Clyde Romer Hughes Taylor, 1905-1997

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 30, 1 January 1997, Page 5

Clyde Romer Hughes Taylor, 1905-1997

Ray Grover

Affable, energetic and shrewd, Clyde Taylor brought the Turnbull Library into the public domain. Perhaps the key to his successful twenty-six years running the Library was a dual inheritance - a book-collecting grandfather and a journalist father. Nurture also played a role. Early on he had a wide experience of his own country and an introduction to the Pacific, his father’s work taking the family from one town to another and up to Fiji.

After he completed an MA and a Diploma of Journalism, he continued for a time with the Department of Lands and Survey in Christchurch. He then became Librarian to the Department of Agriculture in Wellington until, in 1934, he was appointed Assistant Librarian at the Turnbull, where he was to stay for the next twenty-nine years. Later in 1934 he took up a Carnegie Fellowship to spend a semester at the University of Michigan library school and then to visit libraries in America, Britain and Europe whose functions were similar to those of the Turnbull. When he was appointed Chief Librarian in 1937 he had been well prepared for the job.

The background and training in journalism were not to be wasted. Clyde Taylor was the most proficient publicist the T umbull ever had. Even today in this age of spin doctors, Clyde Taylor would be a hard man to beat in opening up to the nation the exclusive and slightly mysterious building on Bowen Street. The big front door was opened wide, reporters from the Post and the Dominion called weekly - and if anything cropped up in between they were quickly informed - displays were established in nearby shop windows, and topical issues which bore a relationship with any aspect of the Library’s holdings were made known. The opportunities offered by the 1940 Centennial celebrations were seized wholeheartedly, the number of visitors to the Library that year rocketing by a third. Similarly Clyde Taylor knew how to take advantage of the arrival of the first Labour government and the determination of Peter Fraser to make the national cultural heritage available to all.

Then came World War II and the Library’s development slowed. For Clyde Taylor, however, it had the positive effect of taking him back to Fiji and then to New Caledonia and the New Hebrides in the Army Education Service before returning to the Turnbull. It does not seem accidental that, six years after the end of the war, the thick volume A Pacific Bibliography: Printed Matter relating to the Native Peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia was first published. The second edition of that work, published in 1965, and his Bibliography of Publications on the New Zealand Maori and the Moriori of the Chatham Islands (1972) are still highly-regarded research tools for the period they cover.

His interest in the Pacific had been initiated by the childhood spell in Fiji and sustained, not just by the later visit and Turnbull Pacific collections, but also by active membership of the Polynesian Society which he joined in 1936 and held office in several capacities. As well, he managed the Society’s own library with its choice

manuscripts - which he later managed to have deposited in the Turnbull - and producing a number of cumulative indexes of the Society’s Journal. Despite his strong interest in New Zealand and the Pacific, he kept as close to Alexander Turnbull’s collecting policy as funds, tiny at first and never more than limited, permitted. Consequently the English literature collection continued to be added to, as did the collections relating to printing and book production. So far as the latter are concerned he had a strong personal interest in each. In his later years he became an authority on book production, and bookbinding was one of his many hobbies.

An old friend (in more ways than one) of the Turnbull has described Clyde Taylor as an eighteenth-century man who could have sailed with Cook. In other words, as well as being a practical man who could turn his hands to most tasks that came his way, he also demonstrated an intelligent and directed interest in a wide range of areas. He was a Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand, New Zealand Secretary of the Hakluyt Society, President of PEN and part-time Assistant Film Censor for some years. For nearly 20 years after his retirement he was Honorary Curator of Numismatics at the National Museum, with special knowledge of the classical period. As well as his skill at bookbinding, he gardened, kept bees and repaired his own car. Indeed I remember him rebuilding a second-hand Bentley, himself machining replacement parts. He was also keen on the theatre to the extent that more than one resting actor found employment at the Turnbull along with a fair selection of artists and writers. The personal Taylor touch was evident in his management of the Library and one remembers with affection how before every Christmas Mrs Taylor would arrive with strawberries and cream for all. It was not the only time we would see Mrs Taylor and we were constantly reminded of her support for Mr Taylor and the library itself.

In his later years as Chief Librarian he found himself opposing the incorporation of the Turnbull Library, the National Library Service and the General Assembly Library into a National Library. He was concerned about the loss of identity and character. In this he had the full support of the staff and, to some effect, the Friends of the Turnbull Library. Before the war it was he who initiated the Friends and founded the Turnbull Library Record , foreseeing the need for a public advocacy group. His vision for the Turnbull was to see it developing as a national cultural centre in its own right and, to this end, he encouraged many cultural societies to use the Turnbull Library as their meeting place. Clyde T aylor made an enduring contribution to the development of the Alexander Turnbull Library, and to library awareness in New Zealand generally.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Colonial Dream: A Reconsideration

This book, the record of the 1996 seminar on Wakefield organised by The Friends of the Turnbull Library in Wellington, challenges the extreme views of Wakefield as inspired humanitarian thinker, profoundly affected by the social disorder around him, or as opportunistic charlatan. It revisits Wakefield’s own life and family background, traces the development of his thinking, and shows how his theory of colonisation worked out on the ground. It presents a fascinating but flawed man against the background of his time - and ours. Contributors include: Grahame Anderson, Tom Brooking, Graham Butterworth, Susan Butterworth, Raewyn Dalziel, Linda Hardy, Ngatata Love, Ged Martin, John E. Martin, Marian Minson, Erik Olssen, Geoff Park, Matiu Rei, Eric Richards, Philip Temple, Lydia Wevers.

This is a joint 1997 publication of The Friends of the Turnbull Library and GP Publications. Available for $39.95 (incl GST, postage & packing) from The Friends of the Turnbull Library, P.O. Box 12-186, Wellington, and the National Library Shop.

Turnbull Library Record 30 (1997), 5-7