by Hyde, Robin
NEW ZEALAND FICTION
General Editor Bill Pearson
The photograph reproduced on the front cover and on these pages is an N.Z. Official Photograph printed in A. E. Byrne, Official History of the Otago Regiment, N.Z.E.F. in the Great War 1914–18, Dunedin 1921, and captioned ‘German Prisoners carrying out Wounded’.
ROBIN HYDE
Passport to Hell
The Story of James Douglas Stark, Bomber, Fifth Reinforcement, New Zealand Expeditionary Forces
Edited and Introduced by
D. I. B. SMITH
‘There is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in Men.’—WALT WHITMAN
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY PRESS
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction D. I. B. Smith
A Note on the Text
Acknowledgements
Passport to Hell
Author’s Note
Introduction to Starkie
1 Making of an Outlaw
2 Good-bye, Summer
3 Ring and Dummy
4 Cup for Youth
5 The Khaki Place
6 Conjurer and Pigeon
7 Dawn’s Angel
8 Bluecoat
9 Court Martial
10 The Noah’s Ark Country
11 Suicide Club
12 Brothers
13 Passport to Hell
14 Le Havre
15 Runaway’s Odyssey
16 Rum for His Corpse
17 Sunshine
18 London and Laurels
19 Last Reveille
Notes
Robin Hyde’s Published Volumes
Copyright
Dedicated on Starkie’s behalf to
The Rev. George Moreton
On mine, with gratitude,
to Dr G. M. Tothill
Introduction
Passport to Hell is the story of 8/2142 Private J. D. Stark, Fifth Reinforcements, Otago Infantry Battalion N.Z.E.F., his youth in New Zealand and his experiences in the Great War of 1914–18. He returned to New Zealand disabled and without skills and like many soldiers found enormous difficulty in adjusting to civilian life. His drift into marriage, prison, violence, and occasional labour is told in another of Robin Hyde’s books Nor the Years Condemn.1 He survived the outbreak of World War II, married—for the third time—a twenty-three-year-old, Peggy Christina Linton, and suffered the ironic indignity for one of his former daring, of receiving two anonymous white feathers (Otago Daily Times, 10 January 1940). He died in Auckland on 22 February 1942, of bilateral broncho-pneumonia with toxic myocarditis, betrayed finally by his wounded lungs. He was buried in the soldiers’ section of Waikumete Cemetery by his friend the Reverend George Moreton, to whom he had asked Robin Hyde to dedicate Passport to Hell.
Hyde first heard of Stark through her investigative journalism on prisons for the New Zealand Observer. She joined the Observer in 1931 just after it had doubled its size, increased its price and aggressively sought more readers, believing that ‘there is a place in Auckland and the provincial district for an informative, illustrated, topical weekly, presenting not so much the ordinary news of the week as the news behind the news and comments thereon’.2 Or as Hyde put it in a letter to J. H. E. Schroder: ‘We are trying more or less, to steal “Truth’s” thunder without their unpleasantness: that is, to write bold & free as other papers mayn’t, but certainly not to haunt divorce courts & put harassed housemaids in the headlines.’ Following up this policy she ‘interviewed several convicts & wrote a pungent article about Mount Eden Gaol’.3 (N.Z. Observer, 9 March 1931: ‘A Convict’s Life in Mount Eden: Unpalatable Truths about Auckland’s Prison Fortress’.) Details from this article were to find their way into Passport to Hell4 but as far as I know she did not hear about Stark at this point. It is interesting however to find how convincing she was in writing of prison conditions for in the same letter to Schroder she observes, ‘And here was a compliment: the prison chaplain told me that the authorities spent hours hunting through the files for a convict named Robin Hyde!’ When, over a year later, she came to write an article on the chaplain, George Moreton, he drew her attention to a figure immediately recognizable as ‘Starkie’. Moreton had shown her letters from former prisoners requesting help:
There is one from a gentleman whom we will call Sammy—which isn’t his name. During the war, this man saved the Hon. Downie Stewart’s life, pulling him out of a bombed dug-out. He was absolutely fearless, and his chest is literally tattooed with bullet wounds. In Wellington he was once concerned in an assault cause, and got the worst of it. Mr Downie Stewart sent him to a private hospital and paid for a bottle of brandy—but this unfortunately was left beside the patient’s bed. Sammy revived somewhat—and when the doctor came in, he found a distinctly tipsy patient, in a cheerful frame of mind. This man sends occasional telegrams to plenipotentiaries in Wellington. ‘Dear Gordon, About ten wolves at the door, waiting your O.K. for job’, may be regarded as a new one on the Hon. J. G. Coates. Mr Moreton is blithely addressed as ‘Young fellow me lad’, or ‘Dear George’. Yet this man, married now and passionately devoted to his wife and children, keeps his little home spotlessly clean, and hopes one day to pay back the ‘one tin jam, 2 lbs butter, one tin baking powder’ for which he now has to ask the D.P.A. [*]5
It was not until February 1935 that Hyde returned to Starkie, this time to interview him for a book.6 That she may have kept him in mind over those years is indicated in an undated letter to Schroder in which she describes her hopes for the book and continues: ‘It was a queer true terrible story—the story of a living man … that simmered until written.’7 Mid-way through March she was sufficiently confident of completing the work that she made over a half share in the royalties to Stark which he promptly assigned toward a furniture debt: being the proceeds ‘from the sale of a book now being written by Miss Iris Wilkinson concerning episodes of my life as a soldier in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force’.8 On 27 March she notified Schroder of her determination: ‘Am likewise going to complete a very queer sort of writing job which I’ve undertaken and which may be either a book or a nightmare when I’ve finished. It will take me about three months to finish the job I am doing.’9 However, within a month she announced triumphantly to Schroder:
The book that might have been a nightmare is finished. It is a nightmare, but I think it is a book—Harder, barer and more confident—It’s the story of a soldier—he exists and I know him very well. His queer racial heritage—he is half Red Indian, half Spaniard—has taken him into desperate places: prisons, battles, affairs. With it all he’s something of a visionary and —in physical courage—unquestionably heroic—I wrote the book because I had to write it when I heard his story, and because it’s an illustration of Walt Whitman’s line—‘There is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in man.’10
As George Moreton remembered it, he had initiated the writing of Passport to Hell sometime in the winter of 1935:
It must have been somewhere about that time that one morning, a slight woman with an interesting face and a lame leg swung into my office on a walking stick. Her name was Iris Wilkinson although, perhaps, she was better known to most people under her pen name ‘Robin Hyde’. She was inconspicuous enough until she began to talk and then you instantly realized that the person sitting before you was not ordinary; the acuminated intelligence behind the sensitive face made you feel like a ponderous galleon awkwardly trying to avoid the lightning shot of a nimble frigate. I forget most of what we talked about that morning but I do know towards the end of our conversation I asked her if she would like a
good story: her smile was tolerant. ‘I should very much,’ she replied, ‘I must confess a weakness for good stories.’
I leaned over and drew a package from my desk and handed it to her—it was the diary of James Douglas Stark, bomber in the Fifth Regiment, N.Z.E.F., during the Great War. I can recall the excited pursing of Iris Wilkinson’s lips as she turned the pages of the document and the way she laughingly waved her stick as she left my office. And that was really the genesis of Passport to Hell, a book which a well-known English paper described as ‘… wild and strange as anything any warbook writer has remembered or imagined’.11
It is highly unlikely that Starkie kept a diary. Soldiers were officially forbidden to do so,12 and he certainly did not have the temperament to which diary keeping is natural. But he recognized the sensational nature of his experience and hoped to make something of it. It is also probable that like other men who had performed brave acts and not been officially noticed, he wished to be recognized. As Ernest Atkins complained: ‘I was recommended for a medal five times. The grievance about it all exists in my mind to this day and is the main reason for writing.’13 In any case in 1926 Starkie was writing to Downie Stewart about his ‘book’: ‘Downie let me know about that book of mine soon as you can because if it is jake I will finish it.’14 Eight months later he mentions a book, again in a letter to Downie Stewart, on this occasion writing from prison: ‘I have been on a book and I am just arriving in Armentiers in the Bombers with you.’15 It is impossible to tell if this work was in the package which George Moreton handed to Robin Hyde, but she certainly possessed a very sketchy and overwritten account of a number of Stark’s adventures. It is contained in a black exercise book, part of Derek Challis’s collection of his mother’s papers, and written in a hand quite unlike that of Robin Hyde or of Stark. Inside the left front cover is an inscription in Stark’s writing: ‘C. Murphy, No 1 p.1–89 inclusive 7/9/29’. The writer is clearly a novice, for he notes down ‘Useful Books’: ‘The Commercial Side of Literature’, ‘Journalism for profit’, and ‘How to write a short story’, and there are rough drafts of different material interspersed with vocabulary lists. I assume that Stark met him in prison and hoped that he would ‘ghost-write’ his experiences. Murphy on the other hand, hoped to break into print with Stark’s story, and get out of prison. This emerges from the draft of a letter from Murphy to Stark on folio 30 of the exercise book:
Since writing this book of yours I have decided to continue on in the business. I have always had a flair for writing and wish to utilize the time here in something of use to me when I leave. Now I wish to suggest that you let me remain the author of yours not as to any spirit of greed but that it may give me a chance to have other things published which I intend writing. Again should any money be forthcoming for your book I don’t want any of it except of course at your own desire. My object is to break into print. With your book as a lead I shall undoubtedly have the chance of a lifetime, not only in gaining prominence in print but as a lever to get myself out of this.
I’m absolutely alone with no influence of any description and am striving to do the best I can for myself. With my writings and stories in print I’ve at least a chance. Coupled with this of course I am depending on your influence with J.G. [Coates?] to get something done. Believe me Doug there is no selfish wish in my effort to shine as the author of your book that will remain a secret between you J.G. and myself. You can explain things to him and I’m sure he will understand. Nominally, the authorship and rights remain absolutely as you choose, also any acruing monetary proceeds. It is the lead I want.
When you leave and let me have your address I’ll send from time to time such stories as I can finish. With the first book a success you ought to be able to get them accepted without trouble and incidentally collect a few quid.
On folio 19 verso, Murphy seems to have tried out his title and intended nom de plume: ‘Dawes Bently author of Doug Stark Bomber’.16 The interest in the Murphy manuscript lies in the fact that where the same incidents are described as in Passport to Hell, there are small but significant differences.17 Robin Hyde’s was not the only imagination at work; Starkie changed his story to suit his hearer. Hyde does not seem to have used the Murphy manuscript but gone straight to Stark and made notes while he talked. She also asked him to write down some of his experiences18 but was unsatisfied with the result. When he talked, she was able to see quickly what was happening. As she explained to J. A. Lee later when commenting on Passport to Hell: ‘I think some bits of it are pretty good—The realism is because when people talk about things they have seen and known I can see ’em like little pictures, or think I can—maybe it’s only an unusually clear knack with words taking shape so quickly that it seems like a visual image—Anyhow that is how it worked with Starkie—I tried getting him to make notes—it was hopeless, no marrow in it at all. When he talked, though I havena my shorthand and the book was in no wise dictation, I seemed to get it without difficulty.’19
Hyde’s original title for her work on Stark was ‘Bronze Outlaw’ and having completed it she sent it off to the agents A. and P. Watt in England who recommended it to the firm Denis Archer, who finally accepted it towards the end of 1935: ‘Archers have accepted “Bronze Outlaw”—terms to come. By the way the title, which sounds like that of a Western, and is altogether vile, may be changed.’20 Archers placed it with the publishing firm Hurst and Blackett who seem to have suggested the title Passport to Hell which did not altogether please Hyde as she explained in a letter to Johannes Andersen, the Alexander Turnbull Librarian: ‘Hurst and Blackett are bringing out my first novel, “Passport to Hell” (I did not choose the title, by the way), early in March of this year, and I suppose that means it will be in New Zealand before Authors’ Week. This is a book of New Zealand background except for some wartime sequences.’21 Hurst and Blackett seem to have seen the work more as war memoir than as New Zealand novel since a great deal has been cut from the original version22 (much of it presumably at their urging) including the last two chapters which bring Starkie back to New Zealand and underline the New Zealand moral to his life. Hyde observed to Lee that the two chapters had had to be dropped but for different reasons: ‘I had two post war chapters one about Mt Eden gaol, but had to cut ’em out owing to considerations of space and libel.’23 There is no doubt that all the cuts can be defended aesthetically; they result in a sparer, less diffuse work, with a stronger narrative line. It is also clear that the same process has gone on here as Dr Patrick Sandbrook has discerned in his study of The Godwits Fly,24 namely an effort to eliminate subjective authorial intrusion, but the result is to focus much more vividly on Stark and his wartime experiences.
I noted above that Stark had also used his imagination in relating his life story (after all he had been polishing these accounts of his encounters for some eighteen years prior to meeting Hyde) and nowhere is this more clear than in his account of his father, which Hyde followed carefully, expanding where it seemed to her there was an opportunity to do so.25 The result is an exotic figure: a giant full-blooded Delaware Indian from Great Bear Lake with a beautiful Spanish wife, killer of Higgins the bushranger, publican and breeder of gamecocks and race-horses. Some of this is undoubtedly true, but either Stark knew little about his father or he recreated him for Robin Hyde’s benefit. These inventions were not confined to Hyde; the Murphy MS contains an account of Stark fondly leaving his parents on the way to the War when his father had been dead five years. If we are to believe the obituaries of Wyald Stark, he was a different, rather more impressive figure, a pioneer with his own claim on history.
One of Invercargill’s very earliest settlers, Mr Wyald Stark, passed away at his residence, on Thursday, in his 78th year. Deceased came to these parts in the fifties, when the present Queen’s Park was covered in bush, and Dee street did not exist except as a track through thick scrub. He was born in Florida (United States), his father being an officer of the American Army, and after his death while on active serv
ice, young Stark left for England. There he remained but a short time before he was attracted to Australia by the gold fever. He put in some hard work on the diggings and, winning a considerable quantity of the precious metal, decided to try New Zealand, arriving in Southland about the year 1857. Deceased built a store in those early days on the east side of the North Road at Avenal, and … supplied goods to miners as far away as the Mataura district, which he waggoned all that distance. Shortly afterwards he constructed a tramway through Queen’s Park, from the North Road at Avenal to Elles road, for the purpose of supplying firewood to the residents, and at a later date erected an hotel at the west side of the road, which he occupied for some years. It was known as ‘The Governor Grey’, and was then a small wooden building. Afterwards he re-erected a brick hotel near the site of the old one….
Deceased was a man of great physical strength, and his courage was exceptional. While on the Victorian diggings he demonstrated these qualities by capturing an armed bushranger named Higgins, for whom the authorities were in search …. Beneath his dark skin beat a kind heart, and those who knew him when he was in a position to assist others, say he was generosity personified …. Deceased was one of the oldest members of the St. George Lodge of Oddfellows. He leaves a widow, one daughter, and three sons, also nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.26
The problem of fact and fiction is not an easy one; most war books contained elements of both, including the memoirs. John Galsworthy saw this in his preface to R. H. Mottram’s The Spanish Farm where he tried to put his finger on the nature of its ‘new form’: ‘I suppose you would call this a war book, but it is unlike any other war book that I, at least, have met with …. “The Spanish Farm” is not precisely a novel, and it is not altogether a chronicle … quite clearly the author did not mean it to be a novel, and fail; nor did he mean it to be a chronicle and fail. In other words, he was guided by mood and subject-matter into discovery of a new vehicle of expression—going straight ahead with the bold directness which guarantees originality.’27 The finest books from World War I were shaped—like New Zealander Alexander Aitken’s stoically elegiac Gallipoli to the Somme, David Jones’s In Parenthesis, Blunden’s Undertones of War, Manning’s Her Privates We. Each is, as William Blissett puts it, ‘both based on experience and thoroughly composed, a “thing made’”.28 Certainly Passport to Hell is ‘composed’; Robin Hyde is concerned to show the making of a man who can both murder a surrendering prisoner and carry a wounded comrade across no-man’s land as ‘gently as a kitten’. But she also wishes to claim the certainty of fact. She had to project a world in which Stark would live convincingly and assert, ‘This book is not a work of fiction.’ She relied too heavily on Stark’s veracity. In one particular incident concerning his schooldays she was forced to remove the account from the ‘new edition’ of 1937 and wrote to the Southland Times with a public apology: