Timaru, on the east coast of the South Island, is built around its port and its sheltered beach, Caroline Bay. The bay was developed as an Italian-style lido: palms and shrubs lend it a Mediterranean appearance, tea-rooms, ice cream stands, a hot water swimming pool, and a sound shell are all linked to the town centre by an Italian-style piazza. On the cliff top above the bay the rows of houses built from the local volcanic bluestone in Victorian and Edwardian styles are reminiscent of southern English beach resorts. The city has a genteel atmosphere and promotes itself as “the Riviera of the South”.
Beverley Hill rises gently behind Caroline Bay. At the end of the First World War George and Jessie Steven retired to 94 Beverley Road at the top of the street. Their son, Jack, a lawyer, bought a house two doors away when he married Bessie Waddell in 1925. My mother, Anne, was born here on 1 December 1928. When the widowed Jessie Steven died in 1934 Jack sold their house and the family moved into number 94. Beverley Road had – and still has – a well-to-do appearance: solid brick houses, lovely trees and gardens, and tennis courts in a small sheltered valley.
Anne attended a nearby kindergarten, just a short walk up Beverley Rise. During the great depression pre-school education would have been unusual and unaffordable for many families. She learned to read there, so that when she started her primary schooling at Waimataitai School, she was placed in Primer 3, thereby skipping a full year of schooling. She was the youngest in her class throughout her primary and secondary schooling, which she thought “may not have benefited me socially”. This, along with being an only child, may have contributed to her shyness.
The family belonged to Chalmers Presbyterian church, where Jack was actively involved in the life and organisation of the parish. The family went to church on Sundays, both in the morning and the evening. Her father was a principled man. When Anne and the neighbours’ children made a guy for Guy Fawkes day and took it around the street asking for “a penny for the guy”, Jack made her give all the money back to the donors.
Domestic life revolved around midday and evening meals: both Jack and Anne came home from work and school in the middle of the day for lunch. Bessie had help from a young woman, Violet, with cooking and cleaning. This enabled her to indulge her passion for gardening; there was an extensive garden around the house at number 94. Jack played golf regularly and Bessie bowls: they both won club championships. Anne learned to play tennis on a neighbour’s grass court. In the evening Jack enjoyed listening to the radio or to music on a gramophone. The family also went away for a fortnight’s holiday each year to places like Kaiteriteri, Hanmer, Ashburton, or they camped by the Opihi river near Winchester.
From an early age Anne started to build up a collection of books at home. At that time there was very little children’s literature, but she kept her copies of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia, along with such classics as Black Beauty and Little Women for many years. Jack took her regularly to the municipal library. She also started to play the piano at the age of eight; as her skills developed, she found that classical music appealed to her – she played Schubert Impromptus, Bach and parts of Beethoven sonatas. When she moved on to Timaru Girls High School, she accompanied hymn singing at assemblies and took part in school concerts. Reading and music became life-long interests.
Her academic interests at secondary school lay in the arts and humanities. She was placed in the upper stream of students which enabled her to study both Latin and French, subjects that she excelled at. English and history were also strengths. Anne was an able student with an academic bent, taking after her father in this respect. At the end of 1945 she passed her final school examinations which granted admission to university. She had just turned 17 when she left Timaru for Dunedin to study at Otago University, where she lived in St Margaret’s College. Her close friends at school, Dorothy, Beverley, and Phyl, also went on to university; they remained life-long friends, still getting together on occasions over the next fifty years.
Christian faith was important in Anne’s life: she went to chapel at St Margaret’s College and to services at Knox Church. She also joined the Student Christian Movement where she met Don Glenny in 1946. At the beginning of 1948 they became engaged; she presented him with a copy of War and Peace and inscribed it to mark the occasion. At the same time as she was studying toward her arts degree, she completed a Certificate of Proficiency in Religious Knowledge through the University of London.
She finished her degree in 1948 and graduated the following May. In 1949 she worked in Timaru as a nurse aide, while Don was still finishing his degree in Dunedin. In 1950 they both worked in Timaru to save the money needed to get married and return to Dunedin for his theological training. At the end of that year, November 1950, they were married in Chalmers church and spent their honeymoon at a place well known to Anne – on the bank of the Opihi river near Winchester.
They arrived back in Dunedin at the start of 1951 and lived for three years in a solid brick mansion at 808 Cumberland Street with two other couples, the Reids and the Battersbys. The three husbands were all training to become Presbyterian ministers at Knox Theological College; the wives all turned the house into a nursery, each bearing their first child in 1952. Anne kept a written record of her firstborn: it shows that she was proud of her son and adapted readily to motherhood.
The family moved to the parish of Te Aroha in the Waikato in 1954. The manse was an aging Victorian villa that lacked all modern amenities: cooking was done on a coal range, there was no refrigerator, laundry was a manual task, and the house was draughty. Anne made do for a year until a new manse was built alongside the old villa. We moved about the time she gave birth to David in February 1955. My grandmother came from Patea to help in the house while Anne was in hospital.
While the parishioners in Te Aroha supported the minister’s wife, Anne did not have family support when bringing up her two young boys: her mother had died three years previously, Jack was in Timaru when not travelling overseas with his second wife (he was to die of cancer in 1958), and she had no brothers nor sisters. She began to experience bouts of depression during our pre-school years. She was very keen to have a daughter; in the years following David’s birth she had a number of miscarriages. She believed that the cause of these miscarriages lay in her variable hormonal levels, which affected her mood. When the family shifted to Christchurch in 1961, she consulted a specialist in hormone treatment. She became pregnant again and gave birth to Alison in November 1963. Anne was delighted when she brought her daughter home.
As well as raising a family, Anne had supported Don’s work since his ministry had begun in Te Aroha. Her role as the minister’s wife grew considerably during the decade they spent in Christchurch; the parish was situated in a fast-growing suburb and it became the largest parish in New Zealand by the end of the decade. Anne found herself acting as Don’s secretary: the phone seemed to ring endlessly, visitors dropped by frequently as the manse was alongside the church. A knock on the door when Don was not at home often led to long conversations listening to the woes of parishioners and locals. Don agreed to a request from a colleague in Otago that we look after a pregnant teenager for six months. The expectation that she provide leadership, for example among the women in the parish, grew; she did not enjoy the public face of the role which became increasingly onerous. At the same time, while she enjoyed singing, playing the piano and the organ, these church activities took time. She was nervous when called on at short notice to play the organ for a church service.
Only after I had left home for university and David and Alison were at school did she think about finding a job; she took on part-time work helping out in the local library. She liked the work; it gave her more control over her life. During the following decade she worked in libraries in Auckland and then Dunedin, and became certificated as a fully trained librarian in 1979. Increasingly, other occasions to involve herself beyond family and parish arose: in March 1973 she joined with the Christchurch Harmonic Society choir to sing in a performance of Mahler’s eighth symphony, “The Symphony of a Thousand”, to mark the opening of the new Christchurch Town Hall.
After a three year ministry in Auckland Don was appointed to a professorship at Knox College, so he, Anne and Alison shifted to Dunedin at the end of 1976. Anne found a librarian’s position at the Dunedin Public Library and later at the Hocken Library at the university. She had an affection for the city from her student years and was happy to return there. The teaching staff of the college and their partners formed a community of friends. They were members of the Opoho parish; she was happy to be relieved of the role of minister’s wife.
In 1981 Don was granted sabbatical leave by the university to take part in the summer school at Princeton University in the United States. This was the first occasion they travelled outside of New Zealand. As their undergraduate university studies had included French, Latin, Greek, philosophy and classical studies, they were both keen to spend time in Europe both on their way to and returning from Princeton. They flew to Rome and travelled overland through Geneva and Paris to London, then returned through Athens to Australia for a conference. Anne did the travel preparation and trip organisation; she was excited at the prospect of visiting these places, read about them carefully, and knew what she wanted to do and see at each stopover. They enjoyed this three month journey so much that they wanted to explore more of Europe for a longer time. The opportunity came in 1986 when I was teaching in Germany: they spent five months travelling and stayed with us in Offenburg for a fortnight.
They enjoyed travelling together, especially as Anne’s shyness still remained. At the end of 1983 Don decided to return to a parish instead of renewing his contract at Knox College. They were both invited to Hamilton to meet a congregation. Anne did not initially want to accompany him (though she later changed her mind). Don described the situation to me in a letter:
“I asked her to come weeks ago, but she turned me down flat… She always says no to these things at the beginning because she worries to the point of neurosis about meeting people she doesn’t know. She literally draws back in fear and lack of confidence about meeting people on a jaunt like this. I don’t help her much because I enjoy it and get into it with a will, but I can’t hold back and pretend to a reserve that I don’t have to accommodate Anne. So I suppose that I contribute to her lack of confidence as much as anything. I’m sorry about that and the only cure is to become a faceless grade 8 clerk in the public service, and I can’t do that, not even for Anne.”
Anne became a grandmother in 1988 with the birth of Robert and for a second time in 1989 when Helen was born. In that year Don retired from parish work and they decided to buy a house in Auckland to be near their two grandchildren, who became three with the arrival of Michael in 1991. Anne took an interest in their development, took the children off our hands when necessary, and helped out in the house when Alison went back to teaching in 1995.
Anne suffered quite severely at times from arthritis and rheumatism as she aged. She took medication for polymyalgia for several years. She continued to play the organ well into her eighties, belonged to the organists society, and attended concerts regularly. She was the organist at the parish church in Devonport until, eventually, her hands became so misshapen from arthritis that she was forced to stop. A group of her friends, all with a love of music, gathered regularly for “concerts”: each would in turn prepare a programme of recorded music which they introduced, listened to and later discussed over afternoon tea.
The last four years of her life, after Don’s death in 2012, become increasingly difficult for her. Various medical conditions, several falls and hospitalisation meant she was unable to live on her own. Most significantly she gradually lost sight and hearing, which caused her considerable distress because she was not able to read and listen to music easily. She still got pleasure, however, from keeping up with the family, particularly when her first great-grandchild, Milo, was born.
She died peacefully in palliative care in June 2016, aged 87.
