Notes and Comments

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIV, Issue 1, 1 May 1981, Page 43

Notes and Comments

JOHN THOMSON

FRANCES PORTER

Catalogue of Milton Collection

One of the Turnbull Library’s core research resources, the John Milton collection, begun by Alexander Turnbull in 1892 with his letter to Quaritch in London stating that ‘I intend forming a Milton collection and making it as complete as possible if I can see my way to do so’, has now been given its bibliographic due. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, Describing Works Printed Before 1801 . . . compiled by Kathleen Coleridge was published in England by the Oxford University Press for the Library in early November 1980 and the event marked by a function at the Turnbull on 25 November. Professor D. F. McKenzie, the guest speaker, moved and entertained those present with a speech enriched by Milton’s verse and prose, and paid a graceful tribute to Kathleen Coleridge for her scholarship and dedication. Professor McKenzie’s address will be published in full in the October issue of the Record. As Miss Coleridge reveals in the introduction she first began work on the compilation in 1967. The Chief Librarian spoke of the Library’s obligation to the international scholarly community which had at last been met by the descriptive catalogue. The catalogue provides extensive bibliographic descriptions of 229 editions and translations of Milton’s works published before 1801 as well as less detailed descriptions of 223 other works, the more important Miltoniana in the Library. The cost of publication was met by the publication funds of the National Library and Miss Coleridge’s research was supported by grants from the Turnbull Library Endowment Trust. The published price in the United Kingdom is £35, but members of the Friends may purchase copies from the Library at $65.

Conference on early modern studies The Turnbull’s second national conference on early modern studies was held in the Library over the weekend of 7-8 February. Organised by Colin Davis of the History Department of Victoria University, the conference brought together some thirty people with a research or teaching interest in the field. Dr Christopher Hill opened proceedings with a paper ‘John Milton in the Puritan Revolution’; Dr Trevor James, University of Waikato, contributed a paper ‘Nostalgia for Paradise: Terra Australis in the Seventeenth Century’; Dr Brian Opie, Victoria University, ‘Nathaniel Bacon and Francis Spira: the Presbyterian and the Apostate’; and Dr Andrew Sharp, University of Auckland, ‘The Trope, not the Theory: Mixed Government in the English Civil War’. Christopher Hill’s visit to Wellington from the Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, where he is a visiting fellow, was sponsored by the Turnbull Research Endowment Fund.

Grants from Research Fund Financial assistance to support a wide range of ‘scholarly research and publication based on the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library’ has been made available recently from the Alexander Turnbull Library Research Endowment Fund. Vincent O’Sullivan has been awarded $2,500 to enable him to visit the United States to consult some materials for the forthcoming edition of the letters of Katherine Mansfield, and smaller grants have been made to the following: Mr David J. Butts, Manawatu Museum, for work on the papers of G. L. Adkin for an exhibition and a publication; Mrs Judith Devaliant of Auckland for work on the Turnbull’s women’s history collection for a biography of Kate Sheppard; Mr K. Stanton ofWellington for research on a biography of F. P. Walsh; DrJ. O. C. Phillips and Christopher Maclean for research on New Zealand stained glass for a book; Dr Nelson Wattie of Cologne for a compilation of source materials on New Zealand literature to be published in Germany; and Dr Ulf Beijbom, director of the Migrants Institute, Vaxjo, Sweden, for a survey of New Zealand sources for research on Scandinavian migrants in New Zealand. During his stay in Wellington Dr Beijbom conducted a brief seminar in the Library on migration research in Scandinavia. A grant was also made available to bring Dr Christopher Hill to Wellington from the Humanities Research Centre in Canberra for a weekend seminar on seventeenth century studies sponsored by the Research Fund.

New publications from the Library The proceedings of the Turnbull Conference on New Zealand Social History held in the Library in August 1978 under the auspices of the Research Fund has now been issued under one cover by the New Zealand Journal of History. Edited by Professor D. A. Hamer under the title New Zealand Social History the proceedings are available from the Library at $5 ($4 to Friends). The original publication of the papers in the New Zealand Journal of History was subsidised by a grant of SIOOO from the Turnbull Research Fund.

The second instalment of the National Register of Archives and Manuscripts in New Zealand was issued by the National Library in September 1980. Both instalments I and II with indexes are available by post from the National Library or may be purchased at a discount directly from the Turnbull Library’s office at 44 The Terrace. Two series of prints of original paintings in the Library’s collections and a new series of photographs will be issued by the Endowment Trust in 1981. The regular series draws on the very fine, and unpublished, natural history paintings by John Abbot of the insects of Georgia formerly in the possession of William Swainson (see the Record for May 1978, pp. 26-36). The series for the Research Fund (this new series was inaugurated in 1980 with the Cooper Prints issued in association with the New Zealand Wool Board) will feature four watercolours by Charles Heaphy and will be published in association with the Fletcher Charitable Trust. In addition the Endowment Trust Board has decided to make some of the Library’s fine

early New Zealand photographs available to a wider audience through a new series of quality reproductions. Six photographs by Tyree have been selected for the first series. It is anticipated that the Abbot prints will be available in August and the Heaphy and Tyree prints in September or October. A supplement to the Catalogue of the Turnbull Library Prints . . . covering prints and other publications issued by the Endowment Trust, the Research Fund, and the Friends in 1979 and 1980 is now available free of charge from the Library.

Banks’ Florilegium The Turnbull has placed an order for one complete set of the edition of Banks’ Florilegium being issued in 100 sets by Alecto Historical Editions, London, in association with the British Museum (Natural History). The original plates were prepared under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks between 1771 and 1784 from watercolours by Sydney Parkinson and others based on specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Carl Solander during Cook’s first voyage. The 738 coloured plates are being published in 34 parts over six years at an estimated cost of £45,000. This is the first full publication of the plates, and the first printing in colour. The Library, after discussions with representatives of botanical research collections in New Zealand, agreed to accept responsibility for acquiring the national set of the Florilegium. In recognition of this the Minister of Internal Affairs has made a special grant of $50,000 over five years and the National Library will provide grants from its special expensive materials fund. The Turnbull Library Endowment Trust has also agreed to make special annual grants over the next five years.

Tony Murray-Oliver farewelled With the departure in November 1980 of‘the Turnbull’s oldest identity, the man who over the years has become a personification of the Library to thousands of people, a veritable “Mr Turnbull Library’” as the Chief Librarian expressed it in his valediction, an era ended in the Turnbull’s history. Tony Murray-Oliver began in the Library in 1938 and was the only representative left on the staff of the period of the 1930 s and 19405, the beginning of the second phase of the Library’s history under C. R. H. Taylor. On Thursday 13 November 1980 an impressive gathering of staff of the National Library, members of the Friends, and Tony MurrayOliver’s friends, filled the Turnbull’s exhibition area for a function to mark his last day in the Library. Other tributes to his service to the Library had already been delivered by the president of the Friends, DrJ. R. Tye, at their meeting in October; and by Mr L. A. Cameron, chairman of the Endowment Trust and the Trustees Committee for the Turnbull Library at the launching ofthe Williams prints in September. This occasion was, in the words of the Chief Librarian, ‘an opportunity for everyone to pay a personal tribute to Tony Murray-Oliver as colleague and friend’.

He said that ‘Tony has left his mark on this Library in more ways than one, and as long as the Library lasts there will be good “Tony” stories to be told to amuse, interest and be a grim warning to new staff. Mr Traue noted some of the things by which Tony Murray-Oliver would be remembered. On the professional level was his development of the potential of the collections of paintings, drawings and prints, and the print series published by the Endowment Trust. No less tangible were his contributions to the traditions of the Turnbull: the form of and the standards set for the social functions in the Library, and the floral decorations which were so much a part of the Turnbull image. ‘But beyond that I shall always remember Tony for his knowledge of the Library and its traditions, his loyalty, and his love for this institution.’

Recent Exhibitions From July to September 1980 an exhibition of New Zealand cartoons prepared by lan Grant to accompany the publication of his book, The Unauthorized Version: A Cartoon History of New Zealand (Cassell New Zealand, 1980) was on view in the Library. Several hundred cartoons were microfilmed from newspapers and periodicals in the Turnbull collections for publication in the book. The publication of the 1980 series of Endowment Trust prints was marked by an exhibition from 22 September to 10 November 1980 of original works by E. A. Williams held in the Turnbull collections supplemented by photographs and copies by Williams’s contemporary, Joseph Osbertus Hamley. Edward Arthur Williams, c.b. (1824-1898) took part in the Waikato and Taranaki Campaigns between 1864 and 1865 and the Library holds 18 watercolours and 2 sketchbooks covering this period as well as sketchbooks recording his tours of duty and holidays in other parts of the world. The exhibition was coordinated by Tony MurrayOliver with the assistance of Tony Clarke, Marian Empson and Fergus Collinson.

From November to early February 1981 an exhibition ‘The Surveying and Mapping of Wellington Province, 1840-76’ was mounted by Phil Barton, the Map Librarian. The theme, the mapping of the Wellington Province from the first settlement to the end of provincial government, was illustrated by material lent by the Department of Lands and Survey backed up by photographs from the A. H. Bogle collection, paintings and drawings from the Turnbull Art Collection, and one map from the National Museum. All the maps on exhibition were in manuscript and had not been displayed previously to the public. Surveyors’ field books and instruments helped to complete the picture. An exhibit at the 1981 conference of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Wellington, ‘Plague to Polio: New Zealand Health 1900-1950’, was remounted in the Library from February to May. The original exhibit, which drew heavily on the Turnbull collections, was augmented during its period in the Library with supporting printed books, pamphlets, leaflets, periodicals, newspapers, posters, paintings and drawings.

Denis James Matthews Glover, 1912-1980 Members will have learnt with sorrow of the death of Denis Glover on 9 August last year. He was a man of wide-ranging achievements, though the word which described the greatest of these —poet —was one he bore with a modest diffidence. It is unnecessary to recall here the life of a man so seldom out of the public eye. Not all his work was so visible however, and the Friends in particular owe him continuing gratitude for the efforts he made on their behalf to preserve the identity of the Turnbull Library when it was incorporated within the National Library.

When Denis Glover was elected President of the Friends in 1963, replacing Pat Lawlor, it must have seemed fitting that on eHelluo librorum should follow another. And the image of clubbish discussion of old typography was seemingly confirmed by the absence of a single committee meeting during his first year of office. The image was deceptive: only the unavoidable confidentiality of the discussions about the proposed National Library Bill during that and the following year concealed the truth. Although Alexander Turnbull’s old Bowen Street home was then under threat of demolition for road-widening, Denis Glover firmly insisted that the problem before the Friends was administrative, adding, with a far-sightedness that the years have unhappily confirmed, that any building whatever was so far away that the question of administration took priority. What he sought to avoid was the loss of the Library’s identity within a National Library under a Minister of Education. Far preferable seemed a continuing separate existence under the Minister of Internal Affairs. When his term of office came to an end in September 1963, that hope appeared to have been dashed, though in proposing a vote of thanks Pat Lawlor remarked that he had never heard such a beautifully presented case as that put to the Hon. Mr Shand earlier in the year.

If these valorous efforts had less effect on the wording of the National Library Act than had been wished, their spirit was acknowledged by the first Trustees of the National Library, who established the non-statutory Special Committee for the Alexander Turnbull Library. In recent years, the committees and meetings of the Friends have been diverted—often in both senses —by Denis Glover’s wayward manipulation of procedural formalities. Both his sense of the absurd and his common sense will be sadly missed.

Canon Nigel Williams, 1901-1980 Cheerfulness, a quiet mind, and an appreciation of goodness in other people, these were qualities Canon Nigel Williams brought to all commitments he entered into, whether to the Anglican church or to the Friends’ committee. He never stepped out of the ambience of his vocation; he was all of a piece, and this made other people as confident and easy in his presence as he was in theirs.

It was natural that he should be a Friend of the Turnbull Library. The letters and journals of his great grandfather and grandmother, William and Jane Williams, together with a multiplicity ofletters and diaries from other members of that notable family, form a sizeable record in the manuscript department of the library. His father, Herbert Williams, was an intimate friend of Alexander Turnbull, and a major contributor to the library’s Maori collection. Bishop Herbert, like his father, William Leonard and grandfather, was a fine Maori scholar and a reviser of the Williams’ Dictionary of the Maori Language. Nigel’s tupuna sat easily on his shoulders. He was knowledgeable about his family—never overawed by it—and was himself a respected and loved elder.

From Wanganui Collegiate he went for a brief time to Canterbury College where, under the direction of Professor Shelley, he was a founding member of the College dramatic society. His father had gone to Jesus College, Cambridge and Nigel followed, graduating with an honours degree in Theology; he also achieved a Cambridge ‘half-blue’ for lacrosse. He was priested in the diocese of Wakefield and served as curate of St Paul’s, Birkenshaw, from 1926 to 28. It was always a maxim with him that if a job needed to be done and was within his ability, then to do it as well as possible and without fuss. He would have been happy to have stayed longer in England but there was a call for a chaplain to British expatriates in Malaysia, he was available and he went. He served ten years in the Singapore diocese where he married and then together with Nora returned to New Zealand in 1938. His first job here was as chaplain and teacher at Wanganui Collegiate—he always had a special affection for that school. A teaching colleague remembering him said he was especially good with boys who were never quite going to excel; he taught the lower forms, he coached the second eleven. He was next vicar of Marton, and then from 1951 to 62, vicar of St Thomas’s, Newtown. Again he was, I suppose, with people who were not in the accepted sense likely to be successful, Newtown was a run-down area, but under his guidance St Thomas’s became an exciting place, and within the Anglican communion, an adventurous one. It was always the broad stream of the catholic faith which appealed to him rather than any narrow dogmatism. During this time he was also Superintendent of the Wellington Chinese Mission. Shortly before he retired he was appointed chaplain to Porirua Hospital. He was made a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1961 and Canon Emeritus in 1968. For the last twelve years he and Nora lived at Waikanae.

Nigel had been a member of the Friends for 17 years; a committee member from 1964 to 1976, and President from 1965 to 1970. It was during his first year as President that the National Library Bill actually came before Parliament. The proposal had already caused alarm and misgivings among the Friends, for it seemed from the first draft of the bill that the Turnbull would be lost in the conglomerate of a National Library. As President of the Friends, Nigel led a deputation to the Statutes Revision Committee to seek provision within the bill for the continuing integrity of the Turnbull Library. To the annual meeting of 1966 he reported that the controversial National Library Bill had been passed ‘with some amendments in the direction of what your Executive wanted —not all the

way, but at least part way. Our next task, I suggest, is to make the new Bill work; we must work for our Library within the framework of the Bill’. It was a matter-of-fact assessment of the situation, of the job that needed to be done, and of the cooperation the new Turnbull librarian, A. G. Bagnall, could expect from the Friends. During his term too it was decided that the key role of the Friends would be the regular publication of the Turnbull Record.

In retrospect it may well be that Nigel Williams’s main contribution to the Turnbull Library was that he consistently brought out the best in other people and encouraged them, without ever interfering, to get on with the work to hand.