Greville Texidor, Frank Sargeson and New Zealand Literary Culture in the 1940S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
All the juicy pastures: Greville Texidor, Frank Sargeson and New Zealand literary culture in the 1940s by Margot Schwass A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Victoria University of Wellington 2017 ABSTRACT The cultural nationalist narrative, and the myths of origin and invention associated with it, cast a long shadow over the mid-twentieth century literary landscape. But since at least the 1980s, scholars have turned their attention to what was happening at the margins of that dominant narrative, revealing untold stories and evidence of unexpected literary meeting points, disruptions and contradictions. The nationalist frame has thus lost purchase as the only way to understand the era’s literature. The 1940s in particular have emerged as a time of cultural recalibration in which subtle shifts were being nourished by various sources, not least the émigré and exilic artists who came to New Zealand from war-torn Europe. They included not only refugees but also a group of less classifiable wanderers and nomads. Among them was Greville Texidor, the peripatetic Englishwoman who transformed herself into a writer and produced a small body of fiction here, including what Frank Sargeson would call “one of the most beautiful prose works ever achieved in this country” (“Greville Texidor” 135). The Sargeson-Texidor encounter, and the larger exilic-nationalist meeting it signifies, is the focus of this thesis. By the early 1940s, Sargeson was the acknowledged master of the New Zealand short story, feted for his ‘authentic’ vision of local reality and for the vernacular idiom and economical form he had developed to render it. Yet he was at a turning point, increasingly constricted by the very tradition he had created. This thesis proposes that, in Texidor, he found the ideal reader for the writer he wished to become. More than merely a mentor-protégée relationship, this was an exchange that left its imprint on Sargeson’s work as much as Texidor’s. Moreover, their meeting enacted the moment at which international influences and modernist modes of expression collided with the literary nationalist project – refashioning, complicating and enlarging it in the process. Combining literary analysis, cultural and literary history, and biography, this thesis is divided into three parts. The first examines the narrative of invention and indigeneity constructed around the dominant Phoenix-Caxton writers, and the scholarship challenging that narrative and its totalising claims. Turning to the arrival of exilic artists from Europe and elsewhere, it argues that the nationalist and the exilic operated as unexpectedly compatible mentalities in i 1940s New Zealand. The second part considers the sources of Sargeson’s literary dilemma in the 1940s, his quest for artistic reinvention, and his problematic role as mentor to a generation of emerging writers. The final part comprises a close reading of Texidor’s published fiction and also (for the first time) her unpublished work. Her fiction is read not only as a record of a writer’s development, but also through the lens of intermodernist theory, suggesting an affinity with writers elsewhere using modernist methods to register the personal and social consequences of political commitment and war. This thesis is informed by extensive archival research, the author’s interviews with Texidor’s two daughters, and visits to significant locations in Spain. In the absence of any other significant literary or biographical accounts of Texidor, it seeks to reassess an author whose place in the New Zealand literary canon has been contested and whose influence on her contemporaries is little recognised. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sincere thanks to: • My supervisors, Professor Harry Ricketts and Professor Mark Williams of the English Programme in the School of English, Film, Media and Theatre Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Their ongoing interest, advice, thoughtful feedback and encouragement has been invaluable. • Cristina Patterson Texidor and Rosamunda Droescher for sharing family information and memories, for responding to numerous questions, and for their hospitality and kindness during my research visits to Spain and Australia. I am particularly grateful to Cristina for showing me Barcelona and Cantonigròs, and to Rosa for taking me to the Blue Mountains and Tossa de Mar, and guiding me (passport-less) through the small towns and former battlefields of Aragón. I would also like to thank their friends and family members in Spain for generous assistance with transport, translations and photography, especially Roger Suriol, Fernando Latorre and Alexis Rossell. • Fergus Barrowman, Mark Derby and Farrell Cleary for sharing their knowledge and putting me in touch with other helpful sources. • Victoria University of Wellington for the Doctoral Scholarship that has enabled me to work full-time on this thesis for three years, and the Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for grants to undertake research in Spain and New Zealand. • Koichi Inoue, Subject Librarian at the VUW Library, for referencing and research help. • Librarians and archivists at the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library (Wellington), especially Jocelyn Chalmers; Auckland University Library; the Hocken Collections (Dunedin); the State Library of New South Wales (Sydney); the Wolverhampton Archives; the UCL Slade School of Fine Art; and Cheltenham Ladies’ College archivist Rachel Roberts. • The Frank Sargeson Trust for kindly granting me permission to consult papers held at the Alexander Turnbull Library. • My family – Graeme, Andrew and Katherine McIndoe, and my father Alex Schwass (1927- 2016) – for their unflagging interest and encouragement. iii iv CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 PART ONE: THE LITERARY LANDSCAPE OF THE 1940s --------------11 CHAPTER 1: Our favourite historical narrative: literary nationalism and the 1940s -- 13 1.1 The founding fathers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15 1.2 The anthologies of 1945-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 1.3 The anti-anti-myth -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 1.4 Untold stories: new critical perspectives on the 1940s -------------------------------------- 38 Overseasia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 39 Origins and inventions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Literary commuters ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 1.5 Contrapuntal narratives: the exilic and the nationalist --------------------------------------- 53 Exilic artists ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57 Meeting points ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62 CHAPTER 2: And now Greville has turned up … ---------------------------------------------- 69 PART TWO: INVENTION AND REINVENTION -----------------------------81 CHAPTER 3: Il miglior fabbro ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 83 3.1 Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 83 3.2 A new way of writing (and reading) ----------------------------------------------------------- 84 3.3 The exponent of a local tradition --------------------------------------------------------------- 93 3.4 The godfather-midwife: Sargeson as mentor-------------------------------------------------- 97 CHAPTER 4: Frank and Greville ----------------------------------------------------------------- 107 4.1 The beautiful Texidor -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 107 4.2 Daughter of Sargeson? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 114 4.3 Towards reinvention ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 122 CHAPTER 5: Speaking for Ourselves ------------------------------------------------------------ 133 v PART THREE: READING TEXIDOR ----------------------------------------- 147 CHAPTER 6: Unfirm environments: from Spain to Paparoa ------------------------------ 149 6.1 Introduction -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 149 6.2 The developing stylist -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 151 The European stories ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 152 The New Zealand stories ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 164 Filled with world echoes ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 170 CHAPTER 7: “It was she who lost the war”: Diary of a Militia Woman ------------------ 173 7.1 A protracted gestation -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 173 7.2 Diary and the canon of war writing ---------------------------------------------------------- 179 CHAPTER 8: A book “one might not unfairly describe as ‘clever’”: These Dark Glasses --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 193 8.1 The product of a sick mind: the critical reception in New Zealand ----------------------