Manson family double

Press, 27 March 1982, Page 16

Manson family double

Widow of Thorndon Quay: Part Two of the Story of a New Zealand Family. By Celia Manson. Pigeon Press, 1981. 258 pp. $19.95. A World Away. By Cecil Manson. Pigeon Press, 1981. 128 pp. Illustrations. $16.95. (Reviewed by D. H. Gilmore) Simultaneous publication of two separate books written by husband and wife must be a comparatively rare event, but such is the case with these two volumes by Cecil and Celia Manson. The two works are quite dissimilar in character and content, the one autobiographical, the other biography, yet both are excellently written in their respective genres as would be expected of writers of their experience and calibre. Of the two, it is perhaps Celia Manson whose work makes the greater impact. In her final instalment of “The Story of a New Zealand Family,” she completes the life story of her great-great-grandmother, Sally Dougherty, from her return to Wellington from the whaling station set up by her husband, Dan, at Port Underwood, until her death in 1898, and covers a pioneering period of some 50 years during which vast changes took place in the life and conditions prevailing in what is now the country’s capital city. It is a vast canvas for any writer to attempt to cover, but Mrs Manson has obviously researched her period with commendable thoroughness and detail. Without losing track of Sally as the central figure of this saga, she weaves into the tapestry much of the historical minutiae against which the later years of her long life was spent. Not only does this include the rise of the small settlement from a scattering of houses set about the northern end western shores of Port Nicholson to the status of Capital city, but also to the development of the Wairarapa district, which, for Sally, always held an almost ’ dreamlike appeal, and where in her later years she was to see many of her descendants successfully established.

Mrs Manson has .achieved a book of such rich personal interest that it is hard at times for the reader to realise it is not fiction, but historical fact. Perhaps the only criticism that could be levelled against it is that, in her endeavour’ to sustain the “family trees” of her protagonists, the various relationships of the different generations become somewhat confusing. Yet it is hard to see just how this could be avoided since she is dealing with five generations of families in' which “family” names were handed down from one to the next; and it is a minor distraction from the engrossing interest of the book as a whole.

In a foreword to “A World Away” Cecil Manson discloses what is probably the origin of most autobiographies: the urgings of family and friends, when one recalls some episode from one’s past —

“Do write about it." It is in response to such urging that he has produced this modest little volume recording “incidents” experienced in the first 34 years of his life, and the result is a vivid picture of life in England in the decade preceding the First World War and of one young man’s share in that conflict and its aftermath.

Tennis parties in his Sussex home; preparatory and public school life; platoon commander on Gallipoli; observer-gunner in the Royal Flying Corps; insurance broker; newspaper proprietor — a varied career for a brief 34 years. On all these topics, and several others he has written with charm and wit in a series of brief vignettes, which justify the pressures which, he says, were brought to bear on his writing them. While each is complete in itself, together they lead the reader steadily through the formative years of a man who has since gained wide recognition for his contributions to the arts. They do, indeed, reflect a picture of an era which is now “A World Away.”

The publishers are also to be commended for the excellent standard of production they have attained in both these books.

(Mr Gilmore, the author of several children’s books, was working on an autobiography at the time of his death, aged 78, earlier this month. He wrote this review shortly before he died.)