North Shore History with David Verran

Karl Wolfskehl and Anna Kavan on the North Shore

In the September 2019 issue of ‘Channel’ I wrote about Greville Texidor, about whom a biography had recently been published. Yet another literary person with a North Shore relevance has now had a biography published, namely the poet Karl Wolfskehl (1869-1948). The author is Wolfskehl expert Friedrich Voit and the publisher is Cold Hub Press in Lyttelton.

In the Texidor article, I noted that while the physical North Shore wasn’t her muse, certainly the literary people with whom she and her husband lived near and socialised both stimulated her writing and were influenced by her. In the case of Wolfskehl, certainly his regard for Takapuna resident Gladys Salter produced a poem entitled ‘The voice of Takapuna’. His ten years in New Zealand were some of his most productive. He had left Germany in 1933, fleeing anti-Semitism, and had then lived in Italy and Switzerland. Nevertheless, his poetry written after 1938 wasn’t about the North Shore as a place, only in one instance about a person he knew who happened to live there.

Above Gladys’s grocery shop, the third down in the block of shops at the corner of Lake Road and Sanders Avenue, was a gathering place for classes run by the local Workers’ Educational Association (W.E.A.). In June 1943 the Salters moved to Forrest Hill Road and Len later married Alison Stirling Duff (1914-2000), a sculptor, potter and teacher.

Despite his poor eyesight, Wolfskehl managed to travel by tram from Mount Eden to meet up with Frank Sargeson (1903-1982) at the North Shore ferry terminal and travelled with him to Sargeson’s house at 14 Esmonde Road. They had first met in early 1942. Wolfskehl also lived in a boarding house for two months in Takapuna in mid-1943 at 25 Bracken Avenue, at the north-east corner with Burns Avenue. He also stayed for at least two weeks with Dorothea Beyda in the summer of 1947/1948, at 24 Tennyson Avenue, Takapuna.

Wolfskehl was connected with, amongst others, R.A.K. (Ron) Mason (1905-1971) who also lived at 24 Tennyson Avenue, Takapuna, A.R.D. (Rex) Fairburn (1904-1957) who lived at 7 King Edward Parade, Devonport, and John Graham (1922-) who at one stage lived at 26 William Bond Street, also in Devonport.

Published in April 2002 as a series of North Shore heritage trails, Graeme Lay’s ‘North Shore literary walks’ is still available. It includes two of Wolfskehl’s poems ‘The voice of Takapuna’ and ‘Fig tree’ and identifies his residence at 25 Bracken Avenue.

A comparison can be made with Anna Kavan, born in 1901 as Helen Emily Woods in Cannes, France and who died in London in 1968. She arrived in Auckland by ship from Los Angeles on 21st February 1941 and rented a flat near the beach in Park Avenue, Takapuna. She initially lived there with Ian Hamilton and they then moved to his house at 50 Rock Isle Road in Torbay (which she called Waitahanui, Maori for ‘surrounded by water’). She left New Zealand on 13th November 1942, spending less than 21 months here.

Two of her Torbay focussed stories are reproduced in Marie Gray and Jennifer Sturm’s ‘… and then came the bridge; a history of Long Bay and Torbay (2008); ‘Any day’ (first published in 1946) and “Waitahanui society’, on pages 144 to 153. Both Greville Texidor and Kavan were published in ‘New Zealand New Writing One’ in 1942 and some of Kavan’s short stories were either written in New Zealand or include references to her New Zealand experiences, places and colloquialisms. For further reading on Kavan, I recommend Jennifer Sturm’s ‘Anna Kavan’s New Zealand; a Pacific interlude in a turbulent life (2009). By David Verran david.verran@xtra.co.nz 34-H110G, courtesy of Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections – Interior view of Ian Hamilton's house in Torbay, with (from the right) Anna Kavan, Ian Hamilton, Melva Firth, and an unidentified woman sitting around a table.