Lesson learnt from a letter to a queen: never give up hope
Arecent column told of a trip to Naseby which reminded me that good pubs always have old pictures with full captions on their walls. At Naseby’s Royal Hotel there’s one labelled “D L T Larnach at Ashburton, 1950”. Surely, there must be a story behind it?
David Leon Thompson Larnach was born in Wellington in 1914 to David Alexander and Minnie Larnach and always claimed a connection with the family associated with Larnach’s Castle.
Could he have been the mysterious “Godfrey II” who enters the Larnach Castle story in 1945? The original Godfrey was Dunedin’s Louis John Godfrey, a skilled stone mason who worked on carvings at First Church and St Joseph’s Cathedral and then at the castle in the 1870s.
“Godfrey II” turned up at the castle in 1945 and offered to undertake restoration work at no charge. The owners since 1941, Beryl Stedman and her husband Gerry who was a squadron leader in charge of the RNZAF base at Taieri, had billeted about 80 American servicemen at the castle during the war. What they paid for the castle was a secret but a year earlier it had sold for £1250 (about $140,000 today). Beryl was impressed by Godfrey’s offer and he set about tidying up artworks and Oamaru stone carvings. He based himself at Port Chalmers where the mayor, Herbert Watson, supported Godfrey’s plan to establish an artists’ centre at the castle and was happy to see Godfrey take a party of local children across the harbour on the Elsie Evans to visit the castle.
The Evening Star reporter noted, “Godfrey II is large and bearded, pleasant to talk to, and with a considerable knowledge of his subject. If the budding artist were to forget the inevitable question of today, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and accept his invitation, he might find his time was very far from being wasted. Godfrey II is more than a competent craftsman, and a man besides, of some imagination. Artistic developments at the castle should be worth waiting for.”
But nothing came of Godfrey’s plans and he soon moved on to other things.
An Evening Star photograph from 1945 shows Godfrey II on the steps at Larnach Castle next to the statue of an eagle whose broken wing he planned to restore. Godfrey told the newspaper he had studied at art school in Melbourne and Sydney and during the war had spent five years in the education department dealing with the visual arts. The identity of Godfrey II was never revealed but the man in the photograph looks remarkably similar to the David Larnach who appears in that 1950 photograph now on the wall at Naseby’s Royal Hotel. The man in both photos has a small beard and a somewhat imperious pose.
David Larnach next crops up as a “Dunedin artist” in his Daimler motor car in a 1949 New Zealand Free Lance photograph. From then on, he seems to have become a travelling artist. The photograph in the Royal Hotel has him striking a pose beside a small truck on the tray of which is a large painting of Naseby showing both the town’s pubs and bearing the legend “For Your Next Holiday Visit Naseby”. The photo is taken in Burnett St, Ashburton, during a snowfall in August. The building in the background is the Ashburton Club, a thriving facility which boomed during Ashburton’s nolicence days.
Larnach had obviously visited Naseby and seemed to be drifting around the South Island. In 1956 he was in Christchurch decorating a car which was taking part in a reliability trial.
By 1958 he was living in Oamaru and on a visit to Timaru in February he was arrested and charged with “being a rogue and a vagabond in that he frequented a public place with felonious intent”.
What felony was envisaged we are not told. In court he was described as “a commercial artist, aged 44, of Oamaru” and he was found guilty and sentenced to three months in prison.
Probably his prison time was spent in Christchurch and later in 1959 he painted a mural of the approach to Larnach Castle in a Christchurch hotel.
David Larnach is seen no more in newspaper reports and his death came at the age of 68 in Dunedin (one report said Auckland) in 1982. Old newspapers have supplied an outline of a colourful and talented man of some charm and a touch of roguery. Maybe there are readers who remember him and know more of his story?
MY mother said we should go and show our respects, after what she had done for us. It would mean a whole day of travelling by public transport, hours of queuing. We could not really afford it either, when every penny counted, but she was right, we should.
In 1951, I was a 12 yearold, living with my mother and 2yearold brother in a tworoomed flat at the top of an old house in Hove, Sussex. My stepfather was in a sanatorium, being treated for tuberculosis that had developed from lung damage he had sustained as a prisoner of war. The rent took much of our very limited budget and I acted as a surrogate father, helping run the household before and after school, while my mother worked as a hotel receptionist to make ends meet. My little brother was cared for during the day by supportive neighbours.
My mother’s one goal was to be granted a council house on one of the estates that were springing up around Greater London to alleviate the desperate housing shortage after the war. But waiting lists were very long. What to do?
One day, she read in the Daily Mirror that Queen Mary, the then Queen Mother, had the ability to grant in her favour a limited number of council houses to families in dire need. I remember my mother putting the paper down in front of me and saying, ‘‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll write to Queen Mary!’’ It seemed an impossible idea but my mother’s energy and determination brooked no doubts.
So she did, describing our straitened circumstances and my stepfather’s illness after his war service. I did not think there would be a reply. As the weeks went by, my mother began to despair. But after a few months, we received a letter from Queen Mary’s private secretary telling us that we would be granted a new house on an estate near Watford. It seemed unbelievable, but my mother’s action had worked, and forever after she proudly regaled her story.
By the time we moved to our new house, Queen Mary’s son, King George VI, had died and I had seen the unforgettable photograph of the three royal women together in black funeral weeds; mother, wife and daughter. The event had seemed to break her, and she had not found the will to survive long enough to see her granddaughter’s coronation. Queen Mary died in March, 1953, and lay in state in Westminster Hall so that anyone could pay homage.
So, perhaps more than the majority of the other 120,000 who filed past her catafalque, we had good reason, an obligation, to go. To pay our respects.
The event remains vivid in my memory, and the story of how we secured a council house taught me that one should never despair at the difficulties one faces, never give up hope, and that one should never be hesitant in approaching those of authority or rank with determination in a cause one believes in. That is what my mother taught me.
What Queen Mary taught me was that, distant and aloof though she may have been, a sense of duty and concern for her people drove her, and this was passed on, perhaps most of all, to her granddaughter. I am a republican at heart, but a small part of it will be forever royal.
❛ That’s what I’ll do. I’ll write to Queen Mary!