A Tangled Web
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A Tangled Web By Allison Oosterman 2012 Centre for Creative Writing A creative work and exegesis submitted to AUT University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing. 1 Table of Contents 1. Attestation of Authorship 2. Acknowledgements Page 2 3. Abstract Page 3 4. Exegesis Page 4 5. A Tangled Web Page 16 6. Afterword Page 213 Attestation of Authorship “I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor any material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning.” Signed: ………………………………………………………. 2 Acknowledgments Writing can be a very solitary activity requiring hours of concentration and application but nevertheless would be impossible without the support and encouragement of many people, colleagues, friends, tutors, fellow students, Kitchen descendants and even random strangers with whom you might happen to discuss your work. My thanks to my journalism colleagues, Greg Treadwell, Alan Lee, Lyn Barnes et al, who sighed resignedly when I announced I intended to embark on yet another postgraduate project, but nevertheless bolstered me up when I looked like fading and had faith I would complete the work. Friends such as Jan Jenson, Kath Mills and Rosemary Brewer, likewise have been patient and interested as I spent the year worrying about various facets of the writing. Their enthusiasm for the story I was telling ensured I completed the task and they always managed to divert me when pessimism and lethargy set in. Our three tutors, Mike Johnson, Stephanie Johnson and James George were inspiring and helpful through the year; I just needed another 12 months to absorb all their teachings. Mike in particular was very patient and forbearing as I struggled to complete the work in time. My fellow students in the master class were also an inspiration, especially those in my small group, Dyana Wells, Sheri O’Neill and Sammy-Rose Scapens. I enjoyed our irregular meetings to discuss progress and offer different ways at looking at problems that had arisen. My biggest thanks, however, go to Tony Kitchen of Melbourne, a direct descendant of William’s uncle, John Ambrose Kitchen, and one of the proprietors of the very successful Australian company J. Kitchen & Sons. Tony and I have worked closely to piece together the Kitchen family history. We had two very successful meetings at his home last December where we discovered photographs of the Wellington Kitchens, a family group with William and his two step-brothers, and photographs of William’s two sons, Arthur and Edward as toddlers. Despite William being considered the black sheep of the Kitchen family, Tony has been happy to have his story told in all its successes and scandals. M y final thanks go to those unknown people I met at various times during the year, often on buses, who listened kindly to my enthusiastic rambles about the story I was telling 3 Abstract A Tangled Web is the story of 19th century radical New Zealand journalist, William Kitchen. Told as a fictionalised biography, the work follows his life from leaving Wellington as a 22-y e a r -old for Otago until his death at 34 in Sydney. Showing early writing promise he became a journalist on working-class newspapers in Dunedin rising to become editor of The Globe. He won prizes for his short stories and was instrumental in establishing one of the country’s first literary journals. Kitchen was deeply involved in the burgeoning of working-class consciousness of the late 1800s and was an outspoken supporter of the Maritime Strike of 1890 and the first labour candidates contesting the election that year. His fervent socialism was treated with derision by conservative papers but he fought injustice as he perceived it, even if it meant taking on Truby King, head of the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. His willingness to carry a fight, however, meant he alienated many conventional Dunedinites. When a suspicious fire burnt down The Globe offices, although uninvolved, Kitchen decided to leave New Zealand, his wife and children, and head to the Australian colonies. Landing first in Sydney, he applied for but failed to get the editorship of the Australian Workman. The working-classes here were also turning to the ballot box and Kitchen went to Melbourne and worked with prominent members of the labour movement leading up to the 1891 election. When journalistic work was unavailable Kitchen took to the stage under a pseudonym and it was during this time he met and then later married Lottie Hannam, an actress and palmist. Disguising himself and using another assumed name, he and Lottie travelled to New Zealand, visiting the southern provinces, but not before he inserted a notice in the papers s a y i n g Kitchen had died in Tasmania. He acted as Lottie’s manager, as she toured as Madame Aramanda. Despite his disguise he was recognised and finally conceded he was William Kitchen. Chased by the police he was captured boarding a ship at Bluff and taken to Wellington to face charges. These charges were dismissed and instead his first wife filed for divorce on the grounds of bigamy and adultery. Kitchen returned to Sydney and two years later remarried Lottie. He became embroiled in a lengthy legal dispute with John Norton, the editor of Truth, when Norton published an article labelling him a wife deserter and bigamist. Kitchen sued Norton for libel but two trials in 1897 saw hung juries. The case was eventually dropped, although Kitchen did win two contempt of court cases against Norton. Overcome by the effects of the trials and a serious stage accident suffered by Lottie, Kitchen took his own life in December 1897. 4 Exegesis ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.’ (Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi, Stanza 17) In the 1980s Stephen Oates (1986) theorised there were three types of biography – pure or literary biography, where the author narrates a life story that engages the heart and the mind – a critical study, where the author “analyses with appropriate detachment and scepticism” and finally, a scholarly chronicle which is a straightforward recounting of facts, where the narrative voice tends to be dry and detached but informative (Oates, 1986, p. ix). In the 21st century, I believe a fourth variant can be introduced – the fictionalised biography, a genre that freely invents scenes and conversations but is based on the life story of a historical person. The author uses their names and the names of those with whom he or she interacts. It is not a roman a clef, a novel in which real people and actual events figure under disguise. I call my work a fictionalised biography, as it is based on the life story of a real person, William Freeman Kitchen, but I have imagined scenes and conversations with the people he is known to have come in contact with. All the characters are historic figures except for some very minor individuals. Since Oates devised his theory of three types of biography, however, others have continued to try to refine the terms but to little avail. Definitions prove to be difficult to pin down, but some are downright incorrect, as evidenced by the following scathing definition from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Fictionalised biography, it says, …often depends almost entirely upon secondary sources and cursory research. Its authors, well represented on the paperback shelves, have created a hybrid form designed to mate the appeal of the novel with a vague claim to authenticity. (Kendall) I take exception to Kendall’s claim the research is cursory and that as a novel the fictionalised biography “makes vague claims to authenticity”. My research was exhaustive, and as painstaking and thorough as any historians, almost to the point where it has possibly interfered with the flow of the narrative. The events and actions depicted in my work are as authentic as I could make them, even if based on secondary sources. In fact, that is possibly the only way to write a biography of a lesser but nonetheless 5 interesting historical figure who is dead and about whom there is very little primary material. This view is supported by Ina Schabert (1982): Contrary to a widespread notion, painstaking research concerning the facts of a life and fidelity to the facts are not qualities which necessarily distinguish non-fictional biography from the modern fictional form. Most of the novelists insist on a scrupulous scholarship as an essential stage of preparation. (Schabert, 1982, p. 3) The historical novel is a popular genre, and within that a growing sub-genre is that of the fictionalised biography, with Philippa Gregory currently its leading exponent. She, however, generally writes about famous kings and queens. My interest is in the authors who focus on less significant historical figures. There have been several recent New Zealand precedents to illustrate my point, The Captive Wife, by Fiona Kidman (2005), Rangatira, by Paula Morris (2011) and The Larnachs, by Owen Marshall (2011). All are stories about interesting, but not historically significant New Zealand figures and all have been fictionalised. Marshall, however, says in a frontispiece to his story about Connie and Douglas Larnach, that his work is neither a biography nor a history. “It is a novel: the imaginative interpretation of a situation experienced by real people.” His is an illustration of the shifting terminology this genre creates.