Book review

The Turnbull Library Record Volume Eleven, Number One, May 1978

reviewed by E.H.McCORMICK

For some years The Turnbull Library Record has been more than a house journal with a readership confined to bibliophiles and 'Friends' of the institution. The forbidding grey covers have enclosed unique literary material, notably Margaret Scott's transcripts of Mansfield papers. The scholarly articles have occasionally been enlivened by such jeux d'esprit as A.G. Bagnall's account of the library's birth pangs. Even the accession lists have had their readers beyond a narrow range of librarians and book-lovers. It is always useful (if only for purposes of gossip) to discover which of our writers have ensured immortality for themselves and whether they have done so by sale or donation.

The latest number discloses a radical revision of the Record's appearance and lesser changes in its contents. The cover has been redesigned, fresh type introduced throughout, and letterpress printing by offset. The new format is most attractive, a triumph for the editors and, above all, for their typographical adviser (hallowed title), Janet Paul. As for the contents, the one major innovation is a set of highly subversive verses by the schizophrenic Denis Glover who appears elsewhere in the issue as Dr D.J.M. Glover, committeeman and past president of the 'Friends'. There follows C.R.H. Taylor's tribute to the late Alice Woodhouse, gratefully known to generations of scholars and more recently famous as Queen of Quiz. Then come the major contributions: Janet Paul on W.M. Hodgkins, June Starke, eruditely and ingeniously, on a sonnet by Coleridge, Phil Parkinson on the drawings of John Abbot, Penelope Griffith on Featon's Waikato War, Tony Murray-Oliver on Earle and Angas - all by members of the staff, all the outcome of the sorting, sifting, and identifying that go on continuously in the Turnbull.

Janet Paul's illuminating article on Hodgkins can perhaps be singled out for brief comment not only for its special interest to readers of Art New Zealand (and to this reviewer) but also because it demonstrates the superiority of the new format. Illustrations are now closely related to text, an immense advantage in the discussion of art, while the offset process reproduces the delicate qualities of Hodgkins's medium, watercolour, even in monochrome. Janet Paul thinks more highly of Hodgkins than Hamish Keith and Gordon Brown do. In support of her views she quotes a remark of mine but questions my use of the phrase 'mild impressionism'. Nearly forty years ago, when the passage was written, I already knew something about Impressionism and, so far as I can remember, deliberately avoided the capital letter. In fact Monet, pioneer Impressionist, and Hodgkins, pioneer landscape painter, were both deeply influenced by Turner and could have reached similar ends independently. That is something future historians of New Zealand art might investigate. But first they will need a detailed catalogue of Hodgkins's extant paintings and catalogues of every other important New Zealand artist. A legion of Rodney Wilsons, please! The same point is made - or implied - in an unsigned note on Heaphy in the Record. reference is also made there to a collection of his watercolours now locked away in the British library as a result of Sir George Grey's vanity (a more conspicuous attribute of the Governor than his alleged lubricity). Can nothing be done to reclaim these superb paintings? And if that is impossible, could they not be reproduced in colour and added to the Turnbull Library Prints?