An Absurd Ambition

235 Pages·1996·3.32 MB·English

by  Eric H. McCormick

I never wanted to be an engine-driver or an explorer or an All Black. I had no desire to be a
bootmaker like my lather or a carpenter like most of my uncles or a farmer like some of my
cousins. But even in my school-days I longed to be a writer and in the barren years that
followed I went on cherishing the absurd ambition.
Eric McCormick was, from about 1940 till his death in 1995, one of New Zealand’s most
distinguished writers and scholars. He wrote several important biographies, his Letters and Art
in New Zealand was a landmark work and he pioneered the appreciation and the study of the
painter Frances Hodgkins. With dry wit, and in a trademark elegant style, his shrewd
observations of literary and artistic behaviour provided fascinating insights into the cultural
history of New Zealand.
In An Absurd Ambition Dennis McEldowney brings together a remarkable collection of
autobiographical fragments to create a moving and coherent ‘autobiography’. Piecing together
finished and unfinished essays, letters and diary entries, he follows McCormick’s personal and
intellectual development, from his childhood in Taihape, to school and university in
Wellington and Cambridge, and through his wartime experiences and role as editor of
Centennial Publications.
AN ABSURD AMBITION
AN ABSURD AMBITION
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS
E. H. McCormick
Edited by Dennis McEldowney
First published 1996
This ebook edition 2013
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY PRESS
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland 1142
www.press.auckland.ac.nz
Main text © Estate of Eric McCormick 1996
Arrangement and editorial matter © Dennis McEldowney 1996
This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study,
research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act no part may
be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of Auckland
University Press.
eISBN 978 1 86940 798 8
Publication is assisted by
Acknowledgements are due to Annabel Fagan and Heather Leggat
for providing photographs.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Brief Chronology and Bibliography
1 The Emporium
2 Wellington
3 Apollo in Taihape
4 A Sentimental Education
5 Greek History, Art and Literature
6 Sole-Charge
7 The Custom of the Country
8 Cambridge
9 Dunedin
10 Centennial
11 The Jumpers
12 ‘In a State of Intoxication’
13 Via Suez
Epilogue
Sources
Index
INTRODUCTION
Dennis McEldowney
In the spring of 1993, Eric McCormick telephoned to ask me, in that hesitant,
constantly rephrasing manner which was one of several traits he shared with
Henry James, whether I would consider writing a book about his sister Myra,
who had died the previous June. She and Eric had lived together for fifty years,
except for intervals when one or the other was away, and the final two years
when Myra, in the last stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, was looked after in
hospitals and nursing homes. In countless ways Myra had provided the
environment and dealt with the practical issues which enabled Eric to be, for
much of that time, a full-time writer. After they moved to Auckland from
Wellington in 1947, they lived for eight years in Grafton Terrace, a short street
which has long since been sacrificed to the motorway, in a house which they at
first rented from the University Librarian, Alice Minchin, and later bought from
her. As Myra neared retirement, in 1954, her work as a public health nurse,
mainly among Maori families, took her to Harrybrook Road in Green Bay. There
she saw a site, overlooking the Manukau Harbour, on which a couple had started
to build a house while living in a two-room bach. They had got no further than
the foundations when they ran out of money. Myra bought the property and after
her retirement, while Eric was in Europe for nearly two years, she moved into
the bach, and planned a house which used most though not all of the original
foundations. By the time Eric returned, Myra was living in the newly erected
house, and the bach, only three or four metres from the house, was available for
Eric. There he slept and worked, and could make light meals when he wished to,
though he often ate with Myra. They were in partnership, despite the fact that
many of Myra’s interests were quite different from Eric’s. On occasion she acted
as his research assistant, especially when he was overseas and needed a
reference from an Auckland library. In his grief after Myra’s death, Eric accused
himself of having taken her for granted: his call to me was an attempt to make
amends. He had admired my book about my wife, Shaking the Bee Tree, and
hoped I might do something similar for Myra.
I was doubtful about the prospect, but owed so much to Eric in many ways
that I could not brush it aside. Nor, in view of his frail health, could I plead
pressure of work (though that could have been justified) and suggest waiting for
a couple of years. I said I would visit him and look over the available material.
On weekly visits for the rest of the year we looked through records, beginning
with photographs and moving on to written material. Alas, it soon became clear
that the makings of a book such as he desired did not exist. Apart from
photographs, very little was documented about Myra’s childhood and early life,
or about her nursing career. Even Eric’s reminiscences could not fill the gaps.
They had not been close when young, for which Eric assumed the two-year
difference in their ages was sufficient explanation. He could say little more than
that she was there.
What did become clear, however, was the amount of autobiographical writing
Eric himself had done, little of which had been published. Eric could no longer
remember everything he had written, let alone where it all was, though he was
clear enough about the contents when they were found. At first he was wary of
letting me loose among his papers, but as his confidence grew he began to allow
it and, with Eric constantly at my side, I went systematically through the papers
stowed in filing cabinets, chests of drawers, desk drawers, desk top, and
bookshelves, all in his two-roomed bach (though he was now living in the
house). What I found were finished essays, uncompleted essays, letters written in
response to specific queries, particularly about his time in Cambridge, and
fragments of all kinds. They covered most of his life from birth until the age of
fifty: his childhood, secondary schooling in Wellington, teachers’ training
college and university, teaching at sole-charge schools in rural Nelson, the
scholarship to Cambridge; his underemployed years in Dunedin, Centennial
Publications, war experiences, and the excitement with which he began his
biographical work on Frances Hodgkins. Some of this material existed in up to
seven handwritten drafts, differing slightly but occasionally significantly. He
also showed me four volumes of a journal kept intermittently from 23 December
1923, when he was seventeen, until 14 June 1989, three days before his eighty-
third birthday.
Notable among his published essays were The Inland Eye: A Sketch in Visual
Autobiography (1959), a booklet based on a talk he had given to the Auckland
Gallery Associates; ‘Apollo in Taihape’, published in the New Zealand Listener
in 1966 and later in Bridget Williams’s miscellany, The Summer Book 2; and
‘Beginnings’ in Islands 22 (1978). During my time at the Auckland University
Press I urged him several times to let us publish a collection of his essays,
autobiographical, literary, and general. His answer was always that they would
require a great deal of revision, that only he could do it, and that he had more
urgent work to complete. Now that he was no longer capable of sustained
literary work, I proposed that with his active help I should edit his
autobiographical writings. To this he acquiesced, if only as a second-best to a
book on Myra.
A real start to the work was delayed when, just after Christmas 1993, Eric
became ill, mainly from exhaustion and malnutrition (he had been receiving
meals-on-wheels, but finding them unappetising had fed them to a neighbour’s
dog), and was moved to an ‘apartment’ in Powley House, a large establishment
for the elderly in Blockhouse Bay. After about a month he was able to return
home with an all-day helper from a service attached to Powley House. (He was
still alone at night.) For the greater part of 1994 I spent every Friday afternoon
with him and shared his evening meal, by courtesy of the home helpers. I
searched for further material, put it in chronological order, clarified obscure
points with him, taped reminiscences, especially where there were gaps to be
filled or unfinished stories to be completed, and discussed the progress of my
work. Since he seldom remembered from Friday to Friday exactly what we had
been doing, much of this had to be repetitious. Eventually, on red-letter days, I
would have the draft of a chapter or part of a chapter to read to him, through the
medium of his cumbersome ‘hearing enhancer’; then I would leave the copy
with him for further consideration. In this way, by the end of the year, he had
read or heard and approved of all but the last three chapters of this book. He
could seldom resist disparaging remarks about his own writing (‘Too wordy’ was
his most frequent complaint), and often corrected my facts or assumptions. Other
regular visitors were there on other days of the week, notably Maurice Shadbolt
and Elspeth Sandys, Linda Gill, Jacqui Fahey, Michael Smither, and Roy Hughes
(whose parents had laid the foundations for Myra’s house); they all reported his
enthusiasm for our book. Near the end of 1994, however, after several night-time
falls and a bout of pneumonia for which he was admitted to Auckland Hospital,
he returned to Powley House, where his deterioration was so rapid before his
death on 23 March 1995 that he was no longer able to take an interest in what I
was doing. During his last weeks Eric believed he was sharing an ocean voyage
with Myra. Why else would so many people be sitting in rows doing nothing and
waited on by people in uniform? He identified as Myra a succession of old ladies
among his fellow residents of Powley House.
A detailed note on sources is printed at the end of the book, so only a few
general remarks are needed here about the variety of methods used in composing
the chapters. Two, ‘Apollo in Taihape’ and ‘“In a State of Intoxication”’ (the