Ron Holloway, Robin Hyde and The Spotted Dog: 2 images of ms
Ron Holloway met Robin Hyde in Auckland in 1934. In Disputed Ground (1991: 54), Gillian Boddy observes: ‘Once Hyde
apparently surprised him by proposing to him on the bus, and on another occasion, while sitting with him at a table in the Spotted Dog, she quietly spoke a poem aloud. Impressed, he asked her to write it out for him. Taking the spotted menu: "sandwiches one penny, sardines on toast sixpence", she wrote: When I am weighted down with fame . . . ‘
The poem is ‘Written in Cold,’ and a revised version of it was published in Persephone in Winter (1937). Holloway kept his pencilled draft and the menu card is now held in the
Small Press Collection at the University of Auckland Library.
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