Minutes of the 91st Annual General Meeting of the Van Riebeeck Society for the Publication of Southern African Historical Documents (VRS) held at the Centre for the Book, Victoria Street, Cape Town on Thursday 29th October 2009 at 1800.
1. Welcome and apologies
The Chairman, Prof Howard Phillips, welcomed the approximately 60 members present. Apologies were recorded from the names on the attached list and the floor.
2. In Memoriam
Members stood for a moment’s silence whilst the Chairman read out the list of members who had died since the previous AGM (list attached).
3. Confirmation of the Minutes of the 90th AGM held on 29th October 2008.
The minutes had been displayed on the VRS website, sent by email to those members who could receive them that way and copies were available at the AGM as well. Arne Schaefer proposed that the minutes be accepted and Paul Mills seconded him. Those present agreed.
4. Matters arising from the minutes
Cora Ovens had received a communication from Mr Derksen that his suggestion in point 6 should read “that more manuscripts from further up Africa should be sought and published by the Van Riebeeck Society, which should not only cover Southern Africa”.
5. Treasurer’s Report
Mr Piet Westra reported that, as the Auditors’ Report for 2008 showed, the Society’s finances were healthy, notwithstanding the decline in world markets. Mr Westra explained the Report page by page. Under the heading “Equipment” there was nothing at present, but since a new computer would be acquired shortly, this would be entered in next year’s financial report and written off over the next few years.
A question was asked as to why the Bradlow Memoirs were not included in the VRS stock but listed separately. It was also queried why there was a difference between printing costs and sales income.
Acceptance of the report was proposed by Ken Evans and seconded by Elizabeth van Heyningen.
6. Chairman’s annual report (attached)
During question time after the annual report had been given, Mr Westra reported that he had discussed the binding and appearance of our blue paper-bound reprint series with the printer. Apparently the tight binding was the result of the machine application of glue. Hand-glueing might result in a volume easier to open out and to lay flat. Mr Vigne also objected to the reprints’ format, but it was explained once more that members fortunate to have original first editions would not wish to see these devalued by handsome reprint versions. Mr Pitlo suggested that some of the 10 000 volumes in the congested store room be offered at special prices to members. Chris van der Merwe asked for a round of applause for Professor Phillips’s inspiring leadership. Ann Gray proposed that the annual report be accepted, which Piet Westra seconded. This proposal was approved by the meeting.
7. Any Other Business
None.
Signed
Chairman……………………………………….
Date…………………………………………….
Apologies
Tanya Barben
Piet Aucamp
Robert van Zyl
Pieter Flint
Mick Leary (UK)
Digby Sales
Dr J T Mets & Mrs T Mets
Piet Vorster
Deon Viljoen
Prof B L Penzhorn
Ann Murray
Esme Bull
A J de Villiers
Horst Kleinschmidt
Anton Ehlers
Chris & Marica Otto
Drs DAE & RM Pelteret
Ethleen Lastovica
Jeremy Lawrence
Betty Davenport
Robert & Sandy Shell
In Memoriam 2009
Mr M H Visser
Mr P L J Van Rensburg
Mrs J D Middelman
Mr H.J. Hustler
Mrs E B Saunders
Mr H F van der Westhuyzen
Launch of Vol. 40, Alan Paton: Selected Letters, 2009
Prof Howard Phillips welcomed the audience (augmented to about 75 by now) and remarked that Paton, a Natalian through and through, had no connection with Cape Town, hence the launch was being held at the Centre for the Book. It was a first for the VRS to publish a volume set in the very recent past and the product of a man prominent in literature rather than in history. It was another first for the VRS in that the actual launch of vol. 40 had taken place in Pietermaritzburg on 17th July 2009, in the presence of him (Prof Phillips), the vice-chair Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen and the editor, Peter Alexander. The present occasion was the second launch, in Cape Town, but we were fortunate to have present two speakers who knew Alan Paton personally: Alan Paton’s elder son, Dr David Paton and Tony Morphet, a Liberal Party colleague of Paton and an old friend of his son Jonathan, to whom several of Paton’s letters had been addressed.
Dr David Paton briefly spoke on his first meeting with the VRS at the conference in Pietermaritzburg and that he had dropped history and geography at school in favour of physics and chemistry, which helped him in his profession of radiologist. However, history and geography have become avenues of escapism for him. He said that what amazed him about the book of his father’s letters was the sheer number of letters in existence – he himself had perhaps written one to two thousand letters in his lifetime but doubted whether anyone had ever kept them! The letters themselves fascinated him, especially those to his mother, to J H Hofmeyr and to Pixie Benson (of whom he had never heard until after Alan Paton’s death) and the range of different people to whom they are addressed. He concluded by saying that the VRS is to be congratulated on the production of this book and for getting Peter Alexander to edit it so well.
Prof Phillips thanked Dr Paton for gracing the launch with his presence. Since Dr Paton had been presented with a copy of the book at the Pietermaritzburg launch, he would like to present a copy to the next Paton generation in the shape of Dr Paton’s daughter, Carol, which he did. He then introduced the next speaker, Tony Morphet, who delivered the following speech:
The Launch of the Selected Letters of Alan Paton
Tony Morphet
I count it as an honour to have been invited to participate in this launching of a very special book by the Van Riebeeck Society. I take pride and pleasure in the occasion, and, as I read through the letters I recalled very similar feelings when I was invited by Mr P to act as a reader of the Clayton manuscript back in 1972. Mr P was always how I referred to him - both directly and to his family. I was never close enough to call him Alan but to stay with Mr Paton seemed ridiculous.
I speak for the general public and for Paton’s friends in congratulating the Society, its Chairman Howard Phillips, and its chosen editor, Peter Alexander, on producing a superb volume. There could not have been a better choice of editor. Peter Alexander knows more than anyone alive about Paton’s life and work as his biography so eloquently shows, and the present volume is a shining example of impeccable scholarship and balanced judgement. It cannot have been an easy or a quick task. He tells us that the 344 letters he has chosen to present are drawn from an available collection of 2,550 known letters - and there are doubtless many more uncollected, a few of which are in my desk drawer. Moreover, while the early correspondence is slight and could be selected more or less in its entirety, in the later years ‘ruthless selection’ as the editor describes it, became the order of the day in dealing with the huge volume of letters Paton addressed to an extraordinary range of people. In discussing his policy for the selection Alexander speaks of his intention of developing a ‘narrative biography’; of producing ‘the autobiography which Paton did not know he had written’. In pursuing this purpose he makes a decisive creative move by dividing the material into five parts. Each brings into deep focus different times and concerns in the career.
I use the phrase ‘deep focus’ to suggest the way in which the letter selection both captures the personalities and circumstances of the day while it also brings up the deeper themes then unfolding in the life. This is first visible in the early years in the letters between the university ‘chum’' (that seems the only appropriate word) Reg Pearse, Railton Dent, Neville Nuttall and others, not forgetting the unlikely but crucial presence, of J H Hofmeyr. The surface tone is light and jocular, the activities very like the English Georgian poets of the same period - testing ideas, exchanging verses, going on long country walks and sharing a playful homoerotic camaraderie. More deeply, though, the correspondents are taking the measure of the world, of each other and of themselves. In Paton’s case the measure is clear and strong. He knows that he is a man of gifts and that he is extremely ambitious. What he wants is a position in which he can match both gifts and ambitions in meaningful work. School-teaching in Natal is too limited in scope and he looks to Hofmeyr for help. He follows Hofmeyr’s political career from a distance seeing in him the best hope for the country, as well as for himself and letter after letter expresses his support and admiration for his mentor’s liberal political stance. At a point he entertains thoughts of joining Hofmeyr in politics and perhaps even succeeding him as Prime Minister but Hofmeyr ignores the address. It is only after the publication and great success of Cry the Beloved Country that Paton is able to break the dependence and become his own man.
The second section on Cry the Beloved Country employs a similar form of deep focus. The bulk of the letters are written home to his wife Dorrie and his two sons and the detail is almost overwhelming in its particularity. Paton mixes a travelogue of all the places and people he has visited on his tour of Europe and America with references back to Diepkloof and to penal reform. Only occasionally is there a reference to ‘the book that I am writing’ though that is where his creative energy is flowing in a deep current. The book was written between October and December 1946 and by February 1947 it was in the enthusiastic hands of Maxwell Perkins, the best editor of the best publishing house of its time in the world - Scribners. It is an astonishing conclusion to a period of intense creative activity carried out at the edge of a very busy schedule. The book today is still the best-remembered work of South African fiction.
The section in the letters which follows is titled ‘The Politics of Innocence’. In case you are puzzled by the phrase I must accept responsibility for coining it in an article I wrote in 1983. It seemed to me then to catch something of the riddle of the Liberal Party and of Paton’s role in it. In a speech to the remnants of the Party in 1985 he referred to the phrase, admitted that it was clever, but dismissed it with his familiar ironic sniff saying that it couldn't possibly apply to him but that Peter Brown on the other hand was innocence itself.
The section cannot have been easy for Alexander to compose. For one thing the volume of correspondence had grown enormously and for another the deeper themes are painfully tangled and only gradually resolved. There are several cross tensions. Paton wanted to continue writing but found it increasingly difficult to recapture the ‘compulsive energy’ which had created Cry the Beloved Country. On the other hand in a steadily darkening political scene he felt called upon to engage in the issues of the day. In addition there was the tension of his relationship with Mary Benson who was in love with Paton. Eventually persuaded to accept the national chairmanship of the Liberal Party he struggled to maintain his writing - notably in the Hofmeyr and Clayton biographies. But the tensions remained. His struggle for clarity in this situation deepened his sense of moral authority and strengthened the power of his language in both speech and writing. He drew heavily on his Christian commitment in resolving moral questions and he put his love of words under stern discipline.
Paton could be fierce and fast in any debate and he revelled in winning any dispute whether on the platform or on the page. In Liberal meetings he took a special pleasure in taunting the Security Police inevitably seated in the back row of the hall. He also took a great deal of innocent pleasure in challenging his friends’ understanding of the meaning of words by submitting them to the test of at least four different dictionaries. This ritual trial by dictionary could take place over dinner or over the telephone at any time of day. I have to own to a regular humiliation as my interpretations were inevitably off the mark.
Several letters in the period carry a powerful critical thrust and cause pain to their recipients as well as to the writer. A typical case is the set of letters to Canon John Collins and his wife Diana which deal with the Defence and Aid Fund administered by Collins from London. Paton was upset that the fund directed its resources to the ANC but gave nothing to the Liberals who had suffered banning and detention but he was outraged when Collins at the UN plainly said that the fund was supporting the violent underground struggle. As a consequence, in a devastating blow, and to Paton’s fury and despair, the fund was banned in SA. Speaking of letters that wound it is perhaps a pity that the editor chose to omit some which carried what he calls ‘sharp remarks about living people, some of them politically powerful in the new South Africa’. The problem he foresaw, and was keen to avoid, was legal but it would have been a special interest to see what the true liberal voice had to say about the currently ‘politically powerful’ people.
In the final chapter titled ‘Stormy Twilight’ the political pressure intensifies through the 80s as radical positions push liberals into the background. Some of the most interesting letters of the period are to Gatsha Buthelezi who had been a friend of Paton’s for many years. All but one of these are written in sombre and respectful prose as, in a tone of ambassadorial gravity, they explore Buthelezi's position and responsibilities – but the one that differs is an abject apology following a sharp rebuke from the Chief after Paton had written that his speeches were too long.
In the later years Paton moved toward a more defensive and conservative position fearing that the drive toward violent confrontation would lead to catastrophe. Afrikaners, he thought, would rather have the country in ruins than yield their power so he looked toward some form of federalism as a path forward. On this apparent change of position he found himself challenged by many, including John Aitchison, a radical liberal long associated with Paton, and himself banned for ten years. Paton replied in a waspish letter which includes the sentences ‘There is nothing I want less than to be regarded as a representative of radical thought. I am a liberal and not a radical.’
Paton may have been proved wrong about the Afrikaners but there is a grand irony in the fact that it was the discourse in which he had crafted and sustained his work, in both fiction and non-fiction, over a lifetime, which set the founding terms for the constitution which saved them and everyone else. In fact it might be said that his work had kept the discourse honest through bad times. Radicals and conservatives alike, we are all liberals now.
The letters are a testament to an exemplary career – as much in political engagement as in literary production. They allow us to see a deep mind and an energetic career unfolding from within, in real time, and they give us the full measure of his achievement.
The Society can be very proud of its work in this book.
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Prof Phillips thanked Tony Morphet and said Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen would give the official vote of thanks. However, before that, one of the guests of honour, Jolyon Nuttall, shared with the audience an exchange of lighthearted verse between his father, Alan Paton’s friend Neville Nuttall, and Alan Paton on the subject of the phalarope, which forms part of the title of Paton’s second novel, Too Late the Phalarope. Here is the explanatory note by Jolyon Nuttall and the poems:
The poems below were exchanged between Alan Paton and my father Neville Nuttall in 1951 after a small controversy arose over the subject of the title of his soon-to-be-published second novel, namely the phalarope. The phalarope is a sea-bird that nests inland. Doubts were expressed, however, that it had ever been seen in the town of Ermelo in the then Eastern Transvaal where Too Late the Phalarope was set. My father's poem was written first and Alan Paton responded on the back of a postcard which I still have in my possession. Neither poem had ever been published until they appeared in 2001in my book A Literary Friendship which chronicled their lifelong relationship.
My father wrote:
I love the gentle phalarope,
I love him more and more,
Putting the penguin in his place
Upon the sanding shore.
I love his quick and nimble wit,
His quirk of humour rare
But, most of all, his will to roam,
To travel anywhere.
He'll go to any bloody place
On any bloody date
And, always willing to oblige,
He'll even come too late.
So trust the phalarope, my son,
And let him come and go
And all the world will chant his name
And never
even
know.
To which ASP responded:
Once in the Tavern of the Seas
The penguin and the phalarope
Did meet and of their joy imbibe
Some real Cape Province dope.
Thus quite unusually they spoke
With forthright tongues and free,
And said what never they'd have said
Just ordinarily.
I'm sick and tired, the penguin said,
Of ice and snow, in future
I'm spending all my winter vacs
Up there at Cape St Lucia.
And then the gentle phalarope,
He too was sick of ice and snow
And thought he’d spend his winter vac
Up there at Ermelo.
At Ermelo, the penguin said,
My God you go too far,
My God we are both ocean birds
Let's stick to what we are.
And who are you, said phalarope,
My God sir, who are you?
I'll go to any bloody place
To make that book come true.
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Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen then rose and thanked both speakers. The letters in volume 40 are of value in that they give an intimate understanding of the issues of the day and provide insight into that complex and humane man, Alan Paton.