1920: Alexander Turnbull Library Nationalised

July 13, 2020

By AHNZ

The Alexander Turnbull Library still forms the nucleus of New Zealand’s National Library.

It was today in history, 13 July 1920, that The State officially nationalised Turnbull’s extensive collection. However, it was on June 28th, 1920, that the Government (William Massey’s Reform Government) opened the library to the public. That was exactly 2 years since Turnbull’s death.

Who was Alexander Turnbull and how did The State get their hands on his library?

The Howard Hughes of New Zealand

Alexander Turnbull (1868-1918) had a lot in common with the famous Howard Huges. Maybe one day a Tommy Lee Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Warren Beatty will make a movie about Turnbull as they each did for Huges. Both men were heirs to great fortune build by their fathers, both were adventurous and dynamic in youth, both decayed into eccentric shut-ins.

“After returning home in 1892, he settled somewhat uneasily in the sleepy Victorian capital, a partner in W&G Turnbull, his father’s successful firm of general merchants.

“Turnbull’s birthplace was booming, and this continued into the 1920s. The capital stood confident, supreme, even opulent, as the country’s commercial, financial, administrative and, indeed, actual crossroads – a hub for coastal and overseas shipping and for interisland and main-trunk train travel.”- How millionaire book collector Alexander Turnbull fell from grace, Redmer Yska; Noted¹

Turnbull’s place in the family birth-order was as number 5 son. He was a spare, named after his mother (Alexandrina) not his father (Walter.) Alex was raised and groomed and educated for sailing, books, and leisure and at these he excelled. Like his elder brothers, the young New Zealander returned to the heart of Britain for his tertiary education. However, the Family System took a bad hit when the middle brothers both drowned at about the age of ten². When he came of age, Alexander had the weight of father’s business empire upon him but I don’t think a spare son’s temperament was suited for all that money and responsibility.

By his late thirties, Turnbull started to unwind. Dad was dead. The millionaire introvert left sailing and society behind, concentrating on piling up his library. Instead of adding a library to his home, Alex built built Turnbull House, Bowen Street, Wellington, primarily as a private library, and added his residence to his library. Life now consisted of hoarding up piles of books and snorting large quanties of cocaine. The W&G Turnbull slipped through his fingers, the shut-in became bankrupt, depressed, drawing ever more inward. By age 49, dead.

“Beautifully kept by a horrible looking recluse of about 40 who is the worst of drug takers. Archdeacon Herbert Williams, his greatest friend, tells me that he has at times consumed £5 of cocaine per week. It seems incredible. Charged up to the firm, this was an excuse not unnaturally leading to the retirement from business of this drug fiend. Turnbull is an ill favoured, evil smelling man who takes no exercise but lives on drugs and gives up all his time to the hobby of collecting books on NZ and secondarily on English literature.”- GE Morrison diary; Yska, ibid

Gillian Ryan, a staffer at the Turnbull Library (still based in the original brick building in the late 1960s), had long regaled colleagues with her father-in-law’s tales of wild cocaine consumption by their most eminent and utterly respectable founder.”- Ref. Yska, ibid

Alexander Turnbull spent the 1910s being consumed by his demons, keeping them at bay with cocaine and the transitory thrill of acquiring new literature. Perhaps Turnbull House (est 1916) gave him something to live for. But there are no external solutions to inner problems. Wellington society would have known about the tormented man wasting away. Massey’s Reform Government would have known the character of their benefactor. All would have thought they could receive his gifts and let the unspoken ignominy fade into forgotten memory.

It’s embarrassing to The State that Turnbull was a crackhead so State history hasn’t told the truth. ‘Turnbullians’, as some Government librarians fondly call themselves, celebrated the centenary of the State nationalisation of the library with Turnbull moustache cookies on a silver platter. Probably they don’t know that this was the moustache under which passed so much white powder.

Not to say that Turnbull’s legacy should be mocked or expunged! It should be reclaimed and understood with all the true details about the man and his pain. We don’t need to lie or keep history secret in order to remember and be thankful to Alexander Turnbull. However, I doubt The State has the maturity to do this. In time they’ll probably expunge Turnbull’s name. Everything will just be Government archives. What’s become, for example, of the once prestigious Leys Institute and its resources which Government took over and broke up and closed up and will now, probably, demolish?

Keep it Private

When New Zealanders bequest land and property to The State they mistaking think they’re making it safe forever. Truckloads of priceless memories, papers and artefacts, are donated to government organisations every week. The State also taxes us to buy up or confiscate yet more objects and to house them but also to dump and incinerate them³.

“I bequeath to His Majesty the King all my Library….I desire…the contents of the Library shall not be permitted to be lent out it being my desire that the contents of the Library comprising in this bequest shall be kept together as the nucleus of a New Zealand National Collection…in the City of Wellington”- Turnbull’s last will; Ref. Probate of Turnbull; Archives NZ; Flickr

“The building housing New Zealand’s taonga is draughty, dripping wastewater, has asbestos issues and needs to be monitored round-the-clock.”- New Zealand’s taonga in with wastewater leaks and asbestos; Stuff 2020

“Doubts remain about the future of Archives New Zealand while its links with Internal Affairs are unclear…”There has been a cloud cast ever since Archives [NZ] was reabsorbed into Internal Affairs,”- Doubts about Archives NZ’s future; ODT 2019

As more private collections are nationalised they increasingly become buried in the archives, lost from public view. Apart from front-end library staff (not very bright) it must be said though that government research librarians and museum staff are able and free with quality assistance in my experience. Yet one day the State will fall and all these eggs in one basket are going to be lost forever.

Keep it local, keep it private.

—

1 You’ll have a hard time reading this old article. The Listener (aka Noted) was killed off by the COVID Hysteria of 2020

2 Burke’s Colonial Gentry; Wikipedia

3 Barbarians At the Gates: The systematic looting of our galleries archives and libraries; Ben’s World

Image ref. Turnbull House; blog.doc.govt.nz

Image ref. Turnbull with guests; Alexander Turnbull Library; Te Ara

Image ref. Mustache biscuits; National Library NZ; Facebook

Note: “A man who believed that the writings of the Englishman John Milton in the seventeenth century were as relevant to New Zealanders as the written records of our past in New Zealand”

Milton’s works and 600,000 others are now in danger of being disposed of by the National Library on the grounds of their not being relevant and not being published in New Zealand; Ref. National Library withdraws 600,000 books from its collection; RNZ (2019)

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