Sarjeant Happenings: Robin Hyde – a barometer for the 1930s

By Helen Frances

Whanganui Chronicle·

18 Sep, 2023 05:00 PM5 mins to read

Celebrating Robin Hyde is a Speakers for the Sarjeant event as part of the Whanganui Literary Festival fringe programme. Photo / Alexander Turnbull Library

The few months that iconic New Zealand poet, journalist and novelist Robin Hyde lived in Whanganui was a big turning point in her short life, says Paula Morris, MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Manuhiri).

The multi-award-winning author and academic, who is Associate Professor of English and Drama at Auckland University, will give an illustrated talk about Hyde in a Speakers for the Sarjeant event as part of the 10th Whanganui Literary Festival fringe programme on Saturday, September 23.

The session includes a short film about Robin Hyde called A Home in this World, a talk by Morris (who collaborated with photographer Haru Sameshima to produce the book Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde), followed by a discussion with Hyde enthusiasts Michele Leggott, Juanita Deely and Morris.

In 1929, Hyde (nee Iris Guiver Wilkinson, January 19, 1906–August 23, 1939) began work for the Whanganui Chronicle and lived at 25 Somme Parade. She also published her first book of poetry, The Desolate Star. After a brief relationship with married journalist Harry Lawson Smith she became pregnant with a second son. Her first son Robin Hyde, whose name she adopted as a professional pseudonym, had been stillborn and, devastated by the loss of her child, Hyde spent time at Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs.

On learning about her second pregnancy, Hyde refused the abortion proposed by Smith and took six months’ sick leave, claiming heart problems. She gave birth to her son Derek Challis at Picton in October 1930 and, despite her attempts to keep the existence of her son secret, rumours possibly cost her the Whanganui newspaper job and she returned “penniless” to Wellington. Hyde worked hard to support herself and her son who was initially cared for in a nursing home and later fostered by a family in Auckland.

“Her time in Whanganui complicated everything for Robin Hyde,” Morris said.

“For the rest of her short life, she had to work like a dog and keep her baby more or less a secret, because otherwise she would have lost newspaper jobs. But it also brought her tremendous happiness, because she really loved Derek. I think Whanganui, for her, was this big turning point with both bad and good consequences. It was also a place where, as a journalist, she got a lot of good training.”

The talk will also explore what the city meant to Hyde, how she saw it, how she engaged with it.

“When I was working on Shining Land, I took many pictures in Whanganui, trying to conjure up the bustling city she experienced, with its grand civic buildings and busy port,” Morris said.

“All cities change in a century, of course. Hyde had a busy life there, though she was still mourning the loss of her first son, one of her many secrets.”

During her research and visits to places Hyde lived in New Zealand, Morris became fascinated by what her subject’s life revealed about the interwar years in New Zealand, about society and the pressures on women in particular.

Paula Morris. Photo / Colleen Maria Lenihan

“I didn’t realise when I began how much more her life would reveal about the impact of World War I on this country. All the men in her life, from her father to the fathers of her two children, were World War I veterans. The interwar years here, especially after the Depression set in, offered opportunities but also problems for Hyde. She was, perhaps, born a little bit too soon, coming of age in an era that was very unsympathetic to the single mother and the single woman working.”

As a journalist, Hyde travelled a lot around New Zealand and then overseas in China, undeterred by lameness since the age of 18 following a knee operation. She was frustrated by, and resisted attitudes towards, women journalists who were largely restricted to writing social columns or women’s pages. In 1938 she travelled to the Japanese-occupied frontline in eastern China and wrote the book Dragon Rampant about her experiences.

The Robin Hyde plaque on the Wellington Writers’ Walk.

Before she left New Zealand, though she was pressed for money and time, and living off and on in an institution, Hyde wrote non-stop. Between 1935 and 1938, Hyde wrote five novels: Passport to Hell, Check to Your King, Wednesday’s Children, Nor the Years Condemn and The Godwits Fly.

“It was a hard time for people in the ‘30s. But that’s why she was obsessed with earning money and in fact worked herself, you could argue, to death because she was not just looking after herself but looking after [her son] as well and wanting to be with him.”