Deborah Shepard: Between the lives - partners in art

The stereotypical image of husband-and-wife writers/artists is of her tending the kids, cooking the meals, cleaning the house, trying to work in what little spare time she has, while he provides erratically, explores personally, rises professionally. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath come to mind. So do Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald — minus the housework.

This accessible, attractive book suggests that in New Zealand, we sometimes do it ... differently.

Nine contributors consider nine couples: some married, some same-sex, some Darby and Joan, some Punch and Judy. There are those you'd expect: the Hanlys, the Siddells, the Campbells, the James K. Baxters. There are those you may not know about: Kendrick Smithyman and Mary Stanley; the McCahons; Rudi and Ramai Hayward; Frances Hodgkins and Dorothy Kate Richmond. Chronologically and culturally, it's a wide range.

Indeed, these relationships include gifted women tired out or left out by social expectations. Anne McCahon and Mary Stanley head the list of losses. But there is also mutual encouragement, vigorous dialogue, shared idylls (try Hodgkins and Stanley's "gentlewomen's grand tour of Europe").

The essays begin with Jill Trevelyan's lucid account of the Woollastons' half-century together, starting in the famous mud-brick room. at Mapua. Toss was "not unsympathetic" towards Edith's work — now there's a revealing double negative. Just as revealing is the fact that Edith drove herself to total collapse and three months in Hanmer Hospital.

They end as Catherine Lane West-Newman neatly narrates the "symbiosis" of Peter and Sylvia Siddell. This essay definitely has the best first meeting: a Search and Rescue descent of a waterfall.

Deborah Shepard's introduction sets the partnerships with their "importance of connectedness" against the persistent Romantic image of the artist as an independent, always male, genius. She also writes the chapter on the film-making Haywards: their confrontations with racism, their work on Rewi's Last Stand and its flop in Britain, and "the positive power of artistic coupledom".

Other picks? Peter Simpson's respectful study of Smithyman and Stanley; Joanne Drayton evoking the eager energy of the Hodgkins-Richmond alliance, placing them deftly in artistic and social history; Paul Millar's balanced outline of the Baxters — with his wry comment that if James K had lived longer, Jacquie might never have returned to her writing.

There are terrific cover photos of the Hanlys and Haywards, plus other eloquent illustrations. Colin McCahon gazes uxoriously at Anne; Frances Hodgkins bounds across a bridge; the drop-dead-lovely Ramai Hayward-to-be poses; Sylvia Siddell reworks Goya with an exhausted woman in a dressing-gown; the McCahons combine to paint a fetching fantasy landscape.

And there are illuminating extracts from letters (Edith Woollaston's are best), memoirs, diaries, manifestos, poems. The last include the whole of Smithyman's affecting, apostrophising Sinfonia Domestica.

All these essays are good — if deferential and even reverential. A number are very good. Inevitably, they make you think of other pairings: Frederick and Evelyn Page; Chris and Barbara Else; Philip Temple and Diane Brown; Kate de Goldi and Bruce Foster. Add your own requests for Vol 2. Meanwhile, these nine will do nicely.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer. Deborah Shepherd will discuss this book at the Chocolate Fish Sessions, Jubilee Hall, 545 Parnell Rd, on April 13, 7-9pm.