Queries by Elaine Geering, Rowan Gibbs and Bill Manhire

Geering, Elaine

Gibbs, Rowan

Manhire, Bill

English

Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library

 88Queries  William Bambridge (1819-1873) came to New Zealand as a member of Bishop Selwyn’s party in 1841. He was employed as a teacher and clerical assistant at St. John’s College, Te Waimate (1842-44) and Auckland (1845-47). An artist of some ability, his journals are illustrated with many drawings of New Zealand landscapes and domestic interiors, as well as with portraits of individuals, both European and Maori. References from his diaries and reproductions of his drawings can be found in a number of publications. A few drawings are collected in a volume in the library of the Auckland Museum; others are to be seen at the Mission House at Waimate. The Alexander Turnbull Library is the repository of his journals, which I am presently engaged in editing. On his return to England, Bambridge became artist-photographer to Queen Victoria. Almost nothing appears to be known of his life before and after his time in New Zealand. I would be grateful for any additional information about him or the sources of any material relating to his life.  Elaine Geering  Joan Stevens, in The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965 (Wellington: A. H and A. W. Reed, 1966) mentions two ‘lone novels of the fities [that] have dropped undeservedly from sight’ (97). She’s Right by Diarmid Cathie was published by Collins in London in 1953. Stevens says that Cathie is a pseudonym for ‘an Englishman who spent a term here in the broadcasting service’ (97). As far as I am aware, Cathie remains unidentified in print. Does any reader know his name? John Gillies’s novel Voyagers in Aspic tells of New Zealanders on a voyage home. A note on the dust wrapper says he was born in Gore, served in the Second World War, and began writing in 1947 after settling in England; it continues: ‘although this is his first “straight” novel, he ... has written five novels about the Wild West.’ If these novels were indeed written they must have been published pseudonymously and have not been traced. I would be grateful for any identification of John Gillies or of his phantom Wild West novels.  Rowan Gibbs  In response to a recent radio programme in which I talked about the poetry of Ursula Bethell, a correspondent wrote asking for elucidation of a detail in Kōtare 1, no. 1 (1998), pp. 88–89.  Kōtare 1, no. 1 (1998), pp. 88–89. 89Bethell’s sequence ‘By the River Ashley’. The first section of the poem contains the parenthetic line ‘Well we understood the experience of Rosamund and her Purple Jar!’ There clearly seems to be some allusion here, perhaps to a work of children’s literature, but it is unidentified. Who was Rosamund, and what is the reference here?  Bill Manhire 

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https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/kotare/article/download/864/1598

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Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library