Donald Anderson

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 4

Donald Anderson

Donald Anderson. By Dennis McEldowney. Paul. 123 pp. and Index.

This short memoir of a highly gifted, but physically handicapped New Zealander is a labour of love for an author who, for the first twenty years of his life, himself suffered from a heart disability which reduced his powers of locomotion to a minimum. Donald Anderson was born in Invercargill in 1923, and from his birth was a sufferer from cerebral palsy, a disease caused by damage during birth, the victims of which are commonly called spastics. The lack of co-ordination of movement which is the distinguishing symptom of the condition is distressing to watch, and must be doubly distressing for the sufferer, but Donald was lucky in one respect—his parents, both of them Scottish Presbyterians of high intellect and acute perception, gave him the discerning sympathy which created the maximum power to help himself. From the age of twelve Donald began to work hard at his studies through a correspondence school, and became so proficient in French, that even his pronunciation of that difficult language was wellnigh perfect. Because of the hazards he experienced in ordinary movement he lived at home, but this did not prevent him from passing his University Entrance examinations with high marks. When Donald sought the academic career for which he was so eminently suited, his physical limitations once more militated against him. Though he.learnt to live alone, and to look after himself, the difficulties attending upon an academic appointment were inclined to influence the authorities in whose hands such assignments lay. By the time he had been granted a lecturer’s appointment at Otago University he had also begun to write, became deeply interested in the Student Christian Movement, and edited its paper, “Outlook.” He also contributed regularly to the "Southland Times,” the “Listener” and “Landfall.” He also did reviewing, and wrote verse. While at Otago he met J. A. W. Bennett, a Fellow of Magdalen who said of him “It

was not hard to see that his acumen, wit and literary judgment would make him welcome at Oxford, and I was glad to find a place for him at Magdalen.” This was a turning point in Donald Anderson’s brief life, for, to a person of his attainments, Oxford was like a home-coming. He enjoyed as much as anything the formality and decorum of its observances, as well as his own New Zealand friendships, visits to English houses, punting on the river (at which he became surprisingly good), and the flowering of his own talents. Always keenly religious, and with a strongly entrenched Presbyterian background, he now found himself drawn more and more to Anglo-Catholicism, and, while grieving at the pain this might cause his parents, found in the Sacramental practices of this branch of Christian worship a deep spiritual satisfaction. Meantime his gifts as a University teacher had developed beyond the expectations even of those who knew him best, and with his marriage to another Oxford graduate, Margaret Witt, he decided to return to New Zealand where he became a lecturer in English at the new University College at Palmerston North. In 1961 he died suddenly of a coronary occlusion at the age of 38.

Within the framework of a short book Dennis McEldowney has managed to enclose a full-life portrait of a man whose untimely death was an intellectual loss of real magnitude to his country, as well as to its ties with the older one for which he had a compelling love.