It’s a long time since I’ve had that honour — many years, in fact.
My younger daughter had the flu and for three days I took over her ODT delivery round. Trudging through the streets at 6am in winter made me realise what a debt we owe to the ODT delivery boys and girls. My daughter still owes me for my three days’ work, incidentally.
But those cold morning treks were the start of an amazing journalistic career. Just days later I was asked to pen the first of the Nothing Too Serious columns. Talk about a meteoric rise! My skill in putting papers in letter boxes must have been noticed.
My latest paper-delivering effort will be on Friday for the University of Otago Centre for the Book who are running a symposium called "Books and the City".
I’ve never been to a symposium before so it’s rather exciting. I’ve been to conferences, of course, but they are simply designed to provide free travel, food and accommodation while you attend talks or miss them, as it suits. Symposiums (I’d love to use "symposia" but that smacks of pretentiousness) are designed to facilitate in-depth explorations of ideas on a specific topic, encouraging intellectual discourse. At Greek symposiums there was much drinking and a banquet. I’ve studied this week’s programme and there’s no mention of a bar and "you are welcome to bring lunch with you" hints at no banquet.
My topic is "Rogues and Rascals in Dunedin’s Victorian Book World" and I’m wondering if any intellectual discourse will emerge from that. Certainly, all the other papers (and there are about 20 of them) will encourage some pretty heady debate and anyone with an interest in books is in for a treat. I suspect that my less than serious topic may be there for light relief.
Athenaeum librarian in 1879 Andrew Cummins was a rascal. He embezzled Athenaeum funds and then set fire to the library. At his trial the judge asked if the library held any inflammatory literature and got a laugh while Cummins got a year’s hard labour. In fact, he had it easy, being appointed prison librarian.
There was William Southan who wrote what some regard as New Zealand’s worst novel and spent time in an Australian jail for shady share dealing but was going straight when he wrote The Two Lawyers. He was a sporting publican in Oamaru and later one of Sydney’s finest sauce makers.
William Baldwin (he of the steepest street) just gets in. He wrote a good novel, Tom Hungerford, which tells a goldfields adventure with style but I’ve labelled him a "rascal" as, mysteriously, four of the houses he lived in burned to the ground which raised some, probably singed, eyebrows. He was also an MP which must qualify him as a "rogue".
"Rogue" is a fair description of lawyer John Barr. He wrote under the name Gilbert Rock and produced a gruesome mystery set at St Clair Beach, By Passion Driven.
He invested in various enterprises using his clients’ money but just before being arrested he fled to London where he mixed with the minor aristocracy and never came back.
In fact, he was a con man whose own story would make a sensational, sometimes farcical, but deeply tragic novel.
In 1887 he was a reporter on Dunedin’s Evening Standard and then edited a very good literary magazine Zealandia and a Liberal-leaning newspaper The Globe.
His reputation as a rogue is based on his leisure time activities.
After being suspected of setting fire to his paper’s office he joined a touring theatrical company, ending up in Australia.
He returned under an assumed name as publicist for a clairvoyant, Madame Amanda, who read palms in her Dowling St apartment.
Kitchen had changed his appearance but not well enough to fool the ODT reporters when he called in to get some publicity.
He ended up committing suicide in Sydney.
That’s only an outline of William Kitchen’s extraordinary life.
He’s worth a full biography and maybe my paper will inspire a member of the audience to go to it.
Even if not, the Centre for the Book is one of the many jewels in the crown of the University of Otago and the symposium proves it.
■Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
