Extract: Leslie Adkin, Farmer Photographer

Te Papa Press has kindly allowed Kete to reproduce this extract from Leslie Adkin, Farmer Photographer, including photographs. Here we are introduced to Leslie's courtship of Maud, his eventual wife and photographic subject.

Leslie Adkin and Maud Herd’s six-year courtship yielded some of Adkin’s best photographs. It was one thing to record images of the world about him, or even picturesque images for the weekly magazines; another to try and immortalise some of the happiest moments of his life. Adkin was now pushed into taking photographs that really mattered as he strove to capture the woman for whom he cared passionately at her very best. In this sense, and because she became the person he photographed most often throughout his life, Maud lies at the centre of Adkin’s photography.

Home again – a siesta, 28 February 1914. Maud sleeping, after The siesta by illustrator Harrison Fisher. Gelatin glass negative, quarter plate, A.008594 Adkin met Maud in October 1909 through her brother Ralph, who had joined the YMCA gymnastics activities. Adkin was twenty-one, she nineteen. Maud’s father, Wellington architect William Herd, had bought a farm on Bruce Road on the south-west margin of Taitoko Levin township, and had installed his sons William (Will) and Ralph in charge with Maud and her sister Gertie as housekeepers. Leslie and Maud soon began seeing each other in mixed social groups, and the two Methodist families developed a friendship that involved picnics at the beach or river and gatherings at their homes.

Maud had been brought up in England in the well-off environment of a three-storey farmhouse with servants, and had attended boarding school before training as a violinist. She played in an orchestra in Wellington and taught music privately in Taitoko Levin. It is easy to imagine the attraction between Leslie and Maud: they were both lively and intelligent, equally comfortable in town and country, and more sophisticated than their local peers; she came with an English refinement and artistic abilities, he with a reputation as an adventurer and published scholar. Soon they were meeting several times a week, at the Herd home, out riding with their siblings, in town and at church. In December 1910 Adkin wrote in his diary, ‘After church & dinner, Gil & I drove down to Mrs Herds to spend afternoon. A lovely day. Maud & I sat under a shady plum tree & had a long talk. Just glorious together.’

Mentions of Maud in Adkin’s diary became more frequent and increasingly emotional over the next few years. Unfortunately we do not have any diaries or letters to tell us how Maud felt, but Adkin wrote enough to give us some indication. We see a tension developing between the couple from October 1911, for example. If Adkin was serious about Maud then she had every right to expect a declaration of feelings, if not a marriage proposal. She was clearly wondering when, if ever, he would make a move.

Throughout the rest of the year and all of 1912, Adkin confided to his diary feelings towards Maud that he could not express directly. Of a musical and literary evening in the Herds’ drawing room he wrote: ‘Sweet Maud sat beside me on couch . . . I love her with my whole heart, & feel sure that she now loves me – even me. God grant our mutual regard will never die & that I for my part will love & cherish her all the days of my life. Amen. Oh! When can I tell her all.’ What held him back was the feeling that he had ‘No prospects in life as yet – that is, nothing definite, hang it.’ Although he might one day inherit part of the family farm, that had not yet been discussed within his family. For the moment he was simply a farm labourer with no means of supporting Maud in the manner she might expect.

Leslie spent enjoyable times in Maud’s company, but on other occasions she seemed distant and reserved in his presence. A coolness developed between the families as well. On a beach picnic with the two families on 26 December 1912, Annie Adkin declined to set up next to the Herds, and Leslie wrote, ‘There is a kind of barrier between Maud & I & I am not yet in a position to break it down.’

With Maud ‘a girl of moods’ and his family ‘uppish’, in February 1913 Adkin diverted his energy to a tough physical challenge – to cycle from Taitoko Levin to Waiōuru via Napier and the Napier–Taupō road. In Napier a ‘black-eyed damsel’ who was at the pictures with her mother gave him such a brilliant smile that he followed her to see where she lived. It turned out that ‘her ma & pa keep a private “pub” – Oh, ye gods, romance is squashed.’ And if that were not enough for the secretary of the Taitoko Levin No-Licence League prohibitionists, when he returned the next day and approached her at an open window he found that ‘[b]y daylight she appeared a very ordinary creature’, unable to unable to get away to ‘enliven a view I wished to photograph’ in the botanical gardens.

Adkin’s trip was a huge achievement. He returned home exhausted after battling the sandy Desert Road, where he came such a cropper that he bent his front wheel out of shape. He certainly deserved a hero’s welcome, but ‘Maud did not seem specially glad to see me again’.

Nevertheless, a breakthrough soon occurred in their relationship, and events in 1913 saw their future open up. On a late-night drive home from a concert in Ōtaki Adkin felt he ‘could not hold out any longer + Maud + I exchanged our first kisses – it’s an amazing, wonderful thing that she should love me; God help me that I never hurt her or be cruel to her as long as I live, + that I may prosper for her sweet sake.’ Things were not exactly resolved, however, for two weeks later Adkin wrote: ‘kissed her good night . . . [and] discovered why she seemed indifferent last night – she didn’t say so but it is because I am kissing her but have not told her how I love her, so she felt she ought to be strict with me – told her that it was only circumstances that kept me from speaking plainly – the darling consented to trust me so again we exchanged kisses – God bless her.’