BODEN BLACK (A Novel)

BODEN BLACK (A Novel) and WITH AXE AND PEN IN THE NEW ZEALAND ALPS: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OVERSEAS AND NEW ZEALAND WRITTEN ACCOUNTS OF CLIMBING MOUNT COOK 1882-1920 AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW ZEALAND VOICE IN MOUNTAINEERING LITERATURE BY JURA (LAURENCE) FEARNLEY A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2012 1 ABSTRACT This thesis has two components: creative and critical. The creative component is the novel Boden Black. It is a first person narrative, imagined as a memoir, and traces the life of its protagonist, Boden Black, from his childhood in the late 1930s to adulthood in the present day. The plot describes various significant encounters in the narrator’s life: from his introduction to the Mackenzie Basin and the Mount Cook region in the South Island of New Zealand, through to meetings with mountaineers and ‘lost’ family members. Throughout his journey from child to butcher to poet, Boden searches for ways to describe his response to the natural landscape. The critical study is titled With Axe and Pen in the New Zealand Alps. It examines the published writing of overseas and New Zealand mountaineers climbing at Aoraki/Mount Cook between 1882 and 1920. I advance the theory that there are stylistic differences between the writing of overseas and New Zealand mountaineers and that the beginning of a distinct New Zealand mountaineering voice can be traced back to the first accounts written by New Zealand mountaineers attempting to reach the summit of Aoraki/Mount Cook. The first mountaineer to attempt to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook was William Spotswood Green, an Irishman who introduced high alpine climbing to New Zealand in 1882. Early New Zealand mountaineers initially emulated the conventions of British mountaineering literature as exemplified by Green and other famous British mountaineers. These pioneering New Zealand mountaineers attempted to impose the language of the ‘civilised’ European alpine-world on to the ‘uncivilised’ world of the Southern Alps. However, as New Zealand mountaineering became more established at Aoraki/Mount Cook from the 1890s through to 1920, a distinct New Zealand voice developed in mountaineering literature: one that is marked by a sense of connection to place expressed through site-specific, factual observation and an unadorned, sometimes laconic, vernacular writing style. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I wish to thank my patient and kind supervisors Bill Manhire and John Thomson. I am indebted to the Creative Writing PhD class at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, for helpful feedback and encouragement. Grateful thanks to Katie Hardwick-Smith and Clare Moleta at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Thank you to the Postgraduate Students Association for awarding me Overall Winner of the Postgraduate Research Excellence Award 2010. Thanks to Barry Lewis in the scholarship office for making sense of the paperwork and all the librarians who found and posted research material to me when I needed it. Thanks to friends Lydia Bradey, Dean Staples, and Garry Nixon, and my brother Dave Fearnley for informal descriptions of the view from the top of Aoraki/Mount Cook. Thanks to Sue Wootton for her encouragement and Marilyn Willis for her generosity. Again I would like to my family for their practical help and emotional support during my research and my trips to Wellington. Thanks to the Bolton Hotel for providing ‘Writer in Residence’ accommodation while in Wellington. 3 CONTENTS TITLE PAGE 1 ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 CONTENTS 4 CREATIVE THESIS Boden Black 6 NOTE ON SOURCES 208 CRITICAL THESIS With Axe and Pen in the New Zealand Alps: Differences Between Overseas and New Zealand Written Accounts of Climbing Mount Cook 1882-1920 and the Emergence of a New Zealand Voice in Mountaineering Literature 210 INTRODUCTION 211 THE NEW ZEALAND VOICE 216 METHODOLOGY 221 BACKGROUND 228 EARLY ASCENTS 230 FRAMEWORK 231 a. Principal Texts: Prior to the First Ascent of Mount Cook in 1894 231 b. Principal Texts: From First Ascent to 1920 231 CHAPTER ONE Accounts of Climbing Mount Cook 1882-1894 233 a. William Spotswood Green 233 b. George Mannering 255 CHAPTER TWO Tom Fyfe, George Graham and Jack Clarke 269 CHAPTER THREE Mattias Zurbriggen and Edward FitzGerald 289 CHAPTER FOUR Malcolm Ross 299 CHAPTER FIVE Samuel Turner 310 CHAPTER SIX Freda du Faur 321 CONCLUSION 330 WORKS CITED 337 BIBLIOGRAPHY 344 Note on General Sources 344 1. PRIMARY SOURCES 346 4 a. Non Periodicals: Books, Pamphlets 346 b. Periodicals: Newspapers, Magazines, Journals 349 c. Archives and Manuscripts 357 d. Maps 358 2. SECONDARY SOURCES 359 a. Non Periodicals: Books, Pamphlets 359 b. Periodicals: Newspapers, Magazines, Journals 367 c. Theses and Research Essays 370 5 BODEN BLACK By Laurence Fearnley 6 Whenever the opportunity presented itself, my father would lift down the framed enlargement he kept on the shelf above the cutting block and show it to the customer who stood waiting to pay for her meat. More often than not, I was able to predict what would come next. The conversation which unfolded took a familiar shape. For example: ‘Do you see who that is?’ my father asked, jabbing his finger at the glass. The woman, not one of his regular customers, took a step forward and peered at the snap, examining the blurred black and white image of two men standing side by side on the summit of a mountain. ‘Your son?’ she responded uncertainly despite having seen me only a few seconds earlier as I started to refill some of the meat trays on display in the window. ‘Boden, isn’t it?’ she guessed, squinting at the picture. Her response was not the one my father was looking for. ‘No, not him,’ he replied, brushing my likeness with the edge of his stained reddish hand. ‘Not him,’ he repeated, his voice barely containing his excitement. ‘Next to him. The big fella.’ At that point the customer often took the photograph from my father’s hand and surveyed the mountain scene more closely, turning it this way and that to catch the light. Behind the figures, disappearing towards the bottom corner of the snap, was a long, undulating ridge line, punctuated by small shadowy indentations—foot-prints in the snow. Taking up the remaining background was sky, featureless around the heads of the men, but lower down it was possible to detect a white carpet of cloud. The surface of this cloud was smooth but not flat; it was rippled like sand exposed at low tide. It was difficult to recognise the figures because both men wore metal-framed snow goggles. The dark lenses obscured the men’s eyes but reflected the partial silhouette of a third figure—that of the photographer. Pushed back onto the crown of the shorter man’s head was a balaclava while the other man, the ‘big fella’, wore a white cotton peaked cap with neck and earflaps—the kind of headwear favoured by soldiers in the desert. Though the sky was clear, the cloth of both men’s jackets was flapping, indicating that the weather was windy. Indeed, if the customer had had more time with the photograph, she should have noticed that the sharp outline of the ridge behind the men was softened by spindrift pluming skyward. But my father made a grab for the picture and, his voice rising hopefully, asked, ‘Now do you see who it is?’ 7 The woman shrugged. She was still uncertain. Could he give her a clue? I remained carefully out of the woman’s line of vision, hovering in the small workspace separating the front of the shop from the chiller out the back. I could see the woman but I was too embarrassed to intervene. On the one hand I wanted to disown my father but, on the other, I didn’t want to deny him this small pleasure. I experienced this conflict whenever he began his performance. If it hadn’t involved me it would have been bearable. But it required my presence in order for my father to complete the show. And for me the performance was false. I knew only too well that despite appearances to the contrary—my jubilant smile, my raised ice axe—behind the dark lenses my eyes expressed alarm. No one could see it in the photograph but I was scared. My feet were rooted to the spot, my hands inside my mittens were clammy and my pulse, I remember clearly, was racing. Having reached the summit of the Middle Peak of Mount Cook all I could think was: how on earth am I going to get down? ‘Tell you what,’ said my father. ‘Take one more look and if you still can’t guess…’ He didn’t get the chance to finish because at that precise moment a look of faint recognition surfaced on the woman’s face. I could see it in the way she frowned, puzzled. An inner voice said, ‘It looks like him—but no, it can’t be. Can it?’ She didn’t want to appear foolish but taking charge of the moment—if only to put an end to the game—she mumbled, ‘Hillary?’ ‘Yes!’ roared my father, the skin on his face flushing—so proud was he of the photograph and what it implied. ‘Sir Edmund Hillary…’ he chortled, stroking the great mountaineer’s hair with his stubby thumb. ‘That’s my son Boden on top of Mount Cook and beside him, as you so rightly say, is the greatest living climber of our generation.’ He paused, beamed at the woman who, from the look of joy on his face, might now have been his closest friend and ally.

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