Passport to Hell

by Hyde, Robin

  Why did Robin Hyde write Passport to Hell? Initially no doubt from her sense of the need for social justice. Her journalism shows her defending the Maoris at Orakei, returned servicemen, discharged prisoners, prison reform, indeed all those pushed aside, oppressed, wounded, or ignored by Society, and Starkie provides a perfect focus for these interests. In addition, as a child she had been fascinated by the War (her father was a sapper in the N.Z.E.F., 13th Reinforcements and her mother’s brother was killed at Gallipoli) and wrote of having been torn apart by ‘our weekly “war lessons”’ and as one ‘who gave to that grim uniform the unthinking hero worship which may have helped all modern men to despise all modern women’.43 In Starkie she may have perceived her ‘mask’, the polar opposite, both an element of herself and an image of New Zealand. Stephen Scobie gives us an insight on the matter in his study of the documentary poem, the genre that has dominated recent Canadian writing. He notes how the authors are driven by a need for self-definition, and how in that dialectical process, they endeavour to anchor their work in the ‘validity of fact’ and are ‘drawn towards their opposites, the images of alterity, setting between them the distances of era, country, gender, yet always recognizing in the image something of themselves, a territory that awaits discovery’.44 Just such a need seems to have led Robin Hyde to Starkie.

  A Note on the Text

  IN PREPARING this edition I have used the manuscript notes (MS Notes) made by Robin Hyde as Starkie related his experiences, the typescript of the finished novel ‘Bronze Outlaw’ in the Auckland University Library (MS B-10), copies of the first edition in various impressions (the novel went through six impressions in 1936), and a copy of the Second Edition—the ‘new edition’ of 1937. I have not consulted the ‘cheap edition’ of 1937, nor the serialization in the Radio Record.45

  A collation of the typescript and the published version reveals an enormous number of variants. Approximately seventy pages were cut from the typescript and there are between ten and thirty minor variants (spelling, punctuation, word order, substantive verbal changes) per page. Robin Hyde took considerable care over the final version of this work. The result is a much tighter, more direct, swifter narrative. Punctuation changes from the typescript show a general tendency to change semi-colons to commas and to remove commas or replace them with dashes. The most noticeable feature of the published version is the much greater use of dashes, presumably to increase narrative urgency. Unnecessary adjectives are removed, though not all the changes are simplifications; occasionally the printed version is more circuitous, in order to underline irony. The more stilted language is improved: ‘Starkie elucidated’ becomes ‘Starkie said’ or he ‘effected a permanent escape’ becomes he ‘got away for keeps’. Very occasionally gentility requires an expression to be made less vivid: ‘poor bugger’ becomes ‘poor blighter’. One cannot, I am afraid, tell which of the changes were at the urging of the publishers.

  The differences between the first edition and the second edition are few, the most important being the change of the name of the Invercargill magistrate from Cruikshank to Sentry and the rewriting of the passage concerned with the incident at Gladstone School. Otherwise there are some minor corrections and a slightly larger number of fresh errors.

  I have chosen the Second Edition as my copy text since it contains the final authorized changes. I have indicated in the notes where cuts in the typescript have occurred, with a brief summary of the material omitted. Finally, I have silently corrected such textual errors as I could readily identify.

  Notes

  1. Republished 1986 by New Women’s Press with an introduction by Phillida Bunkle, Linda Hardy, and Jacqueline Matthews.

  2. N.Z. Observer, 19 February 1931.

  3. Letter to J. H. E. Schroder, 19 March 1931, MS Papers, 280, Schroder, folder 5, Turnbull Library.

  4. See below, note for p.38 on p.220.

  5. N.Z. Observer, 13 October 1932, ‘Landlords Lock Their Doors Against the Friend of Down and Outs: The Prisoners’ Aid Society’s Nomadic Life’. Some of the same details appear in Moreton’s account of Starkie in his biography A Parson in Prison by Melville Harcourt (Whitcombe & Tombs 1942), pp.222–7.

  6. Notes from a brief interview with Stark in an exercise book held by Gloria Rawlinson have a date of 19 February. See Patrick Sandbrook, ‘Robin Hyde: a Writer at Work’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Massey University, p.99 and note p.404.

  7. MS Papers, 280, Schroder, folder 6, no.84, Turnbull Library.

  8. Document dated 18 March 1935 held by Mr Derek Challis.

  9. MS Papers, 280, Schroder, folder 6, no.79, Turnbull Library.

  10. 26 April 1935, MS Papers, 280, Schroder, folder 6, no.80, Turnbull Library. Hyde wrote ‘believe in man’ in this letter, but ‘believe in Men’ appeared on Passport’s title-page. I have been unable to trace the Whitman quotation.

  11. Melville Harcourt, A Parson in Prison, pp.222–3.

  12. Denis Winter, Death’s Men, Allen Lane 1978, p.170.

  13. Winter, p.190.

  14. Letter to the Hon. Downie Stewart, from Wairoa Hospital, dated 27/11/26. Copy in the possession of Derek Challis.

  15. Letter to the Hon. Downie Stewart from Mt Eden prison dated 4/7/27. Copy in the possession of Derek Challis.

  16. The manuscript of ‘Doug Stark—Bomber with Otago on the Western Front’ by ‘Dawes Bently’ (two exercise books written in the same hand as the Murphy/Challis MS) turned up in the Turnbull Library some years ago (see Turnbull Library Record, vol.12, no.2, October 1979, p.121) and was drawn to my attention by Dr Patrick Sandbrook. It had been transferred from the General Assembly Library where it had no doubt been deposited by either Gordon Coates or Downie Stewart, whom Starkie relied on to get it published: ‘Now about that book Downie, can you do anything with it. If so and you think it worth while, can you sell it and help me to furnish my home for the love of Mike’ (letter to Downie Stewart of 3/7/30, copy Derek Challis). And, ‘Now Gordon if that book of mine would only prove a success and you could send me 50£ or 25£ for it …’ (letter to Gordon Coates of 29/7/30, copy Derek Challis).

  17. See below, notes for pp.152, 160, 161 on pp.235–6.

  18. See below, note for p.142 on p.233.

  19. Letter to John A. Lee, 9 June 1936, Auckland Public Library.

  20. Letter to Schroder, ‘Nov/Dec 1935’, MS Papers, 280, Schroder, folder 6, no.86, Turnbull Library. See letter no.84 for A. and P. Watt’s response.

  21. Letter of 28 February 1936, MS Papers, 148, Andersen, 29, Turnbull Library.

  22. See ‘A Note on the Text’, p.xxii.

  23. Letter to Lee, 29 May 1936, Auckland Public Library.

  24. Sandbrook, ‘Robin Hyde: a Writer at Work’, doctoral thesis, Massey University.

  25. See below, notes for p.9 on p.216.

  26. Southland Daily News, 5 November 1910.

  27. R. H. Mottram, The Spanish Farm with a Preface by John Galsworthy, Penguin 1937, p.viii.

  28. William Blissett, ‘In Parenthesis among the War Books’, University of Toronto Quarterly, Spring 1973, p.283.

  29. Southland Times, 17 October 1936.

  30. Southland Times, 3 October 1936.

  31. Southland Times, 17 October 1936.

  32. Southland Times, 10 October 1936.

  33. Southland Times, 17 October 1936; see also note for pp.75–78 on p.222.

  34. Letter of 26 December 1936, MS Papers, 196, 173, Turnbull Library.

  35. Otago Daily Times, 4 July 1936.

  36. Draft of a letter 2 September 1938 with Hyde’s letters to Lee, Auckland Public Library.

  37. Winter, p.40.

  38. Cited in Winter, pp.47–48.

  39. Winter, p.49.

  40. N.Z. Observer, 4 June 1936.

  41. University of Toronto Quarterly, Spring 1973.

  42. Unsigned review, N.Z. Observer, 18 July 1935.

  43. N.Z. MSS 412, Auckland Public Library, ff.5, 13.

  44. ‘Amelia or: Who Do You Think Y
ou Are? Documentary and Identity in Canadian Literature’, Canadian Literature, no. 100, Spring 1984, p.280.

  45. N.Z. Radio Record (Wellington), 30 October 1936–25 March 1937 (22 instalments); also in N.Z. Sporting Life, beginning 31 October 1936.

  *Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.

  Acknowledgements

  I AM MOST grateful to those who have helped me with this edition. Bill Pearson, who first suggested the project, has sustained me with assistance and support throughout and has provided the bibliography. Derek Challis generously allowed me access to all his mother’s papers to do with Passport to Hell, without which I could hardly have begun. Dr Patrick Sandbrook sent me many useful references arising out of his own research on Robin Hyde. My colleague Terry Sturm assisted with some vital material on Passport to Hell, Sir Keith Sinclair and Trudie McNaughton tracked down some newspaper reports of Starkie’s exploits, and Robin Dudding helped me cut and shape my vast and unwieldy annotations. The librarians at the Alexander Turnbull Library, the New Zealand/Pacific section of the Auckland University Library, and the New Zealand section of the Auckland Public Library could not have been more helpful or considerate.

  D.I.B.S.

  Author’s Note

  THIS book is not a work of fiction. I have related its incidents and the circumstances under which they happened, as Starkie told them to me. But after leaving the happy realms of childhood, all names in the book become completely fictitious, with the exception of those belonging to one Field Chaplain, two Generals, and two New Zealand politicians—all, oddly enough, mentioned in a complimentary way. At his own wish I have given the names of Starkie’s family circle correctly, and those of the little group of friends who during the war were leagued together as ‘Tent Eight’. Apart from these, I wish to emphasize the fact that in particular all names of N.C.O.s, military police, wardens, provost marshals, warders, bobbies, and women are as fabulous as those of film stars, and that any possible similarity to the names of living persons is coincidence and coincidence only.

  Introduction to Starkie

  I FIRST heard of Stark when a very glum welfare worker—a friend of mine—informed me that he had declared, that unless he could lawfully come by a pair of trousers he was prepared to steal them. This raised rather a pretty little point of law—whether it were best for Starkie to help himself to the main form of covering prescribed by society, and almost inevitably—he being fatally conspicuous in size and colour—be picked up by the police; or to go ahead, minus trousers or in trousers no longer fitted for the gaze of eyes polite, and thus eventually be arrested for the sort of offence which makes thoughtful parents gently remove the newspapers from the hands of growing girls. ‘What’s a man without his breeches?’

  However Starkie resolved this affair with his conscience he was, when I first saw him at his little house in Grey’s Avenue, wearing trousers. He had also an elderly and sleeveless black shirt, which made him look like a Fascist general—but a finer figure than most of them. He had no socks, no fingers on the left hand—the thumb of which was brilliantly tattooed with the legend, ‘Here’s the Orphan’—and an unconquerable smile. When something happened to amuse Starkie—and a good many things amused him—his black eyes lit up and sparkled, his mouth cracked open to show as many magnificent white teeth as half a life-time of combats with N.C.O.s, military police, common or garden coppers, and other heretics—all of whom he described impartially as ‘The Villains’—had left him.

  Apart from these marks of identification, Starkie had a little blue ring tattooed on his massive bronze chest. That was where the sniper’s bullet tore through his lungs; and his Colonel, the regret in his voice strongly tempered by relief, remarked: ‘Curtains, Starkie.’ On each shoulder are tattooed the handsome stars of captaincy. During the War, Starkie became by degrees very tired of the manner in which his laurels wilted before the blasts of hot air emanating from those holes where gentlemen with long memories sat and brooded over crime-sheets. One honour at least, he decided, should be his beyond recall. So he spent an hour with a Maori friend, and came out pale but triumphant—the one and only tattooed captain in the whole army.

  Grey’s Avenue was built in Auckland City’s first slow edging towards the beautiful and true. It was then known as Grey Street; and despite the fact that it was christened for the most distinguished gentleman who ever acted as Governor over the unruly Benjamin of British colonies, it was characterized by an invincible lust for the disreputable. The three-storeyed red-and-white bawdy-houses of Upper Queen Street extended into Grey Street, and mingled happily with Chinese grocery-shops, masonic clubs, and pakapoo saloons, all known to the city’s then very few moral uplifters as ‘Chinese Dens’. Needless to say, the little Celestials were by far the most orderly of the street’s tenants. But Grey Street’s reputation was well-founded.

  There was really no reason why it should not have been rather a beautiful byway. So near the city that the Town Hall’s posterior is thrust into its lower half, it is afflicted by neither street cars nor buses, and slopes upwards, fine and straight, garnished with a double row of half-hearted English trees whose falling leaves, in their sallow little pools, add to the general shiftlessness. But nothing could be done about it. Grey Street remained the sort of place where husbands with impunity and gusto thrash their wives—and vice versa—where policemen with a great deal of sound and fury, signifying probable fines of from £50 to £100 to be inflicted later in the police courts, smash in the steel doors of opium dens, and where it is possible—though very remotely—to win £60 by marking your ten characters correctly on a green sixpenny pakapoo ticket.

  The name of the street was changed to Grey’s Avenue, apparently in a wild hope that the more distinguished nomenclature might induce in the savage breasts of the inhabitants some dim longing after respectability. Nothing much happened. The Salvation Army took up its head-quarters on one side of the street, setting down a solid white ferro-concrete chunk of gospel truth which looked like a market-woman among whores. Adjoining this depressing building there is now a free kindergarten and a park—rather a nice little park, where the children slither down mighty chutes and wear out cotton drawers bouncing about on see-saws. But the other side of the street—the side where you will find, near the top, Starkie’s little house—remains given over to the shiftless pools of dead leaves, to Chinese cafés so grimy that even University students won’t eat in them, to shops that appear to be empty until after nightfall.

  These empty shops of Grey’s Avenue are rather intriguing. In the more prosperous days of my childhood a better pretence was kept up. They appeared as pastrycooks, confectioners, or grocers; but the curious thing was that nobody ever went in to buy pastry, confectionery, or groceries at these particular shops. There were, of course, respectable provision merchants a-plenty in the street. We were strictly forbidden to approach the street at all, and, technically, at least, remained in complete ignorance as to the existence of its masquerading shops. None the less, we were devoured by a frightful curiosity about them; and I remember one day when a party of us, all between the ages of seven and ten, invaded the confectioner’s. Timidly we whispered a request for chocolates, there being in the window several dusty boxes.

  The lady with the enormous white face and the stupendous bosom encased in bright pink wool leaned right over the counter, showing three teeth in a snarl.

  ‘Yer little devils, gwan out o’ this…. Yer know bloody well them’s dummies!’

  Since the War, however, professional immorality has suffered a sad decline; and the Chinese card-games, which offer the gambler that delightful something for nothing so sternly denied the lover, have taken over practically all the old haunts. By day the empty shops are shuttered and dirty. Passing by in a wet blue dusk on my way to Starkie’s house, I observed that the doors of the empty shops rustled and rattled, that men slid in and out, mysterious as rats, that within, faint and warm light glittered from inner doors. The patrons of the gambling-schools leave li
ttle sentry groups on the pavement. These are part white—unshaven—and part Chinese—very discursive, in that clicking, unknown tongue. The white men look much the less attractive; but, on the other hand, there is such a derisive note in those rattling Chinese discourses. I always feel that they are mocking the gait of the passer-by, declaring in their own speech that she is bandy—or, alternatively, knock-kneed. Not that either is the regrettable truth.

  A few of the shops live open to daylight and lamplight. One displays vile-looking rowelled spurs—God knows where they are used…. A Chinese one is as charming as an early book of Ronald Fraser’s with its queer, thick porcelain spoons, its ginger-jars, its tins of water-lily shoots. A little Chinese lady lives here, much prettier than the one with whom you used to be in love when you first sipped green tea from the frail cup with the flower-faces and the absurd, dignified robes. Pass by the ‘Carpenter’s Arms’, which is conveniently wide-windowed so that you can observe whether your husband happens to be one of the drowning flies in the one-and-sixpenny bottles of amber in the bar. Then come a few vacant sections, where mangy stray cats live out their mysterious lives of hunger, sorrow, and—as Mr Lionel Britton puts it—love. The residential area begins—little dingy houses squeezing and shouldering together, eaves touching, verandahs joining, board-fences broken down for firewood between the patches of scrubby garden where nothing ever grows.