Saga of a Biography

I got caught up in this biography business quite by accident - although it might also be said to have been pre-ordained that I should eventually do something of the sort.

I am a librarian by training, successfully completing the post-graduate Diploma of Librarianship in 1980 after supporting myself through College and University by working as an Enrolled Nurse. I am a scribbler by inclination, although it was not until January 1986 while a patient at Ashburn Hall Private Psychiatric Hospital in Dunedin, that I began writing short stories and, then, poetry. And I am a walker by encouragement.

In January 1988 I was with Alison Mary and a group of Women Walkers, walking up the Grey River, in the Ashley State Forest. Moving on from the lunch spot, I stood on a very slippery boulder, and sat down before I had any say in the matter. An X-ray, later that night, revealed a cracked sacrum, which marked the end of my career as an Enrolled Nurse, especially when it became apparent that the injury had aggravated a spine already damaged by years of steadily progressive degeneration.

 

 Alison Mary and Pauline Cara-
looking for a way off Mount Evans 

At the same time - and unbeknown to me - Alison had been working with her sister, Margaret Quigley, researching the life of Mary Ursula Bethell. They had been introduced to her poetry at secondary school, and had more recently attended a Women's Studies Association Conference in Blenheim in 1984, where they were inspired by the concept of "herstory" and the need to reclaim women's lives from the sidelines and margins of a "male elite" history.

Soon after, I began enquiring after progress on the project and thus I learned that Margaret's life had become complicated - to the point where she needed to withdraw, leaving Alison to box on alone.

My days as a geriatric nurse were numbered, and Alison was looking for a co-worker - I seemed to be not only available, but also interested, and apparently well-suited to the task with skills as a reference librarian and, by now, a published short story writer.

Alison was committed to a part-time job and, as co-principal with her partner Pauline Cara, to Women Walk, leaving her little spare time for research. Consequently she adopted a supportive and encouraging role during the next three years as I lived, breathed and slept Ursula Bethell while I worked my way through her papers, arranging them in chronological order and organising the material on to index cards.

By the end of 1990 I had come to the end of the available New Zealand primary sources, and set myself up in business as a family history researcher to augment my low, fixed income. However,

  - in 1989, Alison and I wrote an article on Ursula Bethell for The book of New Zealand women : ko kui ma te kaupapa (edited by Charlotte Macdonald, Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams, published in Wellington by Bridget Williams Books, 1991);

  - in 1992, I presented a paper on the writing and publishing of the poetry to the Victoria University of Wellington's Stout Research Centre Annual Conference;

  - in 1993, as part of Women's Suffrage Centennial Year, I described some of the research adventures I had experienced along the way to a meeting of the New Zealand Family History Society;

  - in 1995, I prepared an article for The dictionary of New Zealand biography, volume 4 (published in Wellington by Bridget Williams Books and the Department of Internal Affairs, 1998), which then became the basis of a ten-minute talk at an evening held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Ursula Bethell's death and of a two-hour lecture delivered at a Canterbury University Continuing Education course for Seniors on famous New Zealanders; and

  - in 1996, I travelled to Auckland to talk to a group of Master's students in the English Department at Auckland University about the first half of Ursula's life.

Along the way, in mid-1994, I purchased a very basic word processor, and began transcribing on to disk the typewritten material garnered from both the primary and secondary sources. Then, in 1996, I bought a personal computer, and have since added a modem, a printer and a scanner to my collection of authorial technology.

Towards the end of August 1997, Alison was diagnosed as having inoperable cancer, with only months to live.

 Alison heading home

Family history research requests had fallen off in recent months, my advertising in The New Zealand genealogist had lapsed with the previous issue, and it seemed appropriate to put more time and energy into completing the entering of data onto disk, answering more of the questions raised in the primary source material, and starting to shape it all into a publishable book.

Alison's health deteriorated in May 1998, and she spent a week in hospital with pneumonia in the middle of that month. I visited her and shared with her the progress I was making on the first chapter of the book. She said she liked the way in which I used the voices of the people of the time to tell the story, and she asked me to keep a file of what I had done so she could read it again, later, when she felt better.

Alas, this was not to be - Alison Mary died on the afternoon of Friday 29 May 1998.

In the intervening 10 years or so, I have floundered around, full of good intentions but somehow lacking the motivation or the energy to proceed with the biography. I have been through several personal relationships, including a Civil Union which ended in acrimony on 27 February 2009. Now that things have settled down, I am beginning to think the biography may finally get written!

The book will be dedicated to Alison - without her encouragement and support the research and writing would never have progressed as far as it has!