New Zealanders
in Literature.
A Fine Record
of Achievement.

(By O. N. Gillespie.)

New Zealand Authors’ Week was instituted for one express purpose. Its objective is to impress upon the people of New Zealand the wonderful volume and the high standard of work in the world of letters achieved by their fellow countrymen. It has accomplished its task to some extent, but this article is intended to show a little of the cultural value in the modern world of the writings of native New Zealanders. It is time that our attention was turned to this further manifestation of the richness of our British heritage, and of the steadfast manner in which we have held to its best traditions.

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
Thomas Bracken.

It is a real truth that a good poet who is a bad painter will be prouder of his canvases than of his poems. This strange feature of human nature is well exhibited when New Zealanders put in their claims for special achievement. We are prone to mention our “All-Blacks” as our first line of defence in this regard. The sober truth is that we should concentrate on our literary record. Our famous writers make a far more imposing world list than our famous five-eighths. Our libraries of literary treasures are of world parity. The Turnbull Library, the Grey Collection and the Hocken Collection, will, one of these days, be the cause of crowded pilgrimages from older lands. Even in tiny Whangarei is at least the second best collection of Dumas in the whole world and Mr. Reed, its owner, has been twice decorated by the French Government. Our per capita consumption of good literary weeklies and monthlies is the highest in the world. We have a unique proportion of good daily newspapers, well written and devoted to the serious news of the world. Greymouth, Palmerston North and Gisborne, to say nothing of the four chief centres, have bookshops equal to anything on the globe. We have the same proportion of Oxford and Cambridge graduates to our population as Old England herself, and a larger ratio still of graduates from local universities. The incidence of our interest in world affairs is the widest on earth, and we have the best showing among all countries in the comparative space given in our press to world affairs and the local murder or sensation. We are a highly cultivated, literary-book-loving country with a tremendous body of acknowledged achievement in letters. The false impressions abroad about our cultural standards are largely our own fault. When we have been for years proudly pressing our claim to be the “Empire's Dairy Farm,” stressing our enormous production of lamb and wool and cheese, and emphasizing our world precedence in the ownership of motor cars, bathrooms, telephones and radio sets, we must not be disappointed when the folk of older countries imagine us lacking in the love of the things of the mind.

They see us, on our statements, as pre-occupied with material comfort. This attitude assists and intensifies that acute provincialism which is the mark of the dwellers in large cities. I edited the first anthology of New Zealand short stories. The English critics hailed them as bright, skilfully written, full of humour and sophistication; but while admitting their admirable technical qualities, said in chorus that they all “lacked distinctive New Zealand atmosphere.” The first anthology of New Zealand poetry was reviewed thus: “This is a book of verses written by New Zealanders. On the other hand, it is fair to say that our cousins down under play wonderful Rugby.” This is simply Cockney arrogance derived from ignorance. This type of mind wants an Australian story to be full of dingoes and wallabies, a South African romance must take place on the Karroo or the veldt, a Canadian yarn must have moose and North West Mounted police wandering through its pages, and a New Zealand author must deal in Maoris, hot springs, and sheep mustering. The truth is that the New Zealand “scene” in the novelist's sense, is taking definitive shape very slowly. The reasons for this need explanation. In many parts of the young colony, the victory over the forces of Nature was prosaic and swiftly won. The Canterbury settlement was a pleasant land of

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
Katherine Mansfield.

page 10

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
James Cowan.

amenities and general comfort in a couple of decades. Its people had good roads, substantial homes, fine public buildings, colleges, churches and railways in far less than one generation. In the North the tragic misunderstanding of the Maori race and its age-old native culture led to a succession of wars which contain the material for hundreds of epic stories of frontier perils, chivalry and stirring deeds of prowess. The early gold mining explorations on the West Coast and the wild days of early Central Otago, furnish rich veins of high romance. Nevertheless, in certain respects, the pioneer front had less hardship and strenuous difficulties than haunted most new lands. The universality of a mild climate, sunny skies, warm rains, and soil of incredible fertility also aided the swift victory of cultivation and civilisation. One other feature of our colonisation history needs emphasizing in this regard. Our forebears came here of their own free will. They were almost all carefully selected by carefully planned methods, for physical, mental and moral qualities. Their contact with the Homeland they had left was continuous and frequent from the time of the six months’ voyage to the fortnight's airmail of to-day. Everyone possessed of the means took a trip “Home” as a matter of course. Our colleges send boys up to Durham, Oxford or Edinburgh, in the same ratio as an English public school. The latest book is here a month after its London publication date, and so, by the way, is the latest fashion freak. Our incidence of travel is so high that Hawke's Bay or Canterbury are closer to London than Cumberland or Shropshire, as is testified by the thousands of New Zealanders daily walking the streets of the most beloved city in all the world. This is all very comforting, but it means that our lives are really those lived by the inhabitants of the pleasanter suburbs of the greater British cities. A dairy farmer who has a motor-car, radio, telephone, electrically-driven milking plant and an asphalt road to a nearby cinema is hardly a subject for outback romance.

However, certain distinctive, national characteristics are emerging. Our form of life has a certain freshness in the world's history. The freedom of social experiment, the case and ubiquity of open-air life, even for the people of our larger cities, the extraordinary cheapness of most forms of sport, the everchanging picture of the relative standing of families and the genuine ease with which commercial or professional success may be won, make a panorama of colonial colouring. It is less crude, however, than in many new countries. It is leavened with a respect for tradition, and permeated with a respect for commonsense, and a caution best described as “Scottish.” We definitely, too, are tinged with the Maori love of high imagery, his utilitarian ideas of life and death that still are instinct with earthly poetry, and his recognition of the mysterious beauty but wayward forces of Nature. A multitude of examples of Nature's strangest deeds is all about us. In spite, therefore, of the lacking of infusions of alien blood

(Clifford photo.)
Ngalo Marsh.

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
John Brodie.

in the purest Anglo-Saxon stock on earth, we are exhibiting special qualities, and these are being reflected in our literature.

Naturally enough, our first thousand books were largely written by folk who saw themselves as pioneers or exiles. They had transplanted their culture with them to a new home. The swift subjugation of the land, however, soon saw arising a host of New Zealand native born writers able to express themselves in the best tradition of fine English prose. In our own country already, scores of names are forgotten that are known the world over. I do not intend in this article to give a glossary or bibliography of our authors and the names mentioned are not meant to be anything more than random selections to illustrate points. If a New Zealander is asked to give in a hurry the names of figures from our land of international standing, he quotes Katherine Mansfield and Lord Rutherford and finishes there. Pember Reeves or Julius Vogel take their places with a score of others as writers that all England knew. Hereabouts I want to state a claim which I think is entirely valid. The one distinctive possession of New Zealand in the art of letters is this: we have produced a band of writers who have the gift of making a scientific work into an art object, a thing of beauty. Maeterlinck's “Life of the Bee” is strictly accurate in its basis of exact knowledge and authentic precision. Nevertheless, it is a prose poem. Fabre wrote on insects that enthralled readers who knew or cared nothing for entomology. You do not have to be a naturalist to page 11 enjoy the grace and beauty of Dr. Cockayne's “New Zealand Plants and Their Story,” or G. M. Thompson's “A New Zealand Naturalist's Calendar,” or T. H. Potts in “Out in the Open.”

Sir John Salmond won the two great prizes for literary distinction given by universities in England and America for books on legal subjects, and one does not need to be a lawyer to be enthralled by his luminous and enjoyable work on the law of contracts. Our ethnologists are famous in the world arena of knowledge, of whom I may quickly enumerate Elsdon Best, Dr. Buck, Jenness and Beaglehole. They, too, employ literature in its highest sense in their expositions. Then there is that extraordinary, unique and fascinating production, Guthrie Smith's “Tutira.” Here is the complete biography of a sheep station, its soil contents, its geology, its bird life, its native fauna and flora, the history of its grasses, its experiments in stock raising and its development as a farm unit. It is romance of intrinsic merit and is a precious possession in the great world libraries. The list could be extended indefinitely, including such men as Mellor (the world's leading authority on refractories, and a chemist whose work was of such potent efficacy in the World War); Cotton, Morell, Gifford, and Tillyard.

Here, I like to think, is the flowering of one bloom explicitly and absolutely ours in the garden of letters. Good prose is founded upon clear thinking, but it can be enriched by the gift of imagery, and its meaning and inner beauty brought to living texture by the use of decorative language whose poetic structure enhances the clarity of the message. We may honestly and in all

Hubert Church.

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
Johannes C. Andersen.

modesty claim that this combination of powers is a proven possession of many of our countrymen.

Our verse, at first, suffered (in the writer's opinion) through excessive scholarship. It was loaded with classic allusion and metaphor alien to the heart of our life—the product of overmuch reading and too little living. More of our bush verse has been written in dinner jackets than in dungarees. In the last decade, however, there has been a spate of poetry which has the impress of original thinking and of distinctive beauty. Be reminded, too, that nearly every second New Zealander writes rhyme. The small verse volumes are innumerable. I am granting to our exceptional infusion of Celtic blood the credit for much of this new work, and I am hoping, too, that there is a little sign of Maori influence. The latter is not direct, but there is being borne in upon us something of understanding of our native brethren's splendid communal life and culture, and their mingling of poetry and common-sense in their ideas of death and natural forces.

In James Cowan we have a gifted writer whose wealth of stories of our early days and the conflicts between Maori and pakeha are woven from actual experience, actual first-hand knowledge; and a vast and sympathetic understanding of both races and the sources of their problems and misconceptions. A succession of skilled, studious and well equipped historians of the type of Lindsay Buick and Dr. Scholefield have furnished us with an extensive and picturesque panorama of our first days. Lately, too, New Zealand publishing houses have put out in numbers, books of memoirs of pioneer days. I am thankful to say that these are usually most successful; they are all well-written, and it is our duty to encourage this vital method of recording our history. Old men and women whose minds are storehouses of the treasure of “far off forgotten things” are dying all round us, and still more intensive effort is required so that no more of this precious legacy is lost to us.

The number of New Zealand writers who become successes abroad is growing apace. I want to sharply deprecate that saddest and silliest habit of New Zealanders when a fellow-townsman achieves fame in the great arena of the old world capitals. When Hector Bolitho leaps into London limelight as a writer of recognised standing, or when Merton Hodge writes a play “The Wind and the Rain,” which is a veritable triumph, we hear, “How did he do it? He was nothing very wonderful here.” This is comment of the small town mind, stupid and unforgiveable. We should say, “Of course, he succeeded—he is a New Zealander, and we have dozens of others who could do the same if only they had the steamer ticket.”

The New Zealand novel has taken new life lately, and “The Little Country” by Brodie, “A Poor Scholar” by C. R. Allen, and “The Greenstone Door” by Satchell, are works of art, and which is more important, they are wholly and inescapably of New Zealand origin, New Zealand atmosphere, and about New Zealand people. Moreover, there is not a kiwi or a geyser in any

(Continued on page 14)

(S. P. Andrew photo.)
C. R. Allen.

page 12