Bethell, Mary Ursula (1874–1945)

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Bethell, Mary Ursula (1874–1945)

New Zealand naturalist poet. Name variations: (pseudonym) Evelyn Hayes; Ursula Bethell. Born Mary Ursula Bethell in England on October 6, 1874; died in Christchurch, New Zealand, on January 15, 1945; daughter of Isabel Anne Bethell and Richard Bethell (both sheep farmers); educated at Christchurch Girls High School, a Swiss finishing school, and Oxford; longtime companion of Effie Pollen; no children.

Selected works:

From a Garden in the Antipodes (1925); Time and Place (1936); Day and Night: Poems 1924–1935 (1939); Collected Poems (1950).

Born in England in 1874, Mary Ursula Bethell moved with her family to Canterbury, New Zealand, as a young girl. There her father raised sheep, and she attended primary and high school. After an interval at finishing school in Switzerland, she returned to New Zealand, settling in Christchurch in 1892 where she performed charity work. Three years later, she set sail for Europe once more: the study of painting took her to Geneva, the study of music to Dresden, and work with the "Grey Ladies," a religious society dedicated to poor children, to London. By 1919, Bethell was back in New Zealand. In the Cashmere Hills of Christchurch, she retired from volunteering and lived for more than a decade with companion Effie Pollen . "From her I have had love, tenderness and understanding for 30 years," wrote Bethell.

In November of 1934, Pollen died after a brief illness. Yearly, on or near the anniversary of her death, Bethell wrote a memorial poem: "Today I trimmed my lonely dwelling place with flowers;/ … I see you, darling,/ Dispose, defthanded, your bright bunches in that happy house of ours." On their hill in Christchurch, Bethell lived alone for another decade, until her death in January of 1945.

Ursula Bethell conceived most of her poetry in the garden overlooking the valley, and the view was often reflected in her lines. Originally, she only shared her work with correspondents. After a friend showed her writing to a publisher in England, Bethell would only permit publication under the pseudonym Evelyn Hayes or under a reference to a former publication ("by the author of Time and Place"). Though her identity was eventually revealed, it was not acknowledged in print until her collected poems appeared posthumously in 1950. Though Bethell is celebrated in New Zealand, wrote one critic, she is "not enough read elsewhere."