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CHAPTER 23
The Arts Survive

WHEN the war began New Zealand writing was on the move. Overseas literary and social-political influences were guiding writers into new styles and subjects. The Depression reinforced worldwide literary interest in the poor, the under-privileged, the misfits, the inarticulate, the tough, in the special victims of an economic system whom hard work could not save or who had ceased to believe in hard work. In both poetry and prose there was direct and implicit protest against a system where want and frustration rewarded effort, where prices and mortgages defeated those who worked the land and where there was hunger in the midst of surplus. The Spanish war, which strongly affected many influential English writers, drew very little mention in New Zealand.¹ Of direct social satire there was little. The Sky is a Limpet, A. R. D. Fairburn's brilliant Joycean slash at Savage, was a solitary comet; for the Press from 1939 and the Listener from 1941 Allen Curnow as ‘Whim Wham’ made regular, often piercing, comment in verse on news, both overseas and local.

There was however, strong and conscious groping for expression of New Zealand identity, breaking clear of literary colonialism. There was search for awareness of the land and its occupants, for the human condition which had come out of the environment and the past. For some, this search was quickened by 1940 being the centennial of organised British settlement, with the question ‘What are we, after a hundred years in this land?’ asked at many levels. At their most literary, these ideas found clearest expression in three essays by M. H. Holcroft² —The Deepening Stream (1940), The Waiting Hills (1943), The Encircling Seas (1946)—and one by Roderick Finlayson³ Our Life in this Land (1940); in Fairburn's Dominion (1938) and

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in poems by Allen Curnow and Charles Brasch.⁴ In many other places they sounded more faintly.

The centennial produced many books. There was a large crop of histories—of provinces, towns, churches, societies. ‘Books are being printed and published in New Zealand at a greater rate than ever before’, declared John Harris,⁵ librarian and reviewer, in April 1940. Besides the histories there were biographies, studies in economics and education, and a good deal of verse.⁶ Government centennial publications, attractively produced, which summarised development over various fields, included Eric McCormick's⁷ formative critical survey, Letters and Art in New Zealand.

In 1942 John Harris, examining the large increase in local publishing since 1933, as recorded in General Assembly Library copyright lists, noted that 305 books were published in 1940, 238 in 1941. There was relatively little imaginative work. By far the greater number were informative, with scientific and technical works leading the field. Most of them were commissioned by institutions or official bodies such as the Cawthron Institute, the Dairy Research Institute, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, other government departments and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. History writers were generally commissioned by the government for centennial purposes, or by local historical committees.⁸ Later copyright lists for the war period show that publishing totals for 1942–3 did not fall much below those of 1941 and that in 1944–5 they rose to 270 items.

Apart from the Government Printer there were several sizeable publishing firms, notably Reed's, which matured in the centennial boom, and the veteran Whitcombe and Tombs. They concentrated on factual works about New Zealand, scientific, technical, educational and professional works (including weighty legal tomes), books on history and natural history, on Maori subjects, on many aspects of farming and on baby care. In 1945 a Whitcombe's manager spoke of the ‘Rescue the Perishing Department’ which reprinted books considered worth preserving, such as Maning's⁹ Old New Zealand

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(1922 and 1930), Satchell's¹⁰ The Greenstone Door (1935) and The Land of the Lost (1938), and Jane Mander's¹¹ The Story of a New Zealand River (1938). Over the years the firm had published a number of novels; ‘the results have been patchy and this has taught us caution.’ It was usual for a London publisher on receiving the manuscript of a New Zealand novel to consult with the London office of Whitcombe and Tombs which, if it approved the book, would arrange to take a few hundred or a thousand or so copies, which would be printed in addition to those destined for the British publisher's usual markets.¹²

In 1935 John Lehmann,¹³ editor of England's New Writing, began his search for imaginative work, especially of prose which in length or style was too unorthodox for established magazines. This search included work from colonial and foreign countries. Later, in his biography, he wrote that there are no satisfactory explanations for sudden flowerings of talent but that once the process starts it generates its own momentum, with people coming forward who might never have thought it worthwhile to develop those gifts in themselves or even to realise that they possessed them.

Why was it then that out of all the hundreds of towns and universities in the English speaking lands scattered over the seven seas, only one should at the time act as a focus of creative activity in literature of more than local significance, that it should be in Christchurch, New Zealand, that a group of young writers had appeared, who were eager to assimilate the pioneer developments in style and technique that were being made in England and America since the beginning of the century, to explore the world of the dispossessed and under-privileged for their material and to give their country a new conscience and spiritual perspective.¹⁴

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Lehmann attempted no answer to his question but explained that his friend William Plomer¹⁵ had shown him a little pamphlet. Conversations with my Uncle (1936), from an admirer in New Zealand, Frank Sargeson.¹⁶

I was struck at once by the wit and the style of the short pieces, the skilful use of the vernacular idiom, and the tension between rebellion and acceptance underneath which lay an extraordinary warmth of feeling for the New Zealand scene….

Sargeson became a frequent contributor to New Writing and his letters led Lehmann to a circle of young writers of like mind and to publishing poems and stories by Brasch, Finlayson, Curnow, Fairburn and Glover.¹⁷

Sargeson, who claimed that he was strongly influenced by Sherwood Anderson¹⁸ and that during the slump he was ‘more continuously in contact with the social nondescripts and misfits for whose company I always had a strong predilection’,¹⁹ was at the start of a long, luminous and very influential career. For most of the war period he was known mainly for his short stories, though by 1944 his novel That Summer was appearing in English New Writing. Both by example and by direct help and encouragement he was already influencing many other writers in New Zealand.

With few local publishing outlets, most non-factual writers' overseas appearance preceded or kept pace with New Zealand publication and recognition. Most novels, such as John A. Lee's Children of the Poor (1934) and The Hunted (1936), Robin Hyde's²⁰ Check to Your King, Passport to Hell (both 1936) and The Godwits Fly (1938), John Mulgan's²¹ Man Alone (1939), found English publishers. Poets such as Robin Hyde, Eileen Duggan,²² Gloria Rawlinson²³ and the youthful Fairburn had slim volumes published overseas; others, such as R. A. K. Mason, had poems accepted in English anthologies. A few small books of verse emerged during the

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1930s and'40s from one or two private presses, such as the Handcraft Press, Wellington, and between 1932 and 1943 a Wellington journalist, C. A. Marris,²⁴ annually collected a book of conventionally poetical Best Poems. Poems and stories also appeared, under the same literary editor, in Harry Tombs's²⁵ quarterly magazine Art in New Zealand.

The new poets and writers had little use for or place in these pages, satirised by Denis Glover in his Judgment of Paris (1938). Those who 30 or 40 years later were to be the grand old men of New Zealand's established literature were then struggling prophets, with little honour, save among the literary elite, in their own country. From 1934 until it was suppressed, for anticipated sedition, in June 1940, the radical fortnightly Tomorrow was the main platform for the lyrics and lampoons of the poets, the sketches and stories of prose writers. The New Zealand Listener, begun in June 1939, printed poems and stories from time to time. In its earliest years, the prose was often humorous, but some was edged, such as Sargeson's ‘Two Worlds’, A. P. Gaskell's²⁶ ‘The Picture in the Paper’, Leon du Chateau's²⁷ ‘The Law of the Tribe’ and Finlayson's ‘The Everlasting Miracle.’²⁸ In Auckland, the short-lived Phoenix quarterly in 1932–3 had brought together some stirring minds, and later the printers Ron Holloway and Robert Lowry, with their own distinctions and very narrow means, offered a few of the rising authors to a limited public in works such as Sargeson's Conversation with my Uncle, Gaskell's Brown Man's Burden (1938), Fairburn's The Sky is a Limpet (1939), and Finlayson's Sweet Beulah Land (1942).

In 1936 in Christchurch the Caxton Press, run by Denis Glover and a few others, emerged from a year of stabled infancy. With commercial work providing its bread and butter, Caxton began its crusade to print whatever in prose or verse its directors considered worth printing. In its first years it was notable for its elegant small editions of poetry, produced with little expectation of profit. Glover's special interest apart, poems required less print than prose. Allan Curnow in 1945 remarked that of Caxton's 39 publications between 1935 and 1941, 25 were of verse. He added that their publication

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created an audience for verse; ‘Some verse they actually called into being because they were at hand to print it.’²⁹ Its poets were almost a club: Mason, Glover, Fairburn, Curnow, Brasch, Dowling were core members, with a few somewhat older such as Ursula Bethel³⁰ and J. R. Hervey,³¹ and a fledgling or two, such as Anton Vogt,³² gathered in their company. Caxton also produced prose works, among them Sargeson's A Man and his Wife (1940), G. R. Gilbert's³³ Free to Laugh and Dance (1943), the first and last volumes of Holcroft's trilogy, G. M. Smith's³⁴ successive vigorous Notes from his back-block hospital in Hokianga, Professor F. Sinclair's³⁵ spirited prejudices, Lend me your Ears (1942), and Randal Burdon's³⁶ New Zealand Notables (1941 and 1945).

Between 1942 and late 1944, with Glover away in the Navy, the Caxton Press reduced its output of imaginative work, and at this stage co-operative efforts developed, bringing new life into the publishing scene. Before the war, there were three separate co-operative bookshops—Progressive Books in Auckland and Christchurch and Modern Books in Wellington—each publishing a few pamphlets. In 1942 they combined to form the New Zealand Progressive Publishing Society in Wellington. The Society believed strongly that more local publishing was needed if New Zealand were to develop an independent and native literature. Having very little money, it had to publish work which did not use up much capital and brought quick returns. It concentrated at first on topical booklets chosen by an able selection committee, which had the help of informed readers, all voluntary workers. It published over a wide range. There were informative booklets such as H. Belshaw's³⁷ A General Survey of Problems of Reconstruction; D. Robb's³⁸ Health Services and the People; L. Hearnshaw's³⁹ Hours of work in Wartime; The Shadow over New

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Zealand: venereal disease (1942); W. B. Sutch's⁴⁰ Workers and the War Effort (1942) and his Goodbye to Gold, a guide to the International Monetary fund (1944); Christina Guy's⁴¹ Women on the Home Front (1943), a discussion on help in the home; R. Gardner's⁴² Industrial Development in New Zealand (1944), R. L. Meek's⁴³ Maori Problems Today (1944). It also produced A. R. D. Fairburn's reflections on national character, We New Zealanders, and his rejection of jingoism, Hands off the Tom-Tom (1944).

It reprinted in cheap editions several Caxton Press publications, also Stella Morice's⁴⁴ The Book of Wiremu (1944), a children's story, centred on a Maori boy, already serialised in the Listener (April– June 1941) and destined for a long life. It also printed new work such as Curnow's Sailing or Drowning, Holcroft's Waiting Hills, Clyde Carr's Poems, Burdon's Outlaw's Progress, Isobel Andrews's⁴⁵ play about women, The Willing Horse (1944), Arthur Barker's⁴⁶ translations of French poems, Twelve Echoes from France and Twelve More Echoes (1943 and 1944), and New Zealand New Writing (1942–5).

During 1945 financial difficulties pressed upon the Progressive Publishing Society and unpaid effort could not endure for ever. Towards the end of the year it closed down, but its current publications were taken over by one member, Blackwood Paul,⁴⁷ returned from AEWS to civilian life as a Hamilton bookseller. He established a publishing side to his business, preserving the Society's ideals for the promotion of New Zealand literature and history. Beginning modestly, Paul's during the next 25 years produced handsomely many books which in earlier decades local publishers would not have attempted. Its enterprise in this area was in time shared but not equalled by other firms.

The Progressive Publishing Society's series of stories and verse, New Zealand New Writing, edited by Ian Gordon, the young Professor of English at Wellington's university, was an echo of the English production edited by John Lehmann. Its first number, produced late in 1942, declared that it was an experiment not so much

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in writing as in publishing; some of its authors were well known, a few pieces had already appeared in other pages. It hoped to attract readers and encourage writers but at first no payment could be made. The Listener was pleased that during 1942, ‘in the worst crisis of our history’, someone had found time to assemble and edit a ‘distinctly better than average representation’ of local writing talent, and that someone else had found paper on which to print it.‘New Zealand has not so far been inarticulate, but it has not talked to itself. Now it proposes to do so.’⁴⁸

Contributors to the third and fourth issues received modest payments and though the struggles of production permitted only four issues, the last in March 1945, a number of writers had gained a wider public. Some of these authors, and others, were also published by the Caxton Press: 15 appeared in Speaking for Ourselves, edited by Sargeson in 1945. The Caxton miscellany Book, which had paused at No 6 in September 1942, was revived and expanded in February 1946 and No 9, the last, in July 1947, consisted mainly of short stories.

In all, the war years saw increased outlets for New Zealand poems and short stories whose brevity made them easier to publish than novels. The short story directly reporting an incident or episode was an inviting means for presenting a slab-of-life, its realism groomed by creative perception. War experiences, with service atmosphere and language at hand, were obvious themes, but they did not swamp the field. Glover's D-Day (1944), the essence of action, did not have a host of followers. In New Writing stories of fighting and of ships bombed were a modest minority; in Speaking for Ourselves there were no combat stories but three on the jangles of homecoming (dislocated values, bad memories, strangers in marriages, banal talk); one on an airman's off-duty adventures, and Gaskell's ‘Purity Squad’, where a Home Guard lunch is the setting for male gossip. His ‘Tidings of Joy’ (New Writing No 4), about a 1941 Christmas party in a farming community darkened by news of two men lately killed, is powerful in its understatement and faithful in its record.

A literary score-keeper, Professor Robert Chapman,⁴⁹ in 1953 noted that out of the contributors to New Writing, Speaking for Ourselves and Book 9, 25 made no further appearance but 12 others, in the second half of the 1940s produced novels or short story collections or fiction in Landfall, the enduring quarterly begun by Charles Brasch in 1947, which on average printed two short stories or extracts from

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novels in each issue.⁵⁰ Chapman also noted that of ‘considerable’ fiction, always an arbitrary listing,⁵¹ the period 1940–6 saw the appearance of only three novels and three collections of short stories.⁵²

Between 1946 and 1951 eight New Zealanders published ten novels⁵³ and three story collections.⁵⁴ Two of these novels— For the Rest of Our Lives and Brave Company —were about the war, both giving it almost documentary treatment. About half the stories in Davin's⁵⁵ The Gorse Blooms Pale were of war, the others were set in Southland or elsewhere. Sad, off-duty airmen and men with scarred minds moved through most of Cole's⁵⁶ It was so Late; Gaskell stayed with his footballers and Home Guardsmen.

Apart from fiction, accounts of war experiences by New Zealanders soon appeared, augmenting the crop from overseas. Among them, in 1944, were A. S. Helm's⁵⁷ Fights and Furloughs in the Middle East and F. Martyn's⁵⁸ Tripoli and Beyond. In 1945 came two that, in very different ways, held with authority the spirit and atmosphere of 2NZEF at its best: Jim Henderson's⁵⁹ Gunner Inglorious and James Hargest's⁶⁰ Farewell Campo 12. Some, such as Passage to Tobruk: the diary of a Kiwi in the Middle East and Air-gunner, the adventures of Flying Officer H. Lyver, both by Francis

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Jackson,⁶¹ published in 1943 and 1944, were very popular. In Passage to Tobruk comradeship and badinage were wrapped around the main events up to Sidi Rezegh in November 1941, and a Singapore refugee ship's escape from a Japanese submarine is folded into the return voyage of the wounded from Africa. It had 143 small pages and eight drawings by Peter Mclntyre,⁶² official war artist; in its first few months nearly 12 000 copies were sold.⁶³

Top sales were claimed by The Book of the Guard, 36 pages with text by Ian Mackay,⁶⁴ some self-confessed doggerel, with photographs and cartoons and drawings by several local artists.⁶⁵ In April 1944 a notice in the Listener claimed that this was the ‘funniest book the war has brought out so far. Sales and advanced bookings have already reached 25 000—the present is the third printing with no indication that it is slowing down. At 2s it is the cheapest book of laughs on the market.’⁶⁶ John Mulgan's Report on Experience, the outline of a book he had hoped to write, looked at war as it happened about him, relating it to the background of soldiers in New Zealand and in Britain. But perhaps the war's most notable book was Infantry Brigadier, written by the Territorial soldier who was to become in turn a wartime hero and editor-in-chief of the official war history, Sir Howard Kippenberger.⁶⁷ Infantry Brigadier, published in 1949, became both a popular book and something of a text book.

The war produced a publishing hybrid till then unknown in New Zealand: fiction printed locally for English publishers. Losses by bombing and shortage of paper and manpower obliged British publishers to send out only a small proportion of the books called for. To keep their names and their authors before the public, some publishers took the unprecedented step of having popular books set up and printed in New Zealand for sale there. The authors chosen included Frances Parkinson Keyes, Louis Bromfield, Warick Deeping, H. E. Bates, Peter Cheyney, Anne Duffield, Agatha Christie,

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John Brophy and Helen Ashton. Some of the printings were large— up to 10 000 or 15 000 copies. Such sales, it was remarked, had never been enjoyed by New Zealand novelists, although Nelle Scanlan's⁶⁸ Pencarrow trilogy and Ngaio Marsh's detective stories were popular on the world market. During the war years Nelle Scanlan's March Moon and Ngaio Marsh's Colour Scheme and Died in the Wool were printed locally and sold well, but not at the rate of Frances Parkinson Keyes, whose ‘good stories’, without advertisement, topped selling lists.⁶⁹

In all it could be said that in the war New Zealand writing did not wither and that in publishing, as in other fields, shortage of overseas supplies stimulated local production. Factual writing was only slightly less than in preceding years, for poetry and short stories outlets increased modestly, and in the topical booklet field, in which many ideas were stirring, Progressive Publishing offered readier channels to bookshops than had existed previously.

As for reading in general (apart from the restraints of censorship⁷⁰), the position for booksellers and librarians during the war could be summed up as ‘fewer books, more readers’. The Southland Times, in June 1940, reported that paper shortage in England had reduced the books available, especially cheap reprints and first novels.⁷¹ Of Britain Angus Calder wrote:

Publishers were limited, first to sixty per cent, then to forty per cent, of the paper they had used before the war. At the peak of the war effort, when official publications were accounting for a hundred thousand tons of paper a year (and the War Office alone was using twenty-five thousand tons), less than twenty-two thousand tons were available for books. On the one hand, many well-loved children's comics had disappeared entirely; on the other, important publishers of serious books found it hard to keep them in print. The blitz made matters worse. Twenty million unissued volumes were lost. A species of black market publishing arose. Mushroom firms which, because they had not existed before the war, had no quota and need not declare their stocks, found stray sources of paper in the hands of jobbing printers, and published much trash. Meanwhile a thirst for classics was impossible to

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slake, new copies of novels by Trollope and Jane Austen were eventually quite unobtainable.⁷²

New Zealand restrictions imposed at the beginning of 1940, to conserve sterling funds, reduced the importation of books and periodicals by each bookseller and library to 50 per cent of the value of those imported during the year ending 31 March 1938. Under persuasion, Nash, Minister of Customs, allowed libraries to import the same value as before, with the stipulation that the second 50 per cent was to comprise only material certified by a special bureau of the Education Department's Country Library Service as of worthwhile character. An allied purpose was to prevent overlapping in the purchase of expensive works, necessary for reference but required by only a few libraries. Many librarians were not happy about submitting lists of desired imports to a government department, seeing this as suspiciously like a censorship organisation, but they accepted it as a means of getting more books on their shelves. Booksellers spent their available funds carefully, reducing numbers of copies rather than numbers of titles, and inevitably tended to pass over highpriced books of limited appeal, concentrating on those of more general interest.⁷³

The Southland Times in June 1940 reported that Invercargill libraries and bookshops showed that ‘in keeping with the trend which has been noticeable throughout New Zealand during the past few years, the reading public is turning more and more to non-fiction which deals in an interesting manner with the international situation, and to fiction with a setting in spy intrigue or international politics.’ Books like Nemesis by Douglas Reed and Failure of a Mission by Sir Nevile Henderson (formerly ambassador to Berlin) were in keen demand, as was non-fiction written in frank, outspoken style from a personal and fresh viewpoint, such as Margaret Halsey's With Malice towards Some. Others in demand were Philip Gibbs's Broken Pledges, a biography of Göring⁷⁴ by H. W. Blood-Ryan, Martha Dodds's My Years in Germany, Nora Wain's Reaching for the Stars, John Gunther's Inside Europe and Inside Asia, Douglas Reed's Disgrace Abounding and Hitler's Mein Kampf. Doctors' biographies, such as The Healing Knife and Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book by James Harpole, were also popular. In fiction the public appetite was for

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spy dramas and international intrigue such as A. G. Macdonnell's The Crew of the Anaconda and Dennis Wheatley's The Scarlet Imposter.⁷⁵ Three months later Invercargill's city librarian confirmed that there was a big increase in reading, with books about espionage and the Gestapo high in popularity.⁷⁶

There were similar reports from other centres, Auckland book clubs found much more demand for popular non-fiction dealing with world politics and war.⁷⁷ The public librarian of Christchurch in May 1940 noted more interest in books on Balkan and Baltic countries, on the last war and on Egypt; in November statistics showed that Christchurch library issues during the past four months had exceeded those for the corresponding months of 1939, books on foreign affairs being largely responsible.⁷⁸

A year later in October 1941, when the war had settled more heavily, Wellington's city librarian, J. Norrie, believed that, although major events always captured attention, people were not reading the war news in detail or listening to the long overseas broadcasts as they did a year before, when these had been eagerly appreciated. As relief from the daily bombardment of harrowing reports, through press, radio and speech, people were reading more but reading less about the war, ‘though, of course, books of the Douglas Reed, John Gunther, Philip Gibbs and Strasser type are still in demand…. Last year a great many people used to take out books bearing on the war, but this year that seems pretty well confined to broadcasters and school teachers.’ The public was turning more and more to good fiction, biography and cultural literature ‘for relief from the strain imposed on the mind by last year's concentration on war news and war books, almost exclusively.’ It was noticeable that films and broadcasts of good Victorian novels and plays attracted attention to such works and other ways of escape were found in greater attention to books on music, which had become an important section of the library, of drama and even of poetry.⁷⁹

In April 1943 the Listener questioned several librarians, who said that there was no slackening in demand for political or semi-political books by writers such as Gunther, Reed and Quentin Reynolds, and there was keen demand for books about Libya, New Guinea and other countries which were being fought over. There was also notable demand for Tolstoi's War and Peace. There was less interest in specific topics, such as air raid shelters, which had been rushed in 1942.

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Interest in Douglas Credit, theosophy and the occult had waned— ‘fantastic things that flourish in peace time don't seem to have survived the times of worry.’ Keenness on compost, however, was ‘on the up and up’, as was planting by the moon and stars. A senior group of librarians claimed that there were two reactions: among the young, a sense of responsibility was disappearing; among adults it was growing. Many people found that they could not read fiction any more but must have more serious material.⁸⁰

In mid-1943 the Dunedin Evening Star, commenting on publishers' rationing of popular novels, said that libraries were obtaining only half or less of the copies formerly available. Recent books by such authors as Frances Parkinson Keyes, Eric Knight, Georgette Heyer, Douglas Reed, A. J. Cronin, Anne Hepple had long waiting lists. Older Westerns and detective stories were being read more, and earlier authors such as Trollope, Belloc, Bennett, Begbie, Mulford, Punchon, Charlotte Bronte, David Lyall were coming back into favour.⁸¹ Meanwhile trade in second-hand books, where prices had increased but little, was growing, with special interest in art books, New Zealand and political history.⁸² Also, by special arrangements with overseas publishers, new editions of popular small books were being printed in New Zealand.

By mid-1944 in Wellington's Central Library shelves the children's and popular sections looked fuller than they were: there were books only on the higher shelves, nothing near the floor. Half of the children's room was out of use and much of the remaining shelf space was empty. Quick turn-round of books meant less time for repairs and the bindery was short-staffed. Though their prices were high, wartime books with poorer paper and narrow margins could not stand repeated repairs. Many were draggled and worn. But already rationing was less severe than it had been 18 months earlier when if a dozen copies were ordered two or three might arrive. American books were more plentiful and of better quality than British; though more expensive and more difficult in licensing they were better value for libraries because they stood up to wear better.⁸³

Auckland also reported recent slight improvement in supplies, partly the result of increased production both locally and in Australia, but supplies still lagged far behind demand and were largely a matter of chance. Still, the city librarian said that publishing houses had treated New Zealand very fairly and practically no important

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books published during the war, fiction or non-fiction, had failed to reach New Zealand.⁸⁴

In some places where labour pressures were acute, staff shortages curtailed services. In July 1944 Wellington's Central and branch libraries decided to have shorter hours ‘for the duration of the war only’. From Monday to Friday they would close at 8 pm instead of 9.30 pm and on Saturday at noon instead of 9.30 pm. The Central Library would close on Sunday as it was not much used by people living in rooms, for whom this day's service had been expected to prove a great boon.⁸⁵ Despite the reduction in service hours, Wellington reports in 1944 and 1945 told of increased use, notably in suburban libraries.

It must be remembered that the war years preceded the era of free public libraries and highly trained librarians with their sophisticated catalogues and indexes. In 1934 Ralph Munn⁸⁶ of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, and John Barr⁸⁷ of Auckland Public Library had probed libraries in the main towns, reporting very many weaknesses. Their report, said the president of the Library Association in 1943, was the ‘forcing-bed out of which has grown modern library development in New Zealand.’⁸⁸ They stressed the need for a central organisation to buy books and circulate them through public libraries, increasing supplies while reducing wasteful buying, and they condemned the subscription system.⁸⁹

In New Zealand, unlike Britain and the United States, in general borrowers from public libraries paid subscriptions, while newspaper rooms and reference sections were open to all. These libraries were also supported by money from local authorities, the pro rata amount varying considerably from place to place; subscriptions, as the apostles of freedom urged, reduced the number of people using libraries and channelled the selection of books to ‘what our subscribers like’.⁹⁰ Local authorities were not permitted to levy rates of more than 1d in the £ for library purposes until 1939, when 2d was permitted.⁹¹

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Movement towards freedom was helped by the Country Library Service, a government service established in 1938 under the Minister of Education, which began its work with the smallest rural libraries. Originally towns with fewer than 2500 people could have free loans of books, 15 per 100 of population, changed periodically by travelling vans, on condition that the local authority made its library free and gave a reasonably efficient service.⁹² Its range was gradually extended: in 1943, in 43 towns with populations of less than 10 000 there were free libraries; by December 1945 62 towns of fewer than 15 000 people had them.⁹³

The Country Library Service also helped small independent subscription libraries. For £3 a year 100 books were lent and changed. In 1942–3, amid the tyre and petrol shortage, 368 of these libraries had 26 410 books circulating. In addition, to isolated groups of readers hampers of books were sent and remote individuals could get books by post from headquarters. In 1943 there were 70 groups on hampers and 250 individual readers. The Country Library Service then had 118 204 books, including 42 857 in the children's section, 43 295 non-fiction, 32 049 fiction. In 1945, 491 subscription libraries, 66 groups and 567 individuals were linked to the Service, which also acted as an interloan agency for scarce and wanted books.⁹⁴ In 1942 the School Library Service, financed by the Education Department and administered by the Country Library Service, was inaugurated as one of its most important services. By December 1945 some 1019 schools, representing 58 152 children, were receiving books.⁹⁵ The Country Library Service had other functions. From 1942 it supplied books to the AEWS which circulated them to the forces. Its Central Bureau for Library Book Imports has been noted.⁹⁶ Cards from the Bureau were filed and helped to begin the union catalogue of book holdings of the major libraries; other bibliographical projects were cherished as far as means allowed. Its work in many areas was greatly helped by the five-year appointment, beginning in 1940, of a liaison officer between itself and the New Zealand Library Association. Miss E. J. Varnell, with distinguished experience in England behind her, was a vigorous and skilful apostle of free public libraries and of librarian training.⁹⁷

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Amid all the shortcomings imposed by tradition, the Depression and the war the New Zealand Library Association, an enlightened nucleus, heartened since 1939 by a Carnegie Corporation grant, strove for improvement. In March 1943 its president said that in the past year the democracies' preoccupation with winning the war had behind it the no less important aim of re-adjusting society afterwards. The problems of rehabilitation and of other increased demands for library information services were kept in view. Spadework was being done towards ensuring that all necessary books should come into the country and be readily available where wanted.⁹⁸ In 1941 a Book Resources Committee had been set up to strengthen, co-ordinate and exploit the book resources of New Zealand. Its work concerned book purchases by libraries, inter-library loans, accessibility of books to readers and the compilation of union catalogues. Plans for a union catalogue of books, based on microfilm copies of catalogues of major libraries, very hopeful in 1941 when a Carnegie grant promised a microfilm camera, were deferred because that camera could not be obtained until after the war, but from 1944 many libraries began sending copies of their new catalogue cards for inclusion in the union catalogue.⁹⁹ In 1939 a union list of serials was begun in Dunedin and its first mimeographed Check List appeared at the end of 1942. An index to New Zealand periodicals was begun in 1940, again in Dunedin, with 12 selected periodicals, and in 1941 the work moved to Wellington. Several quarterly issues appeared before war preoccupation made indexers very scarce in 1943, but the ground was ready for more intensive work after the war.¹⁰⁰

Training for librarians was a crucial factor. A Training Committee of the Association worked out a syllabus which was discussed and approved in 1941.¹⁰¹ It was a correspondence course, with notes, reading lists and monthly assignments. A year's work gained a General Certificate; a further year would earn a Diploma. School Certificate or University Entrance were the basic qualifications for librarians already on the job, and 42 embarked on the course in August 1942. A difficulty soon apparent was that of finding enough tutors, especially for the Diploma course, among the few senior and qualified librarians in the country. In October 1944 the Association asked the government, in consultation with its Training Committee, to establish intensive training facilities in Wellington under the

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guidance of Miss Mary Parsons,¹⁰² who was then the Director of the United States Information Service Library, opened in Wellington early that year. In 1946 the Library School began training 30 graduate students in a year-long course. Its director, until the end of 1947, was Mary Parsons whose talents and drive were backed by teaching experience in library schools in Paris, Canada and the United States. ‘It is hard,’ wrote the historian of the Association some 15 years later, ‘to estimate the benefit that librarianship in New Zealand derived from her fortunate presence here at a critical time.’¹⁰³

The Library Association's Diploma was abandoned in 1945, superseded by the Library School diplomas, but this did not remove the Certificate course for training library assistants who came to their posts from secondary school. The two training courses have co-existed helpfully ever since, with some distinguished librarians qualified only through the Association and experience.

A National Library was to remain a long-standing dream, but some of its functions were assumed in 1945 by the National Library Service. This had three divisions: one took on and developed the bibliographical projects already nurtured by the Country Library Service; that Service's lending work was extended through regional depots; the library school opened in 1946.¹⁰⁴

Libraries, despite diminished book supplies, did not stand still during the war. They were favoured by a number of informed, devoted workers, by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and by a Prime Minister who had profound belief in books and in their being accessible to people.

When the war began, New Zealand's musicians had just worked through a lean decade. Teaching was the mainstay of the profession. The advent of sound films had meant that by 1930 a large number of theatre musicians faced a bleak future.¹⁰⁵ Some obtained work in the newly formed YA broadcasting stations orchestras, some turned to teaching, some were driven to other jobs. Concentration on private chamber music, with occasional broadcasts to quicken zeal, gave valuable experience to a few, and some dedicated persons embarked on intensive training in order to be ready for professional playing

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when it came.¹⁰⁶ It was believed that broadcasting would employ more musicians in the future.¹⁰⁷

At levels varying from place to place and with many limitations, musical activity struggled on in a hard climate. Many towns, large and small, had choirs and the main centres each had several. There were some chamber music groups; the British Music Society, formed in 1932 and dedicated to the promotion of good music, not exclusively British, had many branches;¹⁰⁸ there were symphony orchestras in the main centres and a few elsewhere: Hawera, under the inspiration and tutelage of an enthusiast, mustered 50 players and a local paper spoke with pride of their range of instruments, including those rarities, the bassoon and the oboe. ‘Mr H. C. A. Fox, who has played professionally every wind instrument’, had taught all the brass and woodwind section and, working through school groups, had given orchestral training to all the cello and viola players, to the leader, Mr Louis Fox, and 60 per cent of the violin players. A concert in August 1940 included ‘From the Country Side’ by Eric Coates and ‘Serenade sous les Étoiles’ by Rarini; the intermezzo from ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’, for woodwind and strings only, which called for ‘delicate treatment and close timing’; selections from ‘La Boheme’, with popular arias represented by violin, oboe, cello, clarinet and trumpet solos. It finished with Ketèlbey's ‘In a Persian Market’ with percussion prominent and market cries sung by male voices.¹⁰⁹

Limitations were imposed both by the instrumentalists available and by the abilities of players. In a 1940 review, F. J. Page¹¹⁰ remarked that Christchurch was lucky to hear a quartet by Haydn once in five years.¹¹¹ Sometimes the need to reduce large-scale music to small-scale means exercised the national habit of improvisation. Thus, regularly, on Good Friday in Christchurch Cathedral, Bach's ‘St Matthew Passion’ was performed. Properly, this would take several hours, a large chorus and orchestra, 10 solo singers and an organ; the Christchurch effort was achieved in one and a half hours with a choir, soloists, an organ and a piano. ‘This is all we can afford ourselves in New Zealand, but it is surprising how a competent presentation with these means can give us a sense of the immense

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wealth of the music; a less competent performance would bring us instead to a realisation of our musical poverty.’¹¹² Not that the whole ‘Passion’ was unknown. Wellington had its first entire performance in April 1941, by the Schola Cantorum, under Stanley Oliver.¹¹³ The Schola Cantorum had started in 1936 and was known as a ‘carefully tutored mixed choir… which has opened the door on a great deal that is beautiful in music, apart from that most commonly known.’¹¹⁴ ‘St Matthew Passion’ was performed with an orchestra and 30 voices, only one soloist being an outsider, packed into the Dominion Museum Hall. It began at 5.30 pm and finished about 10 o'clock, audience and performers sharing tea on the premises during an hour's break; it cost £70 to put on and the net profit was £2 13s 5d.¹¹⁵ A few months later, in December 1941, the choir gave the first performance of another Bach work, the ‘Christmas Oratorio’. It was sung in a church, then an unusual event, cost £93 and made £24 profit.¹¹⁶

At the war's start, there was widespread stimulation from the music festival which was part of the centennial celebrations. During 1939, as a beginning, a National Broadcasting Service string orchestra was selected by Maurice Clare,¹¹⁷ an experienced English violinist then living in New Zealand, with 12 players, 10 of whom had previously worked in theatre and radio orchestras. This was the nucleus around which in April 1940 the Centennial Orchestra of about 30 players was established, the process revealing how limited were New Zealand's musical resources.¹¹⁸ Anderson Tyrer,¹¹⁹ an English pianist and conductor, visiting as an examiner for the Trinity College of Music, became first adviser, then director, of the festival, and conductor of the orchestra. Tyrer's musicality was to be questioned later, but his enthusiasm and energy were undeniable.¹²⁰

As the war in Europe quickened to the 1940 crisis, the Centennial Orchestra toured New Zealand, its own performances buttressed in

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the four main centres by local musical activities. Four overseas musicians, Isobel Baillie,¹²¹ Gladys Ripley,¹²² Raymond Beattie¹²³ and Heddle Nash,¹²⁴ and the English-trained New Zealand bass Oscar Natzke,¹²⁵ sang arias and various other songs. They also joined with local choirs in presenting Gounod's Faust, in gorgeous raiment and very popular, Elgar's King Olaf and The Dream of Gerontius, Mendelssohn's ‘Elijah’ and Brahms's ‘Alto Rhapsody’.¹²⁶ At Auckland an unexpected highlight was the brief appearance of Sir Thomas Beecham¹²⁷ who was passing through on his way to England. He attended Faust and consented to conduct the second act, in which only solo singers were involved, producing an ‘electrifying performance’.¹²⁸

In the whole festival the contributions of local groups were substantial. For Auckland's nine-day season, besides the Centennial Orchestra those involved included the Royal Auckland Choir, the Auckland Choral Society, the Dorian Choir, the Chamber Music Society, the Auckland Symphony Orchestra, the Operatic Society and the 1YA Orchestra. There were four presentations of Faust, choral and symphony concerts and a chamber music concert.¹²⁹ The programme of the Auckland Symphony Orchestra, included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, ‘Finlandia’ by Sibelius and Mozart's ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’.¹³⁰ At Christchurch a concert version of Bizet's Carmen was presented by the Royal Christchurch Musical Society along with Charles Wood's cantata ‘Eden Spirits’, sung by the Christchurch Liederkranzchen.¹³¹ The larger provincial centres such as Nelson, Greymouth, Timaru, Masterton, Rotorua and Whangarei were not forgotten. The visiting vocalists toured them, assisted by an accompanist and a string quartet.¹³²

The musical celebrations included competitions for string quartets and choirs and for compositions of orchestral overtures and choral works. The Orpheus Choir of Christchurch and a quartet drawn from the Laurian Club, a string orchestra also of Christchurch, were

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the winning performers. Douglas Lilburn,¹³³ then studying in England but soon to return, scooped the composition pool, taking a first and second place with his overtures ‘Drysdale’ and ‘Festival’ and a first with a choral work ‘Prodigal Country’.¹³⁴

There was widespread enthusiasm for the Centennial Orchestra and among those who thought that it should be the harbinger of a permanent national orchestra were such influential persons as James Shelley,¹³⁵ Director of Broadcasting, J. W. Heenan,¹³⁶ Under-Secretary of Internal Affairs, and Peter Fraser.¹³⁷ Meanwhile many of its players remained active as the National Broadcasting String Orchestra under Anderson Tyrer. The music critic of the Listener in June 1942 reported that the Orchestra had lately visited the four main centres, ‘virtually the same combination that toured New Zealand during the Centennial celebrations’.¹³⁸

After the centennial singers had departed, for several years there were very few visits by overseas musicians. In 1941 the J. C. Williamson Opera Company from Sydney presented Gilbert and Sullivan shows to audiences that did not expect to enjoy them again for some time.¹³⁹ Harold Williams,¹⁴⁰ an Australian baritone, toured late in 1941, joining in Wellington's annual ‘Messiah’, the Schola Cantorum's ‘Christmas Oratorio’ by Bach, and a concert with Ignaz Friedman¹⁴¹ and the symphony orchestra under Anderson Tyrer.¹⁴² Early in 1942 the fortunes of war, including the Pearl Harbour raid, sent Thomas Matthews,¹⁴³ lately leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and his pianist wife Eileen Ralph,¹⁴⁴ from Hawaii to New Zealand and for a time he was guest conductor of the 1YA orchestra at Auckland.¹⁴⁵ The veteran singer Peter Dawson¹⁴⁶ toured through enthusiastic patriotic concerts in mid-1942.¹⁴⁷ Ignaz Friedman, an

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eminent Polish pianist who during the war settled in Australia, toured New Zealand several times exciting large audiences and contributing to patriotic funds.¹⁴⁸

An informed observer of the musical scene, F. L. W. Wood,¹⁴⁹ wrote in 1943:

An overseas artist, well advertised, can fill the biggest hall in any New Zealand town; and amid the general approval of anything he may do, he may well overlook the keen criticism of an alert minority. A New Zealander, returning from overseas, will get a flying start over equally accomplished artists without handles to their names, though even then familiarity will soon breed, if not contempt, comparative disregard. This substitution of overseas recognition for local achievement is one factor helping to produce a general slackness in standards. There is no focus for local talent, for the conservatorium planned by the National Broadcasting Service must await happier days after the war. Meanwhile the Service is tempted to give the public what it imagines the public wants rather than to head a discriminating drive in the interests of New Zealand music.¹⁵⁰ Three of the four university centres teach for a musical degree; but their work is mainly academic, and they have not in the past effectively drawn together the threads of musical activity in the community. Yet there are many competent and energetic music teachers in all the main towns; and numerous private organisations—like the Music Teachers' Association and the various branches of the British Music Society— do something to bring together those who are interested and to bridge the gap between professional and layman.

Meanwhile there is intense, though uneven, musical activity among the people. Connoisseurs, deprived of first-rate orchestras and full of intolerance for anything New Zealand could possibly do, turn into gramophone fans. The highbrow collects records as a philatelist collects stamps. He sharpens his thorn needles to the finest point, waxes his discs, puts his loudspeaker in the ceiling, and knows the date of every recording. And alongside the classicist

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is the swing fan who scents new records with the same clairvoyance. There are many young men and women who listen to the performance of the best American swing orchestras with a critical ability based on real knowledge both of composition and performance.¹⁵¹

Of a Wellington Town Hall concert in February 1943 which combined the talents of pianist Friedman and a symphony orchestra under Tyrer, the Listener's reviewer wrote:

In a country where concert-going is a rare experience, it is not surprising that we arrive late, stamp down the aisle, and sometimes applaud in the wrong places… but we surrendered to the music when it was not too profound. We frankly liked the fireworks, too, so we didn't forget to applaud (at least twice) the Tchaikovski Concerto…. But most of us are sensationalists at heart. We ask for rhythm and speed before subtlety, for ‘The Bartered Bride’ Overture in preference to ‘A Walk to the Paradise Garden.’¹⁵²

Throughout the war years the orchestras at the radio centres continued to work and local musicians, including singers, broadcast their recitals, solo, in pairs and in small groups. Occasionally they sang or played music by New Zealanders, with Lilburn's looming high in merit over the rest.¹⁵³ In the Listener from early 1942 a critic, ‘Marsyas’ (Antony Alpers¹⁵⁴), wrote freshly and candidly about recordings and local broadcasts and concerts, irritating some readers and generally stimulating musical awareness.¹⁵⁵ The many choral groups continued valiantly, though after mid-1941 soprano sections overwhelmed the tenors.¹⁵⁶ Whatever else faltered, Handel's ‘Messiah’ was faithfully performed in the Christmas season.

The war years saw increased learning of music, then as now directed towards English examinations. More children than ever before learned to play the piano and some turned to stringed instruments such as the violin and the guitar.¹⁵⁷ Parents, earning more, could give their children this cultural opportunity and there was feeling that musical interests would counter the disturbance of the times, would provide a steadying and enriching influence. Some adults, previously more or less skilled, took up playing and singing again as relief from

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tensions and for home entertainment. Music teachers were very busy, some unable to fit in all would-be pupils.¹⁵⁸ There were heavy demands for second-hand pianos—imports had ceased early in the war—and other instruments were very scarce. Those most in demand were piano accordions, guitars, ukeleles, and all band instruments such as clarinets, trumpets and saxophones. There was great shortage of accessories such as steel strings and reeds, though for saxophones plastic reeds had been introduced. Some instruments, such as guitars, drums and bagpipes, were made locally. For records and for sheet music demand exceeded supply, though some music, by arrangement with English publishers, was printed in New Zealand.¹⁵⁹

In primary schools the place of music was enlarged. Broadcast lessons gave more children training in singing and appreciation than was possible when classes and schools were limited by the musical skills of their own teachers. Annual music festivals drew hundreds of children together, singing the songs learnt during the year.¹⁶⁰ In secondary schools, strongly directed towards academic examinations, music was largely regarded as relaxation and each depended on its own teachers, with, in consequence, wide variations in activity. Encouragement of young players took various forms. In the main centres there were annual music competitions and these did not slacken in the war years. Dunedin had the first junior orchestra, with players for most instruments, and was followed by Christchurch. The Christchurch group, which began at Linwood school, by 1941 had gathered 50 string players and was about to add a woodwind section.¹⁶¹ At Auckland in 1944 the Society of Music Teachers proposed a series of concerts to introduce talented young singers and players to the public.¹⁶²

In February 1943 inquiries in the four centres by the Listener found variations in the effect of the war on amateur music societies. In choirs, successive ballots might weaken tenor sections and leave the basses untouched, or essential work might remove the only contralto capable of the solo part in a projected concert. Orchestral societies had suffered more noticeably than had choral groups. Women preferred string instruments, so woodwind players were scarce and brass players even more so, brass instruments not being played by women— ‘No, not so much too spitty as too heavy. The physical

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strain is too great on a woman,’ said Colin Muston,¹⁶³ the Auckland conductor. The Auckland and Wellington symphony orchestras and the Christchurch Laurian Club had gone into recess, though the Auckland string players kept in training, waiting for the war's end. Male choirs here and there had submerged their identity temporarily in larger and therefore more stable groups. In the Royal Wellington Choral Society older members had returned to fill gaps; it had more tenors and drew fuller audiences than had attended during the previous war when heavier casualties had kept people away from entertainment. In Christchurch two male choirs were still functioning at the end of 1942, while the Royal Christchurch Musical Society and the Harmonic Society showed no signs of going under; 40 men had taken part in ‘The Messiah’ of Christmas 1942. Dunedin's Choral Society had gone into recess as far as subscriptions and major works were concerned, but its singers still worked together. Membership of the British Music Society had not declined.¹⁶⁴ The Schola Cantorum went into recess in 1942 though monthly practices kept the choir alive until it regained its full voice in 1945.¹⁶⁵

Chamber music, with only a few players in each group, was the form that prospered best under war conditions. In Britain, amid the bomb raids of 1940, the pianist Myra Hess¹⁶⁶ and Kenneth Clark,¹⁶⁷ director of the National Art Gallery, had replaced the treasures of the Gallery, removed to safe keeping, with the treasures of chamber music in hour-long lunchtime concerts. These had proved a brilliant success. In the winter of 1941 the idea was echoed in Wellington: a series of Sunday afternoon concerts in the Art Gallery had the triple object of attracting visitors to the Gallery, promoting good music and raising patriotic funds. These concerts, begun in mid- June under vice-regal patronage, drew audiences of more than 500.¹⁶⁸ Later, at concerts by many of the same musicians, organised as the Chamber Music Club, smaller city halls were packed to hear trios, quartets and quintets by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven. Occasionally an oboe or clarinet player borrowed from the Air Force Band widened the range.¹⁶⁹ Among the refugees from

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Hitler's Europe were some very talented musicians with distinguished training and experience who as performers and teachers enriched the music field.