THE TURNBULL LIBRARY RECORD 1940-1976

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1 May 1977, Page 38

THE TURNBULL LIBRARY RECORD 1940-1976

Janet Paul

A Record

To this present date the Turnbull Library Record has been the child of two editors, C. R. H. Taylor and A. G. Bagnall. The back cover of Number 1, January 1940, offers a prognosis. It was to be financed by the Friends of the Turnbull Library, a group founded in 1939 at the suggestion of the new Chief Librarian. (The approach of a centennial may have made people more mindful of New Zealand culture and emphasised the value of Alexander Turnbull’s gift of his library.) Subscribing Friends were to be given a free copy of the Record. The Committee included the retired Turnbull Librarian, Johannes C. Andersen; A. E. Currie, an incisive Solicitor for Crown Law; the young Professor of English from Victoria University College, I. A. Gordon; C. Quentin Pope, an exceptional journalist, with an informed taste in music and fine printing and Alan Mulgan, even then a grand old man of journalism and broadcasting’s Supervisor of Talks. By sad coincidence the final number of Taylor’s editing, in November 1962, carries obituary notices of three members of this original committee.

No editor is named but the back cover carries a Library staff listing which gives C. R. H. Taylor as Librarian and A. G. Bagnall as Assistant Librarian and Assistant-Secretary of the Friends, and encourages the assumption that both these men took a responsible part in the inception of the Record. The idea for publishing such a journal was formulated by Clyde Taylor, his models being the journals of the Huntington and Clements libraries and the British Museum Quarterly. He had talked to librarians in the United States who had stressed the value of libraries using a popular periodical to reach the public at large. The Introduction sets out policy:

It will aim to do for the library what neither a catalogue nor a guide book generally does . . . the vehicle for . . . more precise particulars of books, manuscripts and other records . . . the publication of short texts of importance to the research worker . . . the object is simply to aid scholarship by rendering the library’s resources more widely available. Editing will be reduced to a minimum, for interpretation of the material is not intended. The first issue sets a tone for the Record which was remarkably consistent for the following 22 years. There were always bibliographical

notes on new acquisitions to show how these rounded out a particular collection, or emphasised an interest which extended an original impetus; as the Dryden collection and 17th Century pamphlet collections had grown out of Alexander Turnbull’s Milton collection. A regular reader of the Record would have found out about such diverse non-Pacific holdings as Coleridge’s Monody on the Death of Chatterton, a manuscript of the song ‘John Peel’ or a 17th Century Persian manuscript with its contemporary watercolour illustrations, or could have noticed the purchase of a full series of Doves Press publications from Quaritch of London in 1952, and have seen how such a purchase amplified Turnbull’s own collection of British fine printing. The Record reader would have known that the 300 Dutch imprints held in the Library included 60 volumes from the Elzevir Press, or that he could refer to all the books printed by John Baskerville; the scholar of English literature was made aware that the Turnbull Library holds the ‘STC’ books or, less enigmatically, informed that he could see, as they were microfilmed, every English book printed between 1475 and 1640.

Special donations were also scrupulously noted; for example, Sir John Ilott’s presentation of a group of 14th and 15th Century manuscripts or a copy, privately-printed by Bruce Rogers at the Chiswick Press, of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). Friends were kept informed of the fine Guy Morris collection of Katherine Mansfield books and manuscripts (acquired for the price of death duties) ; the Percy Watts Rule bequest which included 1748 and 1750 volumes of Piranesi engravings and early Bibles with Diirer woodcuts or superb copper plates by De Bry; the gift of E. A. Earp’s New Zealand bee library.

Clyde Taylor was a modest editor and scarcely flavoured the periodical with what must have been his own particular interest. The first indication is a review signed ‘A.G.B.’ in No. 9, September 1952, of A Pacific Bibliography published by the Polynesian Society and compiled by C. R. H. Taylor.

To the present-day reader the paucity of recent acquisitions ‘since Ist January, 1952’ the entries under ‘Pacific’ in No. 10, January 1953, must amaze. For poetry, nine titles; for fiction, Janet Frame The Lagoon (1951), John Guthrie Paradise bay (1952), G. R. Gilbert Glass-sharp and poisonous (1952); these three are the only works listed. Fine printing—the Caxton Press and the Pegasus Press gain one each. And that is all. For history seven titles are listed and for art only one and that Modern Australian aboriginal art (1951).

This diminutive list of New Zealand publications explains the bias of the first series of the Record towards the literary and the non-Pacific material. The volume of New Zealand material was a trickle, the Library users and Record readers were bibliophiles and collectors rather than

local historians or Ph.D. students or journalists or grandfather-hunters or television script writers. Post-graduate scholarship was still done outside New Zealand and the indigenous writers and publishers had only just begun to nibble at the edges of New Zealand life. The great New Zealand novel was still a mirage.

Apart from strictly bibliographical notes, the only articles of any length on New Zealand topics are an unsigned examination of W. H. Bumand’s copy of the New Zealand Journal (No. 8, p. 3-13); two extracts from William Bambridge’s diary (No. 1, p. 2-6; No. 2, p. 1-5) and three accounts written by A. G. Bagnall of manuscript holdings: the association and correspondence between an Australian botanist and explorer, Allan Cunningham, and William Colenso 1838-39 (No. 3, p. 5-10) ; J. R. Godley’s letters to Adderley (No. 1, p. 6-7) and Landor’s letters to J. E. Fitzgerald (No. 2, p. 8-10).

Other Turnbull Library Record entries with only a marginal New Zealand connection are the texts of two lectures on Hugh Walpole occasioned by the Memorial Fund established by Miss Julie Tomlinson in 1941. Professor Arnold Wall’s lecture (No. 6, p. 1-12), briefly biographical, sets out the state of ‘English Fiction, 1850-1900’ and with certain approval examines Walpole’s position and achievement as a romantic novelist. Blackwood Paul’s lecture on ‘Hugh Walpole and the popular novel’ is quirky, disrespectful, lucid and informed. With a threepage ‘Additions to Walpole Collection’ it fills the whole of the No. 12 issue.

The physical changes in the type, layout and format of the Record make a miniscule history of contemporary printing taste and a footnote on economics in New Zealand. The first issue was printed by Whitcombe & Tombs at the time when they were being cajoled and bullied into better printing habits by both the editor and the typographical adviser of the Centennial Histories. (The Christchurch printing house was working on the histories and the Wellington branch of Whitcombe & Tombs on the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.) The format of Number 1 shows more than a whiff of J. C. Beaglehole’s typographical style: the use of Baskerville capitals, the thin and thick rules and the leading between the lines of the Introduction, the use of a two-line initial capital followed by capitals in the first word of text, the centralised classical balance which Denis Glover later referred to as ‘tombstone typography’.

Number 3 gave Denis Glover his chance to demonstrate the Caxton Press style in January 1941. It opens with a flourish and uses Baskerville types with a difference. There is a fine balance on the title page and contents list combined; the capitals are visually letter-spaced, the tapered French rules and large old-style numeral elegant; proportions

of margin and text, running-head and folio are impeccable; the antique laid paper has foxed with age but must, when new, have helped to give the whole publication its absence from wartime austerity. Number 5 completely reflects the difficulties of publishing in wartime. The imprint on the back of a clear firm title page reads ‘Set in 8 point Roman Old Style with Italic. Printed by C. R. H. Taylor, at Tawa Flat, Wellington’. The type was commercially set, the printing done by the Chief Librarian in his own time. He may not always have cleaned his type or managed an even impression but he had an art-paper onepage inset with three blocks and, single-handed, had kept culture flying in the Turnbull Library Record that particularly gloomy year of 1942.

The Record did not appear again until December 1946, once more in the Caxton format, though without the detailed niceties of its first number. Number 7, published June 1947, is fully restored with 22 pages of text and a wrapped section of art paper which shows a now historical record of the Rare Book Room and Library entrance in the old Turnbull House.

There is another gap in production until November 1951. Number 8 is set in Poliphilus and Blado italic and printed at the Pegasus Press, Christchurch. It may also reflect Denis Glover’s temporary association with that company. The type is beautiful and a list of maps set in upper and lower case italic and roman is pleasing. A page from ‘the most beautifully printed book of the 15th Century’ would lift any periodical, but the purist critic could list a number of small infelicities which would have been unlikely under the Caxton imprint.

Number 9 descends with a bump to run-of-the-mill commercial printing style. It is set in an undistinguished type, with that extra spacing after a fullstop and the too wide paragraph indentation that J. C. Beaglehole and the Caxton Press had done battle against in the thirties. This issue includes a balance sheet. The cost of printing two issues of the Record had been £6l. Wright & Carman were economical printers; the next balance sheet, November 1953, reads ‘Printing “Record” Nos. 9 and 10 £42.7.6d’; No. 11 in August is still £22.2.6 for one issue. Wright & Carman used a good-quality off-white paper with almost no show-through.

Increase in text size may have dictated further printing economies. The final two numbers under C. R. H. Taylor’s editorship are printed by Universal Printers, Blair Street, Wellington. Typographically they are only adequate. The use of art paper in Number 15, November 1962, is unpleasant in a valedictory text. * * *

In March 1967, under the editorship of A. G. Bagnall, since 27 April 1966 Chief Librarian, the Turnbull Library Record takes a fresh face

and new grace in a second series. Volume 1 Number 1 is a professional periodical in format and content; a no-nonsense cover, good margins, Aldine Bembo type set generously in 12 and 10 point, scholarship implicit in the end-numbered footnotes, a wrap four-page outsection to support the text with illustrations. The editor sets the New Zealand bias of subsequent numbers with a cogently argued article on the ‘Fox water-colours of Otaraia Pa’. The other major contribution, Iris Winchester’s ten-page article on William Swainson, a model of clear writing and accurate attribution, is the first attempt to research the biography of this important, but in New Zealand little-known artistnaturalist. Like Clyde Taylor, A. G. Bagnall as editor was aiming at a lay audience; but twenty-seven years had widened the informed interests of more New Zealanders. This second series could rely on a different kind of layman, one with some knowledge of his country’s past and a readier appetite for the details of research. At an academic level indigenous curiosity was given perspective and authority in the New Zealand Journal of History first issued in April of the same year. The two journals cannot be compared but they have one factor in common — readability, at a time when specialist journals were becoming too technical in content and vocabulary f° r the non-specialist layman.

But what was the purpose of the Record as the journal of the Friends? Its object, printed inside the back cover, was ‘to promote interest in the Alexander Turnbull Library, to assist in the extension of its collections, and to be a means of interchange of information relating to English literature, to the history, literature and art of New Zealand and the Pacific, and to all matters of interest to book-lovers’. The editor in volume 1, number 1 defined ‘Friends’ as ‘persons with particular interests in the special collections which are the Library’s responsibility’ and in the next two numbers proposed ‘that henceforth the more important additions to the Library’s holdings of manuscripts should be noted regularly in the Record’ (v. 1 (n.s.) (2)) and ‘that henceforth short bibliographical or descriptive notes should be included. These will mainly feature unrecorded aspects of well-known titles or draw attention to books of some possible interest which have been “discovered” in the course of work’(v. 1 (n.s.) (3), p. 32). In the same number one may detect a shade less enthusiasm in the further note on editorial policy, ‘it is thought that the Record should give some information about the work and administration of the Library in addition to featuring articles on the material in its collections’.

How far was the editor able to implement his own proposals? The manuscript collection was dear to his heart and its sturdy annual growth has been recorded punctiliously —the first ‘Note’ on manuscript accessions in 1967 occupied three pages; in the two final issues under A. G.

Bagnall’s editorship the ‘Notes on manuscript accessions. A selective list of acquisitions’ from January to June and from July to December 1975 occupied twenty and twenty-three pages respectively. In the last issue a further sixteen pages were also devoted to the manuscript holdings in the article by Michael Hoare which analysed ‘Turnbull Library manuscript holdings in the history of New Zealand science: a review’. I his article itself is both a tribute to the organisation and accessibility of the manuscripts collection as well as a remarkable comment on its author’s capacity to research and assess source material in a ‘foreign’ country with incredible speed.

From an editorial viewpoint the allocation of 39 pages in a 68-page journal would suggest that the institutional pulse beats most strongly in the manuscript collection, although in financial terms its acquisition may be less costly than books and periodicals or the graphic resource collections. If this collection’s growth rate continues the future editors of the Record will have no problem of choice —manuscript acquisitions and an occasional list from art and map collections will soon fill each number. Given this possibility one is the more grateful for the content under A. G. Bagnall’s editorship which analysed source material and printed extracts from diaries and journals ranging from the description of an unknown settler to unpublished stories and extracts deciphered from Katherine Mansfield’s nearly illegible originals. Experts in rarefied fields discuss and elucidate over such a range as where exactly was the Beauchamp house described in ‘At the Bay’, how to discuss and describe the various editions of Heaphy lithographs or look at a Carmelite Book of Hours and recognize the T. J. Wise forgeries at the Turnbull.

The editor called on a variety of contributors; researchers using the Library, his own staff, visiting scholars and those resident in the English Department of the Victoria University of Wellington. Few issues did not have the lift of his own wide knowledge and succinct wit. He saw clearly that between the reading public and the scholar the librarian is mediator. His own activities as editor of the retrospective New Zealand National Bibliography and as local historian, his ability to write in informative and pungent prose make him—to use a term of his own — a ‘second-mile mediator’. In this role, A. G. Bagnall’s article on the ‘Sources for local history in the National Collections’ (v. 5 (n.s.) (2)) is a fine example. In describing the qualities needed to be a local historian he also puts his finger on the very qualities which made him an outstanding mediator and editor—the power of recall, the capacity to see interrelationship, to write an intelligible prose. ‘Accuracy and orderliness’, yes, but also along with qualities of historical geographer and psychologist ‘with a broadly based understanding of human motives

and failings’, those of a historian in whom social maturity is combined with ‘a dispassionate but kindly irreverence’. With the printing of the Katherine Mansfield manuscripts and the three outstanding examples of prose in the jubilee issue of August 1970, the Record not only records and recovers, but becomes, itself, New Zealand literature.