by Hyde, Robin
Page 147
‘Fritzie broke through at Bapaume’. The German break-through at Bapaume occurred on 21 March 1918 (Stewart, pp.336ff.), but Starkie had already returned to the Otago Battalion in February; see note below for p.174.
Page 148
Dick Simmonds. Hunt, MS Notes.
Bob McCullogh. Duncan McKechnie, MS Notes.
‘kept in … compounds like the V.D. men’. This is a detail added by Hyde and touches on General Richardson’s belated effort to control the disease among the members of the N.Z. Division in England. ‘He had every available officer preaching incessantly at the men. “Irrigation huts” were established in each camp. An early set of Routine Orders laid down that all who had been exposed to infection must present themselves within 24 hours for treatment either in camp or at certain hospitals in London. To become infected after failing to do this was to be guilty of disobedience. Those convalescents who persisted in breaking out of hospital were “enclosed in a high barbed wire fence”’ (P. S. O’Connor, ‘Venus and the Lonely Kiwi: The War Effort of Miss Ettie A. Rout’, New Zealand Journal of History, vol.1, no.l, 1967, p.24). The Australians had issued ‘preventives’ to men going on leave from 1916, but General Richardson, O’Connor writes, ‘shared the official New Zealand horror of this—it “would be tantamount to encouraging immorality”—and thereby bears his portion of responsibility for thousands of cases of infection which, as he later came to realise, could have been avoided’.
Page 149
‘brought home seven’. ‘They broke out one night—given job of chasing them’ (MS Notes). Hyde has written ‘given’ so that it looks like ‘seven’.
Page 150
Colonel Hardy. Harcus (MS Notes); presumably Hargest.
Page 151
Sergeant Major Stevens and ‘killing a man in cold blood’. Stevenson (MS Notes). No doubt this is the incident reported by Byrne: ‘During the night of the 19th–20th [February 1918] a successful raiding operation was accomplished by the 1st Battalion. The party committed to the task comprised 30 other ranks from 4th Company, under the command of 2nd-Lieut. W. O’Connell …. The objective was a portion of the enemy’s line at the northern edge of Juniper Wood, including the derelict tank and “pill-box” previously referred to …. The derelict tank was reached and surrounded, and five of the enemy secured as prisoners, but one of them was immediately shot by Pte. Stark, who was not officially one of the raiding party’. Byrne, pp.269–70.
‘Charlie Frane sings out’. ‘Charlie Frame points out wounded man crawling away—Starkie harpooned him with bayonet’. MS Notes.
‘When did the poison gas …. go on with it’. These two sentences replace thirty-three lines from MS B-10 concerning Starkie’s reception back in the trenches by Lieutenant Freed and Colonel Charters—astonishment with grudging admiration.
Pages 152–153
Episode with Val and Blanche. ‘Got uniform went straight down to see Val and Blanche. Arrived there 3.30 a.m. Stopped there all night—Shortly afterwards they went to Paris and he never saw them again’, MS Notes.
Page 154
‘It’s strange … brewers turn out … fat.’ This sentence replaces ten lines in MS B-10 of unnecessary jocular explanation of why God made brewers fat.
Page 155
‘This place’s haunted …. Living in a brewery’. Twenty-six lines cut from MS B-10 deal with Starkie taking some bottles of wine back to his mates, having it confiscated, then returning for a kerosene tin of the wine the Maori had drowned in.
Page 156
Alec Suter. Soper, MS Notes.
‘heard that tale before …. A hand of poker’. Twelve lines cut from MS B-10 deal with the effort to stop a fire spreading in the ammunition dump and an officer recognizing Starkie.
‘“Colonel Chalmers says ten days’ leave’”. Colonel Charters had been evacuated suffering from the effects of gas poisoning on 7 March 1918 (Byrne, p.271) and had not returned when this incident took place.
Page 157
‘“I’ll kill the sniper”’. ‘Two mins after sent Peter Race after him to tell Freed Starkie will kill him for a cup of rum’, MS Notes.
‘nobody’s soldier …. But it’s easier’. Fifteen lines cut from MS B-10 include eleven lines from Alan Seeger’s poem ‘Rendezvous’—see note 3 for p.184.
Jackie Kearney. Jack McGregor, MS Notes.
‘I’m off now! … Three thousand’. Six lines omitted from MS B-10 describe Starkie’s dash back to the trenches to write letters to mother and girlfriend.
Pages 158–159
Duel with the sniper. The incident occurred in early June 1918. On 1 June, 1st Battalion Otago relieved 2nd Battalion Canterbury in the La Signy Farm sector. ‘The opening days of the 1st Battalion’s tour in the line were quiet and the weather perfect. Frequent daylight reconnaissances of the enemy’s lines were being carried out by Pte. Stark, until when single-handed he rushed an enemy post near La Signy Farm and was grievously wounded; his adventurous career thus abruptly terminating for a time at least’ (Byrne, p.298). ‘He shot Starkie at range of 6 yards clean through chest—He got Starkie, lifted right off feet with the blow, as Starkie fell he threw the bomb into the hole with him. Both won—Sniper blown out of hole’, MS Notes.
Page 160
Peter Macy, Mick McGrath, Tim … O’Dorman. Peter Race, Mick McGrath, Tim O’Gorman, MS Notes.
‘“It’s curtains, Starkie.”’ ‘Captain (Dr) Pryor—Looked him over, said three words. Good bye Starkie’ (MS Notes). Seven lines cut from MS B-10 following this sentence deal with the responses as he is carried in: ‘Is that the Outlaw? Isn’t he dead yet?’
‘I have a rendezvous with death’. The opening line of a famous World War I poem that begins ‘I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade …’ by Alan Seeger, killed in action in 1916, Up The Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–1918, ed. Gardner, 1964, p.32.
Page 161
‘Rest, rest on Mother’s breast …’. From the lullaby ‘Sweet and Low’ from Tennyson’s The Princess, II, 456–71, Poems, ed. Buckley, 1958, p.141.
Page 162
Sister Froude. Roode, MS Notes.
Page 163
‘Big Fitz the tunneller, and Jim Turner’. ‘Fitzpatrick … Turnbull’, MS Notes.
Page 164
‘“Cattleyas” … a delicate pinkish spray’. ‘Cattle-eyes’ in the text; Hyde did not correct it though she wrote to John A. Lee: ‘By the way I tried to be luscious and lavish with the nicest girl in the book so gave her a spray of very expensive orchids—cattleyas—trailing misty pink over her shoulder. Somebody once gave me a spray, and I never quite got over it, so passed the idea on. But the publishers settled any tendency to be lavish, once for all, by spelling it cattle-eyes with a hyphen’, Letter of 29 May 1936, held by Auckland Public Library.
Page 165
‘“This is what you said.”’ ‘I’m a — if I will die’, MS Notes.
Page 166
‘sulked like Ajax’. Hyde seems confused; it was Achilles who, after he surrendered Briseis to Agamemnon, retired to his tent and refused to take any further part in the war against Troy.
‘“Getting on for nineteen.’” He was 24.
Haroun-al-Raschid. A favourite literary figure for Hyde, see the letters to J. H. E. Schroder, Turnbull Library.
Page 167
End of Chapter 17. The final three pages—some sixty-six lines—of this chapter have been cut from MS B-10. They are an attempt to bring Hyde herself into the narrative and relate how four years earlier when very sick she had been told that she must have a night nurse. The woman was faded, unattractive and inadequate—unable to keep awake—Hyde disliked her. She had nursed at Brockenhurst during the war and been called Sunshine. Why, wondered Hyde had she been brought to New Zealand ‘already overflowing with unemployed and sexually unemployed, female as well as male’. Surely, she thought, she couldn’t be Starkie’s Sunshine, who, like all the women who nursed in those long
wards deserved happiness and beauty.
Page 168
‘the General’. General Richardson (MSNotes). Brig.-General G. S. Richardson, Commandant New Zealand Troops in England.
Page 169
Sling Camp. The New Zealand Training Depot on the Salisbury Plain in England, Byrne, pp.393ff.
Page 170
‘see the Rosary’. The most likely play seems to be E. E. Rose’s The Rosary, first produced 30/6/1913. See Allardyce Nicoll’s Handlist of plays 1900–1930 in his English Drama 1900–1930, 1973.
‘Juniper berries is what these old London girls go for’. Juniper berries are used in making gin.
Page 171
‘August, 1917’. Starkie’s chronology is confused; if this leave is after Le Havre and the wounding, it is well into 1918.
Page 172
‘there’s a chap in the office’. ‘MacKenzie used to give stamp’, MS Notes.
‘The signature of the Captain’. ‘Capt. Bevis’s signature forged’, MS Notes.
‘the General came up’. General Richardson, MS Notes.
Page 173
‘but you ought to see New Zealand’. This phrase replaces two pages—about fifty-three lines—in MS B-10 of fragmentary further adventures while absent without leave, dodging the ‘Red-Headed Wonder’ and the Military Police.
Page 174
Incident with the Provost-Marshal. ‘Arrive, some limping, some hopping,—Starkie nose bleeding no buttons on tunic & face scratched. Met Provost Marshal’, MS Notes.
‘most conservative club in Auckland’. ‘Pacific Club’, MS Notes.
Page 175
Major Withers. McClymont (MS Notes). Major, later Lt.-Col. J. B. McClymont, originally 2nd in Command Otago Battalion, in Command Otago Reserve Battalion at Sling Camp 1916–March 1917 and again August–December 1918.
‘“Hell—! All O.K. elsewhere?”’ ‘Jesus. O.K. down below?’ MS Notes.
Sergeant James. Ned Jean, MS Notes.
Page 176
‘Royal Irish’. Royal Irish Rifles, MS Notes.
‘Shang, Boozey Bill, Jimmy Daws, Bill Turner, Dick Hunter’. ‘Shang Watson, Boozy Bill Goodlet, Jim Doyle, Bill Turnbull, Dick Hunt’, MS Notes.
Art Butter. Arthur Butts, MS Notes.
‘some God-forsaken little spot’. Ballyhooley, MS Notes.
Page 177
Lark Hill. Larkhill was another military camp nearby, between Bulford and Bustard Camp, formerly used by the Canadians (Nicholson, p.36) and in 1917 by the Otago Reinforcements, Byrne, p.396.
‘grab hold of …. A roll-call’. Twenty-nine lines removed from MS B-10 show Starkie in a different light—defusing an attempt to loot the camp store run by an old Jew and his two daughters. Starkie’s account of this is in the MS Notes.
Page 178
Beginning of Chapter 19. Eighteen introductory lines omitted from MS B-10 concern the fact that Jack Johnson the great boxer had had his training camp at Etaples, and that a ruined cathedral where the New Zealanders were billeted was supposed to have stored £17,000 of gold which the French removed.
‘sodden khaki and field-grey …. Jack Benshaw’. Twenty-two lines cut from MS B-10 concern the use of gas masks and the horrible fate of a young soldier who did not take a gas warning seriously and didn’t put on his mask.
Pages 179–180
Jack Benshaw incident. Hyde has expanded on just one line: ‘Firing party for photographs of girls who knew nothing’, MS Notes.
Page 181
‘Seventeen days before the Armistice’. At 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918 hostilities on the Western Front were suspended under terms dictated by the Allies. Starkie is probably referring to the operations of 23 and 24 October. ‘The two Armies, the Third and Fourth, were simultaneously to continue the great sweep east and north-eastwards on the 23rd …. The 1st Battalion of Otago and the 2nd Battalion of Canterbury, disposed from right to left, were selected to open the Brigade’s attack’ (Byrne, p.365). There was strong opposition and Starkie may have been one of those casualties in 8th Company caused by shellfire (Byrne, p.366). Overall, in a very successful and important operation, the Battalion lost: ‘Killed—one officer and seven other ranks; wounded—two officers and 54 other ranks’, and captured: ‘204 prisoners, 14 machine guns, and one 77mm. field gun’ (Byrne, p.369).
‘Starkie … landed his Iron Cross’. ‘Hun with Iron Cross dived [?] under his coat—Starkie shot him’, MS Notes.
Pages 182–183
‘Four German prisoners jolted … his stretcher’. Curiously, the section in Byrne describing the events of 23–24 October has a photograph of ‘German Prisoners carrying out Wounded’, opposite p.368. See front cover of this edition.
Page 184
Walton-on-Thames. No. 2 New Zealand General Hospital was situated at Walton-on-Thames.
‘a Major from Taranaki’. Major Holmes (MS Notes). This must be Lt.-Col. G. Home C.B.E., O i/c Surgical Div. No. 2 N.Z. General Hospital.
Page 185
Paddy Mahoney. Maloney, MS Notes.
Page 186
‘two bottles … brandy and one of stout’. ‘two bottles Three Star & Four of Stout’, MS Notes.
‘On Christmas Eve they sailed’. The Marama left London 19/12/18, Studholme, N.Z.E.F. Record, 1928, p.378.
‘Maoris had contracted Bright’s Disease’. It is very difficult to ascertain from the MS Notes whether Bright’s Disease refers to the Maoris or the natives at Colon; the latter appears more likely: ‘Four men with crutches fought back howling mob—Rescued by Spanish police, keeping white mule all the while—nine out of ten had Bright’s disease, eyes all affected—Put down among the Maoris because they took him for one.’ Colon was ‘notoriously unhealthful’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1910, vol.VI.
Passage through Panama. Starkie seems to have reversed the direction of travel. The city of Panama is on the Pacific, while Colon is at the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. The Canal was opened to commercial traffic on 14 August 1914, but not declared formally completed and opened until 12 July 1920.
Page 187
Episode of suicidal soldier. ‘Man belonging to medical Corps, 3 days from Auckland, went ashore, for first time had love affair with woman—“goodbye, boys”—went over the side—’, MS Notes.
Page 188
The last two chapters of MS B-10, ‘Apres La Guerre’ and ‘Home was Home Then’, thirty-three pages of typescript, were omitted from the final version. In ‘Apres La Guerre’, Hyde brings the narrative back to her own experience of the War and notes the inadequacy of the country’s response to the returning soldiers and the bond the War had created between them. Then we follow Starkie on his almost inevitable drift to prison. In ‘Home was Home Then’ he marries a Maori and Hyde describes some of their difficulties as well as those of Maoris in general in their own country. After his wife’s death Stark appears headed for prison yet again and the work ends where it began with both Hyde and Stark despairing.
Robin Hyde’s Published Volumes
FICTION
Passport to Hell; the Story of James Douglas Stark, Bomber, Fifth Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Forces, London, Hurst & Blackett 1936, 288pp. Six impressions between April and July 1936. Cheap edition, May 1937.
——, new edition [with revisions], London, Hurst & Blackett, July 1937, 256pp.
Check to Your King; the Life History of Charles, Baron de Thierry, King of Nukahiva, Sovereign Chief of New Zealand, London, Hurst & Blackett 1936. Reprinted 1936, 1937.
——, with an introduction by Joan Stevens, Wellington, Reed 1960.
——, Auckland, Golden Press 1975. Photographic reprint of the 1936 edition.
Wednesday’s Children, London, Hurst & Blackett 1937.
Nor the Years Condemn, London, Hurst & Blackett 1938.
——, [photographic reprint] with an introduction by Phillida Bunkle, Linda Hardy, and Jacqueline Matthews, Auckland, New Women’s Press 1986.
The Godwits Fly, London, Hurst & Blacke
tt 1938.
——, edited with an introduction by Gloria Rawlinson, Auckland University Press 1970. Reprinted 1974, 1980, 1984, 1985.
OTHER PROSE
Journalese, Auckland, The National Printing Co., 1934.
Dragon Rampant, London, Hurst & Blackett 1939.
——, [photographic reprint] with an introduction by Derek Challis and a critical note by Linda Hardy, Auckland, New Women’s Press 1984.
A Home in this World, with an introduction by Derek Challis, Auckland, Longman Paul 1984.
POETRY
The Desolate Star and other poems, Christchurch, Whitcombe & Tombs 1929.
The Conquerors and other poems, London, Macmillan 1935.
Persephone in Winter; poems, London, Hurst & Blackett 1937.
Houses by the Sea and the later poems of Robin Hyde, with an introduction by Gloria Rawlinson, Christchurch, Caxton Press 1952.
Selected Poems, selected and edited [with an introduction] by Lydia Wevers, Auckland, Oxford University Press 1984.
Commentary, Bibliography, and Interpretation (not included above)
James Bertram, ‘Robin Hyde, a Reassessment’, Landfall, September 1953. Reprinted with a Note in Flight of the Phoenix, Critical Notes on New Zealand Writers, Wellington, Victoria University Press 1985.
Jennifer Walls, comp., ‘A Bibliography of Robin Hyde (Iris Wilkinson) 1906–39’, typescript, Wellington, Library School 1960.
Margaret Scott, comp., ‘A Supplementary Bibliography of Robin Hyde (Iris Wilkinson) 1906–39’, typescript, Wellington, Library School 1966.
Joan Stevens, The New Zealand Novel, 1860–1965, 2nd edition, revised, Wellington, Reed 1966.
Gloria Rawlinson, ‘Robin Hyde and The Godwits Fly’, in Critical Essays on the New Zealand Novel, ed. Cherry Hankin, Auckland, Heinemann 1976.
Frank Birbalsingh, ‘Robin Hyde’, Landfall, December 1977.
A script for solo performance on Robin Hyde’s life, The Flight of the Godwit, was written by Bridget Armstrong and performed by her in 1982.
Patrick Sandbrook, ‘Robin Hyde: a writer at work’, Ph.D. thesis, Massey University, 1985. Includes a descriptive inventory of some of Hyde’s manuscripts.