The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde

DEREK CHALLIS & GLORIA RAWLINSON

This extraordinary biography of Robin Hyde (Iris Wilkinson) has been in the making for forty years and it fills a major gap in our literary history. It is a gripping and profoundly moving story which includes appalling accounts of hidden pregnancies, experience as a solo mother, dependence on drugs, intimate acquaintance with sexism and poverty, mental breakdown, an extraordinary trip in China during the Sino-Japanese war. Hyde is revealed here, especially in her letters, as a feisty, witty, courageous woman rather than the languid and sentimental adolescent laughed at by contemporary male writers.

Introduction to The Book of Iris : A Life of Robin Hyde

The genesis of The Book of Iris can be traced back to a letter written to Gloria Rawlinson in 1947 by a seventeen-year-old Seaman Boy from the boys' mess of HMNZS Bellona. After expressing my gratitude for the work Gloria was then doing to bring together my mother's unpublished poems into a single volume, my letter continued:

I would be greatly indebted to you if you could collect as much information as you can about Iris as I know practically nothing about her [. . .]
I don't know whether I will ever be able to write [. . .] a biography on my mother but there is tons of time yet and I will try hard.

In April 1953 I wrote to Gloria from the survey ship HMNZS Lachlan, acknowledging receipt of a copy of the volume of my mother's poems, Houses by the Sea and expressing my satisfaction with the book. In July 1954 I wrote again, this time from HMNZS Pukaki, then off the coast of Malaya on its way back to New Zealand from a tour of duty in Korean waters. I accepted the Rawlinsons' kind offer of the use of the bach in their Ellerslie backyard after my projected discharge from the navy in October.

I occupied the Kalmia Street bach for the next two years, working to support myself and attending lectures at Auckland University. During this period of almost daily contact with Gloria there was a good deal of discussion about the form a biography of Iris might take. After I left the bach I made frequent visits during the next few years, and in 1959 I occupied their home while Gloria, her mother Rosalie and W. R. Edge toured Europe.

In July 1964 the plan for a biography received a sharp stimulus when Gloria received a letter from John Schroder informing her of an enquiry from Margaret Scott concerning the very substantial collection of Robin Hyde letters and manuscripts he held.2 Scott, who hoped to write an analytical-critical appraisal of Hyde's work for the Twayne World Authors Series, told Schroder that we were already in the early stages of planning and collecting material for a biography. Schroder asked for confirmation, and wrote that if this was so he would naturally give us first use of his collection.

Gloria replied to Schroder's query on 4 August:

For many years Derek has had the ambition to write a full scale biography of his mother. [. . .] Emotionally and psychologically he is very deeply involved in the whole idea but always seems to have difficulty in carrying out the actual work required. Not quite his fault, though, as he has had a long tough time of it trying to establish himself within himself (if you know what I mean) as well as in the world. Now at last he is seeing daylight with a tremendous gain in confidence and ability. [. . .] Of course I always offered to help Derek to the limits with this projected biography but he made it clear that he wanted to keep things in his own hands, and for my part I was loath to 'push in' or 'take over' or what have you.
Then, about four months ago he came and asked if I would go into active collaboration with him in writing the biography. We are both keen to go right ahead and have mapped out a book of sorts.

In March 1965 Gloria applied on behalf of the collaborators to the committee of the State Literary Fund for help to finance the project. They responded with a grant the bulk of which was assigned to Gloria in keeping with their practice of supporting established writers. A lesser part was assigned to me to help fund travel and research.

Gwen Mitcalfe, Iris's oldest and closest friend and my own lifelong friend, was told of my resolve, and in April Gloria wrote to her:

You will know, at any rate, that we are collaborating on a biography of Iris. We had long talked about it and over the years have each had numerous approaches from people who either wanted to write up Robin Hyde's life or [were] critical because her friends were slow to do it. It was hard to know what to do for the best. Derek was unwilling (rightly I think) to ride through life on Iris's coat-tails and wanted to establish his own life before tackling such a knotty problem. For our part Rosalie and I felt it would be wrong, even heartless, to put Derek into any kind of public situation he couldn't handle [. . .]
All Iris's papers are with Derek and he is now the executor. The papers [. . .] include several autobiographical pieces, not the least of which describes the whole story of Derek's birth and the two years after, from when she stayed with you till her subsequent job on the Observer. This narrative contains some of the best writing Iris ever did, and at least one publisher up here wanted to print it as it stood plus a short biographical introduction. However Derek has decided against this.Ý [. . .]

. . .

[. . .] At present there's just the barest outline of a heap of material. Derek keeps busy but well -- the lucky fellow has married a splendid girl and we are all very fond of her. We spend most of our Sundays working on the biography together.

In May 1965 Ellynne and I visited Wellington where we had interviews with James Bertram, Pat Lawlor, Warwick Lawrence, Ruth Mackay and John Schroder, all friends of Iris's and people without whose co-operation an authoritative volume would be difficult. We also searched files in the General Assembly and Alexander Turnbull Libraries. Our hostess during the visit was Gwen Mitcalfe. While she was not prepared to simply pass on her extensive and intimate correspondence with Iris she did invite Ellynne to read and make notes from the letters. Gwen later forwarded a few letters and a selection of transcribed passages, but the most unreserved and revealing archive of all was otherwise lost.

With Hazel Woodcock, Iris's oldest sister, we discussed the projected biography and took possession of a suitcase containing the surviving letters from Iris to the Wilkinson family and a substantial collection of photographs and other memorabilia.

In Auckland Gloria, now living at Market Road, was collecting and collating information from a wide variety of sources. The very extensive correspondence this quest entailed absorbed much of her time and energy. Private collections of letters from Iris to a variety of friends now began to arrive at Market Road, and Gloria was soon absorbed in the demanding task of transcription so that the originals could be returned.

Work on the biography continued apace and, except for June&endash;October 1965 when I was away from New Zealand, the collaborators met weekly for the next several years to discuss progress and problems. At these times I read and edited text of the initial draft. I left Auckland in May 1970 and contact with Gloria was then necessarily restricted to letters, telephone conversations and meetings during term vacations.

By 1971 a draft of the biography had been completed and The Book of Iris as it is here presented is the product of the editing, reworking, rewriting and supplementing of this 1043-page draft dated 27 May 1971. The draft and all the associated material was formally bequeathed to Ellynne and me in July 1995. In the years between 1971 and 1995 Gloria talked and wrote to friends, and sometimes to those who had contributed resources to the biography, of being still engaged in the task of revising the text. Nothing of any such endeavour is extant. A large archive of biographical material has survived, but nothing of reworked drafts.

Considering the years of effort she had invested in the biography it is astonishing that after the completion of the 1971 draft Gloria simply shelved the project. What reason could she have had for such a drastic measure? Despite our lifelong, almost fraternal relationship, and her unswerving commitment to the notion of collaborative authorship, Gloria never offered an explanation. Until the biographical archive was retrieved we too believed that work had continued until her final illness. During the last years of Gloria's life Ellynne and I often visited her at Market Road, and when it was clear that her death was imminent I promised that I would complete the biography; Gloria smiled and expressed her confidence that I would do so. Although attempts to explain the failure to proceed to publication are speculative there are several circumstances that may have contributed.

Gloria lacked any equipment other than an elderly typewriter. Reworking and retyping such a large manuscript was a forbidding prospect. Rosalie Rawlinson and W. R. Edge were now clearly ageing, and without assistance in the household Gloria's time and energy were consumed with basic household chores and caregiving. Such responsibility was a heavy burden, and the additional difficulty imposed by confinement to a wheelchair meant that the uninterrupted time needed to concentrate on revision of the manuscript was not available. Although from 1983 Margaret Ruddick was employed by Edge as a housekeeper, an arrangement which relieved Gloria of many responsibilities, the relief came too late to allow her to refocus on the biography.

Earlier there had been offers of assistance on both editorial and secretarial fronts. In May 1980 John Barnett, then on the editorial staff of the publishers Longman Paul, wrote to Gloria expressing interest in 'your "long" biography'. And in July of the same year Dennis McEldowney, then managing editor of Auckland University Press, offered to arrange both editorial and secretarial help:

I don't want to pressure you, knowing things can be difficult for you, but it is a crucial chapter in New Zealand's literary history we are awaiting, and if there are difficulties which can be overcome I feel the literary community must help in overcoming them.

As well as being both overly sentimental and hypercritical the draft manuscript exaggerated the importance of the part played by the Rawlinsons in Iris's life. She is presented as being dependent on their generosity and goodwill to an extraordinary degree. Although there had been a little correspondence earlier in the year and Rosalie had visited Iris in the Auckland Mental Hospital at Avondale, the first meeting between Gloria and Iris took place at the Rawlinsons' home on Gloria's birthday, 1 October 1933, when Iris was given leave from the hospital. A very real friendship developed during the next three years, although Iris remained a patient with limited leave for much of that time. Iris left the asylum in March of 1937 and after brief stays at several places moved to Auckland's North Shore in April. After that time contact with the Rawlinsons was very reduced, and after a breakdown of the friendship in October of the same year there was no contact at all until the friendship was briefly resurrected when Rosalie helped Iris pack for her overseas journey during her final days in New Zealand.

At the time Gloria and Iris met there was a substantial difference between them in both age and experience. As well as having borne two children, one of whom was dead, Iris was a well-known and widely experienced twenty-seven-year-old journalist and editor, the author of many published short stories and of The Desolate Star, an accomplished and critically acclaimed volume of adult poems. Gloria, on the other hand, was just fifteen, and, despite her evident and considerable talent, her experience and publications were naturally more limited. Other than occasional poems published in newspapers her major achievement was the recently published book of children's poems Gloria's Book. From comments in her letters to a wide variety of friends it is clear that Iris thought of Gloria as a brave, loveable, intelligent, remarkably talented young adolescent. When writing to Mary Smee she refers to her as 'Kiddie'; writing to Pat Lawlor she refers to her as 'little Gloria Rawlinson'; writing to Eileen Duggan she names her as 'this child'.

Rosalie too had borne a child, Gloria, who after a normal and happy early childhood in Tonga had been crippled by the aftermath of poliomyelitis contracted at an Auckland children's party. She had also experienced the trauma of a divorce sufficiently bitter for Gloria to be forbidden further contact with either her father or her half-brother from her father's subsequent remarriage. In both age and experience Iris and Rosalie were obviously much closer, and in real terms the relationship was naturally centred on the friendship between these two more mature women.

After Iris left New Zealand communication with the Rawlinsons was very one-sided. Letters to Rosalie were answered only after long intervals, if at all, and comments and questions directed to Gloria didn't evoke a response. In a letter addressed to them both from the MS Johan van Oldenbarnevelt off Portugal on 15 September 1938, when Iris was at last on her way to England, she wrote:

And oh, and ah, but I cannot write to 'ee -- You must remember I haven't heard from you for over nine highly peculiar months. Didn't you want to write to me? Frank Sargeson did twice, and so did Jane [Mander], and Elsie Stronach once and my mother three times.

On 3 January 1939 Iris wrote to Rosalie from Middlesex Hospital:

There is no reason in the world why Gloria should be pushed, or push herself, into writing to me if she doesn't feel like it. She has her own world to make, and all I hope is that she isn't having one of those really damnable and sticky times which seem to choose out writers for their especial prey.

In a letter to John A. Lee written on 22 February 1939 Iris reiterated her concern about Gloria's silence:

[. . .] I don't hear from her at all now, I have no fancy for being the outgrown passion of somebody's adolescence, and think it better not to write. But I have a lot of faith in young Glory, and know that she is genuinely a worker.

Following these expressions of regret Iris ceased trying to communicate with Gloria completely until a single letter from Gloria during Iris's last days in London elicited an eager response.

This is not to say that the friendship with the Rawlinsons was not a very generous gesture on their part, nor to deny that the empathy that often existed between the three women was not of comfort and importance to Iris, but to infer from that some sort of literary or personal dependence on that friendship, as has been done by several commentators, is to misunderstand the reality of the relationship.

There were other reasons why the draft manuscript would have been an embarrassment in the hands of an editor. Any editor involved in the production of a work concerning the literary history of New Zealand would inevitably have insisted on unrestricted access to the source material from which the text was drawn. A comparison of the original letters and the way in which they were used earlier in both The Wooden Horse article about Iris and in the introduction to Houses by the Sea would have revealed many discrepancies. In those documents many of the letters received by the Rawlinsons from Iris during her journey overseas were split into sections each of which was attributed to a different letter and a different date. This procedure produced a feeling of continuity in the correspondence and the illusion that many more letters were received than was actually the case. So in 1938 the Rawlinsons in fact received seven letters from Iris, but the text of the introduction to Houses by the Sea suggests that they received twenty-four. In 1939 the Rawlinsons received four letters from Iris, but Gloria claimed to have received eight.

Some of the reputed letters were not in fact letters at all but were reconstructions of articles written by Iris for a variety of Chinese English-language and other publications. For example, a letter claimed to have been written to the Rawlinsons from Brisbane on 26 January 1938 is actually a rewrite of an unpublished article 'Ways to Dust' written after Iris's first visit to Shanghai. Another letter claimed to have been written to the Rawlinsons on 11 February is taken from the 'I Travel Alone', Part 3 article published in the Mirror. Similarly a letter claimed to have been written on 24 May is actually a rewrite of the article 'Red Pond' published in 1939. A careful comparison of the texts reveals many more discrepancies and alterations.

Perhaps more disappointing was the way in which messages and comments favourable to the Rawlinsons and strongly suggestive of a dependence on them by Iris were inserted into the quoted text. For example, nowhere in the 10 November letter from Iris to the Rawlinsons does it say 'please keep on writing as much and as often as you can'. The letter to Rosalie from Iris on 9 June was subsequently subdivided by Gloria and the parts attributed to 10 May, 11 June and 8 July. In the section attributed to 8 July nowhere does it say 'I wish you were here so that we could talk it all over. I don't know what to do. It is all so unsettling.' In fact that part of the letter says no more than 'It's simply a case of hoping for the best.'

When the introduction to Houses by the Sea was written the correspondence available to Gloria was limited to that addressed to the Rawlinsons, supplemented by the occasional letter to Edge and a letter to me sent care of Edge that remained undelivered. At that time Gloria had access to neither the letters written to the Wilkinson family nor those written to me nor those written to John A. Lee or other correspondents during Iris's journey. Not only was the actual correspondence rather sparse but the failure of Rosalie and particularly of Gloria to respond to the letters that they did receive meant that there were substantial gaps in the information needed to write a knowledgeable and informative description of Iris's adventures during this period of her life. Why the supplementation of the letters was not simply acknowledged is not really understood.

Other factors that might have contributed to the shelving of the draft involve Iris's family. During the early stages of the preparation of the biography a good relationship existed between the biographers and the Wilkinson sisters. Hazel was both kind and co-operative and she expressed herself as being unreservedly in favour of the preparation and publication of a biography of her younger sister.

At this time Hazel's attitude was shared by Ruth, the youngest of Iris's sisters, and in mid-June of 1965 I received a letter confirming her support of our proposal:

Hazel has told me of your plans for the book about Iris and may I say, I am in full support of all you propose to write and that I feel great respect and love for you for undertaking this difficult task[.] I think it is a great tribute from you to your mother and I want you to feel that anything you write will be perfectly alright as far as I am concerned.

The enthusiasm of the two sisters persisted, and in July 1966 I received an equally supportive letter from Hazel:

I am glad the book is progressing well and do trust it will be a success. Will you tell Gloria that I received her lovely letter and have not forgotten her and as soon as I can collect the answers she asked for I will write.

However this openly expressed approval for a biography did not last, and in mid-August of the same year I received from Ruth a letter of quite a different tenor. She had:

[. . .] come back to-night after seeing Hazel in a state of complete nervous collapse in our own Psychiatric Clinic in Wgton Public Hospital [. . .]

Among a variety of causes Ruth attributed Hazel's nervous collapse to:

[. . .] the worry she has been undergoing over the autobiography you and Gloria Rawlinson are proposing to write of Iris.

[. . .] Hazel is most upset and resentful of your plans to expose all the pitiful and tragic incidents and secrets of Iris [. . .]

I myself, when you mentioned so briefly your intentions, had no idea of the complete dragging out of all her past and all the family history and inciden[t]s whether actual fact or fantasy and I feel most strongly that you are wrong in your intentions. Publishing this type of autobiography will not give Iris any added lustre or emphasize her [undoubted] genius and will only bring actual heartbreak to her living family -- particularly its most sensitive member -- Hazel.

Ruth mentioned having written 'a long and most emphatic letter' to Gloria in the same vein.

In September Gloria wrote a long and very detailed and pained reply. She conceded that there had been some initial disagreement about the revelation of the facts surrounding the conception and birth of Iris's first child but thought the matter had been resolved during her lengthy talk with Hazel during her November 1965 visit to Wellington. She continued:

Throughout the afternoon she impressed me by her calmness, and although not in agreement with the inclusion of such an unhappy episode she at least seemed to understand that Derek and I are trying to cope with a problem that goes beyond personal feeling; we see the biography as a whole, and to suppress this episode in what purports to be a definitive biography would lead us into endless distortion since it had an important bearing on what Iris came to think about life and how she wrote about it. [. . .] The chief purpose of this biography is to trace from its beginnings the life of Robin Hyde as a writer; when she began writing, what she wrote, how she developed, her life as a New Zealander, and her contribution to New Zealand thought and literature. This is a large and serious undertaking in itself for Iris was a very prolific writer with something to say about everything. Tragic her life may have been, but she was too big a person to be measured by suburban standards. [. . .] She was extremely interested in her own life and it is simply not true that she kept the birth of her first baby a dead secret. [. . .] Iris respected her mother's convictions but at the same time she insisted on the right to her own ideas, opinions, attitudes and views of life [. . .]

Now as regards the family: you say 'I also strongly feel that if our family are to have all its sad mistakes and sorrows exposed then Derek's father' etc. But the biography is about Iris, not about her family. So far as you and your sisters are concerned your lives and sorrows are in no way mentioned, nor was it ever intended they should be.

The letter mentions the criticism Gloria received for glossing over the more unfortunate aspects of Iris's life in the introduction to Houses by the Sea and mentioned Bertram's response to my 1965 visit:

[. . .] when Derek visited him last year in Wellington and told him that Gloria Rawlinson was to collaborate in writing the biography of Robin Hyde he groaned aloud, 'Oh, but she is quite the wrong person. She will want to suppress all the essential things and you will finish up with a distorted picture of what Robin was really like.' Derek was some time assuring him that a definitive biography was intended by both of us [. . .]

After receiving the letter from Ruth attributing Hazel's breakdown at least in part to Gloria and myself and to the proposed biography, I wrote on 18 August 1966 to the medical officer in charge of the psychiatric unit involved to ask if the biography was in fact a contributing factor in Hazel's condition. He replied:

I feel that you should not be in any way upset by your possible contribution to the patient's present emotional state, as I do not consider your intended book to be at all causative.

Despite letters to the family explaining our intentions, from both Gloria and myself, the antipathy persisted, culminating in Edna, the most outspoken and influential member of the family and the only one living in Auckland, telephoning Gloria on several occasions and threatening to seriously harm herself on Gloria's doorstep if she persisted with the biography. Gloria, a vulnerable, sensitive person, was alarmed and very intimidated by these threats and they may have played a part in the 1971 decision to shelve the draft manuscript.

In The Book of Iris every effort has been made to use the very considerable volume of material available to let Iris speak for herself. There has been no attempt to bowdlerise her story and, although the extraction of quotations from source material inevitably involves selection, nothing of significance has been deliberately omitted. Where Gloria's text is an adequate and fair representation of the facts and of the events that determined the course of Iris's life, I have used it in an almost completely unmodified form, but as far as is possible I have tried to minimise supposition, speculation, misinformation and subjectivity.

Where significant source material such as the mental health records and the legal documents dealing with Iris's stressful attempts to extract maintenance for her child from his father was previously unused it has been incorporated into the text. The correspondence with the Hutsons, the family fostering her child, and the part played by the child himself has been given greater prominence because of the stress this issue caused in the later part of her life. The importance of her family, particularly her mother, has been reassessed in the light of additional information. The correspondence between Downie Stewart and Iris and the circumstances surrounding her journey south in 1936 have been explored. Material relating to the importance to Iris of the Holloway family, material from the Curnow letters and other information that has become available since 1971 has also been included.

Derek Challis
Te Henga -- February 2002

About the editor

Derek Challis is Iris Wilkinson's son, whose care and nurture was an abiding concern of his mother. He had an unusual childhood, becoming in due course a sailor, a university technician and graduate, a teacher and a scientist.

Gloria Rawlinson (1918-95) was best known as a poet, publishing her first collection as a teenager. She edited Hyde's Houses by the Sea (1952).