A fence around the cuckoo

In this first volume of autobiography, Ruth Park covers her New Zealand years – childhood, adolescence and early challenges of adult life. Episodic and frequently leapfrogging in its chronology, the book is firmly held together by a number of recurring and interweaving themes: the urge to write and the difficulty of acquiring an appropriate education; family relationships, at once close and hedged about with barriers; poverty and the Great Depression; and finally the problem of being ‘different’ combined with the joy of discovering kindred spirits. If the ‘born writer’ really exists, then Ruth Park has every claim to the title. From earliest childhood it was all she ever wanted to be. Her imagination was nourished by her father’s traditional Scottish tales as well as by Māori legends. The absence of books (in the beginning there were two in the house) was made up for by eavesdropping on the wildly dramatic gossip of her aunts, and despite the ridicule of school-mates, she persevered with early writing efforts. Not content with childish dreams of a literary future, she began to send regular contributions to the children’s page on the NZ Herald, which would lead eventually to professional journalism and ultimately to the writer’s career envisaged from the outset. It is a pity that no examples of the schoolgirl writings are included – there cannot be many instances of such early publication of an author and it would have been of great interest to follow the development of style from the untutored child’s attempts via the various stages and influences she recounts. There is, in fact, surprisingly little specific reference to the relevance of experiences and their emergence in the books, though the reader familiar with Ruth Park’s writings will find it easy enough to recognise parallels. The great theme of these early years is an overwhelming poverty with all the accompanying strategies of survival later to surface in her novels – blending family sagas and gritty realism. One other, seemingly incongruous, thread shows through every now and then. From the Irish side of the family she had inherited ‘half a handful of second sight’, and this, combined with her feeling of kinship with Māori friends as well as a natural bond with the environment, adds an unexpected element of mysticism, handled with great delicacy. As in her novels where the historical panorama provides a context for the characters and narrative, here the Great Depression colours and dominates everything – home-life, schooling, health and outlook on the world around. Whether it is the yearning for something as simple as a magnifying glass to ‘see feathers on a bee’s leg’, the longing for books or the indignity of wearing cast-off clothing, the awareness of unbearable restrictions and the need to break out is always present. In the early years, the father, ‘a builder of bridges and maker of roads’, takes his frail wife and young daughter to the remotest areas – rain forests, swamps and pumice deserts. There are periods of respite in tiny towns but, whereas the mother feels forever alienated, longing for the civilised pleasures of Auckland, the daughter explores and marvels, storing up impressions for the future. At school she is initially bewildered by hooligan classmates – in fact she wonders if she might be Chinese, this being the most outlandish form of human she has heard of. A firm friendship with a Māori girl and her brother puts the world to rights again. After this shaky start, her school life throughout seems to have been happy and successful. She is at pains to stress both the kindness and the intellectual stimulus the nuns provided. When, eventually, a series of misfortunes forces the father into illness and bankruptcy, the family moves to Auckland to battle on, supported by generous and enterprising relatives. The lively portraits of the chattering, fashion-conscious aunts and the stubborn, contrary grandmother are a constant reminder that this, however factual, is the autobiography of a novelist. The earlier descriptions of haunting and occasionally sinister landscapes are replaced by vivid evocations of a city in depression. Unemployment, boarded-up shops, charity handouts, hunting for food bargains at factory gates and finally rioting, looting and chaos – all are observed and recorded. If great scenes of comedy and tragedy punctuate the family chronicle, the stages in Ruth Park’s personal life are linked more specifically with the people who influenced her in her quest to become a writer. It is a sign of her mental toughness that she draws as much strength from mean-spirited attempts to discourage her ambitions as she does from benevolence. Miss Elsie K. Morton, editor of her beloved children’s page and one of her early idols (‘I revered her as if she were George Eliot’), administered the first of these shocks, devastating the child with a cruel letter probably occasioned by pique at her protégée outgrowing her. Eventually this nasty document, glued to the typewriter, became an amulet, a trigger for obstinate perseverance, lasting well into her marriage and collaboration with D’Arcy Niland, who occasionally ‘borrowed’ it for inspiration. The other severe blow came from a patronising Great Lady, ignorant and snobbish employer of her highly educated uncle, who admonished her for having ideas above her station. This shocked her into a mental stock-taking of her Four Great Handicaps: ‘I was a poor man’s child, I was a girl, it appeared that I might not attain any higher education, and now a relentless hand had shoved me down into the wrong class.’ But there were plenty of people to restore the balance. There was the nun who first subjected her writing to critical appraisal and also pressured her into sitting for the National Scholarship Exam; her Uncle Hugo who shared his education with her; the briefly met Māori whose advice cured her pernicious anaemia; her mentor at the Auckland Star who taught her how to exist on starvation wages, and, most dazzling of all, the writer, Eve Langley. Langley was a Published Writer and thus a superior being. Her conversation was scintillating, her homelife disastrous, but she preserved her facade of glamorous bohemia for Ruth who did not discover the tragic reality until much later. The future importance of D’Arcy Niland is hinted at quite early in the book. One of the nuns suggests that she correspond with this clever boy who is writing in Australia. Young Ruth refuses, having no interest in boys after being what she called ‘cousin-poisoned’, that is, having only unpleasant memories of her boy-cousins. She does not reply to his early letters or even read them. He persists and eventually a correspondence is established, and an unlikely love story begins. Even after their first meeting (she visits Sydney and falls in love with Australia) it is Niland in the letters following the meeting who surprises her by taking it for granted that their future will be together. The end of the book coincides with the outbreak of war and the re-organisation of her career. As a journalist now with international contacts, her first destination is San Francisco, but Pearl Harbour happens a few days before her intended departure. She applies for two jobs in Sydney and is offered both. She flies over, and accepts a third one – as Niland’s wife. His ‘trousseau’ is irresistible – he offers her part-ownership in 3,000 books. So begins a partnership that was to last until Niland’s early death twenty-five years later. And here the first volume of the autobiography ends, with the author not yet twenty years old!

Margot Luke

From the New Issue

Fat Chance: Journalism poems by Kent MacCarter

A Memoir of My Former Self: A life in writing by Hilary Mantel, edited by Nicholas Pearson

The Floating University: Experience, empire, and the politics of knowledge by Tamson Pietsch

‘Rinbo Abdo’, a new poem by Philip Mead

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