Leo and Lawrence (and Robert and Jim)
Leo Bensemann, Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin (Ngāti Awa) are important figures in Christchurch’s cultural history. Bensemann, a painter and publisher, Baigent, an editor and scholar, and Erwin, a librarian, were all close friends with celebrated painter Rita Angus. But their sexuality is rarely mentioned. Researchers must stay alive until 2050 to read their private journals, held under embargo at the Macmillan Brown Library. These are said to document the homoerotic world of 1930s and '40s Christchurch, including the lurking presence of police.
Gary Bedggood’s almost forgotten 1992 oral history interview with Erwin, who was twenty years younger than the other two, sketches key relationships and alludes to the journals’ contents, while photographs tell more of the story.
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Lawrence (left) and Leo in school uniform, Nelson, 1929.
‘Lawrence and Leo had been lovers since they were at secondary school together’, Erwin told Bedggood. Photos show them in uniform in 1929, their last year at Nelson College. In 1931, along with Baigent’s mother, they moved to Christchurch and shared a house opposite the Bridge of Remembrance. ‘The bath was in the kitchen, apparently, with a hinge which they used as a kind of table and, when they weren’t eating over the bath, they were sitting in it’. A set of images from 1931, which surfaced in an Auckland auction house in 2022, chronicle the men’s domestic life.

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At home in 1931. Top: Leo. Middle: Leo and Lawrence. Bottom: Leo (left) and Jim.
Leo and Lawrence hung out with Jim Buttress, an old school friend, at home and in the sand dunes down at the beach. (At Nelson College the trio had been known as ‘the three Bs’). They posed for the camera, grinned fondly at one another, and peeled off their bathing suits. With other friends they went fishing.
Above: Jim (left) and Leo at the beach, probably in Canterbury, in 1931.
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Above: Leo, 1931. Note the book in the picture on the left.
Friends posing gleefully with the catch – Lawrence on the right.
Lawrence completed a history degree in 1935; Leo worked as a commercial artist and joined Denis Glover at the Caxton Press. From 1938 to 1943 the pair rented rooms at 97 Cambridge Terrace, as did Rita Angus. Lawrence was a proficient cook and piano player, and showed off his skills. A small community of artists and intellectuals (‘The Group’) adopted it as their meeting place. ‘I think it was a time of intellectual stimulation, and that group [whose members included Rita and composer Douglas Lilburn] must have been pretty lively and aware of what was happening politically’, Erwin said. ‘I just think, looking back on it, from what Lawrence said, and what I can gather from Lawrence’s journals, that they had a hell of a good time. I mean there were endless parties. I think they were very alert to what was happening, very concerned socially, and I think quite closely emotionally knit.’
Above: The bisexual sensualist Douglas MacDiarmid (left) with Lawrence at the swimming baths.
Lawrence, 1936.
There was some opposition to Lawrence, a pacifist, working as a tutor and lecturer in the English Department at Canterbury University, and Robert Erwin later surmised that ‘to be gay and a pacifist’ at this time ‘was really very, very difficult indeed’. What about their sexuality in particular? ‘Thinking about that period, Lawrence didn’t come out, but I don’t imagine there was ever any misunderstanding between his friends about his relationship with Leo, or the fact that they were gay. It wasn’t anything that needed to be said.’ Leo's erotic life changed tack in 1943 when he married Mary Barrett, but he and Lawrence remained close. ‘Leo continued to be very dependent on Lawrence in lots of senses. It’s clear from Lawrence’s journals that that was the case’. Lawrence also had an enduring relationship with Leo's four children. Daughter Caroline referred to his 'much looked forward to' visits to the family home each Sunday while Leo painted: 'the smell of paint and turpentine, together with his pipe tobacco, wafted through the house'.
Sometime during the late 1940s, Lawrence noticed a teenaged Robert Erwin on a tram and knew he loved him. In 1950, when Robert began his studies at Canterbury, the men actually met. They listened to music, drank coffee, became lovers, and stayed together until Lawrence’s death in 1985. Robert was a fickle companion at first. ‘I continued to be constantly unfaithful, to have passionate and torrid affairs which he endured’, but ‘Lawrence was a very patient person’ and Erwin realised that whatever he had done ‘I could come home to him’.
Robert, c.1950, at Rita Angus’s cottage in Sumner.
The social, romantic, intellectual, familial and political aspects of home are key themes in these men’s lives. Erwin’s long overlooked interview, and this newly rediscovered set of images, help paint the picture.
Sources
Robert Erwin, interview with Gary Bedggood, 1992, Alexander Turnbull Library.
Anna Cahill, Colours of a Life: The Life and Times of Douglas MacDiarmid.
Caroline Otto, Leo Bensemann: Portraits, Masks and Fantasy Figures.
Peter Simpson, Bloomsbury South.
Peter Simpson, Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann.
Jill Trevelyan, Rita Angus: An Artist’s Life.
Bensemann, Leo Vernon, Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4b23/bensemann-leo-vernon