led the women's franchise campaign in the early 1890s; Ada Wells, the first woman city councillor in Christchurch; Elizabeth Yates of Onehunga, the first woman mayor in the British Empire; and Elizabeth McCombs, who had, as recently as 1933, become the first woman member of Parliament. The remarkable Mary Aubert stands alone, as a Catholic nun, teacher and nurse. Several other women rate a paragraph as an addition to an eminent father or husband, for example Constance Barnicoat, the journalist and war correspondent, and Anna Stout, the suffragist campaigner.
Among the women there are at least five Maori: Topeora Rangi Ngati Toa, niece of Te Rauparaha, famous as a composer of waiata; Ri Maumau, a follower of Hone Heke; Te Paea, daughter of the first Maori king; Huria Matenga, whose heroic feat in rescuing the crew of the wrecked brig, Delaware, in 1863 made her well known to most Pakeha; and Makereti Papakura who became an Oxford anthropologist.
Maori men were well represented. Some 212 Maori leaders were included in essays
Scholefield, Dictionary, pp.xii, xiv.
In 1940 the country was perceived as more homogeneous than at the end of the previous century, and Scholefield had few examples of other racial minorities. There are two Chinese business men, Chew Chong of Taranaki and Sew Hoy of Dunedin; several French settlers from Akaroa, Germans from Nelson, Scandanavians, like Judge Alpers, and some exotic individuals such as the soldier, Gustavus Ferdinand von Tempsky, Paul Nicholas Balthazar von Tunzelman (the Russian explorer of Central Otago) and the Dutch painter, Petrus Van der Velden.
Scholefield was adding essays right up to the time of publication. The most important addition to the addenda in volume two was his long article on Michael Joseph Savage who died in the month the first volume was ready. Esther Glen, a children's author who died in February 1940, was also included. Tau Henare MP, who died in January, and Richard McCallum, MP for Wairau, who died on 1 February, were also added. There were, also, omissions from volume one, two of the most important being John Logan Campbell and the French explorer, Dumont d'Urville.
New Zealand reviewers of the
Dictionary were full of praise. Oliver Duff said that if he were choosing one book for all moods it would be the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. 'Nothing,' he wrote, 'is quite so interesting, so stimulating, and so reassuring as the company of men and women who can talk to us when we want them to talk and never in any circumstances contradict us. . . .Wander through this gallery with Dr Scholefield and you will come away walking on your toes.' New Zealand Listener, 16 August 1940, p.5.
The longest and most penetrating review was by Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand. James praised it as a 'monument' to Scholefield's
A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.xv.A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.xv.Dictionary.
Most of its shortcomings he attributed to the fact that it was almost entirely the work of one painstaking scholar. By comparison, the great majority of the entries in the latest Supplement of the British Dictionary of Biography had been written by specialists on a single subject. One consequence for the New Zealand work was the paucity of precise details of birth, marriage, death, and forebears of the people included, less than half of whom had been born in the country. What was needed was a commitment to a long-term team approach, through which the compilers of a dictionary would be able to draw on the work of specialist writers, supported by searchers in their own country and correspondents in others who would fossick out essential details of life histories.
James's other main criticism took up what he called 'the vexed problem of impartiality'. Scholefield had taken 'a purely factual approach' and had avoided evaluative comment but impressions were conveyed by 'even the barest factual compilation', and the discovery of new material could well 'change the entire pictureA Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.xv.Dictionary, given his answer to this criticism. It was precisely because 'estimates of the significance of a man in the history of the country must inevitably change with the passage of the years' that he had adopted a factual approach, because the facts of a life, 'once they are accurately ascertained and recorded cannot change'.Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand, vol.1, no.3, April 1941, pp.196, 97, 200; Scholefield, Dictionary, Introduction, p.xii.
It is striking to observe how James's criticisms of fifty years before were remedied when the first volume of the
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was being prepared to celebrate New Zealand's sesquicentennial in 1990.The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.1, 1769-1869 (Wellington: Allen and Unwin, Department of Internal Affairs, 1990), Introduction, pp.viii-ix.Dictionary as a gallery of people who had given significant public service: its successor set out to be representative of New Zealand society. It included common soldiers as well as officers, matriarchs as well as patriarchs, the disreputable as well as the respectable, and conscious efforts were made to include a generous allocation of subjects to represent differences in gender, ethnic background, region, and occupation. The Maori entries were published in Maori-language volumes as well as in the English-language volumes. It also had the luxury of four volumes covering the period to 1940, though with about 600 essays in each the total, 2408, for the period is close to Scholefield's 2500. Taking representativeness as the criterion,
Apart from Scholefield's conscious effort to give Maori due recognition in his dictionary, the rest of his subjects were nearly all white males of European descent, many having been in fact born in the British Isles, and he included some who had never even visited New Zealand if they had in some way influenced life here. In his introduction Scholefield justifies including Hooker, Owen, and Lyall, as Hooker's brief visit in 1841 resulted in a lifetime's research in New Zealand botany; Lyall, surgeon and naturalist, similarly visited for a few months in 1842, and Owen never came at all but identified a fossil moa bone in 1839. 'They all impinged upon our history in such a manner as to justify at least a mention.' Ibid., Introduction, p.xv.Dictionary appear in the contemporary one: only Mary Ewart, Frances Mary Wimperis, Ri Maumau and Te Paea are missing. Changes in taste over sixty years are revealed by the long essay given to Thomas Bracken whose God Defend New Zealand was in 1940 given official status by Heenan as New Zealand's national song, and his omission from the 1990 dictionary altogether.
There was an aftermath to the Scholefield to Heenan, 2 April 1949,IA 1, 62/9/2.Dictionary that caused Scholefield increasing anguish for the rest of his life. His contract vested copyright in the Crown but it foreshadowed continuing work that would lead to the later publication, perhaps at intervals of ten years, of supplements. The intention was to follow the practice of the British and American exemplars. Scholefield kept adding to his pile of cards and, after he retired in 1948, began preparing what he expected to be the first supplement. By 1949 he estimated that he had 200 pages of text which included biographies of people who had died since 1940, new material covering the years up to 1940, among it French texts on de Surville and du Fresne, and an index.
But there were to be no supplements. Heenan retired in 1949. Labour lost the general election later that year, sending Fraser and Nash into opposition. Scholefield had lost his patrons. Heenan feared for his historical projects under the change of government and, as Michael Bassett records in his history, his fears were well founded: 'a new, less congenial breeze was blowing around his old department.' Michael Bassett, The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997), p. 159.
Scholefield had shown a tendency to haggle when negotiating the initial contract, and it was his undoing when Dictionary. That project became The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, to be edited by the Parliamentary Librarian, Dictionary. Meech, unlike Harper, held that it had no further
Scholefield died, aged eighty-six, just a year later, on 19 July 1963, and it was to the
Dictionary that all the obituaries referred as his enduring monument.New Zealand Listener, 9 August 1963, (C.R.H.Taylor); New Zealand Library, August 1963, p.193, (Dominion, 30 July 1963, (Encyclopaedia of New Zealand he would have had very mixed feelings could he have known that it would include a biographical entry on him. In that entry Dictionary had become 'an essential tool for students of New Zealand history'.An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, vol.3, p.178.Dictionary describes his Dictionary as 'one of the most acclaimed of the centennial publications'.A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.4, p.460.
Scholefields's Dictionary marks the end of an era in written history in New Zealand. An author, working alone, would never again undertake such a task. A new generation of historians approached the study of history with access to a greater volume of original source material, and more rigorous academic training. By the time the first volume of the new Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was being prepared to celebrate the country's sesquicentennial in 1990 two generations of scholarly research had accumulated, providing rich resources on which to draw.
Whatever its shortcomings, Scholefield's Dictionary was a remarkable effort and remained an invaluable guide for two generations. New and more sophisticated research techniques have rendered his work old-fashioned in some ways, but Oliver Duff's claim that it makes a great read is still valid. If we need to check his dates or balance his judgment sometimes, we have now abundant resources available to do so. Nor should it be forgotten that Scholefield remains a valuable first port of call for information on a considerable number of people not included in the volumes of the successor Dictionary. Thanks, too, to Beaglehole's contribution, the physical form of these two volumes with their wide margins, thick creamy paper, elegant typography and handsome binding, make them objects of beauty for bibliophiles after sixty years. We should be grateful that the centennial publications were printed just before the paper shortages of wartime would have made such excellence impossible.
The decision to produce an historical atlas as part of the centennial celebrations for 1940 was taken by the National Historical Committee at its inaugural meeting in June 1937. An atlas and gazetteer subcommittee was appointed under the chairmanship of a member of the committee, Professor James Rutherford of Auckland. Ms-Papers 0230-239, report to National Historical Committee (NHC), ca June 1938.
Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1938, H22, p.3.
be the outstanding, and, next to the Dictionary of National Biography, probably the most important of all the Surveys. So important does the National Historical Committee regard the Atlas that it recommended an enquiry into the possibility of its being published jointly by the Government and the Oxford University Press. ... an endorsement by that press of the work as something outstanding, and so, incidentally, secure practically a world market.
Ms-Papers 0230-239, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL). Extract from memo, Undersecretary to Minister of Internal Affairs, 5 July 1938.
Even taking into account the hyperbole of a public servant wishing to reassure a minister (and beyond the minister a cabinet) of the merits of a course of action, there was some justification for this view. The atlas was to be both big and bright, with a 16 Ms-Papers 0230-239, report to National Historical Committee (NHC), ca June 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, report to National Historical Committee (NHC), ca June 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, report to National Historical Committee (NHC), ca June 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, report to National Historical Committee (NHC), ca June 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. Surveyor General to Secretary, NHC, 7 September 1937, 13 September 1937.2" by 132" map plate size, later altered to 172 by 112 (430mm x 290mm)— presumably because it was realised that New Zealand was long rather than wide! This was larger than the dimensions of the Historical Atlas published in 1997. The proposed atlas entailed a lavish use of colour (up to eight colours for one map series— in contrast the 1997 atlas used only the four process colours) and the individual sewing of the map pages into the binding. A total of eighty-eight of these map pages, comprising eighty-five separate maps (some would spread across the middle) was envisaged. Total costs, including drafting, printing and binding, for a print run of 3000, were estimated at approximately £10,000, or a unit cost of around £3 6s.
Such an ambitious project naturally raises questions. Why was it taken on? And why did it fail to appear? The records are not illuminating on the first question, but the general mood of the centennial celebration project, in which so many different schemes were canvassed, must have played a part.
Rutherford, of the history department of Auckland University College, and H.E. (Harry) Walshe, surveyor general and head of the Department of Lands and Survey, were the two people most prominent in the early deliberations about the atlas. Rutherford was a historian of British colonialism. He had done work in South Africa as well as New Zealand (his magnum opus was to be a biography of George Grey, who served in both countries) and was wont to draw sketch maps himself. Ms-Papers 0230-001, Rutherford to Secretary, NHC, 3 August 1937.
Harry Walshe was the Crown's surveyor general, and chief of the Department of Lands and Survey. A quiet 'lovely' man, his first great enthusiasm was map projections, his second, fishing in the Marlborough Sounds. Interview with
The atlas subcommittee in effect became the manager of the project. Rutherford and Walshe appeared to have reached agreement on the choice of maps, which included both historical and thematic or contemporary maps, plus coverage of contemporary New Zealand in a number of plates at eight to ten miles to the inch (about 1:500,000). Ms-Papers 0230-001. Walshe to Rutherford, 18 June 1937; Rutherford to Secretary, NHC (McCormick), 3 August 1937; McCormick to Rutherford, 10 August 1937. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo of 18 March 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. Undersecretary, Department of Internal Affairs to Undersecretary, Department of Lands and Survey, 24 March 1938.
Lands and Survey had by then assembled a team of draughtsmen, recruited from its district offices up and down the country, whilst McCormick addressed the research side of matters. His letter of August 1937 to Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. Atlas subcommittee meeting, 10 March 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-035 Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Extract from memo, Undersecretary to Minister of Internal Affairs, 5 July 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Record of meeting of 10 March 1938.
War broke out in September 1939. In a letter of 12 October Burnett wrote that the date for printing the atlas was still under consideration, but that it seemed 'fairly certain that as a result of the war, this may be postponed for some little time. But the rest of the work, such as research and drawing, is continuing as before'. Ms-Papers 0230-002, ATL. Burnett to Vice-Consul of Finland, 12 October 1939.
Within a very short time, however, this proved overoptimistic.The sharp rise in the cost of paper after the outbreak of war was one problematic factor: the cost of printing was estimated at £2849 (for a run of 6000) in September 1939 and £5698 in February 1940. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo of 24 February 1941, p.5. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo of 24 February 1941, pp.3-4.
If this is the bare bones of the story of the project, 1937 to 1940, to where do we look for an explanation of the failure? In effect there is a hierarchy of explanations, the most immediate being the war, as discussed above; among less direct influences, three intertwined considerations are crucial: production, management and content.
So far as can be determined, no one involved in the project had ever produced an atlas before. This might not seem to matter. After all no pne had previously mounted a centennial exhibition, or organised a publication enterprise on the scale of the centennial publications either. But it can readily be demonstrated that the production challenges of an atlas were substantial. The atlas was to embrace, as did virtually all atlases at the time, two (with a possible third) distinct production sequences. One was of maps, which were produced by mapmakers. The maps would be prepared as 'plates'—in effect multiple plates, depending on the numbers of colours to be used, from which the printed maps would in due course be produced. The second was of text—letterpress as it was known—which could be produced by printers and certainly would not necessarily involve cartographers. A possible third sequence was a gazetteer (that is, a listing of place names indexing them to the maps by means of grid
Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Quote is from memo, Undersecretary to Minister of Internal Affairs, 5 July 1938.
Who was to do this work? The text was to be the responsibility of scholars, the gazetteer could be produced by the mapmakers. But the maps were a different matter. If this had been a contemporary atlas there is no doubt that the management of it would have best rested with Lands and Survey, which was 'undertaking the research for a number of the maps to be included in the Atlas'. That department knew how to compile contemporary maps, be they general or thematic (for instance of forest cover).
It either collated the necessary information itself or gathered it from the relevant government departments. Many of the thematic maps envisaged for the atlas were prepared in this fashion. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Extract from memo, Undersecretary to Minister of Internal Affairs, 5 July 1938.
With respect to the historical maps, however, no such practice could be followed. Such maps required compilers with expertise in historical research, who had then to work with the cartographers. This was not straightforward. The task of making the information gathered mappable required a familiarity with the mapmaker's art. Whereas for the researcher, the information was the map, for the mapmaker, the legend, or key, was the map. That was what provided the mapmaker with the 'driving instructions' as it were. And not only did there have to be such instructions, they had to be readable, or rather, allow the production of a map which was readable. In other words, there was a challenge in converting one language—that of historical research—into another, a usable map.
This problem might have been overcome if the management of the project had been more robust. Who did manage it? The short answer is—no single person. A slightly longer answer is the atlas subcommittee. There are enough aphorisms about management by committee, but no easy answer to the question of why the committee did not appoint a manager or editor.
One possible answer lies in a version of the contrast between historical research and mapmaking already touched upon, as there is some evidence that this reverberated institutionally. The uncertainty about what the atlas should be called is suggestive, the two commonest appellations being 'historical atlas' and 'centennial atlas'. Sometimes both adjectives were used, quite often neither. McCormick in August 1937 referred to the 'historical atlas', but Walshe in September to the 'centennial atlas', as did historian Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL, passim 1937.
Beyond such matters the need for two departments to collaborate also produced some predictable tensions. One occurred around the time of Rutherford's return from leave, and resumption of the subcommittee chair. Sixty years and more later it has a slightly comic aspect which may not, however, have been evident to the participants. The atlas was to include a number of facsimile maps, such as Tasman and Cook's charts and the 'Tuki' map, a map of New Zealand drawn from information supplied by two Maori informants to British officers on Norfolk Island in 1791. The subcommittee learnt that the draughtsmen proposed to 'redraw' these maps in some respects, partly to increase the legibility of their texts. This seems to have been accepted, if not very enthusiastically ('many contentious points had to be decided' record the minutes of a meeting of 11 July) by other members of the subcommittee when the proposal was explained by Walshe and his deputy Information from
The historians were not happy. Rutherford was to refer to the 'grave objection' there was to redrawing at the subcommittee meeting of 19 August (the first he had attended since returning to New Zealand), and Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Minutes of meeting of Atlas subcommittee, 11 July 1938; record of informal meeting, 5 August 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Minutes of meeting of Atlas subcommittee, 19 August 1938.
Did this episode make Rutherford distrustful of Walshe and his staff? He examined the proposed atlas contents as set out by Walshe in a letter of September 1937 (after Rutherford had gone on leave) and decided that it had entailed a dramatic dilution of the historical content of his own original list, with which he thought Walshe had concurred. As he wrote to McCormick in an angry five- page letter penned on Empire Hotel, Wellington, letterhead, he now realised that many of his historical maps had been amalgamated into one, whilst it was intended that the nineteenth-century war maps would be overdrawn on the ten miles to the inch general maps and that the world maps would appear at the beginnning of the atlas. This would not do. 'We are concerned primarily to produce an Historical Atlas. The approach is historical, and, as far as possible, we begin at the beginning, and let the story of NZ's development unfold itself gradually in a series of maps, beginning with Maori explorers and Pacific navigators and coming up to the present day.' Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Letter of 20 August 1938.
What happened after Rutherford's outburst? The immediate aftermath of it is unclear, although it is recorded that Rutherford's memo was discussed at a meeting of the atlas subcommittee at which he was not present, and at which Walshe was in the chair (presumably Rutherford had by this time returned to Auckland), Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Minutes of meeting of 20 September 1938.
In November the project had been visited by Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Department of Lands and Survey to Secretary, NHC, 21 November 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo, Burnett to Heenan, 23 November 1938.Atlas of Finland and discussion of the need for more social and economic content in the atlas.Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States as a comparable instance.
The approved extra content amounted to another thirty maps or fifteen half-pages. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo of 23 November 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Minutes of meeting, 1 December 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL; Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Minutes of 1 December 1938,4 April 1939. Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. Letter of 27 January 1939.New Zealand Centennial News, July 1939.
Hindsight tells us that with these decisions the likelihood of publishing the atlas
Ms-Papers 0230-002, ATL. In a late memoir McCormick observed that 'we had
underestimated the extent of research required'. Ms-Papers 0230-001, Rutherford to Secretary, NHC, 3 August 1937. Interview with Ms-Papers 0230-001, ATL. McCormick to F. Milner, 16 May 1939 re Gibbs of Nelson. Information from An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, Dennis McEldowney ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), p.150.Dominion of 6 April 1939 refers to the atlas being 'ready for the printer
And a further significant expansion of content took place as a result of an initiative by Apirana Ngata. An exchange between Heenan and Ngata took place in September 1938. Ms-Papers 0230-036, ATL. Information from See NZPD 253, p.453 (15 September 1938).
Ngata proposed a series of maps of different parts of the country, with common waka affiliations, showing place names and other information connnected with that waka tradition (the scheme provided a model for the Tapatuanuku' plates of the 1997 Ms-Papers 0230-035, ATL. See items on file from September and October 1939. Ms-Papers 0230-035, ATL; Interview with Historical Atlas). After meetings with Ngata in September 1939 Burnett advocated a much more complete coverage of tribal history and place names. This proposal was also duly adopted by the atlas committee (the 'sub' had been dropped in April 1939).
So, while the draughtsmen may not have understood the requirements of history, the historians did not fully grasp the requirements of a map production schedule. Either way, the centennial atlas was not to be. The tabulation of maps prepared when the final drawings were 'put aside' in mid-1940 suggests that perhaps a third of the atlas was ready, rather more than a third had not been started, and somewhat less than a third was work in progress. The completed third included a number of facsimile reproductions of old maps and Lands and Survey's special favourites, the ten mile to the inch series maps—on balance, therefore, more than half of the original cartography planned for the atlas remained to be done. Ms-Papers 0230-002, ATL. Memo of 29 July 1940. One draughtsman was returned to the project after this but after just three and a half months was lost again. Ms-Papers 0230-239, ATL. Memo of 24 February 1941, p.4.
The goal of producing an atlas as part of the publications project for the centennial was a commendable one. For one thing, it could have fostered a greater Pakeha comprehension of Maori history, both pre- and post-contact—'a picture is worth a thousand words'. But the project was far too ambitious a one, even if all production and management issues had been resolved and the war had not supervened. As it was, it produced many impressive draft maps, both in this initial phase before the war, and as a result of continued work on it during and after the war. Research and map drawing continued until the project was closed down in 1951, but at no stage were the resources allocated to it adequate to allow it to be brought to publication. For further see Ms-Papers 0230-244, ATL. Report compiled by New Zealand Historical Atlas more than fifty years later. And many remain valuable research aids to scholars to this day.
Accepting an invitation to write a centennial survey on exploration, Otago schoolteacher, former All Black and mountaineer
They had decided on history, with perhaps a little romance thrown in. They wanted history that was both popular and scholarly; critical not adulatory; in style 'proper and dignified without being dull', 'graceful and accurate', combining 'liveliness and information, wit and authority': a 30,000-word essay that would evince scholarly rigour, the feel of authority and literary panache. McCormick to Heenan, 11 November 1936, IA 1, 62/48. Heenan to Parry, 24 February 1937, IA 1, 62/7.New Zealand: A Short History (1936) as the model for the surveys 'for length of vision and style of writing'.
To consider how the historical surveys failed to fulfil their creators' expectations is not to deny the considerable achievement they were; is not to deny Heenan the right to the pride that he took in them. Of the entire centennial enterprise, of which as undersecretary for Internal Affairs he was in charge, and which was the highlight of his long and distinguished public service career, it was the publishing programme and in particular the historical surveys that were nearest to his heart. Most of the thirteen planned volumes appeared, although not monthly: seven by December 1939, the last exactly a year behind schedule. Two sold out quickly, and half were a conspicuous sales success. Four would be reprinted. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive and often enthusiastic. Almost unanimously they praised the books as the restrained masterpieces of typographical art that Heenan had hoped
A dissenting view was expressed by Oliver Duff in the New Zealand Listener. Having agreed with everyone else that the production of the books set a new standard, Duff quibbled about the 'weak' title page and untrimmed edges: 'there is no justification for untrimmed edges on a machine-made book. To trim and stain the top end of a volume and leave the bottom as it happens to fall is to forget that we are nearly half-way through the twentieth century/ New Zealand Listener, 12 April 1940, p.34.Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, and the ill-fated historical atlas, along with a score of local and institutional histories that received centennial funding) they represented the single largest exercise of government literary patronage to that date, and inspired Heenan's wider-ranging ambitions in this regard. Some would be judged significant works in their field. But popular and scholarly was a deceptively simple brief.
It is in the dialectic of popular and scholarly—romance and history—that the historical surveys mark a significant moment in New Zealand intellectual history. As texts, and as an exercise in commissioned history, they demonstrate the main and conflicting currents of historiography in the interwar years. They were, one might say at the risk of rhetorical excess, a site of conflict, a literary moment in which different modes of historical discourse, different intellectual communities, and
The moment was the beginning of the development of history in New Zealand, and the history of New Zealand, as an academic affair. Separate departments and chairs of history were established in New Zealand's university colleges only in the 1920s, freeing the subject from subservience to economics or political science. By the mid-1950s a new generation of academic historians was just beginning its work: Airey and Rutherford, Beaglehole and Wood. Before them, the professional practice of New Zealand history had been largely the domain of the journalist-historians, collectors and ethnographers: Cowan and Buick, Scholefield, Andersen and Best. These men understood history as chronicle and the historian's role as rescuing the traces of an heroic past. They produced texts that were compendia of primary sources: newspaper obituaries, official records, the collected memories of 'old identities', Pakeha and Maori. Their narrative practice replicated their activities as collectors of books and artefacts, as bibliophiles or librarians. In its methodology and its purpose, the history they wrote had much in common with the ethnographic project of the Polynesian Society, which, since it was founded in the 1890s, had sought to preserve the past of a dying race, and, not unlike the poets of the time, to make a cultural home for the European in New Zealand by appropriating the native: by finding the exotic in the indigenous. C. Hilliard, 'Island stories: the writing of New Zealand history, 1920-1940', MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1997;
Wellington in the first decades of the twentieth century had been home to a productive and collegial community of ethnographers and historians, collectors and librarians, centred institutionally on the Alexander Turnbull Library, the General Assembly Library and the Dominion Museum, all busily engaged in the task of preserving the record of the nation's still recent past. But this was an intellectual circle—and soon a style of history—that by the 1930s was disappearing. Elsdon Best, who in his last years had taken refuge in the Turnbull Library from the damp and decay of the Museum where he had been employed as honorary ethnographer since 1910, died in 1931; retired postmaster, 'gruff, prickly, hermit-historian'Books are My Business (Reading: Educational Explorers), 1966, p.57.Settlers and Pioneers.
The appointment of
The new historians were trained in the research practices and academic standards of the British universities of the interwar years. For them, history entailed the presentation of thesis and evidence; it had footnotes and arguments. They were more interested in the European than the Maori story, and were especially interested in the political and administrative aspects of British colonial policy and New Zealand government in the period before 1860. For Beaglehole, the explorer Cook, who would become his lifelong scholarly pursuit, also made meaningful a history he had described in 1926 as he sailed for London and postgraduate study—from which he would reluctantly return in 1929—as 'just a few tuppenny-ha'penny scraps & tenth-rate politics'. Beaglehole, quoted in Turnbull Library Record, vol.14, no.2, October 1981, p.72.
Celebrating the centennial was in itself also fraught with ambivalence: between national assertion and colonial deference; between nationalism and internationalism (accentuated by the context of impending, and then actual war); between the celebration of progress and a nostalgia for brave pioneering days. The official rhetoric of the centennial, like the discourse of cultural nationalism, was heavy with organic metaphors of adolescence and of a nation's and a culture's coming of age.
The National Centennial Historical Committee, convened in July 1936 and charged with advising on all historical matters relating to the centennial, ranging from the planning of historical surveys to the design of centennial stamps, was a rough mix of academic and non-academic historians, officials and politicians. 'Journalist:s were almost as numerous as professors,' An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings,
This committee in fact met only three times, and beyond the initial brainstorming stage had little practically to do with the historical surveys, despite having been told by Heenan that this was to be their most important task. The more influential group was a loosely constituted standing committee of Wellington members and Centennial Office staff, and a smaller group still who formed a de facto editorial committee. They were the younger, smarter set. In this inner circle were Wood and Beaglehole, and Eric McCormick, as first secretary of the National Historical Committee, but editor of the surveys after Oliver Duff left to become founding editor of the New Zealand Listener early in 1939. It was McCormick (while still secretary) who aspired to give the series some overall intellectual coherence and rigour by proposing a 'general theme' or 'common idea' which the authors would be asked to interpret. The 'idea' was adaptation: 'that 100 years ago a sample of nineteenth century society and civilisation was transferred to New Zealand and has since been reshaped and adapted, with varying degrees of success, to conform to the conditions of a new environment'. This was, as he admitted, 'simple enough, so simple and obvious that one finds scarcely any recognition of it, either implicit or explicit, in the vast mass of New Zealand writing'. He cited as two notable exceptions Beaglehole's just-published history of the University of New Zealand, and Herbert Guthrie-Smith's ecological memoir Tutira, which also happened to be Heenan's favourite New Zealand book. It was not exactly novel either, but expressed a familiar Romantic idea: that culture was organic, and therefore mutable; and a commonplace metaphor of the discourse of cultural nationalism: literature as a tender plant that needed to take root in new soil.
If each author were to take up imaginatively this common theme rather than presenting 'a bare chronicle of events', McCormick suggested, 'there would be a greater likelihood of our achieving popular appeal than if we deliberately "wrote down" to the public'. McCormick to Heenan, 11 October 1937, IA 1, 62/8/1. 'Centennial Surveys', Ms-Papers 1132-295.
Other members of the editorial group were McCormick, An Absurd Ambition, p.145.
McCormick himself had returned from England in 1933 yet to complete his MLitt thesis on 'Literature in New Zealand', an expanded treatment of his New Zealand MA informed by the ideas of
His own centennial survey, Letters and Art in New Zealand, was to be a further distillation of this work. A job in the Hocken Library after his return had deepened his commitment to the local, although he had been little more enthusiastic than Beaglehole about coming back. The 'adaptation thesis' was, in one reading, another elaboration on or response to the 'problem of the imagination' which energised the literature of the 1930s and 1940s that would define itself as a cultural beginning. It was the problem of distance: of the relationship between there and here, Britain and New Zealand, the centre and the periphery, and of how to make a cultural home in this land. The authors of the centennial surveys heeded McCormick's brief with varying degrees of interest and success.
Between the idea and its realisation there also intruded problems of a practical kind. There were political constraints: for there was a limit, it became plain, to how far the surveys really could be critical surveys, of 'our achievements and errors', in a series commissioned by the government for an occasion that was by definition celebratory. And there were authors: choosing the right ones, and getting them to deliver.
Firstly, though, there was choosing the subjects, which 'proved more difficult than was at first expected'. NHC annual report, 1937/38, IA 145/2. Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand scholar', in P. Munz ed, McCormick, The Feel of Truth (Wellington: Reed, 1969),p.247.An Absurd Ambition, p.134; Beaglehole, 'The New Zealand scholar', p.245.
Most of the survey proposals that failed to make the final selection were more academic than popular, and notably were in the fields of political and economic history. Wood, for example, thought the most important subjects to be treated were primary and secondary industry, transport, democracy, government, immigration and external relations. Economist F.B. Stephens suggested legislative devolution, corporate life and financial organisation. Surveys on banking, marketing, land settlement, mining, the labour movement, defence, law and justice, and a history of parliament were proposed. Two volumes of selected documents, on constitutional and on economic, social and political history ('liberally illustrated'), were abandoned quite late in the piece, as was a survey of political parties and ideas which Beaglehole was to write. It was felt 'that for any Government in office to sponsor such a history might give rise to undesirable criticism of what was produced'; and probably
Heenan to Parry, 5 July 1938, IA 1, 62/7/4.{Discovery) was enough.
As the standing committee nutted out a shortlist, whittling twenty topics down to eleven between April and May 1938, religion, science, women and war lingered on the 'B' list. Religion they knew was bound to be trouble. Heenan was against its inclusion, unless perhaps each denomination were asked to contribute a section on themselves. Duff thought they should go ahead, but avoid doctrinal and sectarian issues and focus instead on 'the influence of religion ... as a social, moral, and political force', and risk the consequences; but the more cautious view prevailed, upsetting some members of the national committee (in Chappell's view it was 'a blunder of the first magnitude'). Duff to Heenan, 3 May 1938, IA 145/5; A.B. Chappell to McCormick, 9 May 1938, IA 1,62/8/1. Minutes of a meeting of the standing committee, 13 April 1938, IA 145/1; H. Kippenberger to Duff, 9 June 1938, IA 1, 62/8/1.New Zealand Wars, as well as the official record of New Zealand's involvement in the First World War. The decision was confirmed when Howard Kippenberger was asked for his opinion. There was 'no place for a narrative history of our campaigns', the brigadier agreed with Duff, and in his view war had had a minimal effect on the nation or the national character—or at least any effect it had had 'lies too deep and my understanding is too slight to perceive it'. (He doubted, moreover, 'whether the peoples of these islands yet constitute a nation'.)
Whether there needed to be a survey on women also divided the committee, although opinions here were less strong. Contributed Chappell: 'Let the sex-war, now an anachronism, go along with the "New Zealand Wars" and the antipathies of religious denominations—to the limbo where all anachronisms belong.' The Dunedin members thought it would be 'illogical'. Duff admitted, patronisingly, 'a prudential case, perhaps we should call it a domestic-political case, for giving women a volume to themselves if they want one. I do not think they Chappell to McCormick, 9 May 1938; memo for the NHC, no.20,14 April 1938; Duff to Heenan, 3 May 1938, IA 1, 62/8/1.will want one unless someone suggests to them that they should have it.'
Science presented a more intractable problem. No one scientist, it seemed, could write authoritatively about the whole field. The chemist Thomas Easterfield (the founding professor at Victoria) sensibly suggested a collaborative work, but this approach was rejected. It was only when the committee agreed to Heenan's suggestion of his friend and neighbour, railways engineer, sometime journalist and versifier Sidney Jenkinson, that the place of science was assured. This was not such a good choice.
By July 1938 the thirteen survey topics, and twelve of their authors, had been
Three surveys tested the boundaries of political acceptability. Cowan (who had offered to write three surveys himself) was asked to remove a chapter dealing with the Waikato wars from J. Cowan to McCormick, 24 October 1939, IA 1, 62/110/2.
Settlers and Pioneers. Heenan had already made his opinion known that this was a subject best avoided; Cowan, moreover, had taken the Maori side, had even been so provocative as to compare the settler government's treatment of the Waikato Maori with the invading Italians' behaviour in Abyssinia. He believed that this was a truth New Zealanders needed to know: 'I wanted to give it forcibly in order to bring the facts of history home to the readers—& especially Waikato pakehas who are an ignorant lot; like most farmers they don't read anything but the newspapers. This book being a centennial occasion, they might read this.'Dominion remarked, a good read 'but in no sense a history'.Dominion, 6 April 1940.
Mcintosh (nd), Hall, 29 April 1940, IA 1, 62/110/5.
Beaglehole, on the other hand, took offence not at Sutch's politics but at his style: 'I shouldn't myself object to Bill Sutch's writing the nastiest-minded stuff of the century, if only he'd write it & not chuck it together with a bloody shovel.' Beaglehole to Hall, 22 January 1941, IA 1, 62/110/3. The second version was published with the title Soviet Atlas of World History and accompanying volume in translation, at his own request—and permitted to take the manuscript elsewhere provided he made no mention of its origin as a government-commissioned work.Poverty and Progress in New Zealand by the Wellington Co-operative Book Society in 1941, the first as The Quest for Security in New Zealand by Penguin in 1942 and (updated) in 1966.
They were taking no chances with Leicester Webb's survey of administration, which was treated from the outset as a 'special case'. In this instance, a few short passages were deleted from the draft and other doubtful sections referred to Heenan, and by him to Fraser. These included discussions of compulsory unionism, cabinet administration, and democratic government, for fear 'that it might be regarded as an oblique reference to recent events'. McCormick to Heenan, 30 January 1940, IA 1, 62/110/4. It may too have left something to be desired in terms of accuracy: a large number of corrections were made at page-proof stage, and Victoria's professor of political science, Leslie Lipson, whose own The Politics of Democracy (1948) would supersede Webb's survey as a standard work, found it 'full of errors' and omissions. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 1940.
The issue of scholarly versus popular was directly addressed in the discussion over a late entry onto the shortlist: an essay submitted late in 1939 by McCormick, memo (nd), Pascoe to McCormick, 4 April 1940, IA 1, 62/110/13. The essay on 'James Stephen and British intervention in New Zealand, 1838-40' that Williams published in the Journal of History, vol.XIII, no.l, March 1941, pp.19-35 was probably a version of this essay.
Apart from the two that got away, the greatest disappointment of the series was Sidney Jenkinson's New Zealanders and Science. It had been a desperate and unfortunate choice of author (for which Duff, not Heenan, accepted responsibility).
Of course, they had wanted something pitched at the non-specialist 'general reader'. Jenkinson wrote them a paean to the great men of New Zealand science, which brought forth from Hall his most devastating reader's report: 'The effect of this monotonous panegyric is deadening rather than irritating. Mr. Jenkinson has been so successful in what the French aptly term "vulgarisation" that he has developed a truly astounding vulgarity of mind . . . the whole work should have its cliches torn out at the roots.' Hall to McCormick, 22 November 1939, IA 1, 62/110/14.New Zealanders and Science (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.2.
Monty McClymont reduced his manuscript from 80,000 to 40,000 words before sending it in, regretting that it was now 'as dull as ditchwater' and read 'like a school edition of a history book'. McClymont to McCormick, 10 and 22 August 1939, IA 1, 62/110/1. Hall to McCormick, 28 August 1939, ibid.
The series' bestseller, however, to confound committee members' scepticism, was The Women of New Zealand. Helen Simpson (known to her friends as Bully) had a PhD from the University of London, and had been a lecturer in English at Canterbury University College and a contributor to the Christchurch Press, but this was her first book. 'Please tell me when these wretched scripts are expected,
AND what is the latest date at which they can be received,' she wrote to McCormick in May 1939, having started work in January. A week later she reassured him: 'I am about to order a case of sherry, 10,000 cigarettes, and 1 cwt. of coffee, and to have put up on the front fence a notice in 6ft. letters.... I haven't yet decided whether it is to read "POISON LAID FOR VISITORS", or, more simply, "KEEP OUT!" I should rather like to have "DANGER: LIVE WIRE", but my strict regard for the truth prevents that.' H. Simpson to McCormick, 12 and 18 May 1939, IA 1, 62/110/11. Hall to McCormick, 16 October 1939, IA 1, 62/110/11. Ibid. Duff to Simpson, 12 July 193 8, McCormick to Simpson, 23 June 1939,1A 1, 62/110/11. Simpson to McCormick, 14 October 1939, ibid.The Women of New Zealand was not wholly different from the kind of history the surveys were meant to leave behind: respectful tributes to colonial virtues. It was a sympathetic, but not sentimental, account of the material aspect of settler life, but interpreted and written with 'great sprightliness, wit and originality' (like her correspondence).
Simpson had been a model author. Added to political sensitivities and scholarly scruples to frustrate the editors' well-laid plans, there were also authors who wouldn't, or couldn't, produce.
Similarly, the interpretative light that McCormick and Wood cast on their subjects was not a flattering one. Both saw a brief and promising spark of colonial energy superseded at the turn of the century by two or three decades of feeblemindedness and cultural cringe—by an overly imperial, dependent foreign policy, a colonial mother-complex, in Wood's essay on external relations; by a derivative, unimaginative, second-hand Victorian sentimentalism in McCormick's reading of New Zealand literature—from which the country was only beginning to awaken. These were two of the surveys that rose to the challenge, as McCormick had hoped all of them would, of telling the nation's history as more than a 'bare chronicle of events', and less than a paean to pioneering endeavour, and they said as much about failure as they did about success.
How the subject of the Maori might have been interpreted in the light of the adaptation thesis is an interesting question. But Apirana Ngata proved the most elusive author of them all. He was simply too busy, and 'The Maori', intended to be the first in the series, never appeared. In response to inquiries during 1942 from overseas institutions which had subscribed to the set, the department replied that the Maori and social services surveys had been 'postponed' 'owing to war conditions'. Letter to the University of Toronto librarian, 13 August 1942, IA 1, 62/8/10 Pt.3.
he had told Ngata that there could be 'no question of abandoning the survey'; someone else would have to do it if he could not, Heenan to A. Ngata, 16 September 1940, IA 1, 62/110/9.
Duff had been one of the first in—offering his services as a writer or editor in July 1937—and was the last to produce. It is true that his was intended to be the last in the series, but he had to be cajoled. In September 1940 he had written 10,000 words and was proposing abandoning it and producing a prose anthology instead. This was not acceptable. Heenan Heenan to Duff to J. Hight, 27 April 1938, IA 1, 62/8/1. Minutes of a meeting of the NHC, 17 June 1938, IA 145/1; Duff to Heenan, 3 May 1938, IA 145/5.cin my very mild way read the riot act to him', and he took two weeks' leave from the Listener to finish it off.New Zealand Now (although Nature appeared prominently in her female guise). Duff described it on one occasion as a 'recapitulatory volume' which would draw together the main threads of the series, elsewhere as 'not... history so much as social psychology; some by-products of history rather than history itself'."Latitude Forty-five South?".' had no pretensions to be a scholarly essay; but it was a popular success.
Duff, New Zealand Now, 2nd edition (Hamilton: Paul's Book Arcade, 1956), pp.39-40.
History, or romance? Duff's contribution could barely be described as either. Overall, the surveys presented history with a little more romance thrown in than intended. But these are imprecise terms; and mixing history and romance was in truth a different matter from combining scholarship and popular appeal.
It is not surprising that, with the exception of Duff's, it was those surveys written by members of the editorial committee itself that nearest approached their scholarly aspirations, and that were important contributions in their fields: Beaglehole's Discovery of New Zealand, McCormick's Letters and Art in New Zealand and Wood's New Zealand in the World. Nor is it surprising that these were not necessarily the most 'popular' in readers' terms. As of early 1944, Beaglehole, Simpson and Duff were sold out. The publisher, Whitcombe & Tombs, had eighteen copies in their shops of Exploration, from a print run of 2000, and 24 of Settlers and Pioneers. There were 250 copies in hand of McCormick, some 300 of Wood, 450 of Webb, and 500 or more of the science, education and farming volumes. It seems, then, that it was romance that sold. For there could be romance in the tale as well as in the telling: there was romance intrinsically, that is, in the stories of discovery, of exploration, of pioneering the land, but hardly in the administrative structure of government, or education.
The surveys told a more complex story than the conventional, 'romantic' one of official centennial rhetoric, and in most of the literature occasioned by the event (including the companion pictorial surveys): an heroic story which celebrated a hundred years of material progress and honoured the pioneers. They were constrained in their critique of that story, nevertheless, by the metanarrative of European colonisation, by the inherently celebratory tone of the centennial, and by the ambitious aim of combining scholarship with popular success. To the extent that they achieved that aim, Heenan could rightly be pleased.
Appendix: The Centennial Historical Surveys
Heenan did not have anything like Making New Zealand
in mind when he first thought of historical publications to mark the centennial. The idea came from
Minutes of standing committee of the National Historical Committee (NHC), 24 June 1937, p.2, Internal Affairs (IA), series 1, National Archives, (NA), 62/7/2.
It was a project of daunting complexity and virtually everything had to be done from scratch, but Heenan had good reasons for backing his judgement. He had good working relationships with his minister, Michael Bassett, Cabinet approval, 4 February 1938, IA 1, 62/7/4; The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997), chapters 5 and 6; Rachel Barrowman, 'Joseph William Allan Heenan', The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography', vol.4, 1921-1940 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998), p.232.Making New Zealand project, for example, he obtained government approval to suspend the usual rule that all publications by government agencies be handled by the Government Printer. This enabled him to tender private printers, some of whose standards of book production were higher than those of the Government Printer.
He was at the same time assembling an editorial team to have oversight of the book surveys and the pictorial surveys.
Except for Duff, an experienced newspaper man who was five years older than Heenan, the other members of the editorial team were young men whose practical abilities had scarcely yet been tested. Heenan enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of working with his new colleagues on tasks that he was as enthusiastic about as they were, he kept a watchful eye on them, and worked closely with them. McCormick thought of him as a 'a ballet impressario, a Diaghilev ... he liked to show us off, sometimes causing resentment among Heenan's 'old faithful people in the department'.An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, Dennis McEldowney ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), pp.141-2, 145.
The
O. Duff to Angus Ross, 5 October 1938, IA 1, 62/97/15.Building America series was to be no more than a starting point.Making New Zealand (MNZ), Introduction.
They were also a useful backstop. The inclusion in the series of a number on defence and two on sport is probably to be seen as Heenan's way of meeting possible criticism of the standing committee's decision not to include these subjects in the book surveys. There was also the real possibility that suitable authors might not be found to write on subjects proposed for the book surveys, and that authors, once commissioned, might be unable to produce a satisfactory text in the time available to them. The comprehensive coverage intended for the pictorial surveys could be expected to fill any such gaps. Until quite late in the planning, there were proposals for pictorial surveys on banking, health, law and justice, social services, schools, and aliens. In the event, neither the book surveys nor the pictorial surveys proved as comprehensive as had been hoped. None of the proposals just mentioned was included in the pictorial surveys and, with the rejection of Dr Sutch's text on social services, education was the only one to have a volume in the book surveys. Minutes of second meeting of NHC, 17 June 1938, pp.5-6, IA 1, 62/7/1; Walter Nash (Auckland: Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1976), p.208; Rachel Barrowman, A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand, 1930-1950 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1991), pp. 158-9.
Heenan commissioned authors after taking advice from Duff, McCormick, and Pascoe, and taking note of suggestions and reservations expressed by members of the National Historical Committee and its standing committee. As a book lover, an encourager of writers, and something of a writer himself—he was a member of the New Zealand centre of PEN—he had his own preferences as well. Barrowman, McCormick, A Popular Vision, p.231.Tutira and prevailed on him to write the letterpress for The Changing Land, which was planned for the final number of the series. He also
An Absurd Ambition, p. 146.Sea and Air.
McCormick's self-righteousness was a sign of the gulf that opened up during the thirties between younger university-trained researchers and older journalist-historians. Chris Hilliard, 'Stories of Becoming: The Centennial Surveys and the Colonization of New Zealand', Duff to Heenan, 17 August 1938, IA 1, 62/97/1; Harold Miller to Duff, 25 July 1937, IA 1, 62/97/14The New Zealand Journal of History, vol.33, no.l, p.5.Making New Zealand were under the age of forty. Of these, only Unclimbed New Zealand was published in 1939 when he was thirty-one years old, was becoming an author in his own right. There would have been another author from the young brigade if Harold Miller had accepted Heenan's invitation to write the number on missionaries and settlers. Three of the
Making New Zealand was written to a clear editorial plan. True to the subtitle of the series—Pictorial Surveys of a Century—its numbers were predominantly about that century, but they were placed within two outer frames. The first of these frames comprised the first and last numbers of the series—The Beginning and The Changing Land. These gave contrasting accounts of the land before it was Aotearoa or New Zealand, and what a century and more of European occupation had done to it. Making New Zealand was the first history of the country to place itself firmly in the land itself.New Zealand Listener, 14 March 1941, p.4.MNZ, The Beginning, pp.2 and 31; MNZ, The Forest, p.16.
The inner frame—number two,
The Maori, and number twenty-nine, Polynesians—dealt with the Maori presence in New Zealand and the Polynesian peoples of New Zealand's South Pacific dependencies. As with the two numbers on the land, these gave accounts of Maori life before and after the arrival of Europeans, and of Samoans and Cook Islanders whose lives in the late 1930s were 'still largely uninfluenced by European civilisation'.MNZ, Polynesians, p.24.Letters and Art in New Zealand, was that 'modern New Zealand' derived 'not from the culture of the primitive Maori' but from 'early Victorian times'.Letters and Art in New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p. 17.Maori as a formative influence in the history of the country's first hundred years but as a backdrop to it. Its authors, Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole, wrote a tidy ethnographic sketch of an apparently unchanging culture that was to be thought of in the past tense. The Maori frame to the country's first century thus performed a different purpose from the frame provided by the land. In the developing story of modern New Zealand, the land was depicted as an active agent during processes of induced change but Maori were depicted passively as a people and a culture from the country's past.
Ngata was not involved in the planning of
Making New Zealand and his views on its editorial concept are worth noting. He had no objection to Maori people being represented before European times, for how else, he told members of the House of Representatives, would it be possible to show how far Maori had 'advanced in one hundred years'? But he resented accounts written by Pakeha writers who
NZPD, vol.253,15 September 1938, p.453: Na To Hoa Aroha. From Your Dear Friend: The correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50, Making New Zealand told it was the successful transplanting of British civilisation in a savage land. Five numbers set out the background to British annexation in 1840 and sketched out the first generation of organised settlement. The remaining twenty-one, each dealing with an aspect of the country's progress, gave a broad historical sweep of the main components of social and economic life—farming, manufacturing, forestry; the spread of communication by roads, railways, sea, air, radio and telephone; summer and winter sport, tramping and mountaineering, racing, and other recreations; housing, public buildings, and dress.
The first five of these were a salute to the pioneers who had successfully translated British civilisation in a strange, remote land. All but one of the initiatives recorded in these and later numbers were initiatives of 'the white man', and Maori contributions, when noticed, were ancillary. Maori carried the first mails, grew and traded crops and provided transport and labour during the early years of settlement. Some Maori distinguished themselves in politics and on the sports field, Maori soldiers made a 'splendid contribution' in the Great War, and the Maori Battalion was on its way to fight in the renewed conflict.
Ibid., pp.4,6, 8,10; MNZ, Defence, p. 19.Making New Zealand, Wakefield, leaders of the New Zealand Company, and the early governors had kept the 'welfare of the natives' very much in mind. Problems had arisen, however, because chiefs did not always have tribal consent when they sold land.MNZ, The Voyage Out, p.4; The Squatters, p.8.Making New Zealand did not follow James Cowan's example of calling these conflicts the New Zealand Wars, nor would Pakeha historians for at least another generation. The early settlers were not portrayed as being entirely faultless, however. 'The Wairau Massacre', though still a massacre, 'was directly the result of the clumsy handling of a doubtful land claim by [New Zealand] Company under pressure from settlers impatient to be put in possession of their land'. The leading assumption, nevertheless, was that the settlers had a rightful claim to the disputed land: a sale was a sale in anyone's language.MNZ, Manufacturing, p.12; James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars, 2 volumes (Wellington: Government Printer, 1983), see Michael King's Introduction, p.xi.
Maori were presented in a positive though patronising light. Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole wrote that among the races of the world Maori 'most closely resembled the Caucasian race to which the white man belongs', and emphasised Maori 'generosity, friendliness, courage, bravery, and co-operation'. Hall noted that,
MNZ, The Maori, pp.4, 30; MNZ, The Voyage Out, p.30.
In the number on
Duff to Heenan, 3 May 1938, IA 1, 62/97/1.
Missionaries and Settlers the MNZ, Missionaries and Settlers, pp.2, 30.The Squatters, was the best tribute that could be paid to the hard work of the pioneers. It still had 'some wild corners' but was 'one of the world's most successful farming countries'.MNZ, The Squatters, p.30.Recreation.
MNZ, Recreation, passim.Dress, where the main focus was on women, Doris Mcintosh unavoidably portrayed women as slaves to passing fashion.
New Zealand was the subject of Making New Zealand but its authors were very conscious that Britain was their Home away from home. And when they thought of Britain it was often England that they mentioned. English trees, plants, flowers, birds, and animals were a constant reminder. The games and pastimes of the migrants had from the beginning been modelled on those common in Britain. Letters and visits to and from family and friends kept memories alive; books and magazines built allegiances in the minds of others who, born in New Zealand, nevertheless built strong emotional ties with 'Home'. The monarchy, reinforced by regular royal tours, was acknowledged as another strong bond. When comparisons were to be made, Britain was usually the first and often the only country mentioned.
These close ties with Britain were thought of as being mutually beneficial. Refrigeration, for example, had changed the 'lives and social habits of New Zealanders, and it had also enabled people in Britain to maintain higher living standards than would have been possible without it'.
MNZ, Refrigeration, p.30.MNZ, Sea and Air, p.18; MNZ, Defence, pp.30-31.
Making New Zealand presented the country as an exemplary member of the Commonwealth. A steady stream of initiatives taken in the public interest in the course of the century had produced rising levels of economic and social well-being. It had begun auspiciously with Gibbon Wakefield's enlightened views on systematic colonisation and the New Zealand Company's careful regulation of migrants to its settlements in this country. Governments, whether provincial or central, had taken charge of the development of public utilities with the aim of making their benefits available to all New Zealanders. The state, as presented in Making New Zealand, was benign and its interventions uniformly beneficial. In a small country like New Zealand, only the state had the authority and the financial backing to undertake the national development of railways, main highways, coal fields, hydroelectric schemes, telephonic communication, and radio. But the end result was a general standard of living that was among the highest in the world. The spectacular recent increase in hydroelectric generation, for example, was as important to farming, manufacturing, and communications, as it was beneficial to domestic consumers. Except in remote parts of the country, women were enjoying its labour-saving benefits, and the number of homes in isolated districts without electricity was quickly being reduced. 'The all-electric house is no longer a dream of the future, but is the present demand of most New Zealand women.'MNZ, Power, p.23.
Governments of all political persuasions had at different times used the levers of state authority to make good progress in other fields as well. Atkinson had put an end to sweated labour, and the labour legislation of later governments, 'assisted by the vigilance of the trades unions', ensured that such conditions had not recurred.
MNZ, Manufacturing, p. 19.MNZ, The Squatters, p.31.MNZ, The Forest, p.24.MNZ, Houses,p..28.
New Zealand's exemplary record was nowhere better illustrated than in
Racing, one of the most popular of the series, written by Heenan and MNZ, Racing, pp.12, 22-30.
But if racing showed how New Zealand had gone beyond successful adaptation to create an important part of its popular culture that was distinctively its own, the same could not be said of other aspects of its cultural life. Paul Pascoe in
Houses and Public Buildings, Furniture, and Doris Mcintosh in Dress could not disguise their disappointment that a century of effort had so far not produced a national style in their fields. These youngish writers were imbued with the principles of the modern movement in architecture and design which insisted that form must follow function. Like McCormick, they were also frustrated that New Zealand was yet to evolve its own distinctive national culture. It had been unfortunate, Paul Pascoe wrote, that organised European settlement had coincided with 'the collapse of the architectural good taste of the Regency period in England'.MNZ, Houses, p.30.MNZ, Furniture, p.30.MNZ, Dress, pp.2, 30.MNZ, Houses, p.30.
British influences remained dominant at the end of the Dominion's first century but they were being challenged by styles of thought and behaviour and by new technologies from other sources, most notably from America. Direct telephone and
MNZ, Houses p.18.Sea and Air showed a Lockheed Electra, an American aeroplane, operating New Zealand's main trunk commercial air service. But it was through films and radio that American cultural influences were beginning to be most pervasive. Films, Doris Mcintosh noted, were becoming regulators of the clothes people wore. 'We can now be kept right up to date in the mode and are no longer an isolated community.'MNZ, Dress, p.28.
Making New Zealand was conceived as a retrospect. The unvoiced assumption seems to have been that, the uncertainties of war aside, the future would be much like the past. Progress would continue without upsetting well-established arrangements. Secondary industries were being set up but the wealth of the country was expected to remain in the land. The authors of Sea and Air thought it unlikely that air transport would ever supplant sea for the transport of New Zealand goods to Great Britain.MNZ, Pasture Land, p.2; MNZ, Sea and Air, p.30.Power saw the path of the future: 'We are on the brink of new developments in television, air conditioning, new forms of lighting, and electronic devices.'
But there was, as Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole noted, one big question for the future: relationships between Maori and 'the white man'. Changes to the Maori way of life, they wrote, had been quicker and more fundamental than for any other Polynesian people, but 'the tide seems definitely to have turned'. It was well to remember, they pointed out, that it was Maori 'drive and energy' that was behind current schemes and plans for their advance as a people. Despite 'their occasional puzzlement over the ways of the white man', Maori were law-abiding citizens, although they believed they still had grievances over the Treaty of Waitangi and over the sale of native land without full compensation. But '[a]ll of these puzzles can be solved, all of these grievances settled amicably, provided both European and Maori bring to them a sympathetic understanding, a sense of justice, and an ability to compromise'.
MNZ, Polynesians, pp.30-1.
It was from the beginning expected that, as illustrations editor, John Pascoe would have a crucial contribution to make. The letterpress of each number would stir curiosity, and seventy or so illustrations would satisfy that curiosity by giving 'life and colour to the topics surveyed'.
Heenan to Webb, 4 February 1941, Heenan Papers, Ms-Papers 1132: 250.MNZ, Preface to vol.1.Making New Zealand were offered a pictorial treat that ranged all the way from Tasman's journals and Cook's artists to Christopher Perkins, Rita Cook, and the country's leading photographers, including Pascoe himself. Some 1800 illustrations,
The contract to print
Making New Zealand, the biggest offset printing order to have been placed with a New Zealand printer, was won by Wilson and Horton, publishers of the New Zealand Herald. Newspapers throughout the country voluntarily publicised the series, and 2000 complete sets were sold before the first number appeared. By the end of 1940, when the sets were better known, 6000 had been sold. Peter Fraser, when minister of education, ordered 2600 copies of the bound two-volume sets to be distributed to all schools in the country.New Zealand Listener, 14 March 1941, p.14.
Making New Zealand, as Heenan intended, publicised New Zealand overseas. Complimentary sets were sent to the libraries of both Houses of Parliament and to many universities and important people. New Zealand tourist and trade commissioners in England, the United States, Canada, and Australia promoted it.
Several hundred copies of complete sets were sold at the New Zealand pavilion at the New York World Fair. Requests for more sets were regularly received from English-speaking countries. Competent judges considered the quality of the offset printing 'to be equal to the best in the world'. Ibid.
Duff marked the publication of the last number of the pictorial surveys, Guthrie-Smith's posthumous
The Changing Land, with some editorial reflections. He, like Heenan, idolised Guthrie-Smith, and the elegy for a pioneer in the closing paragraph of The Changing Land was for him the epitome of the series. Within a century, Guthrie-Smith had written, the 'home of the pioneer' had changed from 'untilled barreness to garden and green and trees' and had been 'beautified by sorrow, joy, and toil'. That home had been 'a nucleus of culture and continuity, a centre radiating the ancient virtues of hardihood and simplicity'. It was also a spiritual progress: 'the pilgrim's path' that every man must tread.MNZ, The Changing Land, p.30.Making New Zealand, Duff observed, was the 'pilgrim path' that three generations of New Zealanders had now trodden'.New Zealand Listener, 14 March 1941, p.4.Making New Zealand intensified his identification with it.
For his younger colleagues McCormick and Beaglehole, that tradition and their experience while working on the centennial historical publications had a very different meaning. Through their postgraduate studies in England they had come to view the country's history and its people from the outside and had concluded that there was more to criticise than celebrate in an insular narrative of pioneering progress. In his McCormick, New Zealand, published in 1936, Beaglehole suggested an interpretation not in terms of pioneering achievement but as one more example of modern capitalist expansion.New Zealand: A Short History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1936).Letters and Art in NZ, p. 131.
For McCormick, living in England had been transformative, for it was there that he came to know himself as 'a New Zealander, not some species of offshore Englishman'. Ibid.,pp.l26-31.
Beaglehole's change of heart came through his increasing involvement in the centennial historical publications. He had, he recalled in 1940, been
dragged into the centennial racket very unwillingly ... to find that if was not altogether a racket. I have taken a twist towards nationalism I never expected, which will, I hope, turn out to be not so deplorable as some nationalist passions. New Zealand as a piece of history, I have always thought, was interesting chiefly as an example of what happened when
capitalist civilisation in its heyday stretched out and started to interfere with a land and a culture hitherto untouched by this dubious way of life. It wasn't particularly interesting in itself, and it was the duty of the New Zealander to step outside his narrow experience, contemporary and historical, and become a citizen of the world, in history and in his own life. I still believe that, except that now I think New Zealand in itself is thoroughly interesting, and that one does not get at its real significance for ourselves in the wider world of history without a good deal more attention than I have been prepared to give to it.
To be a nationalist, for Beaglehole, was to want a 'national culture', and he had come to realise that that could 'only come from the free intelligence working on its environment and its history'.Spike: The Victoria University College Review, 1940, pp. 18-19.
Beaglehole had already earned the reputation as the leading younger historian in the country, and his conversion to New Zealand history was highly important. But he was not alone. Other younger historians were also drawn into historical activities associated with the centennial, with similar results. Professor Rutherford, Professor Wood and J. Rutherford ed, The Founding of New Zealand: The journals of Felton Mathew, first surveyor general of New Zealand, and his wife, 1840-1847 (Wellington: Reed, 1940);
New Zealand in the Worlds New Zealand Centennial Surveys, no.ll, (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940).A Short History of New Zealand.
The effect of IA 1,62/7/4. Ray Knox ed, Making New Zealand on its readers was more immediate. The size of its print runs and its magazine format gave it greater public appeal than any other centennial publication. It proved, as its originators had hoped it would, to be 'interesting to the general reader and permanently valuable in the teaching of New Zealand history'.New Zealand's Heritage: The Making of a Nation, a magazine-style popular publication which repeated its winning formula.New Zealand's Heritage: The Making of a Nation., (Wellington: Paul Hamlyn, 1971-75). 104 volumes and index.
Of course Making New Zealand reflected the intellectual climate of its time. Its authors differed among themselves in the way they thought about the pioneer legend and the British legacy but they were of one mind about what European civilisation had done for Maori and what the future held for them. Maori had been adapting to European ways for more than a century and, except for some cultural vestiges, would, as they saw it, become virtually indistinguishable from New Zealanders of European
Making New Zealand.
Booker read the series as 'an exercise, albeit restrained, in self-gratulation and satisfying reflection' that conveyed an 'overall impression' of a 'romantic, prosperous, noble' country. He was most severe on Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole, whose contributions on Antony James Booker, 'The Centennial Surveys of New Zealand, 1936£41, BA Hons thesis, Massey University, 1983, pp.15, 17, 18. Talk by The Maori and Polynesians were in his view written from an 'overpowering Euro-centric perspective': their texts were 'paternalistic, patronising, pontifical, and racialist'.The Maori when it was published: he thought it the best work that had ever been done on the subject.
After masterminding and orchestrating the 1940 centennial publications programme, Joe Heenan, Undersecretary for Internal Affairs, sat back and evaluated the contributions of his staff. For his Typographical Advisor,
In the pictorials as well as in the book survey and the Dictionary, Dr Beaglehole's genius for topography [sic] played a very large [role] in the success of the series. He emerged from the whole range of our work with results which will substantiate a claim for his being considered one of the greatest men New Zealand has produced in all matters relating to topography [sic] and book production.
J. W. Heenan to Minister of Internal Affairs, 14 February 1941, Ms-Papers 1132-295, Heenan Papers, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL). With the permission of Professor Tim Beaglehole, his father is hereafter referred to as Beaglehole.
Other commentators echoed Heenan's sentiments. An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, Dennis McEldowney ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), p.148.Phoenix fame.Arts Year Book 6 (1950), pp.44-54.
The 30s brought Glover and Lowry, Mason and Curnow and Fairburn, the Caxton Poets; and in 1939 and 1940, that watershed for New Zealand publishers, the government Centennial Publications. In them, John Beaglehole as historical advisor and typographer and Eric McCormick as general editor planned and edited and designed a group of books which showed New Zealanders that books written about their history and problems, and by their own writers, could be as well-produced and edited
as the best from Britain. This helped to crack a barrier in the inverted snobbery of literate New Zealanders who denigrate the homegrown. Janet Paul, notes from talks in Hamilton and Wanganui on the growth and problems of New Zealand publishing, 1966, Ms-Papers 5640-100, Janet Paul Papers, ATL.
Despite these encomiums, however, Beaglehole remains a shadowy figure on New Zealand's print culture horizon. Almost a decade after his untimely death in 1971, Dennis McEldowney remained puzzled: 'Where did his passion for it [typography], and his mastery of it, come from? I have no idea.' Dennis McEldowney, The Typographical Obsession', Islands 8:1 (1980), p.69.
Letter from In March 1938, McCormick reported that Arnold Goodman had been appointed as 'an expert on lay-out and typography'. New Zealand Listener, During his eight-month direct involvement with the project, Duff was 'the original designer and typographer for the two series of surveys. He selected the typeface, binding cloth and paper and also successfully recommended Whitcombe & Tombs of Christchurch as printers.'
With the design and printing of the Typescript of proposed contribution to Making New Zealand series well under way, Beaglehole's typographical expertise was directed into a suite of subsequent publications, namely the dictionary, the historical surveys and the centennial atlas. Even so, in later life, McCormick recalled blazing rows between Duff and Beaglehole about the specificities of type, paper and binding cloth,New Zealand Listener to voice his difference of design opinion. When the third of the historical surveys, The Women of New Zealand by Helen M. Simpson, was published, Duff was quick to recognise the advent of a new set of standards in New Zealand; he praised the binding, printing and dust cover, and extended his congratulations both to Whitcombe and Tombs and to Beaglehole. He was, however, just as quick to critique some of the design decisions:
The title-page on all three volumes is so weak that it ought to be changed even at this late stage. It is, of course, as difficult for a typographer as for anyone else to make bricks without straw, but there are some good substitutes for straw available. Also, there is no justification for untrimmed edges on a machine-made book. To trim and stain the top end of a volume and leave the bottom just as it happens to fall is to forget that we are nearly half-way through the twentieth century.
Unattributed review with footnote probably penned by Duff, 'Mothers, Sisters And Wives: The Work of Women During Our First Century',
New Zealand Listener21:42, 12 August 1940,34.
One can imagine these differences of opinion stemming from two contrasting backgrounds: the professional trained in the newspaper and magazine industry, confronted with the vicious economics of machine-driven commercial publishing in the fragile war period; the passionate autodidact of fine book typography and handcrafted design whose later Denis Glover wrote to Leo Bensemann from England while on leave from the navy in 1943 and describes the frontispiece as a 'technical miracle' but then notes that 'Beaglehole has gone haywire if he thinks the Tasman effort is any good. Nor has anybody over here got any time or taste for that private style of printing.'Abel Janzoon Tasman and the Discovery of New Zealand (1942) designed in collaboration with Janet Paul (Wilkinson) was labelled an extravagant jeux d'esprit and a self-indulgent love affair with the private press movement and its rarefied processes of textual production.
Your reviewer deplores the title-page ... So do I. The difficulty here is one of balance. If the frontispiece is covered with a blank sheet, you will find that the title-page doesn't look so bad after — perhaps a little too restrained, but not so bad. Unfortunately the unit in book printing is not the single page but the two-page opening; and in these surveys the frontispiece badly overweights the title-page. The obvious remedy is to make the title-page heavier—i.e., to use bigger type on it. But at present we have no bigger type of the right sort—Monotype Aldine Bembo—to use on this page, though it has been on order for more than three months. Why not use a different sort of type then? Because a whole book should also be regarded as a typographical unity, and we have, I think, no type that would fit in well with Bembo. That remedy would be worse than the disease.
With respect to the more controversial issue of page trimming, Beaglehole good-humouredly suggests that just because a machine exists for the purpose described, that does not mean it should be used. On a more serious note, he explains the time-honoured relationship between type block and margins, noting that 'the dignity of a double-page of type' depends in particular upon the bottom margin, which creates a visual support upon which the type sits rather than slipping off the page under its own weight. He concludes with a plea for more such critical dialogue:
We are just beginning in New Zealand to produce books of tolerable appearance, and there is no reason why in a matter that demands craftsmanship and taste rather than genius we should not reach a high standard. But to become complacent at this stage, to lavish indiscriminate praise, would be disastrous. I hope therefore that those of your readers who are interested in typography will regard these Centennial books as a starting-point, not as a final achievement
J. C. Beaglehole , 'Typography of Centennial Surveys',New Zealand Listener21:44, 26 August 1940, p.34.
Through his book reviewing activities of the 40s and 50s, Beaglehole spread his design philosophy with greater assuredness, confirming his belief that 'the business of printing is to carry the message of its content in the clearest, most vivid, and most comely way possible . . . Ideally, type and picture and white space and colour, text and display and paper should all be of a certain quality, and should meet in a common harmony.'Arts Year Book 7 (1951), p.125.Book: Number Four (September 1941); 'Art or Craft?' New Zealand Listener, 25 February 1949; 'A Second Book of Leo Bensemann's Work', Landfall (March 1953), p.81.
How and where did Beaglehole learn the principles of typography and the just disposition of space? Books in the Beaglehole household were far more than literary wallpaper. The extensive library was populated with 'English classics in fine editions, masses of poetry, biography, books about literature and a lot of improving Victorian volumes'The Turnbull Library Record 14:2 (October 1981), p.70.
Recognised as a 'Beaglehole trait', the love of books was instilled from an early age. Bridget Parrott, 'The Beaglehole Dynasty', in Janet Paul, 'John Cawte Beaglehole, OM. His influence on book-production in New Zealand 1936-1971', unpublished typescript.Victorious (Summer 1994-5), pp.18-19.
The ironically titled 'Doggerel' paints a picture of the writer's ambition to keep a bookshop complete with leaded windows—'no common banal one'—in which poetry, essays, chapbooks, first editions, rare books, prints, and broadsides will be his stock in trade. The emergent businessman already demonstrates a keen understanding of the psychology of the market: rare books cannot be too rare, otherwise people will not buy them; books with illustrations by famous artists will be attractive to consumers; broadsides with fancy borders will sell the best. This market realism is counterpointed by the dream of selling 'books with good wide margins in / And finely printed, too', as well as establishing a small artisanal studio. Some two decades later, both these dreams were realised, not in a bookshop, but in the workshop of a state-funded cultural project.
I'll have a staff of craftsmen— Perhaps just one would do, Who'll execute fine bindings Very reasonably for you, In crushed Levant morocco And gold tooling very fine, And, nearly needless to remark, All done from my design. Upstairs I'll have a printing press A hard worked one, or two For printing fine editions Of books both old and new.
J. C. Beaglehole , 'Verses for my father', (1918), 6-8, excerpts and colour reproduction courtesy of Professor Tim Beaglehole.
In this remarkable twenty-four page, handstitched pamphlet, Beaglehole already demonstrates a seasoned design eye. He is conversant with the conventions of traditional book layout, including the use of half-title, flyleaves, and a two-colour title page with ruled border; he also makes a considered and assured use of fleurons. Somewhere in his visual education, he has been exposed to the Glasgow School, particularly the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his famous rosebud design, which he includes on the title page and as the volume's tailpiece. Remaining coolly classical and neither ostentatious nor pretentious, this slim volume carries the germ of future aesthetic decisions and exemplifies Beaglehole's personal design ethos.
Beaglehole continued his literary activities while at Victoria University College and cut his teeth in the publishing world as editor, contributor and designer of the student magazine, Harding's monthly trade journal Spike. While writing his Master's thesis, he had open access to the
The Turnbull Library Record 14:2 (October 1981), p.70.Typo (1887-1897) subtitled 'A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review' was actually a sophisticated primer teaching untrained Kiwi compositors good typesetting practice and introducing them to recent overseas developments in type styles and aesthetics. Harding's series of articles entitled 'Design
in Typography' appeared in syndicated form in famous overseas journals such as The Inland Printer and The British Printer. Later, Beaglehole would subscribe to the Penrose Annual and Monotype Recorder which kept him up to date with European and American printing and design practice.
Once Beaglehole arrived in England in 1926 to further his postgraduate education at the London School of Economics, he was exposed to a wide range of British and American fine printing through local booksellers such as John & Edward Bumpus of Oxford Street. He gazed longingly, but his slender budget meant that he was often unable to purchase the works of his bibliographical heroes, such as Francis Meynell's Nonesuch Press Janet Paul, Milton, although book purchases as gifts to family members back home remained a common practice. He probably read book design manuals given that his three years in London 'coincided with a remarkable efflorescence of published work on the history of printing',(John Cawte Beaglehole, OM. His influence on book-production in New Zealand 1936-1971', unpublished typescript.
In essence, Beaglehole was an autodidact with an eye for type who honed his skill and developed a quiet assurance through a string of remarkable jobs once he returned to New Zealand. Having not yet found his footing in the city of his birth from which he had been absent almost seven years, Beaglehole was ready and willing to take on a range of work: research advisor to the Alexander Turnbull Library (a job which, he complained, seemed to have no real work, though it gave him unrestricted access to the stacks); government functionary responsible for publication design; freelance designer of ephemera for local commercial publishers and volunteer arts organisations. He began his typographical apprenticeship in earnest at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research in 1934 where he was commissioned by Rachel Barrowman has written extensively on the evolution of New Zealand national and cultural identity during this period, including the constant tension between left-wing politics and the ramifications of state intervention in the arts. She eloquently juxtaposes Morris and Marx as figures exemplifying the debate and clearly positions Beaglehole in the liberal intellectual camp of the former, see Symptomatic of the printing industry's inability to understand the need for a typographer is clearly demonstrated in the correspondence for the alma mater. Beaglehole was on the lookout for any work after the council of Auckland University College terminated his temporary lectureship in history for expressing supposedly radical views on academic freedom. He was also swept up in the progressive politics of the thirties and forties which found their cultural expression in a number of literary organisations with which he was involved either as president or member of the executive: Progressive Book Society (1937) and Wellington Co-operative Book Society (1938), and later the Progressive Publishing
A Popular Vision. The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1991).Pictorial Surveys in which Beaglehole's inclusion of a 'layout person' in the tender specifications was not understood by most printing firms at all, John Pascoe later oversaw this side of Making New Zealand, much to the praise of his colleagues and, most importantly, to the printers.
At the NZ Council for Educational Research, Beeby gave Beaglehole free rein when it came to the covers of the Quoted in Janet Paul, 'John Cawte Beaglehole, OM. His influence on book-production in New Zealand 1936V197T, unpublished typescript.Annual Reports (1937-48). Playing with typefaces, rules, and layout, Beaglehole was learning his craft in considered instalments; each cover represents a series of typographical experiments addressing quite different design challenges. Echoing the advice of another of his bibliographic heroes, Daniel Updike of The Merrymount Press in New York, he affirmed that 'the problem is what interests all but beginners in typography. Its solution may be, and often is, moderately exciting; although if the problem is successfully solved no one perceives it has existed/An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, Dennis McEldowney ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), p.140.
By the time he was appointed typographical advisor for the centennial publications, Beaglehole took seriously the task of producing 'works of national importance'. Beaglehole to J.W.H., 15 February 1939, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL. Beaglehole to J.W.H., 1 March 1939, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL. Beaglehole to J.W.H., 15 February 1939, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL.
The Government Printing Office also epitomised for Beaglehole the poor typographical standards, lack of typographical training, and absence of taste in the skilful and effective disposition of type endemic in an industry which was fifty to sixty years behind the times and, moreover, didn't even know it. 'Printing has been deplorable, and except where the printer's every page, line and word is supervised and virtually designed for him, still is.' Beaglehole to J.W.H., 15 February 1939.
Richard Alexander McKay and the Wellington Club of Printing House Craftsmen contributed to the centennial celebrations with a volume of thirteen essays charting the rise and progress of their industry. Leading figures in the New Zealand printing and bibliophilic world wrote on a range of topics: Johannes Anderson on early New Zealand printing including Maori printers and translators, and the Maori alphabet; Sir Apirana Ngata on Maori and the printed word; McKay himself on the process of engraving and a review of the industry; Kenneth McLean Baxter on the newspaper press; A History of Printing in New Zealand 1830-1940 was a limited-edition work of five hundred copies copiously illustrated with the most modern colour and photographic printing methods available in New Zealand at the time. Like the Penrose Annual, it was a homegrown version of a promotional tool advertising to a fairly limited clientele the current state of the typographic and printing arts. The volume was, however, roundly condemned, perhaps unfairly, by a number of critics. Eric McCormick considered it a well-intentioned but unfortunate misapplication of the immense technical resources of the New Zealand printing trade; for him, it represented the culmination of decades of provincial, amateurish, stale and self-gratulatory printing out of touch with traditions of craftsmanship and taste.Arts Year Book 6 (1950), pp.51-2.
Conversely, Denis Glover's 1940 first specimen book boldly inserts itself into a British typographical heritage identified with the modern practice of his bookend heroes, Stanley Morison and Eric Gill. In a series of short quotations each treated separately as exercises in typographic architecture, Glover showcases the various typefaces, design styles, and printing resources available at the Caxton Press. He demonstrates his firm's commitment to excellence, promotes the considered craft of the hand and eye in contrast to the mechanistic world of commercial printing, and
In Glover and Glover's mentor Bob Lowry, Beaglehole saw the development of a new, if 'inherited', typographic tradition which broke away from the uninspired work symptomatic of the outdated New Zealand printing industry. McEldowney would call the advent of these three players on the cultural scene a 'typographical renaissance', Dennis McEldowney, The Typographical Obsession', Beaglehole to E.H. (?) 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL. Beaglehole to E.H. (?) 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL.Islands 8:1 (1980), 59-70.
Part-way through the centennial publications project, Beaglehole looked both forward and backward. From the sceptic who, as McCormick recalled, initially treated the centennial as 'a series of fatuities, all of them depraved', McCormick, 139.
You yourself are largely responsible for this, dragging me into the Centennial organisation at the start against my will. I thought it was all hooey, but I turned out to have been wrong. I can detect in myself the workings of a culturally national spirit which I never could have expected.
Beaglehole to E.H. (?) 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL.
Beaglehole's 'new nationalism' led him to an amazing vision of the role of the state in increasing 'our self-knowledge and our power of self-criticism, which will be as much part of our self-respect, as Social Security or the Government Houses'. Beaglehole to E.H. (?) 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL. Beaglehole to E.H. (?) 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL.
Beaglehole may have been led kicking and screaming to the culture business, but he soon recognised the importance of his stable of print products. As international ambassadors as well as residents in every school and many homes, they were more lasting memorials than any such temporary structures as the 1940 Exhibition. They would also have greater long-term social and cultural impact on the country as New Zealand took stock of it roots, its first one hundred years, and its transition from colony to dominion to nation. The day-to-day business of publishing was, however, not always easy. In his extensive correspondence with Australian-based Norman Richmond, (brother of Helen Simpson), a colleague at Auckland University College who was also ostracised in the academic freedom debate of the early thirties, Beaglehole voiced his frustrations: 'I've turned into a sort of printing hack; with jurisdiction over all govt, historical publications, & a sort of supplementary editor to be consulted on spelling, punctuation, copyright, treatment of authors, treatment of Under-Secretaries, price of fish, & other details impossible to reduce to classification/ Beaglehole to Norman Richmond, 12 December 1939 (courtesy of Prof T. Beaglehole). Beaglehole to Norman Richmond, 12 December 1939 (courtesy of Prof T. Beaglehole).
Well, Tve got an advance copy of my book & it doesn't look too bad, barring some type the wrong size that I never noticed before, so I have to blame myself for that—you can't blame a printer for a little thing like putting in the wrong-sized type, it's the sort of thing he does by instinct. .. I like the blokes who do the actual work at Whitcombe's, works-managers & machine-men & comps. & so forth, but I dislike having to associate with the firm.
Beaglehole to Norman Richmond, 17 December 1939 (courtesy of Prof T. Beaglehole).
This book was Beaglehole's own scholarly contribution to the historical surveys, the first in the series, his Discovery of New Zealand. Although it already shows some of the typographical trademarks which he would flourish through the next decade—classic typefaces such as Monotype Aldine Bembo and Baskerville, swelling rules, centred title pages, meticulously letter-spaced titles, the use of a fixed grid, and insistence on wide margins; and the colophon exemplifies his humble relationship to the printed word: 'the typography was arranged [my emphasis] by
Throughout the 1940s, Beaglehole was acutely aware that his was a modest contribution to the ongoing development of a domestic book publishing industry. Looking back on the centennial project in 1948, he contrasted its goal of producing 'a good article in the orthodox tradition of bookwork, a reasonable marriage of type and margin and binding, without extravagance and without meanness' with the earlier Victorian 'semblance of dignity in setting and press-work' Beaglehole, 'Book Production in New Zealand', Studio (New Zealand issue) 135:661 (April 1948), p.131.
I don't think the jobs are by any means perfect, but taking all the circumstances into account, perhaps they may be called quite reasonably good. We have got on good terms with the printers anyhow, and I even think convinced them that we are not mad. At least we have set up a standard, and the Government work has knocked anything ever done in NZ in the commercial line into a cocked hat (not that that would be difficult anyway). It seems to me important that the Government standard shouldn't be lowered, it seems important that it should even be raised,
Beaglehole to
E. H. McCormick , 30 July 1940, box 1, Ms-Papers 73-004, Beaglehole Papers, ATL.
Beaglehole's contributions while generally conservative and in the British typographic tradition were, however, more than slight. He single-handedly proved in the public arena that book production was a considered art with design parameters and materials specifications different from the newspaper, jobbing, and ephemeral printing upon which New Zealand's printing and publishing industries were founded and remained reliant. He indented typefaces expressly suited for bookwork from overseas type foundries; in an industry where the most common faces were those of the commercial advertising world, he brought to New Zealand the grace and elegance of Aldine Bembo, Baskerville, Granjon, Polyphilus, Perpetua. He advocated the use of good book papers and flew in the face of wartime paper rationing by requesting and receiving supplies suitable for fine letterpress work, and in quantities which allowed him to insist on the generous margins required for good typographic balance. He ensured the longevity of his creations by specifying solid case bindings at a time when more ephemeral paperback perfect bindings were infiltrating the marketplace of print. His many printed products, his published contributions to the discussion of typography and design, and the training of a visual heir, Janet Paul, all attest to the impact Beaglehole made upon the book publishing industry in this country during its formative years. As Heenan acknowledged in the official record:
The measly £350 a year we pay him represents only a fraction of his worth to us over the past six years. He has placed New Zealand
onthe typographical map and our Departmental standard of book production has earned a mild form at least of world fame.
J. W. Heenan to Dick Campbell, 6 April 1943. Ms-Papers 1132-30, Heenan Papers, ATL (excerpted by J.E.P).
Just as the Second World War demonstrated New Zealand's ability to determine its own future, so too could one argue that the final capture of its own 'sovereignity' was achieved in a state-orchestrated centennial publications programme which redefined the nation's history both textually and visually.
In 'The Colonist' in 1890, Thomas Bracken celebrated the creation, 'Here, in the Wilderness, with plough and spade', of 'an empire's firm foundation'. In that same year in 'Jubilee Day' he not only celebrated what had been done in the fifty years since the Treaty of Waitangi but also looked forward to 1940 when 'the nation's superstructure strong and fair' should have been built upon that foundation. Thomas Bracken, 'The Colonist' and 'Jubilee Day', in Undated, unsigned memo from the office of Allen Curnow, author's note to Unsigned, 'News and Views', Musings in Maoriland (Dunedin: Arthur T. Keirle, 1890), pp.27, 29-30.Never a Soul at Home: New Zealand Literary Nationalism and the 1930s (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1998), p.41.An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, Dennis McEldowney ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), p.145.Phoenix-Caxton writers, the first such stirrings since the premature hopes of the 1890s, the tone had changed from fifty years before. Bracken and his fellow jubilee celebrants had proclaimed their society's myths of itself as 'God's Own Country'—the conquering of the bush and the building of a just egalitarian and biracial society, its heroic pioneer near-past, its uniquely beautiful landscape, its proud British heritage, its glorious future. But these new literary nationalists were, as Allen Curnow later said, 'busy making' an 'anti-myth about New Zealand' rather than affirming the old myths.Collected Poems 1933-1973, in Look Back Harder: Critical Writings 1935-1984 , Peter Simpson ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1987),p.244.Tomorrow's unsigned editorial comment on the government's announcement in 1938 of the Centennial Literary Competition. The editorialist predicted that the competition would inevitably result in 'a great deal of second-rate stuff incorporating 'badly-put local patriotism of over-zealous infringement on the demesne of the Tourist Department'. As the editorialist saw it, New Zealand literature seemed 'to be slowly feeling its way towards some sort of natural identification of the country with its people', but this process was a slow growth, like the kauri, whereas the competition was likely to bring forth the literary equivalents of 'the ubiquitous willow'.Tomorrow, 4 (21 August 1938), p.674.
Of course, updated versions of the myths that Bracken had proclaimed were still current, although to Curnow and his contemporaries they were associated with the journalistic-literary establishment, 'Mulgan, Marris, Schroder'; while the Allen Curnow, author's note, in Allen Curnow, 'Landfall in Unknown Seas', in Phoenix-Caxton-Tomorrow group, as Curnow later said, shared an 'antipathy to almost everything that satisfied—or seemed to satisfy—an older generation'.Look Back Harder, p.244.ca great place in which to bring up children', of 'the best British stock in the world' with a warm relationship with a benign Mother England—were certainly foregrounded in the official centennial publications: the biographical dictionary, the twelve book-length centennial surveys, and the thirty pamphlets in the series Making New Zealand: Pictorial Surveys of a Century. Curnow probably had these publications in mind in 1943 when in 'Landfall in Unknown Seas' he sardonically referred to 'the self-important celebration' of 'those speeches / Pinning on the Past like a decoration / For merit that congratulates itself'.Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997), pp.228-9.
The rhetoric of self-congratulation on progress appears at its simplest in some of the more sanguine passages in the Making New Zealand series:
We have seen how New Zealand's grasslands have been developed during the last hundred years from tussock, scrub, and forest to an excellence probably unrivalled in the world.
Q. W. Woodcock andI. H. Forde ], 'Pasture Land',Making New Zealand: Pictorial Surveys of a Century,vol.1, no.12 (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.30.The railway system as it exists to-day is an imposing monument to our railway builders—to the men with the initiative to launch the enterprise; to the surveyors and engineers who tackled and overcame the formidable problems; to the hundreds of men in construction gangs who, working in conditions of danger and isolation, carved a way through the hills and mountains of the two islands.
[
O. N. Gillespie ], 'The Railways',Making New Zealand,vol.2, no. 17, p.2.
But the less popular, more scholarly surveys often similarly, if less simply, proclaim the national myths, especially those by the older journalist-historians, such as James Cowan, New Zealanders and Science. James Cowan's Settler and Pioneers (with the intended chapter on the Waikato Wars excised) was similarly one long celebration of New Zealand's 'heroic genius, the soul that a land wins only by grievous stress and strife and evocation of poignant human emotions', a genius that was formed partly by the heroic struggle of the New Zealand Wars, a conflict bringing honour to both sides, and partly by the struggle with the land—both struggles carried out by immigrants picked by a 'process of natural selection' that 'sent. . . the class best fitted to break in a raw, new country and make it a home of civilisation and comfort'.Settlers and Pioneers (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), pp.vi, 30.
Cowan's attitudes were paralleled in the only one of the 106 entries in the novel section of the Centennial Literary Competition to achieve publication, Beryl McCarthy's Beryl McCarthy, Castles in the Soil, which was judged third equal. This saga of a sheep station in Hawke's Bay takes the Cedarholm family from pioneering through the Hau Hau troubles, later land disputes and World War I to a final success that absorbs the local Maori into the pastoral dream through intermarriage. It celebrates the success of the pioneer dream of 'building castles in the soil' in a 'sheepy paradise' by a family 'process stamped with endurance and courage, virile blood, demanded by the veins of a new country. . . .'Castles in the Soil (Wellington: Reed, 1939), pp.37, 187, 333.
Some of the unofficial centennial publications took a similar tone. Nelle Scanlan's Pencarrow tetralogy, which certainly would have won any popularity contest for a New Zealand novel, was started a bit early for the centennial (1932), but the last volume, Nelle Scanlan, Kelly Pencarrow, appeared as late as 1939, and completed the sequence's celebration of the pioneer myths with a sharply critical view of the new attitudes brought by the Labour government and a nostalgic reaffirmation of cthe virtues of thrift, industry, respect, good manners and unselfishness'.Kelly Pencarrow (London: Robert Hale, 1939), p. 19.New Zealand Poems, intended according to its cover 'In Honour of the Centennial of the Dominion of New Zealand'. The poems affirm a range of history-related myths and motifs: the heroic discoverers and mappers, Tasman and Cook ('The Charting'); the heroic bush pioneers ('Ballad of the Bushman', The Bushwoman'); the loved land, in 'Ode' ('O mighty utterance, O word made land') and 'New Zealand'; idealised Maori ('A Maori Lullaby', 'Peace of Hina'). The opening poem, 'Centenary Ode', in the grand Bracken manner (a
We salute you, sovereign soul, Let our praise resound in choir, Let ocean carry it whole In its mighty undertows To its south with a pelt of floes, To its north with a fell of fire. Eileen Duggan, 'Centenary Ode', in
New Zealand Poems(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1941 rpt.), p.7.
McCormick made perhaps the best case that could be made for such poems when he described them as 'a refined and beautiful close to a long chapter in the history of New Zealand writing', the end of something rather than 'a possible point of departure for the future'.Letters and Art in New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.168.Centennial Miscellany: An Anthology of Short Stories and Verse, edited by
While no doubts of the ruling myths appear in Duggan's or Scanlan's works or in Hoggard's anthology, hints of the anti-myth appear even in some of the official centennial publications. The Making New Zealand pamphlet on 'Dress', by Doris Mcintosh, for example, ends with a statement that would not sound amiss in a Curnow essay if there were more regret in the tone:
Not only in clothes, but also in culture, art, and ideas, we have always been strongly influenced by England, with the result that even yet we have made little attempt to develop our native talents and powers of the imagination. This, of course, must never be a conscious process, but so far there is little indication of a true national culture growing up in this country. Perhaps a hundred years is too short a time for the English stock to have assimilated the strangeness and impressive grandeur of New Zealand and to have made it their own.
[Doris Mcintosh], 'Dress',
Making New Zealand,vol.2, no.23, p.30.
Such statements perhaps reflect McCormick's hope that the book-length surveys would deal with 'the process of adaptation with its record of trials and error and its continuous subjection to fresh influences from the outside' that came about when 'a
McCormick to Heenan, 11 October 1937, IA 62/8/1 Pt.l, National Archives; quoted in McEldowney, 'Publishing , Patronage, Literary Magazines', in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, 2nd edition, Terry Sturm ed, (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.654Government in New Zealand, set out 'to show what modifications the New Zealand environment has produced in the British system of representative government', and wrote primarily an account of how the state had by necessity assumed functions, including the provision of health and welfare, beyond what had happened in Great Britain, but had not evolved the authority and leadership commensurate with its responsibilities, leading to the impression of 'safe, honest, competent mediocrity'.i7 Similarly, F.L.W. Wood in New Zealand in the World focused on the interplay of a British heritage with geographical isolation that had produced a foreign policy that was conservative and dependent on the British, but with an 'undercurrent of independence' that led him to hope for a 'modest independence in international affairs' as a 'small but not subservient member of the British commonwealth'.New Zealand in the World (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940),pp.l31-3.Educating New Zealand played a variation on this demythologising story of adaptation by showing that the 'educational ideas brought from Britain' were
Educating New Zealand (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1941), pp. vi, 6.
These surveys, then, carrying out McCormick's policy, tended at least to modify the ruling myths, and if they ended on a note of progress, it was mainly because they saw Labour policies after 1935 as promising to move New Zealand out of a stodgy dependence on British models. McCormick himself, in his own Letters and Art in New Zealand, saw a similar pattern: progress in creative adaptation, though not as the result of Labour policies but rather of the questioning of the status quo induced in young writers by the depression, leading to the 'signs, few but positive, of adult nationhood' in the post-1932 writing. To him one of the greatest 'signs of hope' was the work of Frank Sargeson, who had, he thought, 'come to terms with [his] social environment, with no apparent loss of integrity', much better than the demythologising poets, Fairburn and Curnow, who showed a less mature 'unyielding spirit of antagonism (sometimes of petulance)' in Dominion and Not in Narrow Seas,
McCormick, Letters and Art, pp.170, 182, 189.
At the time when McCormick was writing his survey, quite independently The Deepening Stream, which would win the centennial essay competition. There Holcroft called for the kind of literary criticism that McCormick was attempting. Like McCormick he found both energy and a lack of balance in the Phoenix poets, and, again like McCormick, he called for a literature that would break with the old imported orthodoxies without being seduced by Marxism and other
Discovered Isles: A Trilogy (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1950 rpt), pp.80, 83.
That there were limits to the critical demythologising the government would accept in official centennial publications was evident in the history of The Quest for Security in New Zealand recounted in Rachel Barrowman's essay. While there were many objections to Sutch's book, the primary one was perhaps that it took a possibly Marxist line, the other flaws coming mostly from that source. In Sutch's interpretation of New Zealand history, written avowedly from 'the viewpoint of the poor rather than the rich, the pensioner rather than the annuitant, the unemployed rather than the leisured', 'inequalities of income, insecurity, unemployment, and poverty' are all the 'invevitable concomitants' of the capitalism brought over by the New Zealand Company; 'private ownership of the means of production' was the force 'which created most of the ills' of society, and those ills were partially ameliorated only because of the popular pressures built up by two depressions.The Quest for Security in New Zealand (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1942), pp.vi-vii.
In contrast to Sutch's book, Oliver Duff, Duff, New Zealand Now by Oliver Duff, the original editor of the surveys, incorporates some of the points that Curnow, Sargeson and the other literary cultural nationalists were making about New Zealand society. The tone is not critical but rather descriptive and accepting. Thus Duff quickly acknowledges that 'New Zealand has always been Puritan', and that it holds to 'one of the deepest-rooted traditions of people with white skins . . . the shamefulness of the flesh'; he points to a 'mistrust of intellectuals' as an abiding fact of New Zealand history; he describes New Zealanders as 'aesthetically inarticulate'; he points out that 'land in New Zealand is a commodity that we buy and sell as often as we see a chance of gain', and that there is the danger that 'we are aliens still in the land that gave us birth'; he proclaims that 'We have reached the end of the easy living that virgin soil and unlimited elbow room made possible'.New Zealand Now (London: George Allen and Unwin and Hamilton: Paul's Book Arcade, 1956 rpt), pp.6, 32, 385 80-1, 119.New Zealand Now, p.x.
Other official accounts show that even more fundamental doubts about some aspects of the national mythology were permissible if the tone was right. In fact when the Minister of Internal Affairs,
In the name of settlement we have denuded hillside and valley—in some cases devastated the country-side—replacing beauty by ugliness, virgin forest by rank weed growth. Mountain sides, deprived of their forest clothing are scarred by wounds of great landslides. ... In our efforts to be another Britain in the Southern Hemisphere we have recklessly imported plants and animals which, amenable to control in their natural environment, have run away as cancerous growths out here.
W. E. Parry , 6 October 1936,J. W. A. Heenan Papers , Ms-Papers 1132-289, ATL, pp.1, 3; quoted in Murray,Never a Soul at Home,pp.22, 23.
It is almost as if the Minister had been reading D'Arcy Cresswell, whose most powerful account of the destruction of the New Zealand environment first appeared in the [ The Changing Land', p.30.Press in 1932 but did not receive widespread publication until it became the opening sections of Present Without Leave in 1939. Parry's concern was strongly echoed in Herbert Guthrie-Smith's pictorial survey 'The Changing Land'. Most of Guthrie-Smith's text traces the way 'Of the Paradise offered to European man in New Zealand he has ... too often made an ashpit'.Making New Zealand, vol.2, no.30, p.28.
With its photograph of severely eroded land on the cover, Herbert Guthrie-Smith, The Changing Land remains primarily critical in its tone. It was published after Guthrie-Smith's death, edited by McCormick, who filled out the text, especially the sections on settlement and gold mining, with material from the early chapters of Guthrie-Smith's Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist of 1936—a text the writer introduced by ruefully apologising 'to New Zealand herself, to that fair maid whom he himself and his compeers have assisted to disrobe and strip', a process he can excuse only by observing that they followed the 'stream of tendency'.Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist (Dunedin: Reed, 1936), p.15.Tutira which Guthrie-Smith wrote in 1940 just before his death, as the only answer to his 'melancholy musings' concerning the effect on the environment of his lifetime of effort: 'Have I then for sixty years desecrated God's earth and dubbed it improvement?'- this from the writer who in the first edition in 1921 had written a paean to 'the glories, the delights, the ecstasies of improvements, for there is no fascination in life like that of the
Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station (1921,1926, 1951, 1969; rpt. Auckland: Godwit, 1999), pp. xxiii, 135.The Changing Land, the myth is both affirmed and questioned.
More radical questioning appeared in some of the winners of the Centennial Literary Competition. If McCarthy's novel had affirmed the cultural myths in a predictable way, as had Frank Sargeson, 'The Making of a New Zealander', Tomorrow early in 1939), implying that it was his judgement on what it means to be a New Zealander after 100 years of Pakeha settlement. In one sense the 'New Zealander' of the title is Nick, the Dalmatian immigrant trying so hard to fit in—working hard, putting too much manure on the apples, trying to make money and pay off the mortgage. But the narrator knows that Nick is not and will not be a New Zealander, even if he is not a Dalmatian any more. The story implies, and the narrator half recognises, that Nick will never fit in in puritan, provincial New Zealand because he is too emotional, not materialistic enough, too critical (he thinks 'it's all wrong', 'money, money money all the time',
The Stories of Frank Sargeson (Auckland: Penguin, 1986 rpt), pp.99-105.
'The River', which shared the short story prize with 'The Making of a New Zealander', is altogether more traditional, a well-made-plot story in which the hatred of the Pakeha by Te Waimana, the bitter and ageing former chief, is overcome by his grandson, who understands that the future of the Maori lies in taking part in Pakeha material progress, symbolised by the bridge that will 'conquer' the river, image of untamed nature, and allow the Maori to attend Pakeha school. Eleanor Scott ( Roderick Finlayson, 'Foreword', Hyacinths and Biscuits: The Diamond Jubilee Book of the Penwomen's Club (New Zealand) Incorporated, 1925 to 1985, Peggy Dunstan et al. ed, (Auckland: Ken Pounder, 1985), pp.8-14.Brown Man's Burden, in which the story appeared in 1938).Brown Man's Burden (Auckland: Griffin Press, 1938), p.ii.
If some of the official publications of the centennial sounded notes of the anti-myth, these were stronger in the unofficial publications. Some of these were not overtly aimed at the centennial but simply coincided with it, such as Cresswell's Charles Brasch, 'The Land and the People (II)', 'The Silent Land', and 'The Islands (2)', in Present Without Leave and John Mulgan's Man Alone, both of which appeared in 1939. Cresswell's opening description of New Zealand landscape and history is a devastating attack on the myths of progress and the welcoming land, and Mulgan's use of Johnson as a 'gauge of morale' for New Zealand systematically deconstructs his father's accepted myths of the land, the egalitarian rural democracy, and Home. Likewise, Charles Brasch's The Land and the People appeared in 1939, although Brasch had had the copy with Glover a year earlier. Its title poems, with their concern
Collected Poems, Alan Roddick ed, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1984), pp.2,17,218; 'The Islands (2)' was first published as 'In These Islands' in Tomorrow, 5 (13 September 1939); 'The Silent Land' was first published in Folios of New Writing in Autumn, 1940.A Man and His Wife in 1940 might not have been explicitly aimed at the centennial, but certainly could be taken as if it were, as Bruce Mason attested:
To be eighteen in Wellington in 1940 was to know that, inevitably, one would soon be in a war, to see from an upstairs window the cardboard and pinex spires of the Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai, and to hold in one's hand
A Man and his Wifeby Frank Sargeson. Against the shrill trumpets of Centennial, one could hear these bravely bleak and minatory chimes; against 'a century of growth and progress', Sargeson was bold enough to say, 'Look! Listen! Mark! This is all it has amounted to. Against your growth, your progress, I place these bleak and stunted lives; against the blare of self-congratulation, the tiny music of the numb and spiritless. I offer you a people sealed off by shock from all that is brave, creative and joyful.' It was quite a shock in itself.Bruce Mason, 'A Local Habitation and a Name',
Islands 21(March 1978), 242-43.
If Glover at the Caxton Press used Sargeson's volume for a direct hit on the centennial, he used two by Curnow to bracket it, Allen Curnow, 'Not in Narrow Seas, Poem VI', in Not in Narrow Seas in 1939 and Island and Time in 1941. The first was Curnow's most direct attempt at stating an anti-myth, deconstructing Canterbury's myth of itself as Godley's godly experiment, the successful colony well on the way to achieving the Pastoral Paradise and the Just City of the Better Britain of the Southern Seas. He showed it instead as a class-ridden society, a shallow and imitative culture, based on a dependent export economy that was built on an exploitative yet fearful relation with a land to which it was not atoned—not the New Jerusalem but rather a second-rate imitation of Victorian English society with all of its flaws: 'no renewal of the world's youth, / But age-soured infancy, a darkened dawn'.Collected Poems 1933-1973 (Wellington: Reed, 1974), p.63.Tomorrow going back as far as 1937, the sequence was not explicitly aimed at the centennial but it was taken as such. Frank Gadd in reviewing it in Tomorrow, related it directly:
Our centenary is falling, naturally enough, at a time when a few of our countrymen are feeling the need, and deploring the lack, of a national culture. . . . Born in an isolated country at the nether end of the world, they are beginning to resent the ties that bind them still to the lands from which their fathers came. . .. Strangely enough, in a country so prosy as New Zealand, it is the poets who are showing the first signs of independent life.
F[rank] G[add},review of Not in Narrow Seas he thought was such a sign, a 'new song' demonstrating that 'our poets have found voice'.Not in Narrow Seas, Tomorrow, 21 June 1939, pp.539, 540.
As 'A Job for Poetry: Notes on an Impulse' makes clear, Curnow had more 'universal' ambitions in Allen Curnow, 'A Job for Poetry: Notes on an Impulse', in Island and Time, an Arnoldian desire to use poetry as a means of criticising 'the mechanist confidence in progress' and helping the intellect to be 'humbled by its vast communal failures', doing its part in bringing on the 'mutation of the intellect' that is necessary for human survival.Look Back Harder, pp.24-5; first published in Book 1, March 1941.Island and Time in the 'In Preparation' announcements at the back of Recent Poems (1941) indicates the New Zealandness of the book:
These poems are an attempt to place New Zealand imaginatively in the widest context of time and the current of history; but the poems have each their separate occasions springing from the natural scene, the history, and the life of New Zealanders.
Allen Curnow et al.,
Recent Poems(Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1941), p.51.
New Zealand is, in the terms of Allen Curnow ed, The Penguin Book of New Zealand Poetry', the 'glove' with which Curnow could 'reach out to the universe', and the centennial was a striking local example of the misplaced 'mechanist confidence' that he was attacking.The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (Auckland: Paul, 1966 rpt), p.15; quoted from Letters to the New Island.
Recent Poems), and 'House and Land',
with their warnings of the dangers of naive nationalism, their deconstruction of New Zealand history as progress, claiming it as instead 'Something different, something / Nobody counted on', and their depiction of the New Zealand as 'a land of settlers / With never a soul at home'. Allen Curnow, ' The Unhistoric Story' and 'House and Land', in Collected Poems, pp.79-80, 92.
More explicitly focused on the centennial was Finlayson's Roderick Finlayson, Our Life in This Land, published in 1940 as a kind of anti-centennial manifesto. For Finlayson, 'after one hundred years of settlement we are strangers in a strange land, having no identity with the soil or even knowledge of it', lacking 'a native art (that infallible index of civilisation)', basing a dependent export economy on exploitation of the land and a 'scientific industrialism in which all is opposed to Nature', in which the farmer is ca somewhat more privileged if more heavily burdened kind of industrial worker bound hand and foot to the wheels of the milk or cream collector and the cheese or butter factory'. He described a country with a history that can be read as a fall from its pioneer beginnings, culminating in participation in a disastrous war that will sweep away the 'recklessly erring industrial plutocracy' of which that war is the inevitable expression.Our Life in This Land (Auckland: Griffin Press, 1940), pp.16,14, 11-12, i.
Most explicit in its confrontation with the centennial was Glover's retrospective poem, not published until five years later:
Denis Glover, 'Centennial', in Selected Poems (Auckland: Penguin, 1981), p.39.
The poem is vintage Glover, with its assonance, consonance and alliteration, and its image of gaseous politicians. However, it is not entirely accurate as history, for there were actually many words dedicated to 'our failures', if not by politicians then by Glover's fellow writers. Both directly and indirectly, the centennial, while it undoubtedly encouraged many affirmations of New Zealand's ruling cultural myths, also helped bring into being very vigorous statements of an anti-myth.
There was no single, triumphant showing of art associated with New Zealand's Centennial Exhibition of 1940, and without the efforts of an ad hoc artists' collective there would have been little contemporary New Zealand 'fine art' on display beyond the murals and statuary installed in and around the Rongotai exhibition buildings. Visitors with a penchant for art needed instead to visit the temple-like precincts of the National Art Gallery above Buckle Street, opened only three years earlier, to view the 970 exhibits of the Centennial Exhibition of International and New Zealand Art organised by Mary Murray Fuller.' Opened on 10 November 1939, the international section comprised 562 works—mainly British paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture. Except for a small number of borrowed works, including seven from the Tate Gallery, everything had its advertised price. The local component of the exhibition was staged in the adjacent galleries of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and comprised 408 contributions solicited from art society members around the country. In recognition of potential sales to visitors over the centennial period, the Academy's exhibition remained open until the end of January. When the National Art Gallery's international exhibition finally closed on 12 May 1940 it had been seen by a total of 57,150 people, including 9,100 children. 'National Art Gallery Committee of Management Annual Report', Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1940, vol.3, H. 21, p.3. For general purposes the figures were rounded to 50,000 adults and 10,000 children (Art in New Zealand, XII, 4, June 1940, p.249).
The more significant exhibition project, the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art, opened in Dunedin's Pioneers' Hall on 19 February 1940. For McLintock see the essay by Edmund Bohan in the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art: Catalogue (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940).Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.4, pp.321-2, and for his background as an artist see David Bell, 'Alexander Hare McLintock, printmaker: An essay and a catalogue', Bulletin of New Zealand Art
History, Special series no.l, 1994. McLintock's most ambitious historical project was the three-volume Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966).
Before we explore these two exhibitions in greater detail, what was the place of art within the exhibition at Rongotai? Incarnated as an 'Murals for Government Court NZ Centennial Exhibition', An account of the art at Rongotai is given in Gordon Brown, Brown, art moderne celebration of modern nationhood, the Centennial Exhibition was itself a gigantic work of art. Perhaps this explains the lack of any plans for a specific display of 'fine arts' such as had been mounted at earlier international exhibitions. The most prominent pieces of traditional painting were four murals on historical themes strategically installed around the central foyer of the Government Court. Commissioned from Wellington-born, London-based artist Frederick H. Coventry, the four murals proposed an historical progression from the 'no-man's-land' of The European in New Zealand before 1840 to The Close of New Zealand's First Century', conveying the results of 'one hundred years of steady progress'.Art in New Zealand, XII, 1, September 1939, p.33.New Zealand Painting 1920-1940: Adaptation and Nationalism (Wellington: Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, 1975). Here Brown reports that two of Coventry's murals were installed at the Auckland Museum (note 11, p.70).New Zealand Painting, p.71. Oriwa T. Haddon's contribution is mentioned in McLintock, Catalogue (1940), p.40: 'He was recently commissioned by the Tourist Department to execute a series of oils in connection with the Centennial celebrations.'
The Women's Section, located in the Exhibition's Tower Block, included Tine Arts' among its advertised exhibits. While the official catalogue describes 'Drawing and painting, etching and engravings, miniatures, modelling and statuary and photography . . . which gives a comprehensive impression of the creative ability of women', the catalogue of the women's section reveals a preponderance of 'Arts and Crafts': decorative needlework, jewellery, pottery, china painting, weaving and spinning. 'Women's section', New Zealand Centennial Exhibition 1939-1940: Official souvenir catalogue (Wellington: NZ Centennial Exhibition Co Ltd, 1939),p.61. A separate listing of the contents, almost all of which was for sale, was published as New Zealand Centennial Exhibition 1839-1940; Women's Section Catalogue.
at the Exhibition.' The display presented 252 drawings, paintings and sculptures by forty-four artists, but unfortunately no precise catalogue of the contents has survived.
cOur Centennial' Art in New Zealand, XII, 2, December 1939, p.81.
See Art in New Zealand, December 1939, p.123, and June 1940, p.250.
'Commonwealth of Australia', Official souvenir catalogue . . ., p.51.
We now return to consider the major centennial art exhibition, some distance from Rongotai at the National Art Gallery. Mary Murray Fuller's Centennial Exhibition of International and New Zealand Art was the initiative of a formidable artist-dealer who was a leading member of Wellington's fine arts establishment. Her husband Edwin Murray Fuller opened the city's first real art dealership in 1920, representing a range of local artists, and together they had organised successful selling tours of contemporary British art—mini-Royal Academies—intended to be inspirational for New Zealand artists and enticing to local collectors. After Edwin's death in 1933, Mary served on the council of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and (from late 1936) on the Board of Management of the National Art Gallery. The programme of British art exhibitions mounted by the Murray Fullers in 1928, 1930 and 1932 was continued single-handedly by Mary Murray Fuller in 1935 and 1936. No doubt she relished the entree into Royal Academy circles that such a role afforded her, and the success of the earlier ventures assisted her in persuading a wide range of British artists to contribute to this, the last as well as the most ambitious of the Murray Fuller exhibition projects. The ship bearing the exhibition left England a mere fortnight before war was declared on 3 September 1939.
Most of the exhibits, 515 works, were British. While the majority of the artists would now be regarded as obscure, Murray Fuller had secured works by leading academic figures such as George Clausen, Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings, together with a smattering of moderns including Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. The 'continental' component consisted of sixteen paintings from Belgium and thirty-one from France, the latter including works by Dufy, Marquet, Vlaminck and Utrillo. T always do my own selecting,' Mrs Fuller boasted
'A contribution to art', Listener reporter in 1940.New Zealand Listener, 31 January 1940, p.41.
... it is clear that our National Art Gallery, in its wisdom, has on this occasion turned itself into a commercial organisation for the purpose of selling European work, and has sent an experienced saleswoman, who is herself one of the Management Committee, to England to carry the scheme through.
H. H. Tombs , 'Our National Art Gallery as a sales organisation',Art in New Zealand,XI, 4, June 1939, p.l80.
Tombs queried the wisdom of forcing New Zealand artists to compete by holding the Academy's exhibition concurrently. 'Aren't we making ourselves rather ridiculous in doing this? . . . The loan idea seems the rational and normal procedure for such exhibitions.' Ibid.
The most popular as well as the single largest exhibit in Murray Fuller's display arrived two months late. An official request to the King, asking to borrow Frank Salisbury's enormous J. Heenan to Coronation of King George VI 'presented to His Majesty by the Dominion Prime Ministers', had been made a year earlier by the Minister of Internal Affairs—at a time when it was expected that the two exhibitions would be shown in tandem.Coronation finally arrived in mid-January 1940 and proved a godsend for all concerned with the centennial exhibitions.
The National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art was a far more carefully planned affair than its International sibling. It was McLintock himself who had first proposed such a project, inspired by his work on the centennial publications as researcher, writer and illustrator. Personal communication, Memorandum re National Centennial Art Committee, 12 June 1939, IA 1, 62/106, Pt.l.Making New Zealand series. Heenan embraced the idea of an exhibition and convened a National Centennial Art Committee comprising 'gentlemen who take a keen interest in art generally' such as Auckland Art Gallery's John Barr.
Regional support was ensured, with lists of significant historical artists and their key works to be drawn up by local committees; and newspaper advertisements invited living artists to submit up to two works for selection at committee meetings in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. The advertisement appeared nationally on 4 November 1939, fulfilling the committee's resolution 'to place the method of selection of contemporary work upon a democratic basis'. Minutes of meeting of the National Centennial Art Committee, 26 October 1939. IA 1,62/106, Pt.2.
Following its Dunedin opening on 19 February 1940, McLintock tirelessly promoted the exhibition on the radio (eight broadcasts during the three weeks it was on show) and through lectures and inspirational talks to a seemingly endless stream of schoolchildren. It was exhausting work, for McLintock was also responsible for overseeing the packing, transportation and reinstallation of the exhibition. At the second venue in Invercargill, faced by the realities of bad weather and provincial indifference to the very existence of New Zealand art, he wrote back to Wellington:
Everyone moans about the war but I'm afraid that the term 'NZ Art' damns it. If we called it Hottentot, Chinese or even German, we'd get a better run. What we
doneed is the 'Coronation Picture' to provide a boost. That drew the crowds in Wellington.McLintock to Mulligan, 27 March 1940, IA 1, 62/106, Pt.5.
McLintock's personal solution was to take up an appointment as lecturer in history at the University of Otago, and he was released from the exhibition after the Christchurch opening. In this most British of New Zealand cities, where the press consistently referred to Britain as 'home', the exhibition received wide coverage. Christchurch artist and teacher Leonard H. Booth lectured the Society for Imperial Culture, delivering 'some severe criticisms of what he called the "reckless destruction of New Zealand landscape by the avaricious methods employed by our modern civilisation".' 'New Zealand art: Mr Leonard H. Booth's address', The Press, 29 April 1940, p.5. Booth was represented in the exhibition by an oil portrait lent by the National Art Gallery and a pen drawing.
Once the International Exhibition had closed in Wellington, Salisbury's Murray Fuller to Mulligan, 27 June 1940, IA 1, 62/106, Pt.5.
Coronation of King George VI was finally able to travel to Auckland and belatedly join McLintock's exhibition, official responsibility for which had been assumed by the ubiquitous Mary Murray Fuller. The extreme difficulty of getting the enormous Coronation into the Auckland Art Gallery made for an eye-catching newspaper photograph and from this point the exhibition's promotional advertising was to read 'Coronation Picture and Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art'. The painting represented an absurd centrepiece for a survey of New Zealand art, but its inclusion guaranteed the exhibition's continued viability. As Mrs Murray Fuller wrote back to Wellington, 'There is no doubt that the Coronation Picture brings the public, very little interest being shown otherwise . . . Most people come to see the one picture.'Art in New Zealand, XIII, 1, September 1940, p.49.
The most compelling feature of McLintock's exhibition is the sheer diversity of its contents. Not only does he include a wide range of media, but there is a clear
A Native Gathering. The only significant victim of circumstances was sculpture, a less portable medium than drawings and oil paintings, which was displayed in the form of photographs.
Given the challenge of representing the entire span of European art in New Zealand, McLintock mustered an impressive range of contemporary work. While the young Colin McCahon is missing, there are paintings by War Makers from
The published catalogue holds its own amongst the series of centennial publications. The catalogue's format was modelled on that of a 1936 exhibition of contemporary Canadian painting, though the elegance of its typography was largely due to the involvement of the bibliophile historian
Exhibition of Contemporary Canadian Painting (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1936).
And I doubt that such will be the case until we realise the distinctive and peculiar characteristics which we have to express. It is local art that also demands our support. In Australia the visitor will find the work of Australian artists prominently displayed. If our art galleries in the coming years will build up a comprehensive and well-selected collection of New Zealand art, they will be doing more for the country than by the purchase of some of the best art from overseas.
Art in New Zealand,XII, 3, March 1940, p. 189.
Yet McLintock's selection, based as it was on intensive historical research in addition to the comprehensive advisory and selection procedures, clearly amounted to a representative distillation of the nation's art. While the catalogue is marred by factual lapses (such as the mention of Augustus Earle's return trip to New Zealand on the Quoted by Brown, Beagle), it is also true that McLintock assembled much previously unrecorded information on the lives of the artists he included. While his writing may lack the literary panache of Letters and Art in New Zealand, the art historian Peter Tomory later characterised McLintock's achievement as 'the first well balanced assessment of New Zealand painting.'New Zealand Painting, 1975, p.73.
Mary Murray Fuller criticised McLintock's catalogue for its inaccuracies and omissions, even though her own catalogue amounted to little more than a rough room-by-room listing of the exhibition. See Robin Kay and Tony Eden, Portrait of a Century: The History of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts 1882-1982 (Wellington: Millwood Press, 1983), p.118.
Surely in an historical collection such as this the true method both of cataloguing and hanging is to endeavour to impress the mind of the beholder with some clear ideas of the work done in a definite period of time.
'New Zealand and American art',
Art in New Zealand,XIII, 3, March 1941, p. 154.
Tombs wanted 'a clear chronological arrangement, sacrificing the usual aesthetic idea of suitable frames, etc.'. Although he does not name her, the criticism is almost certainly directed at Murray Fuller for whom aesthetic concerns were paramount. And it was her 'flair' in such matters, in addition to her keen business sense, that she regarded as her chief qualification for managing the touring exhibition.
I am fortunate in possessing a natural flair for hanging pictures. It's remarkable how few people know how to do this. ... I always see a collection in my mind's eye correctly placed on the walls. When it comes to the actual hanging of the pictures, the work is simplified.
'
Acontribution to art',New Zealand Listener,31 January 1940, p.41.
With little in the way of visual documentation, it is impossible to assess the merits of the earlier installations by McLintock as opposed to Murray Fuller's more 'aesthetic'
The international and national centennial art exhibitions represented radically opposing strategies in terms of centennial celebration, an opposition which is characteristic of New Zealand's art culture of the period. Murray Fuller's international exhibition reveals a National Art Gallery marking the country's centenary with a show imported from the British 'homeland', in preference to a presentation of New Zealand art. But it was not only artists and historians but also members of the governing elite who were aware of the crucial importance of New Zealand's own tradition. Speaking at the 1936 opening of the National Art Gallery, Governor General Lord Galway had urged that 'only the finest works of authentic art should be exhibited in this gallery', and urged the acquisition of historical New Zealand art.
Ibid.(Our Centennial', Art in New Zealand, XII, 2, December 1939, p.70.
McLintock's touring centennial exhibition, on the other hand, represents the first in what was to become an increasingly important genre of exhibition—the survey of the country's own pictorial heritage, in the concrete form of actual works of art. Produced under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, the enterprise commands respect for the range and quality of the works displayed, for the scholarship and elegance of its publication, and for the heroic schedule of its tour through a country at war. This tour's completion was largely due to its effective management by Murray Fuller, whose creative deployments of the exhibition did not lessen the pioneering achievement by McLintock of the first historical survey of New Zealand art.
The broad outline of what became the centennial music festival of June-July 1940 was foreshadowed in a proposal which a deputation from the Royal Wellington Choral Union placed before Parry and Heenan in August 1936. The union had taken the opportunity to be advised by Dr Malcolm Sargent, the eminent English musician who was at the time conducting orchestral concerts in the country, and he attended with them. One of the union's aims was to get an early decision from Parry in the hope that Sargent might be invited to return in 1940 to take charge of the musical festival outlined in their proposal. Lindsay Buick was a member of the deputation and it is probable that he and Heenan had had some prior discussion, so closely was the proposal in tune with Heenan's views for celebrating the centennial.
The deputation emphasised that they were not seeking to monopolise public discussion nor did they want Wellington interests to dominate. A centennial musical festival, they said, must be a 'national and not merely a Wellington one'. The various choirs in the four main centres should be 'induced to sink their identity' in a festival choir which would be supported where possible by local orchestras, and they should start straight away to build up a repertoire. A leading English conductor should be brought out to conduct choral and orchestral concerts, and a couple of leading English soloists should also be invited to perform in them, with other soloists to be selected from 'local talent'. The festival would take place in the four main centres and, if possible, in 'lesser cities and towns', and excursion trains could be run to bring people in from outlying places. The aim should be to give as many people as possible 'the opportunity to hear the best music' on a scale not previously attempted. After the festival the soloists with the addition of a pianist or violinist could tour smaller centres as a 'ballad concert party'. Any profit from the festival could be used to inaugurate musical scholarships for promising young musicians to study abroad. Minutes of meeting of members of the Royal Wellington Choral Union with Minister of Internal Affairs, 8 August 1936. Internal Affairs IA 1,62/59/1 Pt.l, National Archives (NA); letter from Dominion, 21 August 1936.
There would be obvious merit in holding a festival when good weather could be expected but it had also to be borne in mind that June, July, and August were the months when English musicians were most likely to be available. The festival could be organised by local committees but 'some controlling mind' might also be needed. It would, for example, be desirable for the Wellington festival to be planned in association with the organisers of the Centennial Exhibition. Perhaps the minister
Ian Carter, Gadfly: The Life and Times of James Shelley (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993), p.216.
Parry was clearly sympathetic to the proposal, which was also well received by leading musicians from other centres.
James Shelley to Heenan, 28 March 1938, IA 1, 62/59/1 Pt.l.Dominion, 2 September 1936; The Press, 9 March 1938.
Shelley proposed that the National Broadcasting Service be 'the controlling mind' for the festival. The broadcasting service, he wrote, 'is a State organisation providing for all types of musical and dramatic entertainment', it dealt with all leading musicians and musical organisations, and it was 'ideally placed' to manage a centennial musical and dramatic festival. He also had aspirations for the future of a centennial orchestra once the music festival was over. He had on his appointment said that the time had come for a national conservatorium of music, and he believed that the broadcasting service should bring it into being. The centennial orchestra he had in mind would have a core of twenty-five full-time members, supplemented with temporary players in each main centre, and the permanent players should become a permanent part of the National Broadcasting Service after the festival.
Heenan agreed with Shelley's proposal but wanted the addition of provincial music committees in the four main centres and a Centennial Music Committee to coordinate arrangements. Parry got cabinet approval in March 1939. By then, however, the country had a balance of payments crisis and, to reduce the cost of sterling exchange, Shelley's proposals for one or two instrumentalists and the lecturer of literary distinction were dropped. The Centennial Music Committee was set up with Shelley as chairman and Heenan a member, and one representative from each of the four main centres. On Shelley's nomination the provincial members were Dr Galway (Dunedin), Dr Hight (Christchurch), Professor Hollinrake (Auckland), and Loc. cit., Cabinet Paper, Centennial Music 1940, expenditure, [March 1939].
At its first meeting in April, the committee approved Shelley's 'skeleton programme of music and drama', arranged for local committees to be convened, and set to work in close cooperation with them to work up a national music festival that would make use of the centennial musical director and the visiting soloists in performances by local musical groups. Malcolm Sargent was no longer available, so the committee invited Anderson Tyrer to be its music adjudicator and conductor of the centennial orchestra.
It also sought the immediate appointment of Maurice Clare to audition and bring together 'the nucleus of the string portion' of the centennial orchestra.
Tyrer typified the imperial influence on music teaching in this country. He was a pianist, conductor, and composer who had trained under the great Hans Richter and had once been an assistant conductor to Sir Thomas Beecham. He had visited New Zealand in 1933 and again in 1938 as an examiner for Trinity College, London, and during his second visit he conducted a performance of his symphonic poem 'Dr Faustus', which he dedicated to Shelley. Shelley's biographer noted wryly that Shelley repaid the compliment 'by inviting Tyrer to conduct the centennial orchestraV Tyrer would become the dominant figure as conductor of most of the orchestral and choral performances in the festival. In May 1939 he was about to leave London to examine music students in Ceylon, India, and South Africa, but he had time to prescribe the set works for the centennial choral and string quartet competitions and negotiate contracts with Isobel Baillie, soprano, Gladys Ripley, contralto, Heddle Nash, tenor, and Oscar Natzke, bass. Natzke, aged twenty-seven, the one-time blacksmith from the Waikato, had made a big impression in English musical circles and was already being compared to Chaliapin. His career, Tyrer wrote, was taking off and New Zealand was lucky to get him before his diary of engagements filled up. John Mansfield Thomson, The Oxford History of New Zealand Music (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.84; New Zealand Listener, 12 April 1940, p.9.
Maurice Clare typified the Scottish strain of the imperial influence. A gifted violinist, he had arrived in Christchurch in 1938 at the age of twenty-four after studying with leading European violin teachers of the day. Shelley appointed him
John Mansfield Thomson and Janet Paul ed and arrangement, Frederick Page: A Musician's Journal, 1905-1983 (Dunedin: John Mclndoe, 1986), pp.83-7.
The Centennial Music Committee began what would be very effective working relationships with provincial musical committees in the four main centres. The festival would take the form of an intense week of musical performance in Dunedin, Christchurch, Auckland, and Wellington, and dates were agreed for each centre between the middle of May and the end of July. The Dunedin committee said it wanted to perform Gounod's opera Faust and, with the promise of assistance from the broadcasting service, plans were laid to perform it in all four centres. The Christchurch committee received a sympathetic response to its recommendation that 'a standard work by an English composer, preferably Elgar' be chosen for the choirs to sing. The Wellington committee was 'strongly of the opinion' that no works by German composers be included. Mulligan to Shelley, 19 July 1939, IA 1,62/59/1 Pt.2.; minutes of meeting of Wellington Provincial Centennial Committee, 2 February 1940, IA 1, 62/59/1 Pt.3.
Meanwhile the Centennial Exhibition Company was planning musical activities to be associated with the Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai. Concerts had been an important feature of the international exhibitions held in Dunedin and Christchurch but the assembly hall planned for the Centennial Exhibition was not thought by the directors to be 'quite suitable' for musical performances. Ibid., New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company Ltd (NZCECL), box 2A, item 107, Edmund Anscombe to Hainsworth, 11 August 1937.
As a drawcard for the exhibition, the directors decided that they would invite a leading British band with the widest popular appeal to give concerts. Shelley, with his preference for serious music, proposed a 'wind band', which would have flutes, clarinets and other woodwinds as well as brass. He had his way, and the band of the Welsh Guards was invited. But their tour was cancelled when war broke out and local bands gave concerts instead. The Port Nicholson Silver Band tried out the soundshell in February 1939 and they and their audience were pleased with the result. The same band performed a fanfare for the start of the official opening of the Exhibition on 8 November, played the hymn tune 'Old Hundredth' and accompanied a combined choir in Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus' in a variety concert in which the Regimental Band of the First Battalion, Wellington Regiment, and the Pipes and Drums of Wellington City also performed. A dance band played daily during the exhibition, and there were regular concerts by local choirs and bands and by Maori performers. There was, however, no shelter associated with the soundshell, and unseasonable weather during the summer and autumn months put a damper on outside performance.
As its contribution to centennial musical competitions, the company ran a competition for a march and the music firm Charles Begg & Co undertook to publish the winning entry in arrangements for piano, orchestra, band, and military band.
As well as the preparations for the Centennial Exhibition and the centennial music festival, another matter of both musical and national importance claimed some public interest in anticipation of the centennial year. This was the question of a New Zealand national anthem, upon which there were differing views among musicians and within the wider community. Sir George Grey, when Premier in the late 1870s, had declared 'God Defend New Zealand', words by Thomas Bracken and music by New Zealand's National Anthem, Bernard Magee, Dominion Song Book which, first published in 1930, was used in schools throughout the country, and so was regularly sung at important school functions. Sports teams and other organised groups were travelling overseas as New Zealand representatives and were being expected to be identified on formal occasions by a national anthem. New Zealand boy scouts sang a Maori version of 'God Defend New Zealand' at an international jamboree in England in 1929.Otago Daily Times, 17 December 1938.cGod Defend New Zealand' was played at the Empire Games in Glasgow two years later.
But 'God Defend New Zealand' was by no means a universal favourite. Some objected to the sentiment of Bracken's poem, others to Woods's setting, and others again to both words and music. Grey may well have designated it our national anthem but there were those who argued publicly that 'God Save the King' was the national anthem and no other piece of music should replace it or detract from it. Whatever the verbal niceties, however, it was as 'the national anthem' that 'God Defend New Zealand' was regularly referred to in the press.
Dr Galway gave notice of his attitude when, in welcoming the decision to have a centennial music festival, he said he hoped the time had come for the country to 'have a really worthy New Zealand national anthem'.
The Press, 9 March 1938.
By then, however, the government had already decided to endorse 'God Defend New Zealand' as 'the national song'. Its champions had been active. The Centennial Council at its meeting in August 1938 received a proposal for the piece to be given that status and, with Parry in the chair, had unanimously supported Heenan's motion that the government be asked to endorse the singing of 'God Defend New Zealand' at centennial functions. The government agreed but was careful not to muddy the waters of imperial sentiment. 'God Defend New Zealand' was to be the national song, not the national anthem. It would be sung before the national anthem on public occasions and would not replace it. Minutes of meeting of Centennial Council, 8 August 1938, IA 1, 62/71 Pt.l;
Evening Post, 9 April 1940.
The outbreak of war in September 1939 cast a brief shadow of uncertainty over centennial arrangements but the government soon decided that all national celebrations would go ahead. The Auckland provincial committee cancelled its provincial functions but agreed to continue with its contribution to the centennial music festival. Anderson Tyrer began work in February. Choirs in the four centres
Thomson, Oxford History of NZ Music, p.84.
The festival programmes reflected the strength of the country's choral tradition, rooted in church choirs and the social ritual of the oratorio. The town halls in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin, with their big pipe organs, tiered choir stalls, and stages for soloists and orchestra, had all been built for massed choirs and large audiences. The King Edward Barracks in Christchurch Barracks served a similar purpose. The centennial music festival marked the high point of the oratorio tradition. Dunedin had a festival choir of 400 voices. Auckland mustered 500 for its final concert. The soloists were an excellent match. Isobel Baillie was renowned as an oratorio soloist, and Heddle Nash, Gladys Ripley, and Raymond Beatty were also distinguished in the genre. The works they sang were evergreen favourites: Mendlesohn's
Elijah in Dunedin and Christchurch; Elgar's King Olaf in Christchurch and his Dream of Gerontius in Auckland, Faure's Requiem in Wellington.New Zealand Listener, 10 May 1940, pp.8-9.Carmen), the Liederkrantzchen and the Orpheus, in Christchurch.
Immediately after the final festival concerts in Wellington, Isobel Baillie, Gladys Ripley, Heddle Nash and Oscar Natzke set out on a concert tour of provincial towns in both islands. They were accompanied by the pianist Clifford Huntsman, and four first-desk string players from the Centennial Festival Orchestra (Vincent Aspey, Harry Ellwood, William McLean, and Francis Bate) performing as a string quartet. This ensemble travelled 2250 miles in twenty-five days and gave fifteen concerts. The tour was the forerunner of the recitals and plays that would become an important feature of provincial and rural life after the war under the aegis of the Community Arts Service of the Department of Internal Affairs. Michael Bassett, The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997), p. 138.
The highlight of the festival was the staging of
Ibid., Faust, which was given three performances in each of Dunedin and Christchurch, and four each in Auckland and Wellington. The fourth performance in Wellington was added to meet popular demand. Tt has certainly put the name of "Faust" into the musical vocabulary, large and small, of nearly all New Zealanders,' the Listener reported. It was a tribute to all concerned, it continued, that 'each performance reached a standard previously unequalled'.New Zealand Listener, 5 July 1940, p. 18; New Zealand Centennial News {NZCN), no.14, 15 August 1940, p.30.
Compared with vocal music, standards in instrumental music were much less well developed. Looking back in 1960 on his visit in 1936, Sir Malcolm Sargent said politely that the orchestra had made up in spirit for what it lacked in quality. Woodwinds were a particular problem. Ibid. Patrick Day, The Radio Years: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, vol.1 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994), p.249.
The centennial orchestra had a core of thirty-four players: six first violins, four second violins, three violas, three cellos, two double bases, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, one tympanist/percussionist, and a harp. Music Festival Programme, IA 1, 62/59/1 Pt.4.
Listener put it, 'a full symphony orchestra such as Auckland has not heard before.'New Zealand Listener, 10 May 1940, p.9.
The Centennial Music Committee had hoped that the orchestra would present some modern works as well as more familiar ones but, for whatever reason—the unavailability of scores, shortcomings in the orchestra, or the conductor's preferences—Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, and Tyrer himself, were the only twentieth-century composers played. There was one work by a German composer, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony but, ironically, its inclusion served a patriotic purpose. 'V for Victory' was the slogan of the moment, and the symphony's arresting opening four-note figure, repeated many times, tapped out the letter V in Morse code.
The Tyrer work was his
Dr Faustus, a symphonic poem for orchestra, narrator, and choir, with James Shelley as narrator. Two choral works by New Zealand composers were also performed.New Zealand Listener, 12 April 1940, p.9.
The centennial music competitions included sections for original composition as well as for choirs and string quartet. Unlike earlier international exhibitions it had no sections for solo singers or instrumentalists, even though annual competitions were a well-established musical activity. For the choir competition Tyrer had chosen two test pieces: his own Minutes of meeting of National Centennial Music Committee, 4 June 1940,1A 1, 62/ 59/1 Pt.4.
cMusic When Soft Voices Die', and Stanford's 'Diaphenia'. For the string quartet competition he chose the first movement of Haydn's quartet in D major, 'The Lark', and the first movement of Brahms's quartet in A minor. The response to both competitions was disappointing: amateur string quartets who played
NZCN, no.14, 15 August 1940, p.30.
The competition for original musical compositions marked the arrival of Douglas Lilburn on the New Zealand musical scene. He took first and second prize in the orchestral section with his 'Drysdale' and 'Festival' overtures, and first prize for choral work with
The Prodigal Country, written for baritone soloist, choir, and orchestra. Tyrer, who was chief adjudicator, was full of tempered praise. The composer, he said, would need to hear more music and see more of life 'but if the quality of these works continues, he should go far'. There was 'a good sense of form and a sound knowledge of the orchestra' in the 'Drysdale' overture, though it might need some 'pruning'. The sincerity and earnestness of the 'Festival' overture was 'commendable', though it had some cloudy passages. The same musicianship was 'manifest' in The Prodigal Country: it 'had an excellent vocal line, was never stodgy, and as a whole showed fine writing and judgment'.New Zealand Listener, 16 August 1940, p.17.
The Prodigal Country was Lilburn's musical response to his sense of himself as a New Zealander. It was his composer's answer to the same questions of identity that Robin Hyde, Allen Curnow, Charles Brash and other poets were also struggling with. Its first two sections are musical settings of poems of Robin Hyde's 'Journey from New Zealand' and Allen Curnow's 'New Zealand City' The third is from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself. Lilburn's home thoughts from afar are caught in Robin Hyde's lines:
I too am sold into strangeness, Yet in my heart can only dissolve, re-form The circling shapes of New Zealand things Ibid., 15 November 1940; Thomson, Oxford History of New Zealand Music,pp.229-30.
Douglas Lilburn composed these prize-winning works in London. He returned to Wellington in August to a full-page biographical piece with photograph in the
Listener under the headline 'Enter the Man Who Won the Laurels'. It had become common 'knowledge', it said, that Lilburn had won 'overwhelming success' in the centennial musical composition competition. The National Broadcasting Service then arranged for all three of these works to be broadcast. On the evening of 23 November 1940, in what it billed as 'the first concert of its kind since Kupe touched New Zealand' the main YA stations broadcast a concert of New Zealand music. The programme included works played by prize-winners of the choral and string quartet sections
New Zealand Listener, 15 November 1940, p.14.
The performance of Thomson, The Prodigal Country, conducted by Anderson Tyrer was, John Mansfield Thomson later wrote, 'perfunctory' and the piece had to wait thirty-eight years before Sir Charles Groves revived it with a performance that made a strong impression.Oxford History of New Zealand Music, p.230.
The recognition of Lilburn's musical voice came to be seen as the outstanding feature of the centennial music festival, on a par with the wider national recognition of Frank Sargeson's literary voice in his prize-winning short story 'The Making of a New Zealander'. The rest of the festival was a pre-dawn rather than the dawn of the country's musical future. Its importance lay in its national impact. Thanks to very full reporting in the Listener and to radio broadcasting, preparations for the festival and the events of the festival itself became a matter of nationwide interest. The strengths of the festival were those of amateur choral music-making. The performance of some of the great works of the choral repertoire supported by orchestra and distinguished professional soloists made a deep impression on choristers and audiences. But Shelley's idea of assembling a carefully selected centennial choir of sixty voices, and having it perform in the four centres came to nothing, and with it any hopes he may have had for the National Broadcasting Service to follow the example of the BBC and establishing its own broadcasting choir.
The cancellation of the visit of the band of the Welsh Guards meant that bandsmen and followers of band music did not get the excitement and sense of uplift enjoyed by those whose musical interests were catered to by the festival. Except for the professional wartime Royal New Zealand Air Force Band, conducted by Gladstone Hill, playing in a band, like singing in a choir, continued to be an amateur activity. Orchestral players, on the other hand, would have a future as professional musicians, but only for a handful until after the war.
For audiences, the festival brought something new and important in concert programmes. During the country's first century the typical concert was a variety concert in which solos, duets and works for small or large choral groups found a place with dramatic recitations, dramatic scenes, skits, mimicries, and other entertainments, sometimes with a bit of magic as well. Interestingly, this characteristically colonial form of concert had an outing at the heart of the empire when New Zealand performers gave a centennial concert in London in April 1940. Lilburn conducted the Sadlers Wells Orchestra in his 'Aotearoa' overture, Hugh Walpole gave a talk, Hinemoa Ratieur, Stella Murray, Dennis Dowling, and Ian Coster sang, Rosina Buckman explained why she would not be singing, Colin Horsley played a Chopin etude, David Low did some lightning sketches, and some Maori soldiers in uniform performed haka. A variety concert was by then very much out of style in musical circles in the great metropolis but for friends away from home it
Thomson, much worse'.Oxford History of New Zealand Music, p.228.
Performances by professional musicians were a specialised musical activity and audiences came to them with expectations that excluded everything that fell outside the standard musical forms. The programmes by the centennial orchestra would not have been out of place in London. Some members of the audiences would have recalled the concerts given two decades previously by the New South Wales State Orchestra but for most it was through hearing an orchestra of their own that they were inducted into the special world of professional orchestral performance.
Audiences liked what they heard and wanted more. At the conclusion of the Auckland festival, the Town Clerk telegraphed Parry: 'Full houses, enthusiastic audiences, expressions of admiration for Centennial Festival Orchestra.'
Then, with the war over, the years of suspended animation were also over. Music-making continued at local levels but it began to do so in relation to a vital, new national dimension. Owen Jensen initiated the first national school of music at Cambridge in 1946 and invited Douglas Lilburn to take a leading part in what John Mansfield Thomson later described as 'a historic gathering which brought together all the musicians who were to become leading figures over the next decades'. A talk given by Lilburn was 'the cry of the watchman who heralds the dawn'. 'I want to plead with you the necessity of having a music of our own,' he said, 'a living tradition of music created in this country, a music that will satisfy those parts of our being that cannot be satisfied by the music of other nations.' He did not advocate nationalism in music of the nineteenth-century kind that had been so important in the development of Spanish, Russian, and other national forms of music. 'We have no folk-song, nor characteristic rhythms of the kind that arise from folk dance, and without these two things a national music in the accepted sense is out of the question . . .' He was not wanting to 'raise the old controversy of nationalism in music'. But he had come to see that 'the music of the great classical masters or of the modern English school is not in itself sufficient to satisfy us—that being what we are, and living where we do, there must be parts of ourselves that remain strangers to it'. Douglas Lilburn, A Search for Tradition (Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust, 1984), introduction by
For most music-lovers, however, the seminal event was the founding of the national orchestra the following year. Shelley had been able to retain the string ensemble of the Centennial Symphony Orchestra for broadcast performances. He had strong backing from Fraser, who saw the creation of a national symphony as a symbol of the country's cultural maturity. The first concert of the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anderson Tyrer on 6 March 1947, was a gala occasion. As an enthusiastic audience left the Wellington Town Hall a cabinet minister was overheard to say : 'This is the birth of a nation.'New Zealand Listener, 2 March 1947.
We frequently lament the passing of the professional theatre in New Zealand, but it has done one good thing for us; it has restored the drama to
amore democratic basis by assisting in the revival of community drama. Incidentally it has enabled us to see many plays which we should otherwise have missed, for we know that the commercial is concerned mostly with box-office attractions and not necessarily with works of art. The amateur frequently has greater courage.Parry to
F. V. Sanderson , 23 July 1940, Internal Affairs (IA), series 1, 62/59/1, Pt.l, National Archives (NA).
These are the words of
Parry was correct about the 'passing of professional theatre'. During the second half of the nineteenth century New Zealand had been firmly on the professional Australasian circuit, but gradually economic stagnation, the advent of moving pictures, and the disruptions of World War I reduced touring to a marginal commercial activity. The introduction of talking films worldwide in 1929, and then the depression, marked the end of almost all professional theatre touring on the New Zealand circuit.
Throughout the second and third decades of the century, however, local amateur drama clubs and repertory societies were being formed. Many social and community organisations (including even sports clubs) had associated drama groups, and from the mid-1920s both the Women's Division of the Farmers' Union and the Country Women's Institute regularly included sketches or short plays at local meetings. In September 1927 the South Canterbury Drama League, the first organisation formed to link a group of drama clubs, held a dramatic competition, judged by James Shelley, professor of education at Canterbury College, thus inaugurating a tradition of competitive festival presentations of one-act plays. Averille Lawrence, Curtain Call: Fifty Years of Amateur Theatre in Timaru by the South Canterbury Drama League, 1927-1977 [PTimaru: South Canterbury Drama League, 1977], pp.[1-2].
In 1931 Elizabeth Blake, a visiting actress and producer active with the British Drama League in London, gave a talk on Radio 2YA advocating the formation of a
'To Develop National Drama', See Peter Harcourt, New Zealand Radio Record and Home Journal (NZRR), 24 June 1932, 'Of Feminine Interest' page by 'Patricia'.A Dramatic Appearance: New Zealand Theatre 1920-1970 (Wellington: Methuen, 1978), p.70.
The importance of one-act plays for the development of amateur theatre in New Zealand cannot be overestimated. Until the early 1930s these plays were mainly British, but as early as 1929 the
For a discussion of the growth of New Zealand playwriting and amateur play production at this time, see
NZ Radio Record and Home Journal and Tui's Annual ran a national playwriting competition,NZRR, 22 March 1929, p.6.Art in New Zealand, encouraging 'a New Zealand theme and location', ran competitions annually from 1931 to 1937.New Zealand Drama 1930-1980 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1984), pp.12-13, and Howard McNaughton, New Zealand Drama (Boston: Twayne, 1981), pp.28-9.NZ Radio Record, and the New Zealand Dairy Exporter with which it was associated, responded with another competition for plays 'capable of presentation wholly by women [which] should not take longer than 20 to 30 minutes'.NZRR, 5 June 1931, p.4.Plays for Country Women. The BDL ran annual one-act playwriting competitions (not restricted to female casts) with the
Plays for Country Women (Wellington: NZ Dairy Exporter and Farm Home Journal, and the NZ Radio Record, [1931]).
Seven One-Act Plays (Wellington: The NZ Radio Record, under the auspices of the British Drama League(BDL) (New Zealand Branch), 1933); Seven One-Act Plays 1934, (Wellington: The NZ Radio Record /British Drama League, 1934); Six One-Act Plays, 1935 and Further One-Act Plays, 1935 (Wellington: National Magazines, under the auspices of the British Drama League (New Zealand Branch), 1935); 'Clay' and Other New Zealand One-Act Plays (Wellington: National Magazines/BDL, 1936). In addition, Eric Bradwell, whose Clay was the 1936 collection's title play, had Four One-Act Plays published by George Allen and Unwin (London, 1935), with an introduction by Elizabeth Blake on behalf of the BDL.
Patrick Day, The Radio Years: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand (Auckland:
Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting History Trust, 1994), p.252.
Patrick Day, private communication.
New Zealand Listener, 19 April 1940.
Another source of both playwriting and amateur play production was the growing number of left-leaning organisations in the late 1930s, such as the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) and the Left Book Club. The People's Theatre in Auckland emphasised New Zealand writing (almost exclusively that of See Rachel Barrowman, A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand, 1930-1950 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1991), pp.71, 174-84; and Howard McNaughton, 'Drama', in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English (OHNZL), Terry Sturm ed (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.287.
Thus, when detailed planning for the Centennial was undertaken towards the end of the 1930s, it was at the end of a decade of remarkable growth, vitality, and
Planning for the national centennial music and drama celebrations started with a 1936 submission to Parry as the Minister of Internal Affairs. By early 1938 definite proposals were being considered. James Shelley, long involved in the BDL and amateur drama, See Harcourt, James Shelley to See Michael Bassett, Heenan to Parry, 13 April 1939,1A 1,62/59/1, Pt.l. The recommendation was confirmed two days later. Shelley to Heenan, 28 March 1938, IA 1,62/59/1, Pt.l; also minutes of the first meeting (21 April 1939) of the National Centennial Music Committee, IA 1,62/59/1, Pt.l; A Dramatic Appearance, esp. pp.30-31 and 61-65.The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland: Auckland University Press, in association with the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1997), pp.110-11.I7 It was accepted that —the musical celebrations should be national in character, and that in view of the fact that there is in existence no organization representing New Zealand musical interests as a whole... the musical and dramatic festivals should be under the direct control of the National Broadcasting Service (representing the National Centennial Council)'.New Zealand Centennial Newsletter (NZCN), no.14, 15 August 1940, p.28; and Day, The Radio Years, pp.249-50.
The committee sometimes had the word 'Drama' in its title, but was more often referred to simply as the National Centennial Music Committee; and one finds references to the dramatic festivals being produced 'during Music Week'. See, e.g., minutes of the National Centennial Music Committee, 21 April 1939, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.l; and the heading 'Centennial Music Festivals' for an article about both the music and drama festivals in Minutes of the National Centennial Music Committee, 23 August 1939, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.l. Minutes of the National Centennial Music Committee, 21 April 1939, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.l. McNaughton, 'Drama', 'National Centennial Competition for One Act Plays', 5 February 1940, IA 1,62/59/1; see also 'Biggest Yet: Plans for Centennial Drama Festival', NZCN, no.14, 15 August 1940, p.28.OHNZL, p.287.cthe idea behind the national Festival of Drama is not to have a mere sudden activity which will die down on the completion of the competition, but to give an impetus to the study and practice of drama whose good effects will carry on indefinitely stimulating the cultural side of New Zealand life'.New Zealand Listener, 24 May 1940, p.l 1. (Note that the terminology can be confusing, since both 'drama' and 'one-act play' were used to refer to eithei; play production or playwriting. 'Drama Festival', however, referred in most cases to the production competition for one-act plays, with playwriting usually identified separately.)
For the Centennial Drama Festival the country was divided into four regions, each organising elimination festivals leading to four provincial finals in mid-July. From each provincial final one production would be selected to represent the region at the national final in Wellington on 26 July 1940. The entry forms stipulated that the play offered must be '"playworthy"; i.e., of sufficient dramatic merit', have a minimum of four speaking parts (excluding bit parts), and be of 30-45 minutes duration. Regulations: National Centennial Competition for One Act Plays, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.4.
Well over seventy teams participated, with regional festivals in Otago, Westland, South Canterbury, Manawatu, Wairarapa, and Waikato as well as in the four main centres. Although many of the groups were from the larger towns and cities, the geographical spread was very wide. The Otago final, for instance, included a team from Wyndham, the Canterbury-Westland final a team from Hokitika, and at the Auckland elimination festival an all-woman cast from the Northland Players made proud reference to overcoming the difficulties of transport for a cast spread over fifty miles of rural Northland. Programme, Auckland Centennial Drama Festival, p. 12. Copies are held by Auckland Public Library and the Ephemera Section, National Library. Bassett, Lawrence to Mulligan, 1 and 5 July 1940, IA 1, 62/59/1.Mother of All Departments, p.l 13.
The drama groups varied greatly. The ten teams participating in the Auckland elimination festival provide an interesting and in many respects representative selection. Auckland's Grafton Shakespeare and Dramatic Club, founded in 1912 or 1913, was probably the oldest amateur drama society in the country. Programme, Auckland Centennial Drama Festival, p.13, says 1912; the 1913 date comes from the See Barrowman, New Zealand Herald (NZH), 25 November 1972.A Popular Vision, pp. 175-7.
The circumstances of production were carefully regulated so that up to four one-act plays could be presented in an evening. Drapes and simple lighting were provided on stage, but any additional set had to be capable of being set up in no more than eight minutes, and being removed in four minutes. Regulations: National Centennial Competition for One Act Plays, IA 1,62/59/1, Pt.4.
The range of plays presented within these limitations is astonishingly wide, from tragedy to farce, from well-made plays to European expressionism, from Shakespeare to fledgling New Zealand authors, from Synge's
G.W. von Zedlitz, 'Report on Plays', IA 1, 62/9/3.
Programme, Wellington Elimination Festival, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.5; and Riders to the Sea to Coward's Family Album. There was a preponderance, however, of light comedy sketches of little dramatic merit (and by authors now forgotten), and several adjudicators criticised the lack of substance in the choices. The one-act form, plus casting limitations, particularly for the all-woman groups, had clearly resulted in some unadventurous decisions. Good comedy was appreciated, however: one of the most successful all-women casts in Auckland humorously portrayed life among the staff of a large girls' school, another in a hospital,NZH, 10 July 1940, p.12.Family Album. More serious work was also presented, sometimes reflecting concerns about the war. In Wellington, for instance, the Newlands Women's Institute Drama Circle did The Chimney Corner, a play about women spies in Belgium during the First World War hiding an English soldier from the Germans.Dominion, 16 July 1940, p.12; Evening Post, 16 July 1940, p.15.Official Announcement^ cmade fairly credible the tragic situation of a family of Jewish extraction in Nazi Germany'.The Press, 28 June 1940, p.4.The Funk Hole by Harold Brighouse (of Hobson's Choice fame) was chosen by two Wellington groups, perhaps for its topicality: subtitled 'A Farce of the Crisis', it is set in England in 1938 in a country cottage to which city people have retreated for fear of air raids.Dominion, 18 July 1940.
The Christchurch adjudicator, J.J.W. Pollard, commented that 'there are New Zealand plays which would have been better than some of those we have seen this week'. Support for both writing and producing New Zealand plays had been part of BDL policy from its inception, but there were only two in the Christchurch elimination festival.
Howard McNaughton, This episode is given fleeting mention in Rosalie Carey, The Press, 1 July 1940, Tor Women', p.2.Te Mere-Pounamu, was praised in The Press as more ambitious than some of the dramatic sketches, with talented players and 'fidelity, in its atmosphere, to ancient Maori beliefs'.The Press, 29 June 1940, p.8.New Zealand Drama: A Bibliographical Guide (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Library, 1974), p.52. In the printed programme Christchurch Teachers Training College is listed as Canterbury Training College.Flight from Cumnor, the opening act of the full-length Amy Robsart, which the young Rosalie Seddon (later Rosalie Carey of the Globe Theatre, Dunedin) had adapted from Scott's novel Kenilworth and presented in Hamilton earlier that year.A Theatre in the House: The Careys' Globe (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999), p.ll.
Although only a handful of original plays seem to have been entered, two of them reached the national final. One was Francis Renner's Wellington Repertory Theatre production of his own play
Soundings, a drama about the burial of a schooner captain at sea; the other was Sordid Story. Coppard's play, presented by Auckland Repertory Theatre, was not new; it had been first performed at the Scottish Drama Festival in 1932, won the 1935 New Zealand BDL national one-act play production competition, and was published in 1939. But by amateur theatre standards at the time it was certainly, as the New Zealand Herald reviewer put it, 'far removed from the orthodox'.NZH, 11 July 1940, p.12.Sordid Story, in Twelve One-Act Plays from the International One-Act Play Theatre, Elizabeth Everard ed (London: Allen and Unwin, 1939), p.297. Further discussion of the play may be found in McNaughton, New Zealand Drama, pp.35-6, Thomson, New Zealand Drama 1930-1980, p.24, and, for Coppard's earlier writing for university extravaganzas, Harcourt, A Dramatic Appearance, pp.40-41.Sordid Story to advance to the provincial final, Margaret Barr (a recently arrived English dancer and movement teacher), encouraged drama clubs to present more New Zealand work. It was wrong, she said, 'for clubs to copy the drama of other countries when the country's own drama was awaiting expression. By co-operation and continued improvisation, the dramatic clubs, perhaps not for 15 or 20 years, could give to the country a drama of its own.'NZH, 13 July 1940, p. 12.
The adjudicators had nine published criteria to use in reaching their decisions, ranging from dramatic merit and general interpretation to ensemble and individual acting and production achievement. Although adjudicators were, for all the competitions, explicitly free from any obligation to explain how they reached their decisions, most of them willingly followed the BDL tradition of giving detailed criticism of each production. Newspapers report detailed comment on speech, gesture, movement and characterisation of the actors, and of setting, grouping, pace and other production values. The adjudicators often commented on the suitability of the plays chosen to the talents of the group, and on how ambitious the choices were. Although the judges could be severe, they were usually encouraging, and gratitude for the criticism from established experts was often voiced (at least publicly). A typical example of comment is Margaret Barr's summation of a semi-finalist in Auckland, the WEA's presentation of Synge's
Harcourt,
Riders to the Sea: 'The aim was evidently atmosphere rather than clarity of diction, which left much room for improvement, but the players succeeded very well in conveying Celtic fatalism and the idea of brooding fate and a malignant sea. The effect was heightened by a very sombre setting of black drapes'; but Miss Barr was concerned 'that the corpse of the drowned peasant lad had been displayed more conspicuously than was really necessary'.NZH, 10 July 1940, p.12.Otago Daily Times reviewer may well have been quoting her when he described the WEA
Vindication, by Leonard J. Hines and Frank King, as a 'grim and tragic drama' performed with a 'stark realism' which 'left the most profound impression' on the audience.Otago Daily Times, 12 July 1940, p.7.The Press reviewer had reservations about Noel Coward's 'rather shallow but amusingly cynical wit',The Press, 28 June 1940, p.4.Family Album: 'it was an excellent choice for competition, with its emotional variety and big cast. It was not great, but very clever, and should be a lesson to every other team.'The Press, 1 July 1940, 'For Women', p.2.The Press, 'had the advantage of being in general more experienced than the other competitors'.The Press, 28 June 1940, p.4.A Dramatic Appearance, pp.65, 74-5; McNaughton, The Canterbury Repertory Theatre, pp.[2-3]; Day, The Radio Years, p.251.Swan Song (for the Wellington East Old Girls' Dramatic Society) because the actresses 'were all too ladylike for the atmosphere of the dressing-room of a corps de ballet'. His criteria were better met by Francis Renner's production of his own play Soundings: '. . . the stage looking like the ship it was meant to represent and the actors looking and sounding
Dominion, 15 July 1940, p.5; Evening Post, 15 July 1940, p.4.
The national final was held in Wellington on 26 July 1940 in front of a capacity audience in the Concert Chamber. The finalists were Auckland Repertory's
Sordid Story, Wellington Repertory's Soundings, Canterbury Repertory's Family Album, and the Dunedin WEA's Vindication. The adjudicators—May Macdonald, a very experienced BDL producer for Napier Repertory Players,NZH, 10 July 1940, p.12.—to compare, for instance, "Sordid Story", which was based on the Russian theory of monodrama, with "Soundings", which ... depended on gruesome realism'. They emphasised, however, the high standard of all the productions: 'each stood out in some way'.NZCN, no. 14, 15 August 1940, p.31.
Another part of the celebrations on the final night of the National Centennial Festival of Drama was the announcement of the winners of the playwriting competition for a radio play and a one-act stage play. The Deputy Prime Minister, Walter Nash, announced that the written radio play competition, judged by officers of the National Broadcasting Service, Shelley to Mulligan, 30 July 1940, IA 1, 62/59/1, Pt.5.Hell Ship of the Pacific by Nostalgia by Gladys Judd, and Ramsay of Burntwood by Russell Reid.
In a more surprising move, the judges of the one-act stage play competition (also from the National Broadcasting Service) decided that none of the plays was of a sufficiently high standard to win first prize (£70), and that the two best plays were each to be awarded the equivalent of second prize (£30). These were Stop Press by Ian Ronald McLean and It is—to Live by Marguerite Thomas.
Entirely separate from these two competitions, and indeed from the Music and Drama Festival altogether, was a full-length play competition conducted as part of the literary competitions. The plays had to be of three acts, each act being about forty minutes. Fifty-odd entries were received, and were judged by Victoria University's former Professor of Modern Languages G.W. von Zedlitz (who, ironically for a centennial judge, during World War I had been deprived of his university position by a government more concerned about his German genes than his academic and public service to New Zealand). See Nelson Wattie, 'George von Zedlitz', in Chairman, Literary Committee, to Parry, 14 March 1940, IA 1, 62/9/3. G.W. von Zedlitz, 'Report on Plays', IA 1, 62/9/3. Chairman, Literary Committee, to Parry, 14 March 1940, IA 1, 62/9/3. See also IA 1, 62/104/4. Chairman, Literary Committee, to Parry, 14 March 1940, IA 1, 62/9/3.Eminent Victorians, Vincent O'Sullivan ed (Wellington: Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, 2000), pp.139-41.The Snare, by Janet McLeod, whose Te Mere-Pounamu won some praise in the Christchurch drama festival eliminations, but failed to advance to the provincial final. The next prize went to Audrey Leathes for Dark the Path, 'a good representative of another group of plays, those animated by a spirit of idealism'.
Walter Nash, closing the Centennial Drama Festival, was more directly disparaging of film.
'There is a great debt due to the repertory people throughout the Dominion and to the British Drama League for the splendid contribution they are making to the education and culture of our people,' said Mr. Nash. 'It is a magnificent contribution, because we are getting tired, and because we are satisfied with going to the brilliancy of the pictures, but unless we do get back as individuals and take from the past and built [sic] into the future what individuals can give in the form of the drama, then we will go back as a nation; we will go back as individuals.'
'Drama Final; Won By Canterbury; Wellington Second',
Evening Post, 27July 1940, p.20.
The reference here to 'what individuals can give' emphasises the educational value of drama in a democracy. Amateur participation was highly regarded, which may explain why so much more attention was given in these celebrations to performing plays than to writing them. It also partly explains why one-act plays were the focus of the celebrations. Many amateur drama societies, particularly the large urban repertory societies, regularly produced full-length plays (mainly recent West End comedy hits), but the BDL's focus on one-act play competitions throughout the 1930s had established a pattern for local, regional and national festivals. See Harcourt, A Dramatic Appearance, pp.49-75.
Other ideals were also being voiced. The
Otago Daily Times, for instance, praised those members of the amateur theatre who addressed 'topics of deep and vital interest' which the commercial theatre had abandoned: 'the amateur stage has not hesitated on occasions to explore these fields, and has thereby more than justified its existence'.Otago Daily Times, 13 July 1940, p. 10.Otago Daily Times editorial: 'it is to be hoped that with the conclusion of the Dominion-wide programme that has been arranged, widespread benefit will be derived by a cause whose complete fulfilment still awaits the establishment of a national theatre.'Otago Daily Times, 13 July 1940, p.l0.
When the government decided its general centennial policy in May 1936 the Tourist and Publicity Department received additional funding for the coming four years to promote the centennial abroad, but there was no suggestion of the inclusion of a feature film to celebrate the nation's first hundred years. The first task for the Hon Frank Langstone, the department's forceful minister, and Barry Gustafson, From the Cradle to the Grave: A biography of Michael Joseph Savage (Auckland: Penguin, 1986), pp.177-8, 285 (Langstone); Who's Who in New Zealand, Evening Post, 6 March 1980; Clive Sowry, 'Cyril James Morton', The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.4, 1921-1940 (Auckland: Auckland University Press/Department of Internal Affairs, 1998), pp.359-60.
The catalyst for what became
One Hundred Crowded Years was the screening in Sydney in early 1938 of the official film to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of New South Wales. Directed and produced by the internationally acclaimed film maker Frank Hurley, A Nation is Built played to enthusiastic audiences in Australia and was hailed as a 'living document of Australia's progress as a nation'.The Film Weekly, 17 February 1938, Tourism Office (TO) 1, 28/27, Pt 1.
Heenan viewed Heenan to Parry, 5 May 1938, TO 1, 28/27, Pt.l.A Nation is Built and was impressed with its Very high character'. But, as he reported to Parry, he was equally clear that 'the romance' of New Zealand's history combined with its beautiful scenery meant that an even more attractive documentary film could be made here. The film he had in mind would present a 'comprehensive Centennial pictorial survey depicting New Zealand's March to Nationhood'. If it were to be screened overseas before the centennial celebrations began it would attract overseas visitors to the country.
Langstone was enthusiastic about the possibility. He had grown up in the King Country, had been MP for Waimarino since 1922, and identified strongly with the
TO 1,28/27, Pt.l.
The government decided that a centennial film of about fifty minutes' duration would be made and the Tourist and Publicity Department would have charge of it. Schmitt's first problem was how to fit this new project into workloads that were already heavy, and he explored the possibility of getting one of the British film companies to make the film under contract to the department. His nationalistic feelings were nevertheless engaged because, of the two British companies he had in mind—Gaumont British and Fox Films—he preferred Fox Films because its editor-manager was a New Zealander and it had 'an excellent cameraman' who was also a New Zealander. A British company could also be expected to engage one or two leading actors and handle the film's distribution. Schmitt to Langstone, 21 February 1938, TO 1, 28/27, Pt.l.
Fenton's first thought was to tell the nation's story through three generations of a family. He turned to Nelle Scanlon's
Pencarrow novels for inspiration but found the idea too complex. He was influenced, too, by Wells Fargo, a popular American film about the taming of the West then doing the cinema rounds. He thought that its approach could be used to make a good 'romance' out of a shorter period of our history, but could not be made to work for a century.The Weekly News, 9 November 1938, p.14.Wells Fargo and other westerns exerted a strong influence on the screen drama—what Fenton referred to as the photoplay—that tells the story of the pioneer generation.
Fenton commissioned Michael Forlong, a young 2ZB announcer, to write a film script, and the result was, beyond any shadow of doubt, epic. It was a story in three parts: a salute to the pioneering generation; a calvalcade of progress from the gold rushes to the thriving nation of the day; and a depiction of the attributes of modern New Zealand that earned it the title of a world leader in the education, health, and welfare of its people. Bert Bridgman would direct the making of the film, and Cyril Morton supervise and edit it. Of scripting in the sense of dialogue there would be very little. Four brief scenes—two set in London and two in the bush—had dialogue between two actors, three had one actor speaking or singing
The opening section, which takes thirty of the film's fifty-four minutes, tells the story of the pioneer generation through the lives of Tom and Mary, who came to New Zealand as young settlers. The title of the film and the introductory credits are presented as the turning pages of a book. The stirring climax of Grieg's 'Homage March', provides a suitably solemn musical background to the film's dedication to the New Zealand pioneers
. . . who came forth from Britain's ordered ways to the wildness of an untouched land. Through trials and dangers they toiled and struggled to hew from the wilderness a fair heritage for their children—and they fulfilled their purpose. One hundred years have passed, and we who come after remember with grateful pride those brave men and women—our Pioneers.
One Hundred Crowded Years: New Zealand's Centennial,H. H. Bridgman ,Director, C.J. Morton , Editor and Supervisor, Government Film Studios, Miramar, May 1941
The action begins in a foggy London street with a young man declaring that England might be good enough for older people but it is not good enough for him: he wants to go to some far-off land of opportunity like New Zealand where there is
Sovereignty assured, scenes of agreeable shipboard life are the prelude to the arrival of settlers to a friendly Maori welcome on an empty beach. A preacher asks for God's help 'to bring out those qualities that lie within us', and the story then focuses on Tom and Mary creating their farm in the bush. Warmly evocative scenes, enhanced by tui birdcalls and bits of Dvorak's New World symphony, show Tom building their rough cottage in 'the virgin forest', the birth of their son, sheep safely grazing, and Tom and Mary soberly enjoying life in the wilderness and the early reward of their labours.
Then the mood of the film changes. The forest was giving way to the plough, the narrator says, 'but there was still a storm in men's hearts'. Just when Tom and Mary feel that they are getting on their feet, Tom begins to fear 'real trouble from the Maoris'. The wind picks up in the cabbage trees and clouds race across the sky. Scenes of Tom shearing and sharpening his shears alternate with Maori sharpening axes, blowing conch shells, and performing war dances. 'The sounds of war were being heard in the land,' the narrator intones. A preacher visits a kainga and
admonishes the warriors. 'No good ever came from fighting,' he warns them. 'Before the white man came you fought one with the other. There were burnings and killings ... But no good ever came of it.' His words fall on deaf ears. Chased from their land, Tom, Mary and their son flee to the safety of a fort where other settlers are gathering. The war party burns down their home and attacks the fort, but is repulsed by a thin
The rest of the film is in documentary form. The narrator becomes the film's personification, telling viewers what they are seeing and interpreting its significance in an unfolding depiction of the country's steadily increasing prosperity. That prosperity is rooted in the land itself. Refrigeration, the narrator declares, 'was perhaps the most important advance in the country's first hundred years'. Secondary industries were springing up but 'New Zealand exists in the land'. The country's material progress had been impressive: railways, bridges, roads and highways spanned it and aeroplanes had 'brought twentieth-century speed to a stone age land'. It had 'rushed forward from savagery to civilisation in one hundred crowded years', and its people 'would have been more than human if they had not made some mistakes'. Soil erosion had become an unexpected problem, but to 'take care of the land is to take care of our future' and governments in recent years had taken steps to replace forests, restrain rivers, and protect threatened farmland.
But what, the narrator asks, 'have we done for our people?' and he answers emphatically: 'We have done much!' New Zealand social legislation had 'amazed the world'. Land legislation provided opportunities for small farmers. Industrial law protected the legitimate interests of 'employers and their men'. New Zealand had been the first country to have universal suffrage and 'New Zealand women never had to be suffragettes'. Old age pensions had removed 'the fear of destitution in declining years'. Through Truby King's work 'New Zealand led the world' in infant welfare, and a benevolent state ensured that we remained in the forefront of social progress. The department of health 'is always watching over the health of the people'. Education was free and available from primary school to university, for all with 'ability and inclination'. The state housing department 'is carrying through a big national plan', and the houses it was building were 'not workers' houses but houses for people who work'.
Some problems nevertheless remained. The most important of these was the future of 'our Maori people', and several scenes showed how it was being tackled. At this point in the film the voice of the narrator is replaced by a distinguished Maori in a three-piece suit who is seated behind a large desk in a correspondingly large city office. It is Kingi Tahiwi senior, of Ngati Raukawa and Ngati Whakaue, one of the leading members of the Maori community in Wellington.
Dominion, 29 November 1940, p.9; Rupene M. T. Waaka, Tirimi Pererika Tahiwi', The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol.4, 1920-1940 (Auckland University Press, 1998), p.509.
His people, he says, identifying himself immediately as Maori, were still adapting to changes brought about by Europeans. There had been 'a long transition period' during which there were 'differences and disputes' but 'happily' those days were now past. Both races were working to bring about changes 'through mutual respect, goodwill, and cooperation'. But, he says, speaking with great emphasis, 'we must retain our individuality in some things', in our music, dancing, and arts and crafts,
One Hundred Crowded Years.
That completed the storyline. The film ended with shots of the Maori Battalion and Pakeha soldiers embarking for war and with multiple-image flashback shots of pioneer scenes accompanied by a repeat of the resounding chords of Grieg's 'Homage March'. Through it came the narrator's ringing invocation to New Zealanders to recapture the indomitable pioneering spirit.
But what is to be our future? Sadly, our first century finishes with conflict ravaging the world, conflict on a vast scale, conflict which we must rise to fight in 1940 with the same spirit in which we faced it in 1914. To secure the future we must first look to the present, taking courage from the past. Will we of this generation lay as good a foundation for New Zealand's second century as our pioneers did for us? They knew fears, and with hope they laid aside those fears and struggled on through a thousand trials and vicissitudes. Their very purpose breeds a challenge which we in the knowledge of their deeds carry on into a new century to face a new and
striving future with the undaunted spirit that was theirs, to leave to our children that precept that our pioneers have left to us. May God grant that we shall not fail them. Ibid.
Filming began in November 1938 to make the most of the summer months. Bridgman and Morton had four technicians in their production crew, and they had two large, modern camera trucks, sound equipment recently imported from Hollywood for 'its first major job', and a bare studio. Actors were yet to be signed up, period costumes found or sewn, studio sets built, and suitable locations found for scenes to be shot in natural surroundings.
Apart from some of the actors who were at the time working on Rudall Hayward's
Rewi's Last Stand, there was no one in the country with experience of film acting. Radio personalities with experience of amateur dramatics or radio plays were commissioned to play the main roles. Bob Pollard, a 3ZB announcer who had recently toured the country with Gladys Moncrieff's Musical Comedy Company, played the part of Tom, the young pioneer. Mary, his wife, was played by Una Weller, who had played parts in radio drama. Captain Hobson was played by Bryan O'Brienn, well known to ZB listeners for his children's talks.New Zealand Listener, 13 December 1940, p.50.
Bridgman received much willing help with costumes and props and, in places where the filming was done, amateur theatrical groups lent costumes. Una Weller made her own bonnet, collar, and cuffs. Fenton to Schmidt, 24 February 1939, TO 1, 28/27, Pt.3.
TO 1,28/27/3, passim.New Zealand Listener, 13 December 1940, p.50.
Outside filming began at Mt Maunganui with beach scenes showing the arrival of the settlers. The pioneering sequence in which Tom and Mary establish themselves in the bush and the scenes of Maori preparations for war were shot in a disused sawmill settlement at Oripi on the way from Tauranga to Rotorua.
TO 1,28/27/3, passim.New Zealand Listener, 13 December 1940, p.50; The Weekly News, 9 November 1938, p.14; New Zealand Centennial News (NZCN), no.15, 6 February 1941, p.18.
Then the production team ran into problems. In its final form the film would have hundreds of 'fades' and 'dissolves' where one scene merged with another. But the studio was not equipped to make them, TO 1, 49/11/1, unsigned, undated office minute. John Grierson to Evening Post, 6 March 1980.
A working copy was ready for viewing in October 1940.
New Zealand Truth, 12 July 1940.
One Hundred Crowded Years had its first screening in the Tivoli Theatre, across the road from parliament, on 28 November 1940, before the Governor General and Lady Galway, the Prime Minister, several ministers and members of parliament, and prominent citizens. Langstone introduced it by stressing what for him were well-rehearsed themes. The film 'portrayed the progress of a century/ It emphasised the 'hardships and tribulations' of the pioneers 'whose beneficiaries we are'. It was a 'tribute' to the Maori people. The audience applauded enthusiastically during the scenes of the great war canoe escorting Hobson's whaleboat to Waitangi and the Maori Battalion marching to war.Dominion, 29 November 1940, p.9.
The report in the
Dominion of the occasion praised the excellent photography, the skilful directing of the London, shipboard, and Waitangi sequences, and the beauty of the bush and mountain scenes. The scenes it found 'most appealing', however, were the ones showing the young pioneer couple setting themselves up in the bush. The review in the New Zealand Listener was luke-warm: the film, J.G. wrote, had its 'faults and some merits'. In trying to cram one hundred years into 'sixty crowded minutes' it had tried to do too much. Some parts of the story had
New Zealand Listener, 13 December 1940, pp.50-1.
The official announcement of the film in
Trade Commissioner Sydney to General Manager, Tourist and publicity, 8 April 1940, TO, 28/27/3.New Zealand Centennial News was not admitting to any doubts. 'New Zealanders have good cause to feel proud of the Centennial film, which thoroughly justifies its title.' It was a film that would please audiences in all British Commonwealth countries and the United States.NZCN, no. 15, 6 February 1941, p. 16.
Nor was the film released commercially in New Zealand. IA1, 172/126/6 Pts.1-2. Ibid., Pt.l, passim.
Religious objections were largely met by arranging public screenings on week-night evenings in places where theatres were not in commercial use. Two copies of the film were taken on nationwide itineraries that began in May 1941 and continued until the end of 1942, when one copy was sent to the Middle East to be screened for New Zealand servicemen and women. Appropriately, the first screening was in the Capitol Theatre, Miramar, on 7 May to a matinee audience of school children. The public screenings drew very small attendances and 90% of the film's takings of £1209 13s l0d were from captive audiences of school children. Ibid., Pt.2, passim.
The eighteen months when One Hundred Crowded Years was being shown around the country were New Zealanders most anxious months of the Second World
One Hundred Crowded Years had nevertheless done very effectively what had been expected of it, Bridgman and Morton had made the most of their well developed ability to capture the beauty of New Zealand scenery. Fenton had done pretty well, too, in concealing the technical limitations of actors who were making their first film. The centennial film told a story that Pakeha found compelling and uplifting: of well intentioned pioneers winning their way with Maori, some of whom had initially been misguided; of a century of spectacular development; of the emergence of a progressive modern nation; and of a coming together of Maori and Pakeha whose differences and disputes were now a thing of the past. One Hundred Crowded Years burnished the Pakeha public image of themselves in their centennial year.
The commemoration of the centennial in 1940 was a big event in New Zealand. The centrepiece, the Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai in Wellington, lasted for six months and attracted some 2.6 million visitors. There were large ceremonies at Petone on Wellington's anniversary, and at Waitangi on February 6, and in towns and provincial centres throughout the country. Hundreds dressed up in colonial costume, cleaned up the bullock drays and pit saws and paraded through the streets. Christchurch's procession on April 6 was two miles long.
New Zealand Centennial News (NZCN), no.14, 15 August 1940, pp.3, 17, 20.
Other occasions attracted smaller, if perhaps more educated, audiences. These marked the opening of the centennial art exhibition, the centennial concerts, the national drama competitions, the first showing of the centennial film A Hundred Crowded Years; and the launching of a whole series of publications including a thirty-part pictorial, Making New Zealand, book-length surveys on aspects of New Zealand life, and a Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.
A great deal of social energy and public investment went into commemorating the centennial; New Zealanders took stock of themselves and attempted to come to grips with their history and identity. This opens up a way of reading the value system of the society at that point in time. Of course popular enthusiasm should not necessarily be read as endorsement for the big ideas of the centennial. People attended the centennial fair primarily for the fun of Playland rather than the more serious displays. They remembered the great white shark, the Jack and Jill, and the Cyclone roller coaster, the Crazy House, the mock Crown jewels—not the speeches or the government department courts. This was high entertainment, a Hollywood spectacular, in a world just emerging from the restrictions of the depression. We must also remember that the 1940 commemorations were very much a deliberate act of propaganda. Five years in the planning, with a considerable public investment, they represented a self-conscious effort to proclaim and reinforce a national value system; we need to read the values made explicit in the centennial events with this in mind.
It is also true that there was some explicit opposition to the commemorations of
In the year of centennial splendours There were fireworks and decorated cars And pungas drooping from verandahs — But no-one remembered our failures. Denis Glover, 'Centennial', in
Enter without Knocking(Christchurch: Pegasus, 1964), p.37.
But outside the Maori community, such dissent was rare, and in general few indeed remembered the failures. The overwhelming tone of the centennial was pride. Listen to the MP for Stratford speaking at the introduction of the Centennial Bill in 1938:
The bill provides for . . . the celebration of one hundred years of progress in this wonderful Dominion in which we have the good fortune to live. The history of those hundred years is amazing, and one which has never been outshone in any other country. Ours is one of the brightest gems in the Pacific: a real pacific haven away from the troubles of a distracted older world.
New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD),vol.253, p.450.
Not a soul laughed.
It is also worth noting that the momentum of the celebrations was such that they were barely affected by the outbreak of war. Only a few events were cancelled, mainly in Auckland. Most of the major events were held, partly because the values they were designed to inculcate were thought to be even more relevant in a war situation.
The pageantry, monuments, publications, and public occasions of the centennial provide us with a unique window into New Zealand identity in 1940. Here was a moment when Pakeha New Zealanders, or at least those in positions of authority, quite self-consciously sought to give concrete form to a nation's ideals, traditions and values. So let us look at those values.
The most revealing fact was that few of the Pakeha population saw the centennial year primarily as a commemoration of the Treaty of Waitangi; and even fewer as an opportunity to consider the obligations imposed by that treaty. It is true that by contrast with the jubilee in 1890, when the Treaty was barely mentioned, there was a major ceremony at Waitangi on 6 February 1940. But this was just one of many re-enactments. It is also true that much energy went into the building of the Whare Runanga at Waitangi; but the way this was viewed by Pakeha opinion-makers can be judged by the comment of the Minister of Internal Affairs,
NZCN, no.l, 15 August 1938, p.5.
In fact Parry's hopes were misplaced. Both Te Puea and the Maori King boycotted the Waitangi hui on the grounds that the raupatu had not been settled and because the King had not been exempt from registering for social security.D Nga Puhi sitting in front of the stage displayed red blankets in protest at the compulsory acquisition of 'surplus lands' in North Auckland. When Sir Apirana Ngata spoke he thanked the Government for Maori inclusion in the anniversary, and concluded with the comment, 'In the whole of the world I doubt whether any native race has been so well treated by a European people as the Maori in New Zealand/ But between these tributes to Pakeha came a different sentiment from Ngata:
Where are we today? I do not know of any year that the Maori people approached with so much misgiving as the New Zealand Centennial year. In retrospect, what did the Maori see? Lands gone, the powers of the chief crumbled in the dust, Maori culture scattered—broken. What remains at the end of the one hundred years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Your Excellency? What remains of all the fine things said then?
NZCN,no.13, 1 April 1940, pp.6-7.
And there were Maori protests in Taranaki and Akaroa. At Akaroa on 20 April 1940 the proclamation of British sovereignty in the South Island was re-enacted, and as the Union Jack ran up the flag pole Ngai Tahu murmured, 'Way goes the Maori land. Now the Pakeha govern the place.' Ibid., no.14, 15 August 1940, p.3.
But few Pakeha heard these protests. Newspaper comments on Ngata's speech played up his positive remarks, not his expression of grievance; For example,
Weekly News, 14 February 1940, p.47.Evening Post, 7 February 1940.NZCN, no.13, 1 April 1940, p.34.
Strenuous efforts were therefore made to avoid reminding people of conflict. When the idea of restaging the battle of Onawe on Banks Peninsula was mooted, Parry commented: 'One of the main purposes of the Centennial celebrations was to show that the Maori and the Pakeha had left behind them the few old disputes which occasionally led to bloodshed, and were linked now in friendliness to assure an
Ibid., no.6, 25 February 1939, p.4.Settlers and Pioneers.
There were three ways in which the Pakeha represented the Maori in the events of 1940. First they were romanticised as the Old-time Maori, to give some sense of tradition and mystery to New Zealand's otherwise too short history. This approach was especially marked in the pictorial survey, Making New Zealand, in which the whole issue devoted to the Maori confined its attention to the pre-European cMaori as he was'. At its worst, traditional Maori culture was used simply to add exotic and sentimental colour to the New Zealand image for tourist purposes. The exhibition poster of 1938 showed a Maori maiden swinging poi in an alluring pose outside the exhibition buildings. The centennial emblem included a Maori whare, which Sir Apirana Ngata pointed out portrayed the doorway at the centre of the house— something unknown in any whare in the country. Such was the superficial character of the commitment to Maori culture.
The second theme was that of the Maori as great explorers, who as pioneers in their own right could claim a kinship with their Anglo-Saxon countrymen. The centennial issue of stamps, for example, included one depicting the Maori landing on Aotearoa (1s 2d) to accompany the portrayal of the Pakeha landing at Petone (3d). At the exhibition there stood a dramatic image of Kupe, the 'Maori Cook', at the head of the main reflecting pool. This attribution to the Maori of Anglo-Saxon virtues was a throwback to Edward Tregear's 'the Aryan Maori'. See K.R. Howe, Singer in a Songless Land: A Life of Edward Tregear (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991).
Third, there was an attempt to show the progress of the Maori from a stone age people to modern New Zealanders fully integrated into Pakeha civilisation. During the 1938 debate on the centennial bill, Sir Apirana Ngata jokingly suggested that what was needed was a display of Maori 'dressed in plus-fours and caps, carrying golf-clubs' which could be happily contrasted with tattooed heads in the background.
NZPD, vol.253, p.453.Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition (Wellington: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, 1940), p.57.
Given that quite a number of Maori challenged such comfortable claims, it is worth asking why the Pakeha continued to make them. The major reason was that the Maori were barely visible to the Pakeha and so were simply not considered a threat. The number of Maori people at the census of 1936 was about 80,000, 82,326 specified themselves as half or more Maori or did not specify a percentage (Census of New Zealand, 1936).
If the Treaty and Maori rights were not the primary focus of the centennial celebrations, there was little debate about what was: they were intended as a tribute to the noble pioneers. Numerous opinion-makers were quite explicit about this—
Ibid., no.2, 30 September 1938, p.14.NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.3.
Many of the centennial memorials were dedicated to the pioneers, or were explicitly called 'pioneer memorials'. Wellington's Hall of Memories on Petone foreshore opened on Anniversary Day 1940. Its art deco entrance was inscribed: 'This memorial was erected to commemorate the achievement of the pioneer and the first 100 years of progress in the Province of Wellington.' Elsewhere a high proportion of the memorials were parks or swimming baths, where people could regain, through exercise and the outdoor life, the strength of the pioneer. The pageants and parades always included men and women- in pioneer costume, with perhaps a bullock wagon or a pit saw to remind onlookers of the physical hardships of the
previous century.
As for the Centennial Exhibition, the foundation stone described it as 'commemorating the dauntless courage of our pioneer men and women'. Palethorpe, Ibid., p.50.
Official History, p.33.A Hundred Crowded Years also evoked the struggles of pioneering: the long voyage out to a distant empty land; men and women riding into dense bush; then the chopping of the trees and the gradual
NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.17.
This vision of a people of sterling British stock braving high seas, bush and fierce Maori, was at the heart of the pioneer ideal. The intention was not simply to pay a nostalgic tribute, but to encourage a revival of the 'pioneering spirit Michael King, Ibid., no.11, 30 September 1939, p.l.Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), pp.202-5.
And here we come to a major contradiction in the New Zealand value system of 1940. If the pioneer spirit should be revived, the conditions which had given birth to that spirit very definitely should not. The second major theme of virtually all the celebrations was material progress; and pioneer hardships were to be displayed as much to show how far New Zealanders had travelled, as to imbue an admiration for the nation's forefathers and mothers. A Whiggish view of settlers conquering a 'virgin' land with hard work and modern technology lay behind much of the centennial propaganda. This was the message of the centennial film, Ibid., no.15, 6 February 1941, p.27.A Hundred Crowded Years, and it was strongly represented in the pictorial surveys, with issues on such subjects as communications, railways, farming, and industry, all showing the 'on-rush' of technological improvements. Transport improvements seem to have been an especially powerful symbol in 1940. The fourpenny centennial stamp illustrated 'the progress of transport' from bullock team to train, ship and aircraft; while the centennial medal issued by the Numismatic Society showed on one side a Maori canoe and on the other a modern ship and flying-boat under the inscription '1840— A Century of Progress£1940'.
The Centennial Exhibition itself was also a physical demonstration of advancing material progress. The strong lines of the buildings showed the possibilities of modern
Palethorpe, NZCN, no.4, 10 December 1938, p.2.Official History, p.41.
Here we encounter yet another unresolved tension in the value system of New Zealanders in 1940, between material progress and natural beauty. For beneath the Dominion Court was a model of the Waitomo Caves, a physical display of 'beautiful New Zealand'; and much of the centennial year publicity promoted the country as a tourist's paradise. There was much emphasis upon New Zealand's native trees as a focus of national pride and identity. The minister in charge of the centennial, Ibid., no.8, 29 April 1939, p.l; see also no.4, 10 December 1938, p.l. Ibid., no.15, 6 February 1941, p.l9.Centennial News on the need for New Zealanders 'to form strong enduring friendships with forests'.The Deepening Stream, pointed out the contradiction between unabashed enthusiasm for material progress and the worship of the scenic wonderland of the South Pacific.The Deepening Stream: Cultural Influences in New Zealand, (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1940).
It is worth asking why these contradictions were not obvious to New Zealanders in 1940. It was probably because that generation had experienced vividly the gains of material progress but had not yet become aware of the cost. Over the previous 20 years a series of inventions had transformed everyday life: electrical power, the radio, the automobile, the refrigerator, the telephone. Most of these had been invented before the First World War, but they only became common parts of New Zealanders' experience in the years after that war. In addition, the economic depression of the 1930s had made New Zealanders only too aware by default of the material comforts of modern life. For many the hardships of the pioneer recalled their own experience in the years of the depression. On the other hand, some of the negative effects of technological progress—atomic bombs, pollution—had yet to become fully visible; and electricity promised a clean efficient source of power which would free people
For my next theme let us begin at the Centennial Exhibition. Most visitors of course made straight for the Crazy House, the Jack and Jill, and the Cyclone roller coaster in Playland. Some visited the Dominion Court and the Waitomo Caves. Perhaps on a third or fourth visit, they might make it to the Government Court, a mammoth display of over 100,000 sq ft. There were displays of material progress and displays put on by the Department of Agriculture, Industries and Commerce. Defence provided a sense of the Gallipoli tradition. Eventually a visitor might reach the Health Department display. Its theme was The Healthy Family'; and it took the form of a visit to a walking talking robot doctor, Dr Well-and-strong. Dr Well-and-strong conducted visitors from the waiting room and around the display. There were helpful hints for good health and finally 'the Healthy Family in the Happy Home' exhibit. 'Here is seen a charming home in a beautifully laid-out grounds and a garden with fountain playing on the lawn, etc. Two of the children are riding about on tricycles, and while "father" is occupied with the cutting of the lawn, "mother" appears on the verandah with afternoon tea. This scene is used by the doctor as the basis for a talk on life with a capital "L".'
Official Guide to the Government Court (Wellington: Government Printer, 1939), pp.11-12.
Two sets of implicit values are worth exploring here. The first is the idealisation throughout the celebrations of the bourgeois nuclear family. Women get plenty of attention in the anniversary year, but consistently in the role of wife and homemaker. The centennial surveys, for example, included a volume on women by Helen Simpson which celebrates the colonial wife. There are chapters on wives of missionaries, wives on board ship, wives of pioneeers who 'tackled the new life ... with a kind of proud glee', wives of affluent settlers. Helen M. Simpson, The Women of New Zealand, (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940).
Among the centennial memorials, too, women's perceived interests were well represented. Of the 257 approved memorials, thirty-five were Plunket rooms or Ladies' rest rooms.
Ibid., p.3NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.19.
That this was the ideal of the New Zealand woman in 1940 is entirely comprehensible—for it largely accorded with the situation of Pakeha women in New Zealand. The vast majority of adult women were married; and of married women only 3.7% were in full-time employment in 1936—compared with 10% in Britain, 15% in the US. The union fight for the family wage was premised on the idea of a man supporting his wife and children and this was reinforced by the introduction of a 'family allowance' in 1926. In the relatively small cities there were few opportunities for careers for single professional women. The depression cut off some work opportunities for women and reinforced the protective ideal of the domestic circle. Women's 'home-work'—bottling pears or making marmalade according to Aunt Daisy—paid off at a time when manufactured goods were comparatively expensive. So the ideal of the domestically based woman was only part myth in 1940—it accorded also with experience.
The second ideal represented by the Government Court was of course the beneficence of government activity itself. The initiative for the celebration came from government and under the New Zealand Centennial Act of 1938 control of the year was vested in government. Three departments were involved—Internal Affairs, dealing with celebrations and memorials; Industries and Commerce, dealing with the exhibition; and Tourist and Publicity, which was responsible for advertising the events. Internal Affairs issued a magazine,
New Zealand Centennial News; and the minister, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, p.448.
The Centennial Exhibition was organised by a limited liability company, but it received an investment of £75,000 from the government, which also invested heavily in the Government Court. There, government was represented as the promoter of
Michael King, Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), pp.202-5.
Again this reflected reality. Arguably, the 1940s represented the high point of public acceptance of the role of government. The welfare state measures of the 1930s, climaxing with the Social Security Act, had shortly been followed by a massive marshalling of state control during the emergence of war. Belief in the value of government activity was also of course a ruling ideal of the Labour Party, and to a considerable extent the Centennial Exhibition, like many of the publications, was designed to promote and display that ideal.
The final value expressed in the 1940 centennial concerns New Zealand's sense of itself in the world. Let us begin with the state luncheon in Parliament to celebrate the centennial. The speaker was the Deputy Prime Minister, Peter Fraser. He took as his text something Samuel Marsden had written a hundred years before: 'On Sunday morning I saw the English flag flying, which was a pleasing sight in New Zealand. I considered it was the signal and dawn of civilisation, liberty, and religion, and never viewed the English colours with more gratification.'
Ibid., 25 January 1940.Evening Post, 24 January 1940.Evening Post proclaimed, 'the achievements of democracy would never have been possible had the young colony, from its earliest years right up to the present, not been sheltered and protected by the might of Britain'.
The centennial was conceived as a way of reinforcing and making explicit New Zealand nationalism. Yet one is immediately struck by how large a part the mother country played within this national definition. 1940 signified, not just the signing of a treaty with Maori, nor a century of settlement and government, but also a hundred years of membership in the British Empire. At the exhibition the first building you saw after entering at the main gates was the United Kingdom court, and there was barely an opening or an unveiling where either the Governor General or the British Government's special representative at the centennial, Lord Willingdon, was not present. Lord Willingdon himself commented shortly before his departure, 'Wherever I have been I have found New Zealand as British as ever before.' Ibid., 7 February 1940. Ibid., 31 January 1940.
These are the major themes of the centennial of 1940: a century of good race
Rachel Barrowman is a Wellington researcher, whose latest publication is Mason: The life of R. A. K. Mason.
Roger Blackley teaches art history at Victoria University of Wellington. His publications include studies of the paintings of Alben Martin, Alfred Sharpe, and Charles Goldie.
David Carnegie teaches in the School of Film, Drama and English at Victoria University of Wellington
Jim Collinge was until 2004 Associate Dean (Students), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington.
Patrick Day teaches in the School of Education, University of Waikato, and is the author of Radio Years and Voice and Vision, his two-volume history of broadcasting in New Zealand.
Sue Dunlop is a Wellington performer. Her thesis for her M.A. degree focused on women in New Zealand theatre 1920-1950.
Lawrence Jones is an emeritus professor of the University of Otago. His most recent publication on New Zealand writing is Picking up the Traces: The making of a New Zealand literary culture 1932-1945.
Bernard Kernot, a former senior lecturer in Maori studies, Victoria University of Wellington, has published widely on Maori art.
John E. Martin is an historian in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. His most recent publications include Holding the Balance: A history of New Zealand's Department of Labour 1891-1995, and The House: New Zealand's House of Representatives, 1854-2004.
Malcolm Mackinnon is a Wellington historian. His recent publications include The New Zealand Historical Atlas, Ko Papatuanuku e Takoto Nei, which he edited, and Treasury: The New Zealand Treasury, 1840-2000.
Gavin McLean, senior historian, Ministry for Culture and Heritage, has recently published heritage guides to Oamaru and Dunedin, is co-editing a history of New-Zealand, and is writing histories of the Office of Governor General and of the Tasman Express Line
Jock Phillips has been chief historian in the Department of Internal Affairs and more recently in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, where he is now general editor of Te Ara: The online encyclopedia of New Zealand.
William Renwick organised the Stout Research Centre's conference on the 1940 Centennial celebrations and edited this book.
Sydney J. Shep, senior lecturer in Print & Book Culture, Victoria University of Wellington, has research interests in New Zealand print culture and Wellington's book trade.
Russell Stone is an emeritus professor of history, University of Auckland. From Tamaki-makarau to Auckland is the most recent of his many books and other publications on aspects of Auckland's history.
Allan Thomas teaches in the School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington. His book Music in the Town of Hawera, 1946: An historical ethnography was published recently.
William Toomath has practised as an architect for half a century and was director of the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design during the 1980s. His publications include Built in New Zealand: The houses we live in.
Shirley Tunnicliff's writings on Nelson history include Response to a Vision: A history of the Nelson School of Music, and an edition of the letters of Mary Hobhouse.
A Hundred Crowded Years 276-7
A Nation is Built 256
Abbott, R. Atkinson 132, 135
Acheson, Judge 107
Achilles, HMS 93
Adult Education 83
'Agriculture' 45
Air Department 58
Alley, G.T.I 72
Angus, Rita 227
Anscombe, Edmund 28-9, 32-3, 39-43, 87
Arawa see Te Arawa
Ashwin, B. 17
Atkins & Mitchell 28
Aubert, Rev Mother 83
Auckland Art Gallery 228
Auckland Historical Research Committee 129-30
Auckland Judean Theatre 250-1
Auckland Musical Council 85
Auckland Provincial Centennial Council 112, 131,133, 135
Auckland Repertory Theatre 250, 255
Auckland University College 131
Aunt Daisy 77
Australian Pavilion 48, 49, 224
Averill, Archbishop 116, 120
Baillie, Isobel 238
Bank of New South Wales 27
Bankart, Alfred 132
Barrjohn 128,129
Basham, Maud (Aunt Daisy) 77
Batterbee, Sir Harry 281
Baxter, Kenneth McLean 201
Bay of Plenty Centennial Committee 113
Beaglehole, Ernest and Pearl 181,182-3,186
Beatty, Raymond 238
Beccham, Sir Thomas 238-9
Bel Geddes, N. 41
Bell, Cheviot 274
Bennett, Bishop 115
Black, Meri 74
Blake, Elizabeth 246-7
Bledisloe, Lord and Lady 68, 99, 102, 103-4
Blomfield, William 227
Bohemian Male Choir 237
Booth, Leonard H. 226
Borrie,W.S. (Mick) 156
Bradshaw, Kitty 74
Brasch, Charles 216-7
Bridgman, Bert 261-2
Britannia 100
British Drama League 85, 86, 247, 250, 253
Broadcasts to Schools 83
Brown, Deirdre 67
Brown, Nina 142
Buck 101
Buckman, Rosina 242
Burnham, Daniel 48
Bush Bluey 91
Byrd, Admiral 35
Cadbury Fry Hudson 27
Campbell, John Logan 128,132,133,137,140
Campbell Trust 136
Camper, Willie 91
Canada 33
Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society 252, 254, 255
Capitol Theatre, Miramar 269
Carey, Rosalie 252-3
Castle Tea 36 Caxton Press 201-2
Celebrity Concerts 84
Centennial Atlas 149-58
Centennial Bill 273
Centennial Council 104
Centennial Drama Festival 86
Centennial Exhibition 272, 276, 277-8
Centennial Exhibition of International and New Zealand Art 224-5
Centennial Festival Orchestra 238, 239
Centennial Fountain 44
Centennial Games 30
Centennial Historical Surveys 161-75
'Centennial House' 166
Centennial Memorial Park Board 131
Centennial Memorial to the Native Race 66
Centennial Music Committee 84, 233, 235, 237, 239
Centennial Music Festival 84
Centennial Symphony Orchestra 244
Changing Land, The 181
Chappell, Rev A.B. 83, 129, 164, 167, 183
Chicago Exhibition 48
Christchurch Exhibition (1906-7) 64
Christchurch Musical Society 238
Christchurch Teachers Training College 252
Clements, Thomas 134
Columbian Exhibition 48
Cook, James 228
Coronation of King George VI 226
Coster, Ian 242
Coulls Somerville Wilkie 27
Country Womens' Institute 246
Courage, James 243
Coventry, Frederick H. 223
Cowan, James 128, 163, 168-9, 182, 208-9
Crichton, McKay & Haughton 28, 51
Crowther, Frank 268
Curnow, Allen 99-100, 217-18, 244
Cyclone roller coaster 91
Deans, Austen 223
Department of Agriculture 279
Department of Education 61-2
Department of Health 58-9, 279
Department of Industries and Commerce 279
Department of Internal Affairs 142
Department of Lands and Survey 151
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography 139-47
Dillon Bell, Sir Francis 102
Diomede, HMS 103
Dominion Breweries 27
Dominion Motors 27
Double Grip Tubular Steel Amusement Devices Company 88-9, 90
Dowling, Denis 242
Drummond, Emma 74
Duff, Oliver 19, 82-3, 85, 100, 144, 151,167, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 183, 188, 194-5, 213-4
Duggan, Eileen 142, 209-10, 211
Dunedin, HMS 103
Dunedin International Exhibition see New-Zealand & South Seas Exhibition
Dustin the Pieman 94
Eastbourne Borough Council 30
Easterfield, Thomas 167
Everybody, Fred and Maggie 80
Exhibition Hall 70-1
Exhibition Restaurant Cafeteria 93
Faust 238
Federated Catholic Clubs and Societies of New Zealand 83
Fildes, Horace 163
Film Operators Union 269
Filmcraft Studios 260
Foden, Dr N.A. 121
Foot Comfort Station 94
Forbes Edie, R. 129
Forlong, Michael 261
Founders' Society 274
Founding of New Zealand, The (Rutherford) 131
Fox Films 261
Fraser,Peter 62, 63, 78, 108-9, 110, 118, 123, 281
Freyberg, General 35
Fuller, Edwin Murray 224
Fuller, Mary Murray 222, 224-5, 226, 229-
30 Funk Hole, The 252
Gadd, Frank 217
Galway, Dr 233,237
Galway, Lord 35, 56, 106, 108-9, 118, 122, 123, 124, 230
Gamble, Pat 90
General Assembly Library 141
General Motors 27
Gladys Moncrieff's Musical Comedy Company 266
Glasgow Empire Exhibition 87-8
Glover, Denis 217-18, 219, 201-2, 273
God Defend New Zealand 236-7
God Save the King 237
Government Court 45, 54-63, 278, 280
Government Printer 45
Government Printing Office 200-01
Grafton Shakespeare and Dramatic Club 250
Graham, George 128
Gray, Morton & Young 28
Grierson, John 267
Gross, Richard 132, 134, 135-6
Gunson, Lucy 74
Guthrie-Smith, Herbert 179-80, 181, 214
Haddon, Oriwa T. 223
Haines, Charles 92
Hainsworth, Charles P. 26, 34, 35, 89, 93
Hall of Memories, Petone 276
Hall of Progress 58
Hamilton, Harold 68
Hannahs 27
Hart, Frank 82
Harvey, Judge 69
Hauraki 137
Hayward, Rudall 266
Heketa, Miriama 74
Henare, James 110
Herangi, Princess Te Puea see Te Puea
Highland Fling 89
Hight, Dr James 164,233
Highway to Health and Happiness 59-60
Hill, Gladstone 237
Hill, Mabel 227
Hislop, T.C.A 13, 25, 26, 27, 34, 276
Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs 202-3
Hobson, Captain William 105, 121, 130
Hodgkins, Frances 227
Hoggard, N.F. 210
Hollinrake, Professor 233
Holmwood 31
Hongi Hika, Hare 68
Horsley, Colin 242
Hotel Arcadia 31
Housing Construction Department 58
Howell Family 80
Huntsman, Clifford 238
Hutcheson, Wilson & Co 28
ICI 27
Illingworth, Bill 82
Industrial Court 80
International Labour Organisation 60-1
Jackson, T. 66
James Smiths Ltd 36
Johns, Bernard 45
Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 158
Judd, Gladys 255
Kane, Blake and Amy 247
Kanini 137
Kapua, Eramiha 68
Kawiti 107
Kawiti, Riri Maihi 102
Kelburn Park 44
Kemp purchase 122
King Edward Barracks 238
King, Frederic Truby 264
King George V 25
Kippenberger, Howard 167
Labour Department 60-1
Labour Government (1935-49) 18, 54-5,133
Langstone, Frank 16, 66, 71-2, 114-15, 122, 124, 260-1
Larkins, Polly 74
Lascelles, Frank 128
Laughing Sailor 90
Lay, Edwin 90
Le Lievre, E.X. 123
Leathes, Audrey 256
Lee, John A. 164
Left Book Club 247
Lingard, F. 156
Liston, Bishop 116
Louisiana Purchase Exhibition 47-8
Lowry, Bob 202
McCarthy, Beryl 209
MacDonald, May 255
McEwen S.V. 184-5
MacKay, Ian K. 78
McKay, Richard Alexander 201
McKeefry, Fr 129
McLean, Cliff 82
McLean, Ian Ronald 255
McLintock, Dr Alexander Hare 18, 146, 178,
Mahuta,Te Rata 102
Maioha, Sam 158
Maketu Centennial Committee 113
Making New Zealand 178-90
Maori, The 181-2
Maori Battalion 104
Maori Ethnological Board 101
Maori Pioneer Battalion 101
Maori Purposes Trust Fund 151
Marsh, Ngaio 253
Maruera, Tupito 158
Marutuahu confederation 137
Mason, Bruce 217
Massey, Horace L. 118
Massey, William Fergusson 140
Matanga 129
Mathew, Felton 130
Maupakanga, Ranui 65
Metekingi, Lorna 74
Mexican Rose 90-1
Midgley, E.A. 215
Millar, Nola 254
Miller, Harold 180
Mills, James 140
Minhinnick, Gordon 109
Mitchell, G. 89
Mokaraka, Hohaia (Joe) 71
Moriori 114
Morris, Moana 74
Mount Stewart 277
Mount Victoria 277
Mt Maunganui 266
Murphy, Thomas 93
Murray, Stella 242
Muston, Ronald 46
'Mystery Man' competition 93
Nanto-Bordelaise Company 121, 123
Nash, Heddle 238
Nash, Walter 34, 62, 118, 255-6
National Art Gallery 224, 228, 230
National Broadcasting Service (NBS) 77-8, 233
National Broadcasting Service String Orchestra 85
National Centennial Committee 150, 151
National Centennial Council 116
National Centennial Exhibition of New-Zealand Art 222-3, 225
National Centennial Historical Committee 164
National Centennial Music Committee 250
National Centennial Symphony Orchestra 85
National Commercial Broadcasting Service 35, 77-8, 81
National Eucharistic Congress 116
National Film Unit 260
National Historical Committee 130, 139, 142
National Maori Centennial Celebrations Committee 66-7
National Party 17
National Patriotic Fund Board 237, 269
National Symphony Orchestra 244
National Thanksgiving Day 116
NBS studio 78
NCBS studio 78
New York World's Fair 50
New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts 224
New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition 13, 39, 46-7
New Zealand Brains Abroad 84
New Zealand Centennial Beauty Competition 80
New Zealand Centennial Drama Festival 244-57
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Act 1938 31-2
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company 25-6, 27, 33-4, 36, 87-8
New Zealand Centennial March 236
New Zealand Centennial News 280
New Zealand Company 117
New Zealand Council for Educational Research 199, 200
New Zealand Listener, The 19, 82-3, 85; see
also Duff, Oliver
New Zealand Now 100
New Zealand Railways 46
Newlands Women's Institute Drama Circle 252
Ngaitai 137
Ngata, Sir Apirana 15, 16, 65, 66, 67-9, 71-2,
73-4, 100, 101, 102-5, 107-9, 113, 115,
122, 124, 134, 158, 181-2, 173-4, 210, 273, 275
Ngata, Henare 74
Ngati Haua 133
Ngati Hine 65
Ngati Kahu 65
Ngati Maniapoto 158
Ngati Maru 133
Ngati Otatautahi 122
Ngati Poneke Young Maori Association 66, 71
Ngati Raukawa 264
Ngati Tama-te-ra 137
Ngati Whakaue 265
Northland Players 250
Numismatic Society 277
NZ Radio Record 247
O'Brienn, Bryan 266
Odell, R.M. 151-2
Onawe 274
One Hundred Crowded Years 260-70
One Hundred Years 83
Oripi 266
Orpheus Choir 241
Otaki Maori Racing Club 73 Our Early Colonists 83
Overseas Shipowners' Allotment Committee 27
Page, Frederick 244
Paikea, Paraire 122
Paora, Umaro 81-2
Pascoe, John D. 142, 151-2, 154, 165, 178,
Pascoe, Paul 185
Paul J.T. 164
Paul, Lou 81-2
People's Theatre 247
Petone commemorations 117-21
Petone Hall of Memories 276
Petone Recreation Ground 118-19
Phillips, Dr W.J. 125
Pioneer Men/Women 44-5
Pipes and Drums of Wellington City 235
Pipiwharau 122
Pirihi, Te Hatu 124
Pito-one 117
Plays for Country Women 247
Plunket Rooms 279
Poenamo 137
Pokiha, Hemana 115
Pollard, Bessie 79
Pollard, Bob 266
Polynesians 181-2
Port Nicholson Silver Band 235
Pouquet, Andre 123
Poutapu, Piri 65
Pratt, George 49
Presbytery of Southland 269
Progressive Book Society 199
Progressive Publishing Society 199-200
Puketapu, Ihaia 73
Rae, Duncan 129
Railways Department 58
Rangiaohia 124
Rapley, Eva 237
Ratieur, Hinemoa 242
Raymond, Manuel 93
Reed, A.H. &A.W. 131
Regimental Band of the First Battalion, Wellington Regiment 235
Reid, Russell 255
residuary trust 133
Returned Servicemen's Association 32
Rewaka, Piki 74
Rhodes, Sir Heaton 102
Richmond, Norman 203
Rigby Pratt, Rev M.A. 142
Ripley, Gladys 238
Roberts, John 140
Rongotai 39-40
Ross & Glendinning 27
Royal Auckland Male Choir 238
Royal New Zealand Air Force Band 242
Royal Wellington Choral Union 232
Rumble, F. 90
Ruru, Rangi 74
Russell 112
Russell, Billy 79
Russell celebrations 120-1
Rutherford, Professor James 129, 130, 142, 149, 150,155, 164, 189
Sadlers Wells Orchestra 242
Sargood, Son & Ewen 27
Savage, Michael Joseph 25, 29, 58, 71, 78, 79, 100, 274, 276
Scanlan, Nelle 209
Scholefield, Dr Guy Hardy 83, 139-47, 164, 255-6
School of Maori Arts and Crafts 65, 67, 69, 101, 113
Scott, Eileen 74
Sea and Air 186
Seddon, Rosalie 252-3
Shell Oil 27
Shelley, James 17-8, 77, 78, 83-86, 233, 234, 235, 246, 248, 255
Sheridan Players 250
Signal Hill 277
Simkin, Rev J. 129
Sir John Logan Campbell Memorial 112
Sir John Logan Campbell Memorial Day 135
Sir John Logan Campbell Residuary Estate Trust 131
Snow, Alan 82
Social Security Department 55, 60
Society for Imperial Culture 226
Sproggins, Daisy 80
St Moritz skaters 91
Stephenson & Turner 49-50
Stout, Sir Robert 140
Taiaroa, Temairiki 123
Tainui 65
Taranaki 158
Tarrant, Joy 74
Tatau o te Po marae 70
Taupopoki, Mita 124
Te Akarana Maori Association 133,
Te Aupouri 65
Te Hau ki Turanga 67
Te Horeta, 137
Te Houkotuku, Te Naera 115
Te Kapua, Tama 115
Te Puni, Ivor 117
Te Rarawa 65
TeTaiTokerau 158
Te Ti marae 102
Te Ti welcoming ceremony 107
Te Totara-i-ahua 128
Te Tumuhia, Taraia Ngakuti 137
Te Wharepouri 16
Te Wherowhero, Potatau 137
Te Winika 65
TEAL 46
Terry, Lionel 93
Thomas, Marguerite 255
Thorn, James 164
Tivoli Theatre 268
Todd, Charles 26
Todd Motors 27
Tourist and Publicity Department 260, 266, 280, 281
Tovey, Gordon 227 Treaty House 104
Treaty of Waitangi 97, 121, 273-4
Trethewey, William 44-5
Troup, Sir George 25
Tuarau, Iotua (Charlie) 71
Tuhou, Roa 71
'Tuki' map 154
Turangawaewae 65
Turoa, Uri 74
Turongo 65
Tyrer, Anderson 233, 234, 237-40, 242, 244
UK Pavilion see British Pavilion Union Bank 27
Union Steamship Company 27
United Northern Tribes 120
Ure Smith, Sydney 224
'Wairau Massacre' 182
Waitangi broadcasts 82
Waitangi celebrations 105-6
Waitangi ceremonies 102-4
Waitangi National Reserve 102
Waitangi Trust Board 102
Waitangi Whare Runanga 66, 68-9, 74
Walker & Muston 46
Walker, Riria 74
Walpole, Hugh 242
Walshe, H.E. 150-1
War Memorial Carillon 43
Wauchop,W.S. 17
Waxworks and Chamber of Horrors 93
WEA Dramatic Club 251
Webb, Leicester 164, 170, 171, 211
Well-and-strong, Dr 59, 60, 279
Weller, Una 266
Wellington City Council 27, 30-1
Wellington Club of Printing House Craftsmen 201
Wellington Co-operative Book Society 199
Wellington Harbour Board 27
Wellington Provincial Centennial Memorial
at Petone 119 Wellington Regiment, Regimental Band of
the First Battalion, 235
Wellington Repertory Theatre 253, 255
Welsh Guards 35
West Watson, Bishop 116
Whakaue 113
Whangarei Pipe Band 120
Whitcombe and Tombs 142, 197
Whitwell, Frank 51
Who's Who 140
Wickham, Raiha 74
Wilkinson, Janet see Paul, Janet
Williams, Bishop H.W. 164
Williams, ET. 170
Wilson and Horton 187
Winiata, Isabel 74
Wirehana, Ropata 65
Women's Division, Farmers' Union 246
Wong, May 90
Wood, Frederick L. 165, 166, 173, 189, 211
Woolworths 27
Workers' Educational Association 247, 251
World War II 19-20, 33, 118, 135-6, 152
world fairs 47
Wright Stephenson 27
Wright, Walter 227