Poet Baxter's mother subject of biography

Christchurch biographer Penny Griffith is in Dunedin to research Millicent Baxter, mother of...
Christchurch biographer Penny Griffith is in Dunedin to research Millicent Baxter, mother of James K. Baxter. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
Millicent Baxter may be the most famous New Zealander few people have ever heard of.

The people who surrounded her were extraordinary.

Her mother Helen Connon was the first woman in the British Empire to earn a degree with honours; her father John Macmillan Brown was chancellor of the University of New Zealand, her husband Archibald Baxter was one of New Zealand's best known World War 1 conscientious objectors; her son James K. Baxter was a celebrated poet; and her daughter-in-law Jacqui Sturm was the first female Maori in the world to get a master of arts degree.

While screeds have been written about her family, much of Millicent's life remains a mystery.

Christchurch biographer Penny Griffith hopes to change that.

This month, she is in Dunedin, Kuri Bush and Brighton, where Millicent lived for 64 years, in a bid to find people who met or knew her.

"Apart from her own selective memoirs, which appeared in 1981 when she was in her 90s, there has been no substantial study or publication of the life and achievements of this remarkable woman.

"As I do my research, I'm finding that far from being engulfed by this fame, Millicent Baxter was a powerful and forceful character, with a crushing wit, lucid intellect and sharp political mind."

Ms Griffith said Millicent was a strongly independent woman, a leading promoter of female education in New Zealand, a staunch pacifist, and was the pivot and driving force of her husband's and sons' lives.

"In many ways, they lived in her shadow.

"If it had not been for her tenacity and persuasion, Archibald Baxter's book would never have been written, and by Millicent physically taking her socially inept 18-year-old son into a Christchurch publisher, James K. Baxter was launched on to his pathway to international fame."

Millicent also became a leading promoter of female education in New Zealand, a staunch pacifist, and an educated woman who was offered an honours degree at the University of Cambridge.

She achieved all this in a time when women just did not do such things.

By interviewing Millicent's friends and family in the Dunedin area and Wellington, Ms Griffith hopes to complete the biography and a masters degree on Millicent at Victoria University next year.

"In this way, I hope to reveal the real Millicent Baxter, and write this biography of this New Zealander who is so significant in her own right."

Ms Griffith said time was of the essence because many of those who knew Millicent were elderly.

She was devastated when she missed an opportunity to interview Millicent's daughter-in-law Jacqui Sturm, who died recently.

- john.lewis@odt.co.nz

 

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