"In Bunny's Bush", shot by Robert Grant (second from right), 1888.
Books
A man’s man’s world
by Paul Diamond
Chris Brickell makes some surprising discoveries in a book that redresses historians’ scanty treatment of New Zealand homosexuality.
Mateship is an ambiguous aspect of New Zealand masculinity. The complex relationship between sex, affection, friendship and love is confronted at the outset of Chris Brickell’s first book. “When in our history has mateship become erotic; what have been the complex relationships between eros and affection; when has sexual desire suggested a particular identity, and when has it not?”
The absence of a comprehensive history of homosexuality has been a significant absence in New Zealand scholarship. Although it’s long been a truism to say that the love that once dared not speak its name now won’t shut up, exactly how we got to this point is less clear cut.
Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand goes a long way towards illuminating “the history of love and sex between men in New Zealand”, from the early years of British colonisation up to the gay liberation movement.
Brickell, a senior lecturer in Gender Studies at Otago University, has written a book refreshingly free of academic jargon while still embracing the complexity of the topic.
Arguing that “in an historical sense the modern gay man was made not born”, Brickell sets out to trace “the means of his making” by examining the documentary traces left behind by each generation.
He has scoured archives and personal collections and come up with some real gems, illustrating a hidden subculture of meeting places spread across the country and all social classes. One of his most significant sources is the records of court cases where men fell foul of the law prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1986. Brickell is one of the few researchers granted access to these little-studied records, and his analysis, together with newspaper reports and other sources, creates a vivid picture of homosexual life.
We read about characters like Trevor Kilty, who ran stables on the outskirts of Taihape, popular with visiting men who would often stay the night. As Brickell writes: “Kilty was perfectly open about what he wanted. He used to sit on a bench in the stables, hold his erect penis through his trousers, and declare his wish to sleep with one or other of the men present. Often his mates were just as keen.” In 1928, Kilty and another man were arrested after Taihape’s police constable watched them through a stable window for an hour.
Surprisingly, this is the only example Brickell has been able to find where a policeman burst in on two men in a private place without a complaint from a third party.
This was thought to have been what happened when writer Frank Sargeson (then known as Norris Davey) was arrested following a homosexual encounter with Leonard Hollobon in 1929. This version of the story appeared in Michael King’s 1995 biography of Sargeson and was based on an interview with Sargeson’s elderly sister. However, court records uncovered by Brickell tell a different story. Hollobon went to the police after he was approached by an unknown blackmailer, and it was Hollobon who gave Sargeson’s name and address to the police.
According to Brickell, this retelling of the Davey/Hollobon story changes our understanding of police activity in the first half of the 20th century: “The available body of court evidence suggests there was very little – if anything – in the way of systematic police surveillance during these decades.”
Another prominent case (also featured in King’s Penguin History of New Zealand) was “the Wanganui Affair”, in which the poet Walter D’Arcy Cresswell was shot and wounded in 1920 by the Mayor of Wanganui, Charles Mackay. It was alleged Mackay (who’d previously sought treatment for his homosexuality) had made sexual advances to Cresswell, who then attempted to blackmail the mayor. Given that Cresswell was himself homosexual, the incident prompts the question posed by the writer Peter Wells: why would one homosexual man blackmail another?
Indeed, this and many of the other court cases featured in this book suggest that decriminalisation was necessary to protect homosexual men from each other, as well as others in the community.
Photographs are another key source in this lavishly illustrated book. Many come from personal collections, illustrating lives that were by necessity hidden before law reform. Some, like the intriguing cover image of Messrs Greem and Collie with their dog, are ambiguous. Brickell is careful to point out that some of the images will be illustrative and not necessarily indicative of the sitters’ sexual orientation. Other images are less ambiguous, like those from the collection of Robert Gant, who came to New Zealand from Britain in 1876, and was apprenticed to a Wellington chemist. He joined the local theatre and specialised in female roles, using the pseudonym Cecil Riverton. While some of Gant’s images are undeniably homoerotic, others aren’t, suggesting he and his various male partners were able to coexist with others in the communities they lived in.
It’s a theme echoed through the book, implying that men who loved other men were able to create fulfilling lives well before law reform. As Brickell notes, “While stories of social progress hold a distinct appeal for modern readers, isolation and misery were not inevitable characteristics of New Zealanders’ experiences in earlier times.”
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