Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection
Notes Books Authors
1989

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NOTES BOOKS AUTHORS
Number two
1989

NOTES ‑ BOOKS ‑ AUTHORS
is edited by Bruce Morris and published by the Friends of the
Dorothy Neal White Collection
Wellington
New Zealand

Copyright July 1989
ISSN 0114‑5428

Welcome to the second issue of Notes ‑Books ‑ Authors. It gives me great personal pleasure to be involved in this issue as it is devoted to New Zealander Winifred (McQuilkan) Hall, who as Clare Mallory wrote some superior school stories published in the late nineteen forties and early fifties.

I first met Clare Mallory and Merry, when, at the age of thirteen, I was given a hand‑me‑down, much loved copy of Merry begins. I was captured immediately by the story, the characters and the setting. When I was a child my family used to make the pilgrimage by ferry and train from Wellington to Dunedin, to visit my Grandmother. Merry begins brought back many happy memories of the train trip and of Dunedin.

I remember being disappointed that the public library had no more books by Clare Mallory. I was delighted, years later, to discover that there were more books by this author. They worked their magic with me still and made me more of a fan of Clare Mallory than I already was.

" I still need three titles to complete my collection, so if anybody has spare copies a good home is assured.

Bruce Morris

CLARE MALLORY
A personal memoir
Janet Maconie

Winnie was born Winifred Constance McQuilkan and I first met her in 1924 when my parents moved to Invercargill and I was sent to Middle School. We were both ten and in standard five, our teacher the almost‑never‑to‑be‑forgotten Miss Murphy, our headmaster the dignified Mr Featherstone. 'A pupil head and shoulders above the rest of the school' he was to say of her.

We became friends. We were both only children (though some years later my mother was to have another child who insisted that Winnie, too, was her sister) and we were both devoted to books and reading, especially of school stories. Each week we bought the schoolgirls' paper, the School friend and I think the pupils of Cliff House, Babs, Mabs, Bessie Bunter et al were more real to us than our own classmates.

We liked to write. In those days the Invercargill Competitions included essays and stories and we both competed with some success. We both wrote for Cousin Betty's page in the Southland Times. Later The pen and pencil girls owed something to our activities and is of course dedicated to the " writers and artists of Cousin Betty's page, Southland Times, Invercargill, New Zealand".

At the end of my standard six year my parents moved to Dunedin and for the next five years I saw Winnie only when she visited us in the school holidays. Early in her third form year at Southland Girls' High School her mother died and a little later, her father. Winnie spent the next nine years of her life in private board. Her only experience of home life was in holiday time with her aunt, uncle and cousin, and occasionally with friends. This, I think, is important in the light of the criticism of her first school story.

We came more permanently together again at Otago University. Winnie had been dux of Southland Girls' and had won a university entrance scholarship. She was probably the brightest woman student of her year. Her great love was the Classics, her great rival in that department, Dan Davin, also from Invercargill. Winnie also became well known in the university for her disarming contributions to the Critic as Susie Schnozzletippet.

She left with two Master's degrees, First Class Honours in English, the Macmillan Brown prize and Second Class Honours in Classics. She had won a post‑graduate scholarship and was off to Oxford and Lady Margaret Hall. For many years afterwards it seemed that I had only to mention a contemporary woman writer for Winnie to remark casually that she had known her at Oxford, and to provide some background information. I well remember once when I had a group of women friends to lunch and we were discussing the role of women in India ‑the stunned silence that followed her quiet observation that the only Indian woman she knew was Indira Ghandi!

Back in Dunedin with more First Class honours, Winnie taught for a time at Otago Girls' High School before becoming the very young Headmistress of Columba College. This appointment, with that of the even younger Margaret Dalziel at Saint Hilda's created considerable interest in the city and I think that Winnie felt for some time that the eyes of Dunedin were upon her; however, Frank, she wrote, was being a great help.

Frank was Dr Frank Hall. A brilliant, unassuming scholar, he had graduated Master of Arts at the same time as Winnie, after which he had studied medicine. When the war ended they were to marry.

It was while she was at Columba College that Winnie wrote Merry begins. Each week the boarders spent time packing parcels for Britain. These had to be encased in unbleached calico and sewn up with red wool. The juniors found the work tedious and so she read to them. But she could never find a story that some had not already read and so she made one up. This became the first Merry book.

Her friend and secretary, Marjory Taverner suggested she send it to a publisher and to that end typed it for her. She sent it to Oxford University Press and there were no problems about its acceptance; it was published in 1947. A little later, Winnie followed it with Merry again which is dedicated to 'Marjory for her help and interest'.

Oxford University Press sent Merry begins to the New Zealand Listener to review. What happened next is a mystery. The editor, Oliver Duff, told my husband, John, at the time a sub‑editor, that he had sent the book to a librarian in the National Library Service (as it was then). He had received the review, was unhappy about it and was debating returning it for reconsideration ‑ something he had never done, he added. John read the review and was told the name of the writer. We were both interested because she was the sister of one of our friends (both have now been dead for many years).

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The review, I understand, was returned unaltered and Oliver Duff published it. In those days most, if not all, Listener contributions were signed with initials and, possibly for that reason, I did not notice that they were not those of the librarian. It was only when I unearthed the review for this memoir that I began to wonder who actually had written it: and I have recently been told that the editors of the early volumes of the Index to New Zealand periodicals, who also had the unenviable task of identifying the owners of all these initials, were also baffled by D.R.

The review is important because Winnie always blamed it for the comparatively little recognition given to her books in this country. 'It killed my books', she always maintained. She always believed that because of its author's status as a librarian with the National Library Service (Oxford had told her that much ‑ and, it must be remembered, that in those days there were few professional librarians) that her books were rejected by public libraries. I think too that this experience made her more tolerant for many years of the works of Enid Blyton.

Frank came back from the war, they were married and immediately left for England where he was to continue his studies. Winnie continued to write. They returned to New Zealand in 1952 and Frank began to practise in Wellington. Winnie taught for a time at Wellington Girl's College and Samuel Marsden Collegiate and tutored in English on a part‑time basis at Victoria University. In 1966 she became a member of the permanent staff. In between she continued to travel whenever possible, to Australia, to Europe (especially to Greece and Rome) and to the United States with always a visit to the Huntingdon Library in Los Angeles.

She retired from Victoria University at the end of 1978. None of my children had been fortunate enough to be students in her tutorials though she always kept an eye on them. I am told she was an excellent tutor, considerate, thorough, generous with her time and hospitable.

Frank was far from well in 1978. Shortly after Christmas Winnie phoned to say he had been taken to hospital. He died in March, 1979. With hindsight I now believe that Winnie's own health had by then begun to deteriorate. It continued to do so slowly and relentlessly. Eventually Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed and in 1986 it became necessary for her to be permanently hospitalised. For some time she remembered Miss Murphy and our schooldays when all else had gone; now, sadly, there is nothing.

Winnie wrote of the world she knew; indeed that was the advice given to the young would‑be‑writers in The pen and pencil girls. She knew nothing of 'the kids down the street´ of the Merry begins review and, I doubt whether Oxford in the 1940s, with overseas sales to consider, would have been interested in such a background. I am told too, by former pupils, that the the private schools of the time were just as she described them.

I was very pleased by Betty Gilderdale's much more reasoned assessment of her books in A sea change; 145 years of, New Zealand junior fiction (Auckland:Longman Paul, 1982). It was almost too late. I read it to Winnie and she was able to appreciate, albeit briefly, Mrs Gilderdale's tribute.

´Our years in London were very full and very rich´ said Mrs Hall, on her return to New Zealand with her husband, Dr G F Hall, after three‑and‑a‑half years abroad. Headquarters in London was a flat in Ealing. ´We were within five minutes' walk of Ealing Studios, and it was not uncommon while out shopping to find oneself in the middle of a shooting of a film.´

Mrs Hall gave a large number of talks over the BBC. On one occasion, following a talk on aspects of New Zealand school life, she received among her "fan mail", a letter from a former prefect at Columba College, Betty Smith, who was staying in Edinburgh. Mrs Hall also met a number of authors of children's books. She herself was invited to speak at library functions in many parts of Britain.

New Zealand Freelance. 17 Sept. 1953.

THE REVIEW
GIRLS AT SCHOOL

MERRY BEGINS. By Clare Mallory.
Geoffrey Cumberlege, for the Oxford University Press.

Clare Mallory was lucky in getting the Oxford University Press to take her book ‑ a boarding school story set in New Zealand about supposedly New Zealand girls. The school is at Dunedin (where the sun shines more often than not), Auckland and Wellington are mentioned, there is a visit to a sheep station in Canterbury (sheep aren't mentioned), and the school year starts in February. But that is about all there is of New Zealand in it. There is the familiar plot of the unpopular prefect Winning Through with the help of the new girl. But there are far too many House points, too much House pride and House Honour. When perhaps eighty per cent of New Zealand children attend day and mixed high schools, it is unfortunate that overseas readers are receiving such a strange impression of the school life of our girls. Clare Mallory can write, but I would like to see her talents used in a school story that will be about the kind of school you and I went to, and about children like the kids down the street.

New Zealand Listener. 24 Oct. 1947. P15.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Merry begins. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947.

Merry again. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947.

Merry marches on. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947.

The pen and pencil girls. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege,Oxford University Press, [1947].

The new house at Winwood. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1949.

Juliet overseas. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1949.

-Another edition. Illustrated by Margaret Horder. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1949.

Tony against the prefects. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1949.

Leith and friends. Illustrated by Kathleen Gell. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1950.

The two Linties. Melbourne: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1950.

The league of the smallest. Melbourne, Wellington: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1951.

Janet Maconie is retired and lives in Wellington. She is a librarian who has worked for Lower Hutt Public Library, School Library Service and, since retiring from SLS, various school libraries. For many years she was on the management committee of the New Zealand Book Council and still contributes regularly to its newsletter.

FRIENDS OF THE DOROTHY NEAL WHITE COLLECTION
1988‑1989

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	Lorraine Crozier
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