Lovers and Husbands and
What-not: A Biography of
Margaret L. Macpherson
by
Copyright © 2013 Reynold Macpherson. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the publisher.
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This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Margaret L. Macpherson in the hope that her life and times inform the way in which we understand our own contributions in very different contexts.
It is also dedicated to my wife, Nicki, our children Kirsty, Shiona, Ewan, and Angus, and grandchildren, Austin and Olive Brooks, who all continue to give my adventures meaning.
Finally, it is also dedicated to my many relatives, friends, and informants around the world for their understanding, forbearance, and support; which made the research reported here possible. Together we may have added some understanding of how a life fully lived and reflected upon can help better reconcile purposes, personality, opportunities, and luck in unique circumstances.
Kia ora tatau. Thank you all.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction: Purposes, Methods, and Timeline
Chapter 2 Precocious Child and Solo Mother, 1895–1916
Chapter 3 Hamish, First Born and Savant, 1915–2005
Chapter 4 Miner’s Wife, Journalist and Mother of Five, 1916–1922
Chapter 5 Journalist and Editor, 1923–1933
Chapter 6 Entrepreneur, Broadcaster, and Activist, 1933–1935
Chapter 7 Editor, Writer, Public Speaker, and Mother, 1936–1956
Chapter 8 Poet, Teacher, and Storyteller, 1956–1974
Chapter 9 Reflections, Interpretation, and Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
This book was only made possible with the help of many people, all of whom are acknowledged and thanked most sincerely.
First among them is my father, Guy Macpherson, who installed in me a judicious and respectful pride in his mother’s many works and controversial life in adversity. He was more aware than most of her strengths and weaknesses. While he always answered every question I put to him, he did point to some of the complex dilemmas in her life and suggested that I withhold judgement until I had a “good grip” of the facts, in context. It was wise advice.
Second are the members of my family in the Far North of New Zealand and in England who impressed on me, early and repeatedly, their bigoted view—in essence, that Margaret’s behaviour was a source of deep shame to the family and therefore best left hidden. Since an unexamined life is not worth living, according to Socrates, and none of these iconoclasts are themselves above reproach, I wondered about the trustworthiness of their advice. I am now grateful for their help in deepening my curiosity to the point of triggering research into the substance of Margaret’s life, works, and times.
Third are the informants in New Zealand and around the world who shared their memories and views on an attributed basis. Their help often extended over many hours, and in some cases, over weeks and months. Some of them went out of their way to help uncover papers and photographs relating to this most unusual woman.
Key examples in this regard were my brothers, cousins, and connections, such as Tony Smith of Blaina (Blaneau), Wales and his wife, Yvonne, and son, Nigel, who gave me the personal files of Margaret’s eldest son, Hamish Macpherson, known to them as Basil. Warmest thanks also to Isabella Johnston who kindly provided the details of the life of Margaret’s sixth son, David Johnston. Completing this list of key informants is Cluny Macpherson, Margaret’s youngest, and her seventh and sole surviving son, today resident in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.
Fourth are the professional knowledge managers who provided invaluable help, such as the custodian and archivist of the Far North Regional Museum in Kaitaia, New Zealand, Don and Linda Hammond. Warmest thanks are also due to a number of research librarians who were generous and insightful in their advice: Moira Mackenzie and Lorraine Smith of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; Judy Lindsay, Head of the Museum and Study Collection, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London; Peter Fisher, Head Archivist at the London Metropolitan University; Judy Wild, Library Manager, and Victoria Passau, Librarian, Elam School of Fine Arts Library, University of Auckland, and many other anonymous research librarians at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Australia. While digitization is progressing steadily, they helped me with manual searches for Margaret’s publications in long-deceased newspapers and magazines.
It is, therefore, inevitable that there are others of Margaret’s works yet to be discovered, especially as digitization proceeds. The publication of this book could trigger the release of more pertinent material. Nevertheless, any errors, deficiencies and oversights that have occurred remain solely my responsibility.
In December 1936, two years after she had left her eldest son, Hamish, in London, and he was struggling to survive as a sculptor, Margaret wrote to advise him that
in my opinion the spirit only shines through when the body is controlled and subdued. You’ll think that a funny thing for me to say, with all my lovers and husbands and what-not. But if you think of them as teacher s and love as a stern school, then you find that not one experience has been wasted. One develops the capacity to love properly as one develops the capacity to sculpt properly, by practicing.1
While this is intriguing advice for a mother to give to her son just into his twenties, it also signals the intimate link between the unusual relationships that Margaret had with her various partners and children and her own punishing long march towards professionalism, honour, and wisdom. This biography takes up this theme by tracing and evaluating the life and works of Margaret L. Macpherson. Relevant material was collected around the world over decades and analysed. It is presented here with sources to enable reflection and follow-up research.
An introductory overview of her life may be helpful here before I turn to the detail in later chapters and discuss implications. Margaret Louisa Kendall was born in 1895 in Yorkshire, educated as a Quaker, and studied as an external student with the University of St. Andrews. She was employed first as a journalist in the north of England and then as a munitions factory manager in World War 1 (WW1). Her first child, Henry Basil Kendall, was the illegitimate son of a lover known only as Basil. This Basil was killed in the early days of WW1 yet was long remembered by his son, latterly known as Hamish or Basil Macpherson, who kept photographs of his parents together beside his lounge chair in his retirement. Hamish achieved moderate fame as a sculptor and industrial designer in England.
Margaret eloped with my grandfather Alfred Sinclair Macpherson in 1916, married in London before migrating to Otago, New Zealand, where she helped pioneer the literature of New Zealand feminist socialism. She had four more sons there; Boeuf, Guy, and the twins, John and Peter. She edited the Women’s Column of The Maoriland Worker from 1916 to 1920 until illness associated with childbirth prevented her from continuing. In 1923, she moved with her husband and five sons to the Far North of New Zealand to make a fresh start.
She was immediately central to a major controversy that reflected a deep rift in settler society between Better Briton progressivism and missionary conservatism. When she achieved financial independence, by becoming a full-time journalist on The Northlander, she abandoned her first marriage and left the four boys with their father. The boys were raised by May Russell, the housekeeper until 1925 when she and Alfred were married. While the two older brothers, Boeuf and Guy, went on to have full and successful lives, the twins died a day apart overseas in WW2.
Margaret married again in 1925 to John “Jock” Johnston and had a sixth son, David. She edited The Northlander from 1928 in support of Lt. Colonel Allen Bell’s radical view of progress, most tellingly to have the Mangonui County Hospital moved to Kaitaia in response to population trends. She abandoned her second marriage for reasons unknown prior to the paper closing in 1933. David was left with his father Jock who initially placed him in an orphanage. Jock then had him adopted out by his sister, later employed him, and eventually saw him launched as an independent builder, marry successfully, and have three children, all unbeknownst to Margaret.
Margaret moved to Wellington in 1933 where she freelance d in print and radio broadcasting and advanced her life-long interest in spiritualism. She also took a lead role in the New Zealand Movement Against War and Fascism, which, in my view, was enormously to her credit. Her entrepreneurial management of a medium in Auckland was initially very successful but ended in disaster in London in 1934 when he proved, again, to be a fraudster. Margaret returned to Wellington before moving to Auckland where she was regarded as an active member of New Zealand’s literati. In 1935, she moved to Australia where she completed her first book, Antipodean Journey, in addition to publishing and broadcasting extensively and starting a relationship that led to her third marriage.
In 1938, she had a seventh son, Cluny Macpherson Albert, in Corsica, marrying his father, Bill Albert, in 1940 in London. Bill was a foreign correspondent for the Sydney Bulletin. They moved to Goshen, New York, for the duration of WW2. There she managed a chain of three newspapers, wrote another three books and many short stories, and lectured widely in support of the American war effort–principally for the protection it offered New Zealand.
In 1949, her third marriage collapsed in bitterness, both partners very ill. Bill returned to Australia with cancer. Margaret underwent a series of operations that left her weak and in poverty. She and her seventh son became Catholics. In 1956, Cluny started his successful career in the United States Air Force (USAF), and Margaret started fresh ventures. She briefly visited New Zealand, served as a wheelchair salesperson but had to convalesce in Malta.
Intermittently plagued by ill health and penury, Margaret travelled and wrote to survive. She was residing in Kent in very modest circumstances in 1966 when an award from the Royal Literary Fund enabled her to return to New Zealand to publish a series of poems and to become a teacher -librarian at the Baradene Catholic College of the Sacred Heart in Remuera, Auckland. In 1970, she finally retired to the Far North of New Zealand to write her legacy—a series of unrepentant articles and contributions to her obituary. She died in Kaitaia in 1974, and even in death, proved difficult to bury.
How are her contributions to be evaluated? Margaret L. Macpherson has the singular distinction of appearing in both the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and Australia’s Bibliography of Australian Literature. Yet, curiously, her standing in New Zealand literature has remained ambivalent and may be a consequence of a historicism about her life-long engagement with spiritualism.
Hence, this book assembles Margaret’s literary works and subjects them to critique. It also documents and evaluates the impact of her lifestyle on her children, a key issue in the Macpherson family.
In sum, this biography shows that this intelligent, talented, and determined person challenged the norms of the cultures and times she lived in to a significant degree, often but not always to positive effect. It also demonstrates that she sometimes generated reactions that impacted on her relationships and other’s lives in most unfortunate ways. Further, it provides evidence that she deserves national standing in New Zealand as a foundational contributor to feminist and socialist journalism, as a pioneer woman editor, and as an accomplished travelogue writer with a socially critical edge. Finally, it also confirms that she was addicted to travel, fascinated by matters spiritual and religious, lived her passions to the point of self-indulgence, never suffered a fool gladly, revelled in her notoriety, and died unrepentantly as “That Woman” in many people’s eyes, having rendered extraordinary service as a mother, contrary to some myths in the Macpherson family.
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1 Margaret Macpherson, personal communication to Hamish Macpherson, 17 December 1936.
Margaret Louisa Macpherson is one of the most controversial members of my family. I recall, as a child in the early 1950s, hearing her being referred to as “That Woman” with considerable venom. The epithet had long been used by the English Establishment to refer to the American and twice-divorced socialite Wallis Simpson, whose relationship with the British King Edward VIII led to a constitutional crisis and his abdication.2 Margaret’s greatest crime, it was said, was that she had abandoned her toddler twins when she left my grandfather, Alfred Macpherson. Nobody explained why. I wondered.
Over the years, I also became aware that Margaret had acquired an equivocal position in New Zealand literature despite her professional contemporaries in journalism holding her in high regard. To illustrate, she was described in Pat Lawlor’s autobiography Confessions of a Journalist as a “well known” New Zealand writer “of uncommon ability” although too busy to produce a great and enduring work.3 Lawlor’s prediction proved accurate enough although it may have been due more to her constant struggle to keep body and soul together than her ability or opportunity to produce a masterpiece.
Another indicator of standing was the distinguished company that Margaret kept in print. The monthly New Zealand Railways Magazine was launched 1 May 1926 to promote domestic tourism. It showcased some of the country’s best writers. In 1938, Gillespie opined that “I have already mentioned James Cowan as a regular contributor, but the magazine’s list of writers of great attainments is a long one … Professor T.A. Hunter, Professor Charles Chilton, Dr. E. P. Neale, A.C. Gifford, Miss Eileen Duggan, Miss Iris Wilkinson, Miss Margaret Macpherson, Winifred Tennant, and scores of others have filled the bright pages of the Railways Magazine.”4
The New Zealand Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s more recent evaluation of the Railways Magazine found that
the historian James Cowan was the magazine’s most prolific contributor, writing more than 120 historical and travel features, including forty-eight sketches of “Famous New Zealanders.” In 1935–6, the writer Robin Hyde produced a lively travel series, “On the Road to Anywhere: Adventures of a Train Tramp.” Other contributors included Pat Lawlor (who wrote a regular “Among the Books” column under the pseudonym Shibli Bagarag), Margaret MacPherson, Alan Mulgan, and Denis Glover.”5
In 1927, the magazine introduced a regular column “Of Feminine Interest” (later entitled “Our Women’s Section”) featuring recipes, fashion tips, society gossip, and notes on children’s health. As well as catering for the small number of female staff (85 at that time), New Zealand Railways hoped that the wives and daughters of the 12,000 married railwaymen would “appreciate the regular appearance of a page devoted to feminine and household matters.”6
In 1933, apparently at the urging of Lawlor, the Railways Magazine further widened its brief to become a general-interest monthly for all New Zealanders. In the mid-1930s, its circulation peaked at 26,000. The Railways Magazine survived the Depression but closed suddenly in June 1940—a victim of wartime economies, paper shortages, and the imminent retirement of founding editor G.G. Stewart. Over its fourteen-year history, it had grown from a house journal into a hugely popular general-interest monthly. During the inter-war years, no other monthly magazine matched its commitment to promoting a popular literary culture in New Zealand.
A third example is the view taken by Robin Hyde, the pen name of the insightful and tragic Iris Wilkinson, who is regarded today as one of New Zealand’s most accomplished poets. Hyde admired Margaret as an ex-Suffragette and as a courageous, lone, and lively woman editor in the Far North with a “remarkable business capacity.”7
The admiration was mutual. In Margaret’s description of a private séance she organised for Hyde, she recalled her as “the well known New Zealand poet and journalist … a very sensitive, finely balanced woman.”8
Curiously, a seminal biography of Robin Hyde confirmed her sustained interest in spiritualism, and the comfort she gained from it, yet made no reference to Margaret.9 Since spiritualism was far more plausible and popular in the 1920s and 1930s than it is today, and her contemporaries apparently accorded her substantial expert respect, it may be that Margaret’s standing among New Zealand’s literati has been undermined by historicism.
It is also odd that none of these contemporaries, nor Margaret herself, drew attention to the depth and volume of her contributions published in The Maoriland Worker. It will become clear in Chapter 4 why I hold the view that Margaret made a foundational contribution to feminism and socialism in New Zealand.
By most accounts, Margaret was clever, strikingly beautiful, assertive, and unrepentant. She married three times and had other partners. Oral history in the family also had her hobnobbing with the rich and famous, so I started recording snippets about her decades ago. She sparred with her critics, real and supposed, almost to the end, when she fired a final and somewhat disingenuous shot.
The vilest things were said about me, and still are. Only last week a woman stated seriously that I had been married “at least five times.” These gossips picture my life as being one long dormitory scene in which I go leaping gaily from bed to bed.
Alas, such joys never came my way. I worked hard and built an honourable career, an honourable name for myself, first in New Zealand, then in Australia, England, and America.10
Margaret left little for the biographer. There was the “Margaret Meditates” series of legacy articles in the Northland Age written in 1970, four years before she died. She left her third son, Guy, a scrapbook containing a few photographs, an assortment of letters of appreciation for talks given in the United States, and some newspaper cuttings. A valuable find in Wales consisted of 28 letters and a postcard to her eldest son, Hamish. The rest of the material on her life and works had to be assembled through face-to-face and email interviews, research online where records had been digitized, visiting institutions in Scotland and London, and scanning microfiche in the library of the University of Auckland and hard copy that survives in the public libraries of Sydney and London. While necessarily never complete, the evidence accumulated to the point where the facts could be used to test the myth s and counter claims about her life and make provisional sense of her work and relationships in context.
Photographs also came my way over decades and provided evidence of her enduring beauty. The photo of her left above was probably taken in 1916 to obtain a passport in England, when she was twenty-one, newly married to Alfred, and about to emigrate to Otago, New Zealand. As noted, the photo on the front cover was probably taken about 1922 when she was twenty-seven. I have yet to see a photograph of her when she was thirty and married John “Jock” Johnston, on 2 May 1925 in Kaitaia.11 The second photo on page 512 was probably taken in 1940 when she was about forty-five, about when she married Bill Albert, in Westminster, Middlesex, England.13
It is also important to understand the impact that Margaret had on other’s lives, especially her children. Her grandchildren are as puzzled and bemused as they are diversely opinionated about the significance of her life and its impact on their fathers. While her obituary14 did acknowledge six sons, and her death certificate15 accurately recorded the ages of four living sons, Margaret actually gave birth to seven boys and possibly two girls, with five of the boys and possibly one daughter still alive when she died. I will explain below.
Despite what appeared to be her cavalier attitude to motherhood, I wondered if social odium and remorseless condemnation from some in our family was entirely appropriate for her abandoning all but two of her children to pursue an international career as a professional writer. Part of the answer can be gained by understanding the context of each decision concerning her professionalism and tracing the lives of her boys.
To be clear about this, Margaret angered and embarrassed many in the Macpherson family with her partisan approach to journalism, unconventional lifestyle, and treatment of her children. Worse, she seemed to revel in her notoriety. People seemed to respect or hate her, a few loved her intensely, and in each case, she responded in full. She was passionate, colorful, and deeply committed to values that often seemed to be beyond the understanding of many of the communities she landed in.
Decades after she had left the Far North of New Zealand, and when many in our family considered themselves to be well rid of her, she returned to a very uneven welcome. She soon left again for more congenial settings, revisited from time to time, and suffered more and more from ill health. In 1970, she returned permanently to the Far North, some in the family said to “haunt them” with the Margaret Meditates series of fascinating yet sometimes bizarre articles. Among her reminiscences were reports of her relationships with the great and good, mostly men, and her personal experiences of raising the spirits of the dead. Her relationships tended to be ephemeral or troubled.
Even her burial proved contentious. When she died 14 September 1974, aged seventy-nine, I recall hearing discussions of objections prior to her being buried amongst Dalmations in the Kaitaia Lawn Cemetery. They remembered how she had vilified them in 1923 as “aliens” (Austrians, Jugoslavs) or “Jugos,” as unBritish despoilers of the land who sent money home to feed “the guns that killed our kinsmen.”16 Her claims had triggered a storm of controversy. And it took a year for her to admit that she had taken a “fearful trouncing” from those she had insulted.17 But she never apologized.
I wondered why such an obviously intelligent person could have written such racist and xenophobic nonsense, and when her arguments were comprehensively demolished with empirical facts, why a person so concerned about her honour could not bring herself to apologise fulsomely and move on.
But nothing was simple and straightforward with Margaret. Even her casket stuck level with the ground at her burial, exciting speculation in the family as to why she could not be laid to rest.
As for the reasons for the ambivalence about Margaret’s standing among our literati, she is in the select band of New Zealand women recognized by a biographical note in the Book of New Zealand Women: Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa,18 later republished in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.19 Very few of these New Zealand women also appear in the Bibliography of Australian Literature as Margaret does.20
I met with the author of Margaret’s biographical note, Dr. Anna Green, in Truro, Cornwall in 2011. She was generous in her advice and encouragement. We agreed that a systematic biography was warranted to build on, clarify, and extend her initial account. Margaret’s descendants, Australasia’s literati, and others might now wish to consider the decisions she made and the life she led in its historical context, in order to revise their position on “That Woman.”
To begin, an overview of some of the key events in Margaret’s life follows, with her age in parentheses:
1895, 19 June: Born in Headingley, Leeds, to Alfred Sunderland Kendall and Fanny Kendall once Kent née Gibson.
1898, December (3): Brother Guy Gibson Kendall born in Leeds.
1901 (5): Census recorded Alfred Kendall (37), Fanny Kendall (28), Margaret L. Kendall (5), and Guy G. (2), resident at 32 Kelso Road, West Leeds, Yorkshire, which is less than two miles from Headingley Hall, Leeds where my grandfather was born and raised.
1901–c1910 (5–c14): Margaret attended Lyndon Villa Quaker School in Leeds.
1911, April (15): The census recorded Margaret living alone at 5 Raglan Street, West Leeds, Yorkshire.
1911 (16): Enrolled as an external student in the Lady Literate in the Arts (LLA) programme of the University of St. Andrews, resident at 309 Fulham Palace Road, SW5, London.
1912, 17 February (16): The LLA Letters Book recorded her resident at 76 Shaw Street, Liverpool.
1912 (17): Failed to improve the C Grade in English or sit the exam in French and dropped out of the LLA.
1915, 20 February (20): Margaret, journalist, gave birth to her first son, Henry Basil Kendall, later Hamish “Jim” Macpherson. His father’s name not disclosed. Basil/Hamish had three sons and died 7 July 2005, aged ninety, in Blaina (aka Blaenau), Gwent, Wales.
1916 (21): Margaret’s brother Guy Gibson Kendall died, aged seventeen or eighteen.
1916, 9 March (21): Married Alfred Sinclair Macpherson of Headingley Hall, Leeds in Blandford, Dorset. Her employment was given as a forewoman in a munitions factory.
1916, 14 April (21): Departed from Tilbury, London for Port Chalmers, Otago, New Zealand with Alfred and Hamish. Alfred laboured in the Kaitangata coal mine. Margaret wrote as “Wahine” and “conducted” the Women’s Column of The Maoriland Worker, the Labour Party weekly.
1917, 28 November (22): Second son Herbert Pemberton “Boeuf” Macpherson born in Kaitangata, Otago. Boeuf became a lead timber miller in the Far North of New Zealand, married twice, and had seven daughters. He died 7 November 1976, aged fifty-eight.
1918, 3 December (23): Third son William “Guy” Macpherson born in Kaitangata. Guy was in the 27th (Machine Gun) Battalion in WW2 and became a farmer in Mangatoetoe Road, Fairburns, Kaitaia in the Far North. He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), married twice, and had six sons. He died 13 August 2001, aged eighty-two.
1919 (24): New Zealand Electoral Roll for Bruce, Otago, recorded Margaret and Alfred Sinclair MacPherson, labourer, resident in Union Street, Milton.
1920, 22 October (25): Fourth and twin son John Anderson Macpherson born in Milton. Sergeant in the RNZAF in WW2. Died 18 August 1942 aged twenty-one off the Danish coast, Mentioned in Despatches.
1920, 22 October (25): Fifth and twin son Peter Marryatt Macpherson born in Milton. Private in the 27th (Machine Gun) Battalion WW2. Died 17 August 1942 aged twenty-one in the Ninio Bixio when it was torpedoed off Greece.
1923, 31 May (28): The Northlander reported that “Mrs. Margaret McPherson, the well known journalist of Kaitangata, Otago, is spending a few weeks holiday at Waiharera” in the Far North.
1923, June–November (28): freelance writer with articles published in the Christchurch Sun, and the Northland Age and the Northlander, Kaitaia. Part-time pianist in silent movies, Awanui, but became ill and frail. May Russell joined the household and took over the rearing of the five boys.
1923, Mid November (28): Gained full-time employment as a journalist with Colonel Allen Bell, owner and editor of The Northlander, a newspaper published in Kaitaia from 13 March 1922 until 21 July 1933. In mid-November 1923, Margaret left Alfred, who also suffered from PTSD, taking only Hamish when she moved to Kaitaia.
1925, 27 April (29): Margaret divorced Alfred Macpherson, taxi driver, Awanui and Kaitaia. Alfred subsequently married May Russell 20 June 1925. May and Alfred had three more boys: Kenneth Sinclair “Ken” Macpherson, David Macpherson (stillborn), and Gordon Ross “Wink” Macpherson.
1925, 2 May (30): Margaret married second husband John “Jock” Johnston, a one-time soldier and swamp dredge engineer, Hikurangi and Kaitaia.
1925, 11 June (29): Margaret’s fifth son John David Mario Johnston, known as David, born at Mangonui County Hospital. When his parents separated about 1930 he was placed in an orphanage, later raised by his aunt and her husband, employed by his father, developed his own business as a builder, and married and had three children. David died 27 December 2005 in Hamilton, aged eighty.
1928–1933 (32–38): Editor of The Northlander until it ceased publication 21 July 1933.
1928–(33–): Contributor to the Women’s Section of the New Zealand edition of the Aussie magazine.
1928 (33): Eldest son, Hamish, about fourteen, started at the Elam School of Arts and Crafts in Auckland, then a secondary technical school specializing in arts and crafts, now the Elam School of Fine Arts in the University of Auckland.
1933–1934 (38–39): Freelance journalist, radio broadcaster, and activist against fascism and war in Wellington. She published in the Evening Post, New Zealand Free Lance, The Mirror, The Star, The New Zealand Herald, and The Radio Record. She started managing Claude Dolores, a spiritualist, in Auckland.
1934 (39): Took Dolores on tour to London where he was revealed as a fraudster. She enrolled Hamish in the Central School of Art and Design in London, and returned to New Zealand.
1934 (39): Interviewed George Bernard Shaw in Wellington who advised her to travel and report on the art, drama, music, and the cultures of New Zealand and Australia. She published the account three years later as Antipodean Journey.
1934 (39): Edited A Symposium against War, a sixteen-page collection of quotes, Wellington.
1935 (40): Described as a “leading” New Zealand writer in Pat Lawlor’s Confessions of a Journalist.
1935, 14 September (40): Appeared on the front cover of the Australian radio guide The Listener with an interview promoting her coming programme on Sydney Radio XLO.
1936, 15 January (41): Hamish opened an exhibition in London with three others, prepared panels for the first-class saloon of the Queen Mary, and married Olive Davies.
1937 (42): Published Antipodean Journey in London. Hamish and Olive’s first son John Saxon Macpherson born.
1938, 26 June (43): Gave birth to her seventh son, Cluny Macpherson Albert, resident at Villa Baretti, Ajaccio, Corsica.
1940, 4 May (44): Married third husband, William Thomas “Bill” Albert, aged fifty-four, Westminster, London. Obtained passport as Margaret Louisa Albert with her son recorded as Cluny Macpherson Albert.
1940, 19 July (45): Bill, Margaret, and Cluny embarked for Canada, en route to New York.
1940, August (45): Bill, Margaret, and Cluny landed at Rouses Point, New York, as immigrants.
1942 (47): Published I Heard the Anzacs Singing in New York.
1946 (51): Published Australia Calling in New York. Hamish and Olive had a second son, Peter Henry Macpherson, and adopted him out at eighteen months.
1949 (54): Bill and Margaret separated. Bill returned to Australia with cancer. Margaret had three operations.
1949, 12 June (54): Margaret and Cluny were baptized as Catholic s in Peconic, Long Island, New York. Cluny was given a new middle name, Michael. Margaret worked when she could as a literary agent.
1952 (57): Published New Zealand Beckons in New York.
1952–1953 (57–58): Librarian at Salesian School, Peconic.
1954 (59): Published The Love Horse: A Gay Novella in New York.
1955 (60): Published first edition of The Way of the Cross: Sonnets of Devotion.
1956 (61): Given American citizenship, changed her surname to Macpherson, and changed Cluny’s formal name to Cluny Michael Macpherson. Cluny enlisted in the USAF 10 October.
1956 (61): Visited Malta, worked as wheelchair salesperson in the United States, returned to convalesce in Malta, and then invited by her sons Boeuf and Guy to visit New Zealand. Met by Boeuf and his daughters at the Kaitaia Airport, stayed briefly at Guy’s farm in Mangatoetoe Road, Fairburns, before taking up a new role as librarian and teacher of creative writing in Baradene College of the Sacred Heart, in Victoria Avenue, Remuera, Auckland.
1958, about 13 February (63): Visited by Neta and Willy Van Der Sluis at Baradene.
1964 (69): Operation for cancer of the colon in London, given a colostomy.
1966 (71): Ill and resident in Russell Hotel, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Granted £600 18 March by the Royal Literary Fund to buy a typewriter and to travel.
1969, 3 May (74): Arrived at Auckland Airport, re-entered New Zealand for the last time.
1970 (75): Published the “Margaret Meditates” series of articles in the Northland Age.
1971, April (76): Published the third edition of The Way of the Cross: Sonnets of Devotion in Kaitaia.
1971, July (76): Suffered a stroke that paralyzed her right side and was moved into hospital and care.
1974, 15 September (79): Died in the Kaitaia Hospital after two days of bronchopneumonia.
1974, 17 September (79): Buried in the Kaitaia Lawn Cemetery, Far North, New Zealand.
In the next chapter I review what is known about Margaret’s parents and education, her first child, Hamish, and first husband, Alfred.
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2 Anna Sebba, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011).
3 Pat Lawlor, Confessions of a Journalist with Observations on some Australian and New Zealand Writers (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1935), 73–74.
4 O. N. Gillespie, “The Growth of the N.Z. Railways Magazine—From Shop Organ to Great National Journal,” The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 December 1938, 70.
5 “NZ Railways Magazine Launched,” NZ History Online, accessed 12 June 2011, http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/page/nz-railways-magazine-launched.
6 Ibid.
7 Robin Hyde, Journalese (Auckland: National Printing Company, 1934).
8 Margaret L. Macpherson, “Margaret Meditates: Apports and Atoms,” Northland Age, 10 March 1970.
9 Derek Challis and Gloria Rawlinson, The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002).
10 Margaret L. Macpherson, “Margaret Meditates: On Leaving Kaitaia,” Northland Age, 3 February 1970.
11 Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, New Zealand Marriage Certificate, Margaret Louisa Macpherson and John Johnston, 2 May 1925, registration number 1925003111.
12 From the flyleaf of Macpherson, Margaret L., New Zealand Beckons (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1952).
13 England & Wales, Marriage Index, vol. 1a, 1916–2005 (London, England: General Register Office), 1597.
14 Derrick Vincent, “Death Releases Mrs. Margaret Macpherson,” Northland Age, 17 September 1974.
15 Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, New Zealand Death Certificate, Margaret Louisa Macpherson, 17 September 1974, registration number 1974048860.
16 Margaret L. Macpherson, “The Winterless North,” Northland Age, 10 September 1923.
17 Margaret L. Macpherson, “The Yugo-Slav Orchestra,” Northland Age, 1 September 1924.
18 Anna Green, “Margaret Macpherson,” in Book of New Zealand Women: Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa, eds. C. Macdonald, B. Williams, and M. Penfold (Bridget Williams Books, 1990).
19 Anna Green, “Macpherson, Margaret Louisa 1895–1974,” Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4m26/1.
20 John Arnold and John Hay, “Margaret L. Macpherson,” in The Bibliography of Australian Literature, vol. 3 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2008), 280.
In this chapter, I examine what is known of Margaret’s upbringing and education, up to the point of her first marriage in 1916, and their likely impact on her personality, relationships, and early literary works. I give special attention to her relationship with her first child, Hamish, and in the following chapter, report his unusual life and works because they have not been documented before and deserve to be as part of Margaret’s legacy. In the fourth chapter I return to Margaret’s experience and works as a miner’s wife in Otago, New Zealand, until 1923, when the family moved to the Far North.
Margaret was not born in Scotland, as claimed on the flyleaf of New Zealand Beckons21 and repeated in the Bibliography of Australian Literature.22 She was born in Headingley, Leeds, Yorkshire on 19 June 1895.23 She was almost certainly born at 32 Kelso Road, West Leeds, which today is rather rundown and semi-detached student accommodation, close to Leeds University. Kelso Road is a less-than-two-mile walk from Headingley Hall, Leeds where her first husband Alfred Macpherson, my grandfather, was born and raised.
Margaret’s father was Alfred Sunderland Kendall, a linen draper born in October 1864 in Ossett, Yorkshire.24 Alfred died in Scarborough aged seventy-two on 23 August 1936.25 Margaret’s mother was Fanny Gibson, born about 1873 in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire,26 although her death date and location are unknown.
Fanny and Alfred Kendall were married in September 1894 in Nottingham,27 and they had Margaret nine months later, apparently a honeymoon baby. Six years later, the 1901 Census recorded Margaret’s family still living at 32 Kelso Road in the St. Georges Parish of West Leeds.28 Her father, Alfred, was now thirty-seven and described as a shopkeeper, draper, and employer. Her mother Fanny was twenty-eight, with Margaret L. aged five and her younger brother, Guy G., aged two. They had a domestic servant, Mary L. Martin and had taken in Alfred’s nephew Charles K. Hanss. These data suggest that this trades family was moderately well off.
Curiously, when Margaret married her second husband John “Jock” Johnston on 2 May 1925, she gave her mother’s name as “Fannie” with a family name of Kent and a birth name of Gibson,29 suggesting that Fanny had been married to a Kent before marry ing her father Alfred Sunderland Kendall. No other evidence has been found on Fanny Kendall’s background.
Margaret had a younger brother born sometime in December 1898: Guy Gibson Kendall.30 Guy died aged seventeen in 1916.31 The cause of his early death, and the effect it had on Margaret, are not known. He is not referred to in any of her writings. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to suppose that my father, William Guy Macpherson, got his middle name from his uncle Guy Kendall. Oddly, to my knowledge, my father was told neither about his uncle nor why he was always referred to as Guy. It was a mystery to him. Margaret was unusually judicious in what she told her children, and that may explain why my father and his brothers had almost no knowledge of the Kendalls nor any connection with them. The only surviving link is that Guy gave his fourth boy Stuart the middle name of Kendall.
There also must have been reasons why Margaret left home in her early teens and did not have any further contact with them until decades later, and then only briefly. Whatever the reasons, when the estrangement was compounded by her emigration to New Zealand with Alfred, and Alfred’s decades-long estrangement from his family, it resulted in an internally reliant nuclear family with a relatively closed culture.
Margaret attended Lyndon Villa Quaker School in Leeds.32 The Kendalls were members of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as Quakers. Quaker values acquired from her family and schooling help explain the nature of Margaret’s professional, social, and political commitments later in life.
The Society of Friends has three primary beliefs: all people are equal before God, they can each make personal and direct sense of the ideas of Jesus Christ, and the nature of Christianity should be made evident through their actions and public testimony.33 The high degree of personal responsibility required of Quakers leads to some congregations meeting for silent reflection and worship without the leadership of priests or even a planned programme, although some have their services led by a pastor with readings from the New Testament and hymns. Quaker congregations commonly avoid the use of titles or address that rank people and prefer worship without elaborate vestments and sophisticated architecture.
Prominent Quakers have taken leadership roles in socio-political movements, such as in the anti-slavery and Suffragette movements. They have openly contested the expectations of the state, promoted social justice and equality, and refused any formal oaths that might compromise their prior commitment to their Saviour.34
This is to suggest that Margaret’s home life and primary and secondary education may well have instilled in her a preliminary commitment to radical humanitarianism. It was preliminary in the sense that experiences later in life led to modifications to her beliefs. It was radical in the sense that she tended to assume that all people were to be valued equally as human beings, and that she should ignore, abolish, or campaign against what she saw as biased social views, prejudice, and racism. It was fundamental in the sense that she tended to default to two objectives without systematic reflection: extending kindness, care and sympathy to fellow humans, and bluntly challenging any human suffering or abuse derived from gendered, racial, cultural, religious, or national differences.
Apart from their religious commitments, little else is known with certainty about Margaret’s family. Her son Guy reiterated her claim that she was of Italian aristocratic descent, but this has yet to be substantiated and seems unlikely, although very little is known about her mother’s family and origins.
What is known is that Alfred Sunderland Kendall’s parents were coal miner William Kendall and his wife Charlotte. The 1841 Census shows that they were born about 183035 and 183236 respectively. They lived first in Yorkshire, then in Mangotsfield, Gloucestershire, before ending their days in Bristol. William and Charlotte Kendall had two other children in Mangotsfield after Alfred’s birth in Yorkshire, John and Emily born in 1870 and 1871.
The 1841 Census also showed that the coal miner William’s parents were a forty-year-old horse dealer William Kendall and his thirty-five-year-old wife, Honour. At the time of the census, William and Honour Kendall were living in Fishponds Rabbit Burrows, Stapelton, Gloucester with their children Sarah (fifteen), Hannah (thirteen), William (eleven), John (nine), Samuel (seven), George (two) and William’s father William, a horse-dealer aged seventy.
The mobility of these families was clearly replicated in Margaret’s life. Pending further information on Fanny’s forebears, it appears that Margaret’s grandparents and great-grandparents were more likely to have been coal miners or gypsies than Italian aristocrats. Whatever, the result was that Margaret had a large number of working class relatives.
All accounts of Margaret also emphasise that she was remorselessly intelligent, intolerant of fools, intensely focussed on her own objectives, and uncompromising to the point of dogmatism, traits not entirely unfamiliar in some of her descendants.
I first encountered Margaret’s choleric personality when I was about ten. During her visit to the Mangatoetoe Farm in the mid 1950s, she came across as an austere person whose eyes seemed to see right through you. She was made all the taller by the long black coat she never took off. Her 1968 passport showed that she was actually only 5 foot 6 inches tall with blue eyes and grey hair.37 Her ascetic personality was still evident in the passport photo below that was taken when she was seventy-three, six years before she died.
Her visit to Mangatoetoe also made it clear that she was not going to be taking up the traditional role of a grandmother. After gazing impassively at us during the introductions and distributing presents that my younger brother Gilbert Peter Macpherson recalled as being suitable for children much younger than we were,38 she switched her attention to my father and engaged him in a private conversation.
My timid mother, Janet, was terrified of Margaret and intimated that we should all make ourselves scarce. We evaporated. Sometime later that day we cautiously reappeared to discover that she had left without saying goodbye, suggesting to us that our long-absent grandmother was unlikely to play a significant role in our lives. And so it proved.
She did return to stay with us for a few weeks and hosted meetings with her other grandchildren that were long recalled with clarity, but she remained a formidable stranger to us all. However, since my cousins also remember her as being “very refined,”39 it is unlikely that she intended to be feared. She coolly expected to be respected and that her wishes would be complied with. She was and they were.
Margaret commonly challenged the values of those she met, sometimes offending them with her capacity for analysis and critique. It might be supposed that her university education, as an external student in the Lady Literate in the Arts (LLA) programme at the University of St. Andrews, taught her to think and write critically about the social mores of her time and to offer wise recommendations to others. The evidence suggests instead that her capacity to provide critique was more a function of her ego and insights gained through journalism, travel, and interaction with the literati than through her higher education, to which I now turn.
In the Special Collection of the Library at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, there is a leather-bound tomb over 19 inches (50 cm) wide, over 15 inches (40 cm) high and about 4 inches (10 cm) thick. It is the LLA Diploma Examination Register.40 In July 2010, Librarian Moira Mackenzie showed me page 279, where, in careful copperplate handwriting, was recorded the enrolment of the 3360th LLA student, Margaret Louisa Kendall. Her home address was given as 309 Fulham Palace Road, SW5, London.
Since Margaret had presumably enrolled in the first half of 1911 when she was still fifteen, this means that she had already left her home in Leeds. She actually started her university studies in September 1911 when she was sixteen, pointing at the least to a very strong ego, a capacity to convince those managing enrolments in the LLA that she could complete the programme satisfactorily, and an implacable determination to manage her own life. It is unlikely, however, that she was mature enough intellectually to be able to reflect critically on the relativity of the values she had acquired from her upbringing and school education. It is more likely that she relied on a precocious surety about her values and chances of success, traits that stayed with her throughout her life.
The Register recorded that Margaret enrolled in an English class in the Department of Language in 1911. She enrolled again in 1912, each year paying fees of two guineas and achieving C grade passes at what is known as Honours level, that is, at first year postgraduate level. She enrolled in a French class in 1912, paying the one guinea fee but failing to complete the course. She then failed to complete any other courses and did not graduate with an LLA Diploma. Nevertheless, the rigor of the correspondence course that Margaret passed at this young age suggests that she was a very able and determined learner, at least at the outset.
The examination processes of the LLA were very demanding and signaled an advanced level of expectations that would have been very difficult to satisfy without a preparatory undergraduate programme. The LLA Calendar 1911–1912 explained that English Honours students were examined over two days in mid-May, each cohort facing three two-hour papers on the same day in each subject they were enrolled in.41 Lorraine Smith explained that each female student had to pass seven subjects to be awarded the LLA and had to achieve the same standards as male students studying for the Master of Arts.42
The curriculum Margaret selected provided a general background for any career requiring advanced literacy. Her English Honours course included Old and Middle English and the history of the English language. It did not provide any training for journalism per se. The LLA Calendar explained instead that English Honours was an appropriate preparation for women who were or who intended to become teacher s. It did not explain the differences between undergraduate and post graduate levels of study.
Margaret was either unaware of or accepted the huge challenge of leaping straight into postgraduate work without undergraduate preparation, probably in order to join the teaching profession as a teacher of English. And this almost certainly indicated Margaret’s study objective. The successful completion of an LLA would have elevated Margaret from a successful trades background to comfortable middle-class professionalism.
LLA Letter Book43