Mary Ursula Bethell (
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...
, Evelyn Hayes; 6 October 1874 – 15 January 1945), was a New Zealand social worker and poet. She settled at the age of 50 at Rise Cottage on the
Cashmere Hills near
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River ...
, with her companion Effie Pollen, where she created a sheltered garden with views over the city and towards the
Southern Alps
The Southern Alps (; officially Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana) is a mountain range extending along much of the length of New Zealand's South Island, reaching its greatest elevations near the range's western side. The name "Southern ...
, and began writing poems about the landscape.
Although she considered herself "by birth and choice English", and spent her life travelling between England and New Zealand, she was one of the first distinctively New Zealand poets, seen today as a pioneer of its modern poetry.
Background and social work
Bethell was the eldest daughter of the well-to-do sheep farmer Richard Bethell and his wife Isabel Anne, née Lillie, and was born in
Horsell
Horsell is a village in the borough of Woking in Surrey, England, less than a mile north-west of Woking town centre. In November 2012, its population was 9,384. Horsell is integral to H. G. Wells' classic science fiction novel ''The War of the Wor ...
, Surrey, England, in 1874.
Her parents had both lived in New Zealand in the 1860s, but returned to London where they married.
Shortly after her birth, in 1875, her parents returned with her to New Zealand, where her two younger siblings were born.
[''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English'', ed. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 90.] She was educated at
Rangiora Primary School and
Christchurch Girls' High School
Christchurch Girls' High School in Christchurch, New Zealand, was established in 1877 and is the second oldest girls-only secondary school in the country, after Otago Girls' High School.
History
Christchurch Girls' High School was established ...
,
and developed a love of the Canterbury landscape that would last for the rest of her life.
In later years, she wrote of the
Ashley River
The Ashley River is a blackwater and tidal river in South Carolina, rising from the Wassamassaw and Great Cypress Swamps in western Berkeley County. It consolidates its main channel about five miles west of Summerville, widening into a ti ...
:
Her father died in April 1885.
Two years later, at age 15, she travelled back to England and boarded with the family of
Ruth Mayhew, who became a lifelong friend,
as she attended
Oxford High School for Girls
Oxford High School is an independent day school for girls in Oxford, England. It was founded by the Girls' Day School Trust in 1875, making it the city's oldest girls' school.
History
Oxford High School was opened on 3 November 1875, with t ...
and a Swiss finishing school. She returned to New Zealand in 1892 and devoted herself to charitable work,
before again returning to Europe in 1895 to study painting in Geneva and music in Dresden.
Having enough private wealth to support herself, she took up social work in London with the Anglican organisation Women Workers for God, or "Grey Ladies".
She continued to perform social work in a religious context in England and New Zealand, travelling between the two, including in the war years.
In 1924 Bethell permanently settled in New Zealand, in the Cashmere Hills near Christchurch.
She bought a newly built home, Rise Cottage in Westenra Terrace, which she shared with another returnee New Zealander, Effie Pollen.
The theory that Bethell's relationship with Pollen was homosexual (which would have sat ill with her Anglicanism and her social aspirations in that period) was explored in some detail by the fellow poet
Janet Charman, as a visiting scholar at the
University of Auckland
, mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work
, established = 1883; years ago
, endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021)
, budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021)
, chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant
, vice_chancellor = Dawn ...
in 1997.
[Janet Charman: "My Ursula Bethell", ''Women's Studies Journal'' 14.2 (Spring 1998), pp. 91–10]
Retrieved 8 April 2015.
/ref> Bethell herself described the relationship as "prevailingly maternal", but there is no way of knowing for sure what the relationship between them was, except that it was a close and loving relationship.
Poet and salonnière
Bethell only began to write poetry at the age of about 50. Most of it was written during her years at Rise Cottage with Pollen. At first she had no design to publish her poems, but wrote them as messages to send in letters to her friends. She was deeply affected by Pollen's death in 1934, writing to a friend that the event was "a complete shattering of my life.... orfrom her I have had love, tenderness, and understanding... and close and happy companionship". She wrote little more afterwards, so that most of her output dates from the one decade of 1924 to 1934. Vincent O'Sullivan said, "She was surprised that people admired her 'garden' poems, often written as casual messages to friends.... By the late 1920s, she was also writing the more deliberate and intellectually adventurous poems which took their place in her later two books." After Pollen's death, she sold Rise Cottage and moved into a room in a house she had gifted to the Anglican church.
Her first collection, ''From a Garden in the Antipodies'' (1929), is her best-known work; its poems have often been anthologised. It expresses an awareness of her separation from "loved and lost London", and themes of religious thought and nature that marked all her work. Her later collections include poems for which there had been no place in the first collection, and memorial poems to Pollen. Her poetry is ascribed by the ''Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English'' "a plainness and spareness (as well as freshness of image) which distinguishes it from the more ornamented verse the country had previously produced."
The New Zealand writer Charles Brasch, visiting Bethell in the late 1930s, found her at "the centre of an astonishingly diverse circle of interesting people, many of the younger of whom were so close to her that she almost directed their lives." Among them were the crime writer Ngaio Marsh
Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966.
As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Det ...
, the essayist M. H. Holcroft, the artists R. H. Field and Evelyn Margaret Page, the poets Blanche Edith Baughan and J. H. E. Schroder, and the musician Frederick Joseph Page. She acted as a mentor to younger local poets, notably Allen Curnow
Thomas Allen Monro Curnow (17 June 1911 – 23 September 2001) was a New Zealand poet and journalist.
Life
Curnow was born in Timaru, New Zealand, the son of a fourth generation New Zealander, an Anglican clergyman, and he grew up in a relig ...
and Denis Glover
Denis James Matthews Glover (9 December 19129 August 1980) was a New Zealand poet and publisher. Born in Dunedin, he attended the University of Canterbury where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts, and subsequently lectured. He worked as a reporte ...
.
All Bethell's work appeared anonymously, as she felt that publicity in "provincial New Zealand" would be a "painful affair". She said her pseudonym, Evelyn Hayes, came from a great-great-grandfather, Sir Henry Hayes of Cork
Cork or CORK may refer to:
Materials
* Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product
** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container
***Wine cork
Places Ireland
* Cork (city)
** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...
, who was "deported for life to Botany Bay
Botany Bay (Dharawal: ''Kamay''), an open oceanic embayment, is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and the Cooks Ri ...
for attempted abduction of a Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
heiress." In later life, she became less keen to be anonymous, and before her death asked that her collected poems be published under her own name.
Death and legacy
Bethell died in Christchurch on 15 January 1945. A volume of her ''Collected Poems'' appeared posthumously in 1950 and was reprinted in 1985 with an introduction by O'Sullivan. In 1948, after her death, several New Zealand authors contributed personal reflections to ''Landfall''. The educator and writer Crawford Somerset opined, "New Zealand has produced no other poetry so clearly original and so delicately sensitive as Ursula Bethell's." The poet and journalist D'Arcy Cresswell said that in literature "New Zealand wasn't truly discovered, in fact, until Ursula Bethell, 'very earnestly digging', raised her head to look at the mountains. Almost everyone had been blind before."
She featured prominently in both of Curnow's notable anthologies, ''A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–1945'' (1945) (in which 19 of her poems were printed, more than any other poet) and ''The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse'' (1960), and later in ''The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse'' (1985) edited by Ian Wedde
Ian Curtis Wedde (born 17 October 1946) is a New Zealand poet, fiction writer, critic, and art curator.
Biography
Born in Blenheim, New Zealand, Wedde lived in East Pakistan and England as a child before returning to New Zealand. He attended ...
and Harvey McQueen.
In 1979, the University of Canterbury
The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...
founded the Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing to support and encourage New Zealand writing. It goes to writers of "proven merit". Notable recipients have included Margaret Mahy, Keri Hulme
Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme (9 March 194727 December 2021) was a New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story writer. She also wrote under the pen name Kai Tainui. Her novel ''The Bone People'' won the Booker Prize in 1985; she was the first New Zealande ...
and Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton (born 24 September 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International I ...
.
Published works
*(As Evelyn Hayes) ''From a Garden in the Antipodes'' (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1929)
*(As "The Author of ''Poems From a Garden in the Antipodes''") ''Time and Place'' (Christchurch: Caxton, 1936)
*(As "The Author of ''Time and Place''") ''Day and Night: Poems 1924–1934'', (Christchurch: Caxton, 1939)
*''Collected Poems'', ed. Helen Simpson, (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1950), (Kindle edition 2016, ASIN: B016QNELZ4)
*''Collected Poems'', ed. Vincent O’Sullivan, (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1985 950
Year 950 ( CML) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Arab–Byzantine War: A Hamdanid army (30,000 men) led by Sayf al-Dawla raids int ...
*''Vibrant with Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell'', ed. Peter Whiteford (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005).
References
External links
Ursula Bethell
author page at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre
Bethell, (Mary) Ursula
profile at Read NZ Te Pou Muramura
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura (formerly the New Zealand Book Council) is a not-for-profit organisation that presents a wide range of programmes to promote books and reading in New Zealand.
History
It was established in 1972 as a response to UNESCO's ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bethell, Ursula
1874 births
1945 deaths
New Zealand social workers
English emigrants to New Zealand
New Zealand poets
New Zealand women poets
New Zealand Anglo-Catholics
20th-century New Zealand poets
People educated at Christchurch Girls' High School
People educated at Oxford High School, England
People from Christchurch
Pseudonymous women writers
20th-century pseudonymous writers
20th-century New Zealand women writers