The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  Bill Pearson

  Acknowledgements

  I undertook to provide a note on the banning of The Butcher Shop and it would have been difficult to uncover the circumstances of that half-covert operation without the generous help of librarians and archivists throughout New Zealand, and at Australian Archives and the National Library of Australia. I am especially and equally indebted to all the following: Ruth E. Munro of National Archives of New Zealand; Kevin Cunningham, McNab/New Zealand Librarian at Dunedin Public Library; Michael Hitchings, Hocken Librarian; John Stringleman, Canterbury Public Librarian; R. N. Erwin of the University of Canterbury Library; B. K. McKeon, Wellington City Librarian; Mrs K. A. Coleridge of Victoria University of Wellington Library; Patricia Sargison and Hilary Stace of the Alexander Turnbull Library; Indulis Kepars and Christopher Harrison of the National Library of Australia; Barry Stephenson of Australian Archives.

  I am particularly indebted to the Hon. H. C. Templeton, Minister of Customs, for producing material from his Department’s files; to Stuart Perry, Vincent O’Sullivan, Professors J. F. Northey and R. McD. Chapman; and to Mrs Norma Jenkin for typing.

  I would like to acknowledge the help of B. R. Patterson of the General Assembly Library; Ian Thwaites of Auckland Museum and Institute Library; J. B. Ringer of Hamilton Public Library; Anne L. Shipherd, New Plymouth Librarian; Sally L. Smith of Invercargill Public Library; and the ready replies of Librarians at Oamaru, Timaru, Nelson, Palmerston North, and Napier.

  B.P.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. Joan Stevens: The New Zealand Novel (Wellington, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1966), p.36.

  2. Some aspects of the part that violence plays in New Zealand literature are discussed in Patrick Evans, ‘Paradise or Slaughterhouse: some aspects of New Zealand proletarian fiction’, Islands, v.8, no.1, March 1980, pp.71-85.

  3. ‘New Zealand Society c. 1890-c. 1940’, unpublished essay by Erik Olssen, p.34. Quoted with the author’s permission.

  4. Unless otherwise stated, all biographical information in this section comes from Jean Devanny’s unpublished autobiography. The autobiography is under contract to be published by the University of Queensland Press.

  5. H. Roth: Trade Unions in New Zealand (Wellington, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1973), p.28.

  6. ibid., p.44.

  7. M. B. Soljak: ‘Outspoken N.Z. Novelist’, The New Zealand Observer, 16 December 1935, p.9, and ‘Banned New Zealand Novel’, The Sun, Christchurch, 5 June 1926. The sales figure comes from an interview with Jean Devanny in Sydney dated 4 December 1930, reported in the Otago Daily Times.

  8. This assertion is made by Store and Anderson (p.67—see Note 11) on the authority of Jean Devanny’s unpublished autobiography.

  9. Soljak, loc.cit.

  10. Ian Reid: Fiction and the Great Depression: Australia and New Zealand 1930-1950 (Melbourne, Edward Arnold, 1979), p.43.

  11. The most complete listings so far to be made of Devanny’s published and unpublished writing are in ‘Jean Devanny: A Biographical and Bibliographical Note’ by Ronald Store and Richard Anderson in Australian Academic and Research Libraries, v.1, no.1, Winter 1970, pp.70-72, and Women in Australia, v.2, edited by Kay Daniels, Mary Murnane and Anne Picot (Canberra, Australian Government Printer, 1977), pp.34-38.

  12. Miles Franklin: Laughter, not for a Cage: notes on Australian Writing … (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1956), p.183.

  13. Frank Ryland, Letter to Patricia Hurd, March 8 [year not given].

  14. Stevens, The New Zealand Novel, p.39.

  15. E. H. McCormick: Letters and Art in New Zealand (Wellington, Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), p.148.

  16. Robin Hyde, ‘The New Zealand Woman in Letters’, in The Working Woman (Wellington), v.3, 6 April 1936, p.5.

  17. Unpublished MSS on the origins and development of the family. MSS/38/1 of Devanny manuscripts held at the James Cook University of North Queensland.

  18. For more information about the New Zealand Legion see M. C. Pugh: ‘The New Zealand Legion 1932-1935’, New Zealand Journal of History, v.1, no.1, April 1971.

  The Butcher Shop

  Page 33

  ‘ “Here, jerk the brownie along, Potts.” ’ A brownie is a cake made of flour, fat, and sugar, according to Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.

  Page 39

  George Gissing’s The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), a series of small essays on various matters purportedly written by a retired journalist living in Devon. It is an odd choice of book for Devanny to give her heroine, as Ryecroft is opposed to any sort of change. Having once been a socialist he now professes himself to be ‘in every fibre … an individualist’.

  Page 43

  ‘leaving school at fourteen years of age’: Margaret had had the minimum amount of schooling. In New Zealand the leaving age was raised to fourteen in 1901.

  Page 46

  ‘Why, Elsdon Best and Edward Tregear and Johannes Andersen cannot do too much honour to the Maoris’: These three men studied traditional Maori life and thought. Devanny was strongly influenced by their attitudes and approaches to Maori life, in particular by Best’s emphasis that Maori life was communal. Elsdon Best (1856-1931) spent sixteen years in the Ureweras recording the traditional culture and history of the Tuhoe people. In 1911 he joined the Dominion Museum in Wellington. With Tregear and others he was active in the Polynesian Society formed in 1892. Edward Tregear (1846-1931) was born in England. He joined the public service in New Zealand and was Secretary of Labour from 1898 until 1911. Tregear wrote several works about the Maori, including a Maori-Polynesian comparative dictionary. Johannes Carl Andersen (1873-1962) was born in Denmark. He was librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, and wrote several books on Maori life including Maori Tales (1924) and Maori Life in Aotea (1907).

  Page 90

  ‘Old Bill gripped the axe, stood above his mate, swung it, and brought the blade’s edge down with all his force upon the thin, scraggy neck.’ This was an early use, for Jean Devanny’s own purposes, of what was to become a New Zealand legend. In a whare at Mangamahu, near Wanganui, on 21 July 1921, after three men had drunk four and a half bottles of whisky in quick time, George Gordon begged his mate John Kinsella, ‘Cut my head off.’ Kinsella obliged. He was subsequently found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment with hard labour. (Rex Monigatti: New Zealand Headlines (Wellington, A. H. & A. W. Reed), 1963, pp. 109-12.)

  Page 123

  ‘You are only—what Jack London calls class-conscious’: Jack London (1876-1916), best known for his novels about strong men or animals engaged in violent struggle, is less well known for the social novels which would have attracted Devanny—The Iron Heel (1907) in which he prophesies a fascist revolution followed by an egalitarian golden age, or The Valley of the Moon (1913) in which economic problems are solved by a return to the land. Like Devanny, London also wrote treatises on socialism.

  Page 146

  ‘Central Europe had followed Russia’s example and turned Bolshevik the year previous, with much upset and bloodshed, and England was on the verge of taking her turn at the game.’ The greater part of The Butcher Shop is set in what at the time of publication was the future. It opens in ‘the year 1924’ when Margaret is seventeen. At its climax she is said to be twenty-seven, which brings the date to 1934, eight years after the book was published.

  In her analysis of international political trends, Devanny adopts a position like that of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. The resulting mixture of forecast and wishful thinking includes references to the 1918 Communist Government in Hungary and to the industrial unrest in Britain that was to culminate in the General Strike of 1926.

  In ‘that old tiger of the sea, Fintan O’Flynn’ who leads the small communist group in the New Zealand parliament, one can recognize the friend of Jean and Hal Devanny, Fintan Patrick Walsh, born Tuohy (1896-1963), who was an active member of the Ne
w Zealand Seamen’s Union and until 1924 a member of the Communist Party. For several years after the formation of the New Zealand Communist Party in 1921 there were fierce arguments within the New Zealand Labour Party about whether Communists could hold membership. In 1925 the Labour Party resolved that members of that Party could not belong to other political parties, and thus the break between the Labour and Communist Parties was official.

  The Banning of The Butcher Shop

  1. Indecent Publications Act, 1910, No. 19, section 1, New Zealand Statutes, 1950.

  2. N.Z. Gazette, 19 May 1921, p.1186.

  3. William Downie Stewart, The Right Honourable Sir Francis Bell … His Life and Times, Wellington, Butterworth, 1937, pp. 177-8. A general account of censorship in New Zealand at the time is given in ch.1, Stuart Perry, The Indecent Publications Tribunal (Christchurch, Whitcombe and Tombs, 1965), and Pat Lawlor, ‘The Censorship Problem’, N.Z. Law Journal, 20 October, 3 November 1964, pp.440-4, 464-8. See also A. C. Burns, ‘Some Aspects of Censorship: a survey of censorship law and practice in New Zealand from 1841 to 1963, mainly concerning the control of indecent publications’ (M.A. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1968).

  4. N.Z. Parliamentary Debates, 24 June 1926, pp. 135-6. See also Stewart, Sir Francis Bell, p.178, and N.Z.P.D., 1 October 1929, p.249.

  5. N.Z.P.D., 24 June 1926, p.135.

  6. ‘Bert’ to F. D. Thomson, telegram from Dunedin to Roxburgh, 1 March 1926, Customs Dept. 24/43/48, National Archives. See also letter from Comptroller of Customs to Chairman, Board of Censorship, 27 March, Customs Dept. 24/43/48.

  7. It could not have been Herbert Baillie, who was in Wellington at the time. (B. K. McKeon, private communication, 27 November 1980.) It is hardly possible that, as Jean Devanny claimed to have been told by Baillie, the sender of the cable was the New Zealand High Commissioner, Sir James Allen.

  8. R. M. Hacket to Minister of Customs, 26 March 1926, National Archives 24/43/48.

  9. H. C. South to Comptroller of Customs, 26 April 1926, Customs Dept., 24/43/48. (Original on 36/959).

  10. The Sun (Christchurch), 4 May 1926; The Press, 5 May 1926.

  11. ‘Our Strange Board of Censors’, The Sun, 5 May 1926; K. in ‘Obiter Dicta’, The Press, 8 May 1926 (‘K.’ was the editor of The Press, Michael Keane, who thus unwittingly condemned his Auckland colleague); The Bulletin (Sydney), 3 June 1926, Red Page.

  12. ‘The Butcher Shop’, Spike, Victoria University College Review, June 1926, pp.38-41.

  13. ‘Banned by the Censors’, New Zealand Times (Wellington), 4 June 1926; reprinted with different headlines in The Sun, 5 June; Otago Witness, 8 June.

  14. Nellie M. Scanlan, ‘Banned by the Censors’, N.Z. Free Lance, 26 May 1926, p.10.

  15. loc. cit.

  16. See note 13.

  17. Press interview with Jean Devanny in Sydney, dated 4 December 1930 (from Otago Witness, date of issue uncertain).

  18. N.Z.P.D., 24 June 1926, pp. 128-38.

  19. N.Z.P.D., 1 October 1929, pp.249-51.

  20. Stuart Perry, private communication 2 July 1980 (‘I made sure they [the lists of Customs decisions] were complete.’); B. K. McKeon, Wellington City Librarian, private communication 9 October 1980.

  21. Pat Lawlor, ‘The Censorship Problem’, N.Z. Law Journal, 20 October 1964, pp.442-3.

  22. E. D. Good, Comptroller of Customs, to the Minister, 22 July 1938, 24/43/48 National Archives.

  23. The Customs Department total list had been radically revised in 1953 by a more liberal advisory committee headed by Ian Gordon. See Perry, The Indecent Publications Tribunal, p.41.

  24. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1929, p.15.

  25. Unless otherwise attributed subsequent information about the Australian prohibition of the novel is taken from the Department of Trade and Customs, Correspondence file, annual single number series, ‘Prohibited Publications “The Butcher Shop” “Die Herrin” 1929-1943’, Australian Archives: CRS A425 Item 43/4415, and is reproduced with the permission of Australian Archives. The latest relevant document on this file is dated 1932. A folio dated 1958, not yet released to public access, consists of an instruction to release the novel from the prohibited list.

  26. Bernice May (pseud.), ‘Jean Devanny’, Australian Woman’s Mirror, 29 July 1930, pp.10, 47.

  27. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 May 1930, p. 10, quoted by Peter Coleman, Obscenity, Blasphemy, Sedition; 100 Years of Censorship in Australia, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1974, from which (pp. 13-21) most of the information in this paragraph and the next is taken. The membership of the Board in 1957 is taken from the Federal Guide 1957 (Commonwealth Government Printer, Canberra, 1957) p.87.

  28. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 1958, p.2.

  JEAN DEVANNY’S PUBLISHED WORK

  Fiction

  The Butcher Shop (London, Duckworth) 1926 (three impressions, February, March, June); popular edition May 1927; fourth impression, March 1928; cheaper edition, April 1931; (New York, Macaulay) 1926.*

  Lenore Divine (London, Duckworth) 1926; popular edition 1928.

  Old Savage and other stories (London, Duckworth) 1927.

  Dawn Beloved (London, Duckworth) 1928; cheaper edition 1934; (New York, Macaulay) 1928.

  Riven (London, Duckworth) 1929; cheaper edition 1934; American title, Unchastened Youth (New York, Macaulay) 1930, cheaper edition 1931.

  Bushman Burke (London, Duckworth) 1930; (New York, Macaulay) 1930. An abridged version was issued in paperback by Frank Johnson, Sydney under the title Taipo, undated, in 1944, and, also undated, by the same publisher under the title Wages of Desire, †

  Devil Made Saint (London, Duckworth) 1930.

  Poor Swine (London, Duckworth) 1932.

  All for Love (New York, Macaulay) 1932; cheaper edition 1934.

  Out of Such Fires (New York, Macaulay) 1934; cheaper edition 1935.

  The Ghost Wife (London, Duckworth) 1935.

  The Virtuous Courtesan (New York, Macaulay) 1935; cheaper edition 1936; (Toronto, McLeod) 1936.

  Sugar Heaven (Sydney, Modern Publishers) 1936; an abridged version (Sydney, Frank Johnson) 1942.

  Paradise Flow (London, Duckworth) 1938; cheaper edition 1940.

  The Killing of Jacqueline Love (Sydney, Frank Johnson) 1942.

  Roll Back the Night (London, Robert Hale) 1945.

  Cindie: a chronicle of the canefields (London, Robert Hale) 1949.

  Non-fiction

  By Tropic Sea and Jungle: adventures in North Queensland (Sydney, Angus and Robertson) 1944.

  Bird of Paradise (Sydney, Frank Johnson) 1945.

  Travels in North Queensland (London, Jarrolds) 1951.

  Essay

  ‘The Worker’s Contribution to Australian Literature’ in Australian Writers Speak; literature and life in Australia, a series of talks arranged by the Fellowship of Australian Writers for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (Sydney, Angus and Robertson) 1942.

  Translations

  (The Butcher Shop). Die Herrin, translated by Paul Baudisch (Berlin, Th. Knaur Nachf.) 1928.

  (Sugar Heaven). Sakharnyi rai, translated by T. Redko (Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvenoi Literatury) 1963.

  Unpublished Writing

  The Devanny papers, including manuscripts of four unpublished novels, an autobiography, radio and film scripts, notes and letters are listed in ‘Jean Devanny: a Biographical and Bibliographical Note’, by Ronald E. Store and Richard Anderson, Australian Academic and Research Libraries, v.1, no.1, Winter 1970, pp.66-72. The papers are described in more detail in Women in Australia: an annotated guide to records, edited by Kay Daniels, Mary Murnane, and Anne Picot, v.2 (Canberra, Australian Government Printer, 1977).

  Critical Study

  Carole Ferrier. ‘Jean Devanny’s New Zealand Novels’, Hecate, v.6, no.1, 1980.

  * The distinctions are of price. Standard editions of Jean Devanny’s novels published by Duckworth cost 7s.6d., the ‘popular edition’ sold at 3s.6d., and the ‘cheaper edition�
� at 2s.6d. Macaulay’s prices were $2.00 and 75c. (McLeod 90c.)

  † Copy in Auckland University Library.

  NEW ZEALAND FICTION

  1. A South-Sea Siren by George Chamier, edited and introduced by Joan Stevens.

  2. The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde, edited and introduced by Gloria Rawlinson.

  3. The Land of the Lost by William Satchell, edited and introduced by Kendrick Smithyman.

  4. Allen Adair by Jane Mander, edited and introduced by Dorothea Turner.

  5. Tikera, or Children of the Queen of Oceania by Sygurd Wiśniowski, translated by Jerzy Podstolski, edited and introduced by Dennis McEldowney.

  6. Show Down by Margaret Escott, edited and introduced by Robert Goodman.

  7. Brown Man’s Burden and later stories by Roderick Finlayson, edited and introduced by Bill Pearson.

  8. I Saw in My Dream by Frank Sargeson, edited and introduced by H. Winston Rhodes.

  9. Follow the Call by Frank S. Anthony, edited and introduced by Terry Sturm.

  10. Roads from Home by Dan Davin, edited and introduced by Lawrence Jones.

  11. Gus Tomlins by Frank S. Anthony, edited and introduced by Terry Sturm.

  12. All Part of the Game, the stories of A. P. Gaskell, edited and introduced by R. A. Copland.

  13. It Was So Late and other stories by John Reece Cole, edited and introduced by Cherry Hankin.

  14. Tidal Creek by Roderick Finlayson, edited and introduced by Dennis McEldowney.

  15. Collected Stories by Maurice Duggan, edited and introduced by C. K. Stead.

  16. The Butcher Shop by Jean Devanny, edited and introduced by Heather Roberts.