PAMBU NEWS
Having just celebrated his 100th
birthday,
Professor Harry Maude died in Canberra on 4 November. His survey of
Pacific
archives and manuscripts, The Documentary Basis for Pacific
Studies: a
report on progress and desiderata, written in 1967 was instrumental
in the
formation of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau.
The Documentary Basis for Pacific
Studies was commissioned by
G.D.
Richardson, then Mitchell Librarian, following a move instigated by the
Sinclair Library at the University of Hawai'i to form an association of
Pacific
research libraries. Maude’s report surveyed Pacific manuscripts at a
schematic
level. It outlined the scope of Pacific documentation, suggested
surveying and
copying programs, and recommended the formation of an Association of
Pacific
Research Libraries “to complete library holdings and improve
bibliographic
control in the case of printed works, and to promote the location,
cataloguing
and copying of manuscripts
relating to the Pacific by the establishment
of a
jointly-operated Manuscripts Clearing Centre.”
This association was never formed, but
the report resulted in the establishment in 1968 of the Pacific
Manuscripts
Bureau based at the Australian National University. The Bureau
continues to
operate as a collaborative joint copying venture. It was supported,
initially,
by the University of Hawaii, the Mitchell, Turnbull and ANU Libraries
and the
National Library of Australia, and now, additionally, by the Library of
the
University of California at San Diego, the University of Auckland
Library, Yale
University Library and the University of Michigan Library.
The continuing successful operation of
the PMB, which is probably the longest running international archives
preservation project in the world, is a tribute to Harry Maude’s vision
and planning.
We are honoured to print Alaric Maude’s eulogy to his father in this
issue of Pambu.
Reports on recent PMB fieldwork in Noumea and
Tuvalu
are also included in this issue of Pambu.
The PMB has commenced microfilming the Fiji
correspondence of CSR Ltd, 1880-1947. Microfilming is also proceeding
on Fr.
Kevin Kerley’s diaries kept during the Bougainville crisis, on Sir John
Gunther’s papers on health administration in PNG, and on a batch of
early LMS,
Samoan District administrative archives.
An unpublished typescript history of the New
Hebrides
Condominium (c.1930) was lent to the PMB for microfilming by Jim Burton
of
Brisbane. Deryck Scarr helped identify R.T.E. Latham (1909-1943) as the
author
of the document.
Rev. Neville Threlfall’s unpublished
manuscript, From
Mangroves to Frangipani: The Story of Rabaul and East New Britain
Province
(1988), has been microfilmed; and Rev. Threlfall has given the PMB
permission
to microfilm his extensive research papers on New Britain.
A photograph album Pacific Islands, 1919,
documenting an official tour by Lord Liverpool, Governor-General of New
Zealand, in the possession of Dr Ewan Johnston (RSPAS, ANU) has been
microfilmed and digitised.
Aerial photographs made for the Vanuatu
Resource
Information System, which Chris Ballard transferred to the PMB, have
been arranged
and listed. A detailed listing of Bill Coppell’s bibliographic data and
research papers on the Cook Islands, Norfolk Island and other
Polynesian
islands, which the PMB has held for some time, has also been compiled.
The PMB has surveyed a large collection of
volcanological research materials, mainly relating to PNG and the
Solomon
Islands, held by Dr R.W. Johnson. They include papers of the
volcanologists
R.J.S. Cooke, killed at Karkar in 1971, and Tony Taylor.
Dr Peter Sack’s unpublished manuscripts, his
Tolai
materials and his general collection of research documents on German
New Guinea
were also surveyed. Five cartons of Professor John Ballard’s research
papers on
PNG administration and provincial government, 1945-1985, have been
transferred
to the PMB. Professor Gerard Ward’s research papers are being
transferred to
the ANU Archives pending the appointment of the Pacific Archivist.
Papers and
audio recordings of Professor Stephen Wurm have also been transferred
from the
PMB to the ANU Archives.
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PAPERS OF SIR RAYMOND FIRTH
AT LSE ARCHIVES
The
Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science is
happy to
announce the completion of the catalogue for the papers of the
anthropologist
Sir Raymond Firth. This catalogue covers the whole of the Firth papers
(over
1000 files) and can be accessed online via our Archives Catalogue (http://archives.lse.ac.uk/).
Our Firth collection reflects all aspects of
Sir
Raymond’s long and wide-ranging career, but there are several sections
which
are of particular relevance to researchers studying the history and
culture of
the Pacific.
As
might be expected, Sir Raymond’s studies of the Tikopia feature
strongly in the
collection. Firth first visited the island of Tikopia in 1928-1929 and
returned
again for shorter visits in 1952 and 1966. His research there formed
the basis
of a series of books and articles covering all aspects of Tikopia
culture and
society. Some of the highlights include:
·
An
extensive
series of field notes and diaries compiled by Firth during his visits
to
Tikopia in 1928-1929, 1952 and 1966
·
Over
1000
fieldwork negatives and photographs taken by Firth as part of his
Tikopia
research (these are only covered briefly in the current online
catalogue; a
fuller list of these is being compiled and will be published later this
year)
·
Correspondence
and working papers for Firth’s Tikopia-English dictionary and Tikopia
songs
projects
·
Notes
and drafts
of lectures, articles and other publications on the Tikopia
·
Notes
by W.J.
Durrad documenting his visit to Tikopia in 1910, used by Firth as
preparation
for his first field work expedition
Firth’s
early studies in his native New Zealand in the 1920s are also
represented,
including:
·
Notes
and drafts
for his MA thesis on the Kauri Gum industry
·
Notes
and
photographs from his visits to Tuhoe land
·
Notes
and drafts
for his PhD thesis on the economics of Maori society
·
Letters
from
Elsdon Best, William Baucke, Hohepa Te Rake Te Kiri, Norman Potts,
Sister Annie
Henry, George Graham and Gilbert Archey
The collection also contains material
relating to
Firth’s involvement with the establishment of Australian National
University in
1946, and in particular with the foundation of ANU’s Research School of
Pacific
Studies, including correspondence with J.W. Davidson, Keith Hancock and
other
founder ANU staff.
Firth corresponded widely with friends and
colleagues
who shared his interest in the Pacific region. Our collection includes
letters
from Cyril Belshaw, P.H. Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), Dorothy Crozier, A.P.
Elkin,
Reo Fortune, A.W.F. Fuller, W.C. Groves, Ian Hogbin, Felix Keesing,
H.E. Maude,
Margaret Mead, Joan Metge, Torben Monberg, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown,
Charles
Seligman and W.E.H. Stanner.
These original papers are only available for
research
in the Library’s Archives reading room, but we are happy to consider
requests
for copies from researchers who are unable to visit us in person. For
further information,
please visit our website at http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/archive/
or contact us at document@lse.ac.uk
Anna Towlson
Assistant Archivist
Library of the
London School of Economics and Political Science
Raymond and Rosemary Firth on
their way to Malaya, 1939. Firth Collection, LSE Archives.
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HARRY MAUDE 1906-2006
Harry
Maude was born at Bankipore in India on 1 October 1906, the last of six
children. His father was a senior
officer in the Indian Civil Service.
After an intermittent and inadequate schooling in India, he was
sent to
his father’s old school in London. There
his academic record was undistinguished, to say the least, largely
because of
the deficiencies in his previous education.
The headmaster wrote to Harry’s father advising against sending
him to
university as, to quote from the biography by Susan Woodburn, ‘when the
good
lord was distributing brains, I’m afraid that Harry must have been
behind the
door’. But his father had more faith,
and with tutorial help Harry managed to scrape into Jesus College,
Cambridge. There he studied Economics and
then Anthropology,
graduating with a better class of Honours than his old headmaster. The headmaster would have been even more
astonished to learn, as I did only three weeks ago, that Harry is
listed as one
of Highgate School’s famous old boys, sandwiched between a Lord and a
cricketer
who played for England.
In 1929, newly graduated, Harry was appointed
to the
British Colonial Service as a cadet in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
Colony,
the only place he wanted to go, married my mother Honor, and set off
for the
Pacific. He remained in the Pacific,
with posts in Fiji, Tonga and Pitcairn Island as well as the Gilberts,
for most
of the next 20 years, apart from an unhappy spell in Zanzibar. At the end of 1948 he joined the newly
established South Pacific Commission, and within a year became head of
the
Social Development branch. He set up his
office in Sydney, which is how we became Australians.
In 1957 he joined the Department of Pacific
History at the Australian National University, which is how we became
Canberrans. After retirement in 1970 he
continued to
write and publish, and he and Honor worked together to produce a series
of
books on the Gilbert Islands, now Kiribati.
Honor died in 2001, ending a remarkable partnership of over 71
years. His final years were spent at
Jindalee Nursing Home, as scholar-in-residence, where his health
improved with
the care he received, and he became a much-loved person, despite
constant, and
successful, attempts to escape.
What should we remember him for?
Robert Langdon, in a short biography of Harry
published in 1978, called him ‘shy proconsul and dedicated Pacific
historian’.
Doug Munro, in a yet-to-be published manuscript, describes him as
‘loyal
lieutenant and incurable romantic.’ His
biographer, Susan Woodburn, writes of his role as an academic as that
of
‘informant, model and mentor’. Many who
sent messages on Harry’s 100th birthday confirmed these
qualities.
He was morally strong, and I think that this,
along
with my mother’s influence, preserved him from the pitfalls and traps
of
colonial life.
In his professional life he was unfailingly
helpful. He spent a lot of his time as
an academic and in retirement helping students, colleagues and anyone
with
advice, information on sources and comments on their manuscripts. He was constantly answering correspondence
from all over the world, all of it neatly filed and preserved. On the occasion of his 100th
birthday one former student wrote that ‘you were the most generous of
supervisors’; another of the ‘time and effort you took, gently
encouraging me
to persist and expand’; and yet another that ‘I have never stopped
thanking you
in my inner spirit for your confidence in me.’
He was modest.
He was quietly proud of his achievements, but didn’t expect
anyone to
take much notice of them. Yet they were
recognised, by the comments I have just read, by the book of essays in
his
honour edited by Niel Gunson, by an award by the Government of
Kiribati, and by
the fact that he is still remembered in those islands for his work as a
preserver and publisher of the record of its history and culture.
He was a product of the Enlightenment,
believing in
the power of reason and rational thought.
At various times he claimed to be (but you could never be quite
sure) an
atheist, an agnostic, and a humanist.
But he was also drawn to both Unitarianism, for its theological
simplicity, and high church Anglicanism, for its pomp and ceremony. In his last years he clearly had a faith,
which he carried with quiet conviction, and enjoyed the regular
Anglican
services at Jindalee.
In his attitudes and actions he was
progressive. At university he joined the
Freedom group of
the British Anarchists, from which he only resigned in his eighties. In the Pacific he supported the interests of
the indigenous peoples. He sometimes
clashed with the missions and his superiors over his defence of
Gilbertese
custom. He once told me that he thought
his greatest contribution to human happiness had been to remove some
130
draconian regulations, inspired by the missions, the traders and
British
officials, from Gilbertese law. In his
research into Pacific history, to which he dedicated the second half of
his
life, he wanted to tell the story of the Pacific peoples, which he
called
mainstream history, and not that of the colonial powers.
He was definitely a romantic.
He was drawn to the Central Pacific by the
literature of Robert Louis Stevenson, and wrote that his and Honor’s
first view
of a coral atoll was ‘a picture of such beauty, peace and solitude that
it has
been engraved on our memory ever since.
We were captivated once and forever by the magic of the South
Sea
Islands.’ The other side of this was
that he wasn’t very practical, as my mother could have told you at some
length.
But in historical research he was
very
practical, a true craftsman. He was
passionate about locating and preserving the source materials of
Pacific
History. He knew where to find
information on the most obscure topics, and loved filling in the
details of
historical events, rather like in a crossword puzzle.
His favourite amongst his publications, Slavers
in Paradise, was described by the reviewers as ‘a masterpiece’ and
‘a gem’,
and involved detective work in three languages and many archives. He
combined
this meticulous scholarship with an equal determination to tell a good
story in
good prose. For Harry history was
literature. Here is an example, drawn to
my attention by his grandson Richard. It
comes at the end of his essay on beachcombers and castaways, Europeans
who
lived unprotected and uncertain lives in the islands long before the
colonial
period:
…in
the beachcomber era … there was as yet no trader to interfere with the
economic
life of the islander, no missionary dedicated to changing his religion,
no
planter demanding his labour, and no government official his freedom. There was only the beachcomber and the
castaway to represent what was to come; often drunken, profligate and
quarrelsome, but still essentially human and tolerant, and wishing to
change no
one.
Finally, we should remember him for his sense
of
humour. You could always get a smile and
a laugh from him, and he rejoiced in the occasional absurdity of life,
whether
in the middle of the Pacific, in a university or in a nursing home. I came across this passage in his biography
in which a colleague, describing Harry’s South Pacific Commission
office in
Sydney in the 1950s, wrote:
Maude
directed and guided us by suggestion, discussion and laughter; a sense
of
humour was essential in that office, together with a slightly mad
streak and a
willingness to work peculiar hours.
We
should not regret his passing. He lived
a full and productive life. He achieved
just about everything he wanted to achieve, and lived to see his work
recognised by others. He had a
successful and lasting marriage, though not one without its ups and
downs. He lived to enjoy his 100th
birthday, and the messages he received.
But he was ready to move on. He
once complained to his grandson James about his inability to die (as he
did to
many of you here) and said that it was like being at a bus stop. Everyone else seemed to catch the bus but he
kept missing it. This time he caught the
bus.
Alaric Maude
Adelaide
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