Biography and image contributed by Rowan Gibbs
M. R. Randle was born Marie Randle Dawkins in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales on 17 January 1856, second child of John Dawkins and his wife Sarah, née Randle. Marie grew up in Haverfordwest, where her father ran a large drapery store.
On 30 January 1877 at St John’s Church, Stratford, in Essex, Marie married Howard Randle, Principal of Buxton College in Forest Gate, Essex. They were first cousins once removed. Both Marie and Howard were musical, she a pianist, he a singer, and both composed songs and music.
In the 1881 census they are living at Buxton College, Marie a teacher, with their first two children, Blanche and Eva, born in 1878 and 1880; Minnie followed in 1881, Alan in 1883, and in New Zealand Tui in 1891 and Ada in 1897.
They came to New Zealand probably in late 1883. Howard taught initially at Otago Boys’ High School, then, believing there was more scope for him under the Education Board, resigned and in 1885 was appointed headmaster at Moeraki. Here, and at his later schools, he and Marie often performed together in concerts, Howard known for his comic songs and Marie for her accomplished piano playing. And here she began publishing her poems, becoming a regular contributor to the Otago Witness under the pen name ‘Wych Elm’. These largely reflect her daily round – the children, the beach, and above all the bush and the song of the birds, often evoking a contrast with those she had known in Britain and a sadder note of exiles living, and dying, far from home.
At the end of 1888 Howard resigned his position and took the family to England on an ambitious business venture to establish a chain of shops selling frozen New Zealand meat. This was not a success and they returned to New Zealand the following year. On the passenger list Howard gave his profession as ‘Commercial agent’, but he soon resumed teaching.
In October 1889 he was appointed head teacher at Inch Valley, resigning in 1892 to become headmaster of the much larger Pukeiviti (Pukeiwitahi) School at Shag Point. It was here in 1893 that Marie signed the third women’s suffrage petition as ‘M.R. Randle, Housewife’. She is on the 1893, 1896 and 1900 Waihemo electoral rolls.
In August 1893 her poems were published as a book by Dunedin bookseller James Horsburgh, Lilts and Lyrics of New Zealand. It included a foreword by William Pember Reeves ('…their merits are brevity, simplicity, and local colour') and was dedicated to 'the late lamented John Balance … this volume… owes its publication to his kindly interest and suggestion'. The dedication to Balance, a great reader and a strong advocate of women’s suffrage, is effusive, but sincere and personal.
Early in 1899 Marie had a trip Home with the younger children, returning in June. On 3 October, when she was staying in Dunedin, leaving only Howard and Minnie, just turned 18, at Shag Point, Howard shot himself. He had just posted a letter of resignation, and at the inquest a friend described his conduct as ‘being that of a person of depressed spirits’.
Howard was buried in St John’s Cemetery in Palmerston and probate filed in Dunedin on 3 November. By then Marie had already left for England with the children. In the 1901 census she is living back in Pembrokeshire, and in 1911 in London, described as of ‘Private Means’.
Her last poem in the Otago Witness had been ‘A Seaside Home’ in the 1896 Christmas Number; her portrait in Lilts and Lyrics was included in a photo-gallery of Otago Witness women writers in February 1901.
Three of her children pre-deceased her, Eva in 1909, Minnie in 1918, and Ada in 1937. Marie died at her London home on 5 February 1947. Her death notice in the Times read:
MARIE RANDLE RANDLE, formerly of Haverfordwest, Pembroke-shire, and Otago, New Zealand, widow of Howard Randle, J.P., and the dearly loved mother of Blanche, Alan, and Tui, aged 91.
The photograph of her is from her 1893 book ‘Lilts and Lyrics’.
Sources
This is abridged from my biography of Marie, with a selection of her poetry: Rowan Gibbs, “A Bird of Our Clime”, Otago Songstress Marie R. Randle (‘Wych Elm’): A Bio-Bibliography (Wellington 2012).