HELEN WILSON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 15

HELEN WILSON

By

Celia

and

Cecil

Manson

H dear," Helen Wilson used to ‘say, "I have managed my old age badly! My brain’s all right, but my body’s letting me down." It was true, and typical. She was so eager, so young in her enthusiasms, for all her 88 years, that the ear-trumpet, the impatient white stick that guided her quick, light steps, the white hair and unseeing eyes seemed not to be part of her. And she was truly humble-always surprised and delighted to find that anyone had enjoyed her books. It is not given to many to achieve renown as a national figure after the age of 80. In this respect Helen Wilson was a phenomenon in the literary life of New Zealand. Fame came to her with the publication of her delightful autobiography, My First Eighty Years, a book which is likely to become a New Zealand classic. Her death will have brought sadness to thousands who may never have met her, but who felt the warmth of her character through her writings. One night, as we drove her home from a literary gathering at which she had been a guest of honour, she remarked regretfully that there had been only one thing lacking to make the evening entirely enjoyable. "If only my husband had been alive to enjoy the little success I have had with my writing," she said. Then as an afterthought, "but then, of course, if he’d been alive, I would never have written anything. We had too many other interesting things to do together."

wv That, no doubt, was the truth and the secret of her late success. The activity of her full and long life, with its accompanying deep feeling and intelligent observation, alone could have produced My First Eighty Years, which in turn called attention to her little noticed

novel Moonshine and encouraged the writing of Land of My Children. The eagerness and the warmth of ‘her interest drew you to her. You would often find her sitting in the big window of her daughter’s house, with her typewriter on the table in front of her-the machine that (she admitted) she was just a little late in learning to use. She would push her work impatiently away, feel her way round the table and hold out both hands in welcome, "Oh, it is nice to see you." And a delightful look of youthful pleasure would cross her face. "And now. What’s your news? Come, sit down and tell me about everything!" It was fun to be with Helen Wilson. Always laughter in the conversation, and none with a bitter edge, She loved to talk, and was a vivid, lucid talker. But she was also the perfect listener — the understanding smile, the occasional nod of the head, the earnest probing question. Talk with her for only a little while, and you could not miss the echo of the young girl who, with her equally spirited mother, had gone pioneering in the bush seventy years before. Something of the closeness to nature and the hardships of those early days had bred in her the common-sense approach, of a farmer’s wife (who, incidentally, was a founder and President of the W.D.F.F.) and at the same time a warm humour and a profound sense of beauty which is reflected in her writings. One of the tragedies of Helen Wilson’s last few years was that, though blind and nearly deaf, she still retained her liveliness of mind, her desire to create and to look forward when all around her were urging her to look back.

"Reminiscences! More reminiscences!" was the cry from readers and admirers. ‘But I’ve done all that. I can’t go back to that again,’ she would say. And then she would begin talking about the play which occupied her mind so much recently, and to which in the last jew years, between writing stories, articles and broadcasts she would always return. The play, which was about Moses, had been first written many years before, after much research and study. After a long period tucked away in a drawer, it had been brought out again and she had become more and more anxious to perfect it. The subject was one on which she felt deeply and the play is conceived on the grand scale and written in Biblical language and in iambic pentameters. It has touches of great beauty. "T had pretty good cheek to write such a play hadn’t I?" Helen Wilson would say, "There was I, a farmer’s wife who knew nothing about the theatre .. ." And when, at the last, she tried to rewrite parts of it, and to revise, she found that it was too late to go to plays and study stage-craft. She could not even see. "T have so little time left," she would say urgently, explaining the need which she felt to get on with the work currently nearest to her heart. "Tt isn’t reasonable at my age that I should expect to have much longer." The time was too short. It is New Zealand’s loss that many stories stored in her mind, or jotted down in rough notes, will not now be written; at least by her. Her writing had about it a quality of purity, rising sometimes to nobile ity, which has added distinction to our literature.