Your Unselfish Kindness: Robin Hyde's Autobiographical Writings

by Mary Edmond-Paul (Editor)

Overview

Robin Hyde’s extraordinary but short life (1906–39) included a precocious early career as poet and parliamentary reporter. As a journalist, she juggled writing for the social pages with highly political reporting on unemployment, prison conditions and the alienation of Maori land. She struggled with drug addiction and depression, single motherhood twice over, and a lengthy period as a voluntary patient in a residential clinic (The Lodge) attached to Auckland Mental Hospital in Avondale. Her life culminated in brilliant reporting on the Sino/Japanese War following a journey into China in 1938.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781877578212
Publisher:	Otago University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Pages:	327
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mary Edmond Paul is the author of Her Side of the Story: Readings of Mander, Mansfield and Hyde, the editor of Lighted Windows: Critical essays on Robin Hyde and co-editor of Gothic New Zealand (with Jennifer Lawn and Misha Kavka). She is a senior lecturer in English and Media Studies at Massey University Albany, in Auckland.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

1934 Autobiography

NZ MS 412A, Special Collections, Auckland Central City Library (formerly Auckland Public Library). Donated by Dr Gilbert Tothill on 10 February 1965.

Description: This is a manuscript of approximately 190 pages handwritten in blue ink on loose-leaf foolscap paper, with a change in paper type in Chapter 14 from 'blue-lined, 34-line foolscap resembling paper used for patient records and scrap at Auckland Mental Hospital' to 'a poor-quality notepaper, possibly letter pad'.

Provenance: The manuscript was written in early 1934 (between January and probably March), addressed to Dr Gilbert Tothill, Hyde's psychiatrist, and gifted to him. It was actually given or returned into his possession only after Hyde's death. He gifted it to the Auckland Public (now Central City) Library on his retirement in 1965, with an embargo of sixteen years to protect work on the biography (eventually published as The Book of Iris). The handwritten manuscript of the '1934 Autobiography' was first transcribed by Lisa Docherty as part of the Marsden Fund project that also produced The Book of Iris and Young Knowledge: that version has been refined and corrected for this publication.

The manuscript is arranged in 23 chapters, but is missing Chapter 1, the beginning of Chapter 2 and the end of Chapter 16, as well as at least the beginning of Chapter 17 (although some of this chapter has been re-instated from mis-ordered pages). It is possible that there were more pages and that the ending may not be the original ending. In 1980 the manuscript was bound out of sequence, so that it is difficult to determine where there are pages missing. Two parts of a poem, 'Sodom', previously bound in different places, were the initial clue to reinstating some of the original order. In the following text, the end of Chapter 16 and part of what is probably Chapter 17 have been reordered by Mary Edmond-Paul and Patrick Sandbrook according to the suggestions made by Anne Zimmerman in her 1991 MA thesis incorporated as research notes in her 1996 Doctorate. Zimmerman's series C, F, A have been placed in Chapters 16–17; however, another suggested series has not been applied as we considered additional re-ordering would further complicate the problems of sequence. Similar suggestions for re-sequencing this manuscript have been made by Alison Hunt in her 2008 doctoral thesis.

Three poems – 'The Last Ones'; 'Sand'; 'Descendants' – are bound at the end of the manuscript but not reproduced here. Pencil notes on the verso of 'Descendants' mention '54 Woburn Rd' and 'Bellevue Hotel', the date '19th', with partial directions and possibly telephone numbers.

The '1934 Autobiography' was written at the suggestion of Robin Hyde's psychiatrist, Dr Gilbert Tothill, when she first became a patient at the Lodge, a voluntary ward of Auckland Mental Hospital at Avondale. She wrote it quite quickly in the summer of 1933–34, beginning before the New Year and finishing, probably, by or before the end of March. (Readers will notice that the only dated entries are around 31 January and early February.) Hyde bequeathed this autobiography to Dr Gilbert Tothill and he presented the manuscript at the time of his retirement, along with his signed copy of Hyde's bio-fictional novel The Godwits Fly.

The manuscript is missing its first chapter and some pages of Chapter 2, which must have recounted the earliest years of Hyde's childhood story, but it is not difficult to follow the subsequent narrative. The opening paragraph, on 'the Mob', is an aside on a group of young New Zealand poets who were then beginning to dominate the literary scene; the personal story then resumes. The incident where her father quarrelled with a landlord, 'got himself into an amusing scrape with a lady who was not one', and then sent frantic telegrams to Australia to call his wife and children home, took place when Hyde was about four years old.

After and including Chapters 16 and 17, it is difficult to restore order to some fragmentation, owing to the missing pages and because Hyde moves between incidents at the Lodge, taking place as she writes, and the account of events in her life that precipitated her breakdowns. The fact that she does not tell the life story chronologically complicates the matter. However, if the reader follows the main strands of present events at the Lodge, the incident of the girl who runs away to see her mother and is in danger of being sent to the main hospital, and Hyde's own story of being transferred summarily to the main hospital (the Wolfe Home), it is easier to follow.

The whole narrative, except for one example in the final pages, is addressed to Dr Tothill and from time to time refers to conversations with him. It is a diagnostic and explanatory piece of writing, as Hyde tries to understand and explain both to herself and her doctor the events that precipitated her breakdown. It deals with personal material – injury to her knee, drug treatment and abuse, betrayal, loss of a baby, and love affairs – in a way that is designed to explain and sometimes perhaps even exonerate her from the judgment of her doctor and the severe judgments of the time. This '1934 Autobiography' has also been described by Hyde scholar Alison Hunt as a 'therapeutic text', because it was prescribed by the doctor as part of her treatment. Its broken and abrupt ending suggests it did indeed have a cathartic effect, altering Hyde's way of looking at the world.

[text of '1934 Autobiography' begins]

"the Mob,") but locally & when banded together, they seem to be all mouth and no courage. Shelley gave them the entire and simple outline of a plan of action, and they haven't music enough in them to have read it, nor guts enough to use it if by chance they did.

Apologies: there were, anyhow, frantic telegrams of recall from N.Z. My Father, having quarrelled with "Robin Hood's" landlord, moved on and got himself into what I suspect to have been a rather amusing scrape, with a lady who indeed wasn't one. She quartered herself on him, and brought a girl friend. I believe that she was an early edition of the cold-gold-digger sort of thing. Beyond his income, but disconcertingly Platonic. God help her, if she met my Mother! I don't quite know whether our family fought or ran away, but we started life in a new household.

Only a little more of this – and indeed, there has been too much. (By the way, I know all the sticky patches in our history, because mentioning the unmentionable – or rather, shouting it at the very top of one's voice – has almost forever been a custom.)

But I like to remember that my Father found or purchased a queer old flute, and that unsuitably garlanded with wild corn-flowers and scarlet poppies, we used to execute formal dances in the evenings, with a clothes-prop for a maypole: and mushroom-hunting in the high hills, grey with a little pungent-scented shrub: sacrifices, moreover, on the huge Druid's Stone, which remains in my memory bathed always in ominous blood-red light –

There in the hills, that music came which you tell me has a perfectly natural explanation. There was a little ringed-in, rather frightening place of sunlight and wax-like pink flowers. (Once we were scared away from here by a man, enough to scatter us like a covey of birds.) The music just began, unearthly, vibrant, trembling, terrible in its sweetness – We all heard it, and stared and stared at one another's queer faces. It seemed to me to shake the heart of the hills. Oh, it was what I have always imagined a windharp's music to be, a shudder of chords too deep and wise for the mere pattern of tune.

You say it was nothing. The others all forgot it quite, I've sounded them. But it has stayed in me. And this is a rather laughable sequel – At one of those Helena Blavatsky affairs (you know, Theosophy pulling solemn faces at imaginary Masters, and hoping for the worst in the shape of a little very mild magic,) what they call an Astral Bell rang –

Minimised and almost defeated by a stuffy room, it was my music, my swaying, shaken music again. Perhaps it was human trickery then, Nature's trickery before. But it has certainly lived in me, and I rather wish you could have heard it in those clean hills. But blessed is he that forgets, for to him shall everything be forgiven —

The very last time we were all happy together (except Mother, who just kept away, provided meals and manners, or sewed little frocks of brown tobralco was at a picnic (just ourselves, of course,) in a gold-green place among the trees. I could, if I chose to be so wearisome, tell you our menu – all the funny things my Father bought. He was in khaki already, and looked astonishingly brown and nice.

Poor mother! She must have had an intolerably bitter birth with her war-baby, which arrived, red and appallingly ugly, a few months before my Father left. So debonair, to whistle "Loved I not honour more!" At any rate it snapped the very frail cord of decent family restraint –

She was so hard up, during the war – and once, we were burgled and she lost £14. Oh dear! The vicar wanted to take up a parish subscription for us, but at the last moment, she backed out. It was "no, and no, and no," with her mouth set. Only her very long, very dark auburn hair, which I used to brush for hours, was at all charming then. She was a stern, thin, unprepossessing woman. And I rather fancy our clothes were a bit nonchalant, for I started to have a bad time at school, and my elder sister too, I believe.

Yet how you'd have admired her! She didn't know that in the eyes of this generation Kitchener would become no hero, but a man who "just couldn't get on with his colleagues." (Incidentally, I believe that he couldn't stand cats, either: much the same thing, very possibly.) I don't think she knows it or admits it yet, for his portrait is still in our house. When he was drowned, I remember seeing her cry, with her head on the kitchen table. "Oh God! My poor country! What has she done to deserve it?" England might remember that, of Colonials –

Why didn't her family pull us out of the soup? Reason (a) They were all very busy with the war. And her Mother and Father, and Aunt Louise, all died – reason (b) and the real one, I should think – She was in disgrace – or rather, just out of things for good – because she never returned to New Zealand at all. At least, not one of them has ever sent her a birthday or Christmas present.

She was V. A. R. during the 'flu epidemic, and I believe it did her good. I went down with influenza and a spinning, throbbing head on the sham Armistice Day, when all the bells were ringing. I would, of course. But mine wasn't the very bad brand of influenza. She went into death-houses, laid out bodies, heard delirious Catholic babies rave about angels. (We lived in a strongly pro-Roman Catholic district.) We heard about these things at secondhand, and casually, because "little pitchers have long ears," and the women at the rooms where we were sprayed with that sickly stuff afterwards so often condemned, would have their daily bread of gossip –

I think she felt her feet again, after ages in a quicksand –

Then "the boys came back." We were ready, we children, to be most enthusiastic – I believe I once told you that our weekly "war lessons" used to tear me to bits – But my Father was stand-offish. I remember that he scolded me in the car going home –

But, we were to have our own house at last. It was hastily chosen, in a most unsuburban suburb near bush, hills, graveyard. We were all delighted, and there really was a flowering passion-vine, very pink of blossom, all over the back of the house – It's old and creaky and inconvenient to an unheard-of degree, yet I like its looks and its oldness and badness.

We all chanted in chorus, "Buy Laloma! Buy Laloma!"

Which was the former name of the place, and means "The House of Love."

Chapter 3. Innocence.

I'd like to go wandering on and on among Solomon's seal and passion-flower (though the Smiths, damn their impudence, removed the lilies of the valley before we "took over." What would you expect of Christian Scientists?

But I suppose – know – tintacks are tintacks. Yet it's so hard to tell you the mixture; that I was utterly ignorant, that my anatomical knowledge would have made any cat grin, that we were nice children and strictly carried out stricter instructions not to talk about sex. We were even respected for our "innocence". (Haroun whom I loved years later, used the phrase, "filthy innocence" in one of his very bad verses.) Yet with it all, I had an innate knowledge or awakening, as early as a native child's, as old as the first stony damnations of the Bible –

Hard to describe: a fitful flickering possession by this very old knowledge of the senses. I did keep away, utterly, from the hole-in-the-corner sexualities, verbal and otherwise, which seem to be rather like bad drainage at most schools. Perhaps if I'd just once been un-mothered enough to join in that, I'd have been shocked or frightened out of – oh, you would know its scientific name: an impulse to utter surrender, a fascination that men – not schoolboys, had for me, and I for them – a knowledge, that's the only word I can come back to. Don't hurt me over this. Even the Biblical condemnations – and there were times when I believed them word for word, and begged God, as one might beg a Devil possibly amenable to reason, to let me off – went away from me at times – .

I who hadn't done anything, had thought and felt and known and been, by the time I was seven – Queer – Rather like Danae's torrent of gold and her harsh stone tower rolled into one. As I grew older, the gold became less and the tower pressed into my inmost thoughts, and every inch of it was carved or painted as might be at Pompeii –

But always – and here, and I think with your help – that has gone away and left me quite free, more free than normal people are, I think – I mean, there's a strange remote and absolute cleanliness in long periods of time, perhaps years, perhaps months – And I call that region Hy-Brasil, who call the other Venusberg, and know every inch of it, because I have eyes that must see and a memory that must retain – I woke up once, with the first line of a poem about Venusberg in my mind. It was

"Out of that slimy Hell he burst at last."

Make just what you wish of that –

I told you there were two men who wanted me, while I was still very young. About the second I may just conceivably have been wrong, though I don't think so. His secretive desire to have me alone, to pet me, make me little gifts, may, it is possible, have been a rather maudlin fatherliness. But I don't think so – or I wouldn't remember. I liked him, for the funniest of reasons. He taught me to play hockey passably, and I was already shame-faced about not being able to play games –

The first (you may have thought it diseased imagination,) was no mistake, though it was such a little thing, one single incident – and I was seven –

Picnic on the sand-dunes. This shining light of a Sunday School world led me away, quite casually, from the rest – I remember the little hollow of the sand, the hot sun beating.

He leaned over –

"Well, give us a kiss, Kiddie."

I did – rather shyly – perhaps Danae's shower wasn't known to me then. But I remember his thin face and ravening eyes –

He laughed, rather confusedly. I don't think anything much more happened, though it's all afar. We went back to the picnic –

He was prosecuted and imprisoned for interference with children, not much later. Don't think that made prodigious my own little, unclean experience – I had already been queerly frightened about it – Woke up one night, and told my mother –

She only said, very soberly, "I'm glad you told me."

My clever Aunt Louise was probably the first to detect "the monstrous changeling." But as Dom Byrne once very truly said, there's a psychic path. I don't know that I mind so very much now. I am freer sometimes – now! – than most women will ever know how to be. But it did bring me, when I was seventeen, this.

Flattery from an "artistic" Christchurch business man, who should be keeping a "maison de tolerance." An invitation to view his sketches at his flat ... well that was obvious enough, God knows, and I did know a bit about myself by then, though still a ridiculous nothing of clear fact. (Poor Mother! Her idea was to leave a book that would have sickened anyone in my room. It wasn't explicit, just dramatic and ugly. For many months, before I left College, I drew myself into the smallest possible section of air, and shrank from every touch, because I believed that a disease which blinded and scarred could be caught – from any human contact. I must have mentioned it to her, for she hurriedly retracted: I'd only read half the book, anyhow. But like Balaam's ass, I would no further go, and just shrieked to her to be quiet if she ever mentioned sex.)

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Your Unselfish Kindness"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Mary Edmond-Paul.
Excerpted by permission of Otago University Press.
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Table of Contents

Front Cover,
Title Page,
Copyright,
Acknowledgements,
Chronology,
Abbreviations,
Introduction A Fortuitous Moment,
The Opening Door: The Writing,
I: 1934 Autobiography,
II: 1934–1935 Journal Fragments,
III: 1935 Journal,
IV: 1935–1936 Journal Fragments,
V: The Cage with the Open Door,
VI: 1936 Journal Fragment,
VII: Essay on Mental Health,
Select Bibliography,
Photos,
Index,