APPRECIATING A. E. CURRIE

Turnbull Library Record, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 November 1968, Page 57

APPRECIATING A. E. CURRIE

C.R.H.T.

It was on my fifteenth birthday that I first met the name of Ernest Currie, for my brother gave me a copy of New Zealand verse collected by W. F. Alexander and A. E. Currie. The volume (I have it still, with its fraternal inscription) gave me an awareness of the country I lived in beyond any other experience I had known. David McKee Wright, Will Lawson, Blanche Baughan, Thomas Bracken, Pember Reeves, became more than names, and I remember marvelling (with no inkling of the bibliographer’s art) how these two compilers could have found out about all these poets and their poems. I couldn’t guess that the one young compiler was a mere twenty-two years, or that he would one day be a good friend, still less could I foresee that some of these writers themselves would also be friends - Alan Mulgan, Arnold Wall, James Cowan, Johannes Andersen, the last even more: colleague, guide and friend.

It was not till the mid-i93os that I met Ernest Currie. He was a frequent user of the Library, and as a devoted bookman he came across useful information that we found worth noting somewhere. Sometimes it would be a problem, more usually a bibliographical one. His lawyer’s mind showed itself in a fastidiousness about precise thinking and expression; he had a whimsical, sardonic, even tortuous sense of humour, an intolerance of careless work, especially in recording, and above all, a profound knowledge of literature, printing and the ‘lore’ of books. He did not hestitate to criticise, usefully, upon occasion, and he was generous in his appreciation of any service he was given. I regard as one of my best testimonials, his remark upon my spot identification of an illustration from a lost book: ‘You’re a bloody marvel’. So when in 1939 I thought to launch an organization of‘Friends of the Turnbull Library’, I went to three people: P. A. Lawlor, J. M. A. Ilott (now Sir John), and A. E. Currie. I couldn’t have found better people: all were enthusiastic, as was the inaugural meeting that followed. Ilott became the first President, Lawlor the Secretary and Currie the committee-man charged with the erection of a constitution, and the legal processes of incorporation as a society. Both the latter became subsequent presidents and have remained good friends over the years. As everyone knows, even in death, Currie remembered the Turnbull

Library. He was President of the ‘Friends’ from 1952 to 1955, and it was commonly his way to take the initiative in meetings at the Library. I remember one that taxed me considerably when he varied the conventional talk or lecture by staging an ‘interview’, wherein he posed a series of searching questions on the binding of books. Of necessity, his own knowledge of the surprising range of the subject became manifest

in the questions, most readily answered by examples from the Turnbull’s own shelves. His book on Verlaine as well as his anthologies attest his literary scholarship; his several legal volumes, his learning in that field; yet knowing his pleasure in and knowledge of anecdote and personalities of the law, I’d hoped that in his retirement he would have turned to some such writing. But his later years were devoted more and more to his garden, his books and his wife, the companion of nearly sixty years. The daughter of the dynamic G. W. Russell was doubtless fit mate for this man of precise intellect, learning, wit and humour.

Note by Editor >■ i : >l» J .< In strongly endorsing Mr Taylor’s examples of A.E.C.’s support for the Library we may be permitted to explain Mr Taylor’s reference to his remembering it ‘even in death’. The bereavement notice asked friends to make a donation to the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust instead of paying 3 the usual floral tributes. Over sixty dollars were so donated as the result of this characteristically original and fitting request. We are particularly glad to note also the receipt from the Trustees, Lt-Col. A. R. Currie and Mr D. R. Currie, on the recommendation of his literary executor,! Mr Stuart Perry, a most interesting and significant collection of A. E. Currie’s private papers.