Floating the canoes of picnickers

With a lighter teaching load this intake I have the opportunity, in terms of time at least, to do some [hushed tones] primary research, that ephemeral pastime whose presence connects to my working life much in the same way that reading under the blankets with a torch in the dark, aged nine or ten, does to everyday daylight reading.

I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, revisiting some of the close readings I made of Robin Hyde’s fiction, almost twelve years ago now.  Through this, I happened on the below-quoted which I share with you, since it made me so laugh:

The city of Christchurch has only one ambition.  It likes to be thought more English than the English.  Its pioneers were almost exclusively church settlers, and brought with them English seedling trees, English architecture, English tradition.  The results, as applied to the originally flat and dreary expanse where Christchurch was built, are extremely charming and extremely insincere.  Stone arches cup a pale sunlight between their uplifted hands, Hagley Park sweeps brown and green over many acres, there is a sad little stream, only deep enough to drown an occasional stray cat and float the canoes of picnickers, which by suffering its smooth banks to be covered with the long green tresses of the weeping willow has become a scenic feature, and is dignified by the soubriquet of the River Avon.  If you want to be beloved among the citizens, you produce the more English than the English cliché. You can rest assured they will never even suspect that the overdoing of such a thing is an atrocity.

(Passport to Hell, 36)

My source is the 1986 edition of the volume; the original was published in 1936.  Viva RH!

Tagged as: Christchurch, Passport to Hell, research, Robin Hyde