One crisp Autumn evening, I walked over to Palmerston North’s City Library to sit and listen to Peter Wells deliver his illustrated speech on the current fate of Frank Sargeson’s small cottage in Esmond Road, Takapuna. It was an enthralling experience.

I had a brief chat with Peter beforehand, and asked him about the gaps in our collective memory which are only partially filled by the existence of such works as the late Michael King’s biography of Sargeson, an essential reference work for anyone interested in this subject.  He recommended that I scope out Chris Brickell’s forthcoming volume on New Zealand gay history, which should be an indispensable work on the grand overview of LGBT life in New Zealand (and precolonial takatapui, whakawahine and tangata ira tane existence in Aotearoa?).

After an introduction from Anthony Lewis, head PN librarian, Peter talked about the neccessity of heritage preservation, complimenting Palmerston North on its intact and restored Regent Theatre, and Sargeson’s Takapuna property is slightly more modest, he views it as “the only Fibrelite literary mueseum in the world.” The hut is a repository of egalitarian, modest civil values, something which New Zealand (and Auckland, especially) lost in the mad rush from the eighties to modernise at all costs. Sadly, that has often been at the cost of our architectural and cultural heritage.  There was some welcome reference to Harry Doyle, his lover, whose imprint also resides on his bed, and we even got a photograph of both men together, as well as an item from TVNZ’s old arts programme, Kaliedoscope, recorded only a year before his death (c1981).  The affectionately cluttered rooms are full of memorabilia, including a quilt that the late Janet Frame sewed for him.  Peter also referred to his own experiences of the hut, when he himself was only a fledgeling writer, and Frank was looking over his early work.

As well as that, there’s reference to a substance called Lemora, which sounds highly intoxicating, and was apparently made from lemons.

Unfortunately, while Sargeson’s hut is under a heritage preservation order, the same cannot be said for its environs, which are steadily being encroached upon for North Shore traffic volume expansion requirements, and there are also alarming signs that the North Shore City Council wants to forget the site’s existence, given Frank’s conspicuous absence from a list of celebrities, which seems to have been drawn up with the historically illiterate youth of today in mind.  However, not everyone has forgotten him- a young gay poet and his lover apparently made love on Frank’s bed.  Rather like E.M.Forster’s Maurice and nineteenth century English gay utopian socialist Edward Carpenter, this verdant pocket of paradise seems to be shrinking and faced with the oblivion of historical amnesia.

I wondered if Frame’s Daughter Buffalo, often regarded as a homage to Frank (especially the character of the elderly gay Turnlung) was on Frank’s shelf, to which Peter replied that he couldn’t recollect whether that was the case.  He had prefaced his loving camcorder scrutiny of the hut with attention to the manicured and postmodern landscape of Hamilton, which had cast the young Norris Davey out after Frank’s earlier persona was caught in a public convenience in Wellington  in 1929, and outed in the city papers.  Oddly, there was no reference to the whereabouts of the bog site in question.I asked Peter about it afterward, and one hopes there might be some reference in Chris’ forthcoming book on the subject.  As for Peter, he’s working on another historical novel.

Can’t wait!

Recommended:

Bruce Harding: “The Oil on the Salad, or Being Frank about Frank: The Conjunction of Religious and Judicial Legalisms in Frank Sargeson’s Life and in The Hangover (1967)” Journal of New Zealand Literature 16 (1998): 58-71

Michael King: Frank Sargeson: A Life: Viking: Auckland: 1995.