The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  The character of Jimmy Tutaki in The Butcher Shop illustrates Devanny’s confusion about Maoris. Jimmy is as cultured as the Messengers, has been to the same school as Barry, and can discuss literature with Margaret with more understanding than her husband. But Jimmy is only a few decades removed from the savage and that is one of the reasons that he is seen as too weak to resist Miette’s advances to him. When Margaret learns of the affair between Miette and Jimmy her ‘racial pride’ is aroused and she insults him with racist epithets. While many of Devanny’s ideas about the Maori may appear now as patronizing and even racist, she was unusual for her time in even considering the Maori as a serious character in a novel.

  The boldness of the ideas in The Butcher Shop obscures the affinity of its plot to those of popular romantic novels of the kind that Margaret Messenger condemns as ‘the product of an erotic imagination pandering to vulgar sensationalism for the sake of a sale’.

  But Devanny’s novel differs from them in certain important respects. In other novels of the time which deal with marital infidelity the erring partner (who is more often male than female) usually suffers guilt as a consequence of his or her ‘sin’. But Margaret never considers that her relationship with Glengarry is wrong, and does not feel guilty about it. If there is any punishment in the novel it is for the two men, rather than for Margaret who is in the conventional view the most guilty. The moral tone of Devanny’s novel is very different from that of popular romantic novels, and it is different because Devanny’s attitude towards her heroine is so different. If there is any fault, it lies not with Margaret but with the society in which she lives, a society dominated by men. It is therefore quite just that the men should be the ones to be punished.

  Most of the characters in The Butcher Shop are types. The dedication to ‘the Margarets of the world’ and the fact that Margaret kills Glengarry to avenge Barry and ‘the Margarets of the world’ suggests that Devanny saw her main character as representative. For this reason the subtleties of character development are irrelevant to Devanny, and she tells the reader about her characters rather than revealing them through events and relationships.

  There is perhaps some incongruity about the setting of the novel. The locale is clearly defined. Devanny’s novel was intended as much for the overseas market as for a local one, and she felt the need to be specific about her setting. But the locating of the novel in the King Country is incongruous because it is very unlikely that such revolutionary ideas would have found much favour in this area. In the early 1930s the King Country was inhabited by sympathizers with the New Zealand Legion, a right-wing political organization which sprang up during the Depression (and quickly disappeared soon after that).18 The Messengers are so isolated from their neighbours that no outside political or social influences are brought to bear on their attitudes to life. The only outsiders who come to the station are Glengarry and his mother, and the Longstairs. There are no incidental visitors, no minor characters who challenge what occurs and what is thought on the station. The isolation serves Devanny’s purpose well, but reduces its effectiveness.

  The plot, characterization, and ideas of The Butcher Shop were to be repeated in most of Devanny’s other novels. The pattern of the strong woman, married to a quiet man, who realizes she is mismatched and forms a relationship with a strong man is common to many of her works. In later novels the quiet man lacks the strength that Barry Messenger has, and the strong man often has intellectual attributes which Glengarry lacks. The issue is usually complicated by a weak woman who like Miette is promiscuous. The plots revolve around sorting out the relationships amongst this stock set of characters, in the process discussing and illustrating the ideas that are considered in The Butcher Shop. The emphasis varies occasionally—in Bushman Burke (1930) Devanny is more interested in personal relationships than in the political ideas, and in Riven (1929) she is interested mainly in the maternal role. But even in Sugar Heaven (1936), which is written in the documentary style favoured by socialist writers of the 1930s and fictionalizes an actual sugar strike in North Queensland in 1936, there are correspondences of theme and technique with her first novel.

  Jean Devanny’s work is most often compared with that of Jane Mander. Both women published novels during the 1920s—all of Jane Mander’s novels were published during that decade, as were all the novels Devanny wrote and set in New Zealand. Both of them wrote about what is often called ‘the woman problem’, and both advocated socialism. They were also both interested in people used to culture and comfort, and it was members of this class in their novels who espoused the socialist cause. Neither of them had much sympathy with the working class. Men were either civilized gentlemen like Barry Messenger or David Bruce (in The Story of a New Zealand River), or strong and primitive like Glengarry or Tom Roland. Attraction to the latter type was unfortunate but inevitable. In all cases the woman is seen as the educator, the upholder of values whether of the old type or of the new order which Devanny in particular advocated.

  The difference between the two novelists and their writing is one of tone. Devanny was prepared to be more explicit both in what she condemned and in what she proposed as desirable. Thus her novels are more lively and daring, and there is more excitement in them. But it also means that her use of language is often less controlled than that of Mander, that her characters are less developed, and she has less interest in plot development.

  Together they mark a certain direction in the development of New Zealand fiction. Since they worked separately each may be seen as an anomaly, a lone voice advocating female equality and socialist government in a society which wanted stability above all. Two novelists engaged with the same subject need not represent a substantial movement in opinion, but they do suggest that there were others receptive to ideas that challenged the accepted attitudes of their society. In this respect Mander and Devanny can be seen as innovators of change.

  Devanny’s affinities outside New Zealand are more with writers of non-fiction than with novelists. I have discussed before her reliance on Engels, and many ideas must have come from other socialist writers she read. Her novels resemble those of D. H. Lawrence in some respects, but there is no mention in Devanny’s papers that she actually read Lawrence (though four of his novels, published by Duckworth, are advertised in the back pages of the fourth impression of The Butcher Shop). She was more sympathetic to earlier twentieth-century writers like John Galsworthy.

  Jean Devanny recognized and described the faults of The Butcher Shop. Despite them, and even because of them, the novel deserves to be in circulation again. Its themes are still pertinent today. The anguish which Margaret Messenger endures when she perceives that there are new ways of seeing the world around her is a condition that will always be with us as we struggle to understand the society in which we live. Jean Devanny’s novel is a contribution towards that understanding.

  Many people have helped me in the preparation of The Butcher Shop for republication. I would like to thank them all, and particularly Andree Levesque, Jean Devanny’s daughter Patricia Hurd, Helen Mays, Margaret Orbell, Graeme Dunstall, Sue Colyer, and the Australia-New Zealand Foundation.

  Heather Roberts

  Note. The text of this edition has been taken from a copy of the fourth impression, 1928, with a few literals corrected.

  To the Margarets of this world

  CHAPTER I

  Barry Messenger drew rein upon a high ridge of land. He was “lambing.” The day was Saturday, late afternoon, in August, the first month of New Zealand’s spring, in the year 1924. Snow lay thickly about his horse’s feet and stretched far on all sides in mighty undulations. His eyes, as he peered about on all sides, smarted with the cut of the raw wind, and he and his horse shivered as though one.

  A plaintive blatting rose up from the valley to his left and immediately, without coercion, his horse turned round and downwards, slithering with stiff forefeet from tiny ledge to tiny ledge until the floor of the valley was reached. There the snow lay d
eep. Nearby lay the sheep from which the distressing cries had come. She was silent now except for heavy, painful breathing, and her legs moved jerkily back and forth as she rolled upon her side.

  Messenger stiffly dismounted. His horse emitted a tremendous sigh and settled itself easily with rump to windward. The man moved to the stricken animal and gently, though firmly, handled it to ease the hard delivery.

  Daybreak had found him at this work, and the intervening hours had given him no respite. A scanty lunch had been eaten upon horseback. Yet he showed no signs of fatigue as he patiently laboured with the animal. His oilskin coat, his hands, and even his face, were daubed with blood; his body was numb with the piercing cold of the upland winds, but in face of the travail of the dumb creatures he had been tending all day his discomfort claimed no thought.

  The Southdown’s head came round to him, her patient, foolish eyes carrying an appeal that made him swear aloud. She blatted again dolefully.

  “All right, old lady, all right,” he said, and bared his right arm to the elbow. But this time his ministrations were unsuccessful. Shortly the newborn lamb was in his arms, but almost as soon the mother was dead.

  “The sixth today,” he muttered. “An infernal lot this season.” He regarded the lamb in his arms. “And you, you poor little devil, you’ll have to go the way of the rest. Can’t possibly take you. Won’t be home till late now.” He put the lamb upon its dead mother’s body, drew a jack knife from his pocket and quickly cut the little one’s throat. The skinning of the mother occupied him some time; then he threw the skin over his horse’s rump in company with several others which hung there, remounted and proceeded along the valley.

  This man, only twenty-two years of age, had, by the recent death of his father, been left sole owner of Maunganui Station, a vast tract of upland country comprising twenty thousand acres situated on the southern border of the King Country in the North Island of New Zealand.

  His appearance betokened the very finest type of young manhood. He stood five feet ten inches high, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip. His feet were small and beautifully shaped; his hands not so small as they might have been for strict symmetry, but remarkably well kept considering his toilsome way of life; his small head was profusely covered with waving jet-black hair, and his face was ruggedly handsome. His deep-set, rather closely placed eyes were steady and stern looking and of the very deepest brown. His nose and mouth were ruggedly chiselled; his chin was square and decided.

  He came of mixed English and French stock. His father, some thirty years before this time, had brought from English country life to New Zealand a little fortune and an indomitable will, and had builded Maunganui acre by acre, so to say. Barry’s mother had been governess to a neighbouring station-owner’s children. She had died when giving birth to the boy, who had grown to manhood under the interested, if old-fashioned, guidance of his father and tended by a succession of white housekeepers and Maori maids.

  He had few friends. Busy station life left little leisure for frivolities, nor did it encourage a desire for them. The township of Taihape lay at a distance of fourteen miles from the homestead, and divers pleasures were procurable in Taihape. It lay right on the borderline of the King Country, wherein prohibition reigned, and was the last “liquor” town until Taumaranui was reached some two hundred miles farther on. Therefore was Taihape a live town, of which, on occasion, noisome tales were bruited abroad. For sawmills, flaxmills, sheep-stations and cattle-runs encircled it in all directions, and gave it of their flavour. It was the hub of the bushman’s wheel, the meeting-place of the shearing sheds, the temporary abode of the slaughtermen and freezers whose manner of life was not circumscribed by conventional restrictions nor ordained to curry favour with the scrupulous and orthodox.

  Barry Messenger owned an automobile and a twelve horse-power Indian motor cycle, but his visits to Taihape were almost always on business. His father, the English country gentleman, had rigorously held the boy to the open-air life; had done his old-fashioned best to pass on to his son his own manly simplicity and steadfast habits. Young Messenger had responded nobly so far. Straight and reliable he had been; clean-living and hard-working.

  The station was a goodly property; twenty thousand acres of uplands, some timbered, mostly cleared land, on which were grazed some fifty thousand sheep and varying numbers, from one thousand upwards, of “store” cattle. A wealthy property, despite the fact that Messenger had been hard hit during the slump years after the Great War. And yet Barry and his father had worked as hard and unceasingly as their shepherds and drovers, except for occasional visits to various parts of New Zealand. They were no exceptions to the general in this; they would have been exceptions had they not done so. The boy had revelled in the work, and the years had but drawn him closer to it. Some of it was vile, for sure; other of it was heartbreaking. For instance, the lambing season, when Nature, for no reason at all it seemed to the young man, not even in pursuance of her policy of the survival of the fittest, wreaked cruel vengeance on the patient, meek and helpless. It was all hard, back-breaking and soul-scarring. The dust of the yards in the dagging season, and other dreadful things— One could not free one’s throat from it for weeks after. The clipping sheds in the shearing season— Ah! but there was fascinating toil, if one liked. Back-breaking, yes, but devil-may-care and free.

  During the wool-clipping Barry Messenger invariably became uneasy. Sometimes the crying of the young lambs temporarily separated from their mothers would wake a strange emotion in his breast. He would catch his breath sharply, and the hand holding the clippers would shake. Then he would wonder why this should be so. The golden wool falling away from the naked Southdowns never ceased to fascinate him, and at the finish of the day he always stood awhile beside the classers’ benches to glory in the amber piles reaching high.

  True, there were hateful things about the shearing sheds. The vile oaths of the men, the continual racket and banging of doors, the plunging of the terrified young sheep (he could never use himself to the torment of the animals). But the wonder of the wool, dripping as though with honey, was always there; the naked feet of the brown women “picking up” from the shining greasy floor, just a trifle browner than the wool, always carried compensation and more.

  Speaking of women, Barry Messenger had not yet desired their company. Once, when he was eighteen— But hardly worth mentioning. A brief interlude: a brown maiden, visiting at the home of one of his father’s men, exercising all of her coy and not unsubstantial fascinations. She the pursuer, as the traditions of her race gave her the right to be, he the half-willing and troubled pursued. Nothing really, just a “might-have-been” if Messenger senior had not seen and whisked the lass out of harm’s way. Many brown girls were about the station, but his Dad’s warning, allied to his own clean racial sentiment and the profound respect he had for that grand race his own had dispossessed, had preserved him.

  He knew plenty of white girls, of course. How otherwise, when the district knew no better “catch”? Handsome, clean and wealthy—fathers respected and liked him, mothers appreciated and girls adored. It was his unsullied blood, his quiet, lonesome turn of mind and his hard work that saved him from spoliation.

  No white girl had yet interested him sufficiently to cause a quickened pulse. At least not until this narrative takes up the thread of his life.

  His most intimate friend was Jimmy Tutaki, the son of old Chief Tutaki, who each year contracted with Messenger for the wool-clip. Old Tutaki occupied the house nearest to the Messenger homestead. Each year he found the labour for the shearing sheds, mostly Maoris. He was a character, this Chief, known far and wide. He was rumoured by the old identities of the district to be over eighty, though appearance indicated him to be on the healthy side of sixty. Over six feet high, though slightly stooped, virile enough to be still begetting children by his last young wife, his venerable, hoary head, strangely offsetting his unusually dark face, was revered for the wisdom it contained by all who knew
of him. He was an old-time Maori, retaining the wild look and the ancient prejudices of his tribe. He looked to his sons for the old-time implicit obedience, refusing to pander to pakeha influences on his own, though reasonably acknowledging and respecting the customs of the whites for whites. Many sons he had, ranging from ages of thirty odd down to infancy, and quarrels were frequent between him and the older ones, in whom allegiance to the ancient laws was wearing thin.

  Jimmy Tutaki was twenty-four years old. He was tall, slight and extremely gay of disposition, though also, paradoxically enough, a fine lover of books. Among a people noted for the beauty of its men as is the Maori race he counted as ugly, though the good humour reflected in his continual smile and merry ways made him a great favourite. He was Messenger’s head shepherd, at the time our story opens, and was marvellously adept at dog training. He had accompanied Barry to college, though two years the latter’s senior, and there their childhood’s friendship had been cemented.

  Old Tutaki had been living on Maunganui when it had been staked out.

  In truth, Barry’s motor cycle was guided more often to Taihape by his dusky friend than by himself. The broad nose, thick lips and shining black eyes of Jim Tutaki were heartily welcomed everywhere when jollity reigned among the common people. He danced divinely, and sang the songs of his race in deep and mellow tones.

  Also he could make the white pine chips fly. To the city dweller of far lands a man’s proficiency with an axe may smack of little merit, but in New Zealand— The quickest time through a two-foot upright or an underhand cut carried weighty honours. Jimmy Tutaki, though a shepherd, had wielded the blade to such good end that no bushman in the King Country, the land of sawmills, could successfully compete with him. Certainly he had to surrender the honours to certain of the South Island visitors on Taihape’s two consecutive annual sports days, and Dave Pyrett’s world’s record made his look faint, but locally he was the “champ”. How he found time to read always puzzled Barry Messenger, but find time he certainly did, for the room he shared with three of his brothers was cluttered up with his books. He slept little.