Tony Murray-Oliver

Tony Murray- Oliver was a traditionalist, who believed it important to observe the correct forms of address, the correct precedence, because they, and the other niceties of communication between people, were a powerful way of showing respect for the other person. Tony's politeness, his courtly manners, were the measure of the man. He may have been vexed with himself, but he was never rude to others.

He was a gentleman in the sense listed in my Oxford dictionary as 'archaic' . He would have liked that. A gentleman in the archaic sense of the word: noble, generous, courteous, polite.

Tony was born in Christchurch, educated at St. Mathew's and Christchurch Boys High, Canterbury College and Victoria College. He came to Wellington in 1938 to a position at the Turnbull which he vacated with considerable reluctance in 1980 at the age of 65. He is the longest serve to the Turnbull to date, 42 years, and he couldn't really see that partnership ever coming to an end. He was extraordinarily lucky in finding the Turnbull so early in his life. It fitted his needs so well. It was his home, his family, and almost his whole life in his early years. (It even provided him with a brood of cats). Tony's desk in the old Library was one of the wonders of Wellington, which the Library carefully concealed from its citizens, fortunately. In the early years it is rumoured he sometimes never left it for weeks, spending nights and weekends there, working for the Library, or on one of his many books, catalogues, or articles. Or sometimes just in retreat.

The young people who came to the Library held him in great awe - he was a poet, an aesthete, a man with a style that set him off from the others on Bowen Street. He was 'an apostle in the high aesthetic band' … not on 'Picadilly with a Poppy or a Lily', but on Labton Quay with a peonie. But they all came to love and respect him for what he had to offer - a vision of how life could and should be lived - with good food and wine, flowers, music, conversation, art and literature, and cats.

Tony became the Library's arbiter of good taste, responsible for the Turnbull's social events: selecting the liquor - insisting on sherry and dry vermouth, and resolutely set against the serving of wine at a cocktail party - the flowers, the food and setting the standards of service.

To Tony we are indebted for the idea and then the development of the annual series of Turnbull Library prints which have given so much pleasure to so many people.

With time his public profile increased. The Wine and Food Society, of which he was founder, president, and later an honorary life member; then the Historic Places Trust, where he held offices in the Wellington Regional Committee and later the Council; the Scenery Preservation Society; the Friends of Old St. Paul's, of which he became chairman; the Litter Control Council; the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand. And the publications began to flow. Quite different from verse of the 1930's and 1940's, these were the products of his increasing knowledge of the Turnbull's pictorial collections. There were exhibition catalogues, guides, articles, and the books. Ausustus Earle in New Zealand (1968); Captain Cook's Artists in the Pacific (1969); Cook's Hawaii as seen by His Artists (1975), the Heaphy folio in 1981.

Tony Murray-Oliver was at first a lone voice championing the neglected artists of the period of exploration and settlement: He died surrounded by a chorus of others who share his vision and acknowledge his work.

The books and articles will remain his monuments, and possibly his garden. The friendships will remain a while; the Tony stories will be handed down as grim reminders and celebrations of the man, but they will fade with time. His vision of a cultivated life, the style that he recognized in others, and encouraged to realize its potential, will remain as long as his friends live.

Tony was a very vulnerable man, and this vulnerability, and his worth, was sensed by all those around him. The Society for the Protection of Mr. M-O seems to have been in existence as long as any Turnbullian can remember. The committee members changed over the years, but the need remained. His contribution was to recognize vulnerability in others, and to give his help and his friendship to them.

Tony Murray-Oliver had a vision of style - in life, in books, in gardens - which sustained him and which he passed on to others, even if he didn't quite realze it in his own life, his books, his garden, or his cats.

He died as he lived, a gentleman, thanking his doctor, and his nurse for turning him, in that familiar sincere way which he had, just before he died on Monday.

Good and faithful servant, Adieu.