BANNERS OF ROMANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 78, 2 April 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

BANNERS OF ROMANCE.

OUR HEROES AND HEROINES. NEW ZEALAND MATERIAL. (By BART SUTHERLAND.)

Mr. Monte Holcroft, dealing with the prospects of New Zealand literature, took side with those despondent prophets who gloomily question whether our 6liort tenure of this portion of the earth gives us sufficient history, experience and wisdom to tell the world a story. He said: "I can imagine that many people will say —possibly with heat—that New Zealand is a mine of material." I rise to the defence —not with heat, I hope—but with an ardour for the art of my country, which shall be mine fife-long, and which 110 melancholy disparager can dispel.

One may agree that the extent to wliiph definite scenic "background" may be used is doubtful. D'Arcy Cresswell, speaking of colonial poets, says: "They feel called upon to become artists in proportion a» surroundings are novel and grand, and tlicir energies enormous, while they remain blind to the fact that the poet is properly concerned with Nature only in so far as it provides a medium or language for the expression of an inward spiritual state."

I maintain that it is just because our scenery has "a cold beauty, and perhaps a dark one" (to quote Mr. Holcroft) that a very keen spiritual state may be consummated, and that a New Zealand writer of genius will in time startle mankind with a philosophy pure, remote, and aspiring, yet sympathetic with the struggles of humanity. Why did Katherine Mansfield, weary of the Old World, cry out in her journal: "Oh, I want for one moment, to make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the Old World?" Because, in the words of Donn Byrne, she knew of "the great dignified conversations one can hold with high mountains."

Mr. Holcroft says that we have no mellow background; a colonial "has a longer road to travel than the young English writer"; that "literature comes with the slow growth of generations, the impulses of peace and war, the shadowy influences of other civilisations." Why? Flinders Petrie has said, and said truly, that "a colony is as old as, or older than, the mother country."

A Wealth of Material. The only point in this depressing article on which I can agree is the statement that it would take a writer of genius to interpret our life and land. "It is simple for the layman to point out subject matter," and it is with some shrinking, therefore, that I set down specific tales that have moved me; but I record them, not so much as germs for the inspiration of some vast project of art, but to enhearten artist and layman alike, and to prove to them that this is not: A land without a past; a race Set in the rut of commonplace.

•In James Cowan's "New Zealand Wars" there is a description of the position of the Ruapekapeka pa (the capture of which marked the close of the war in the North, 1845-46), wihch suits my purpose admirably in linking past to present: Here the final British camp was pitched, and the guns advanced for the bombardment •oi£ the hill fort, at a range of about a. quarter of a mile. On this ridge, fringed and dotted with puriri trees, is an isolated farm-house. Just before it is reached, the fern-grown remains of the British entrenchments are passed; the main road, in fact, goes through the centre of the position. Somewhere here, too, are the unmarked graves of the Imperial men who fell in the attack. The exact place is forgotten; maybe one rides over the spot where the bones of the redcoats and bluejackets lie. In the yard, under the great twisted puriri, whose boughs Trembled before the reverberations of Despard's guns, the farmer's children are playing a game of bowls of their own devising with four cannon balls—rusty old round shot that were hurled from British 6-pounders and 12 pounders.

It hardly needs comment; a racial squabble, and, after nearly a hundred years, the old tale of earth is told: "On thi3 ridge is an isolated farmhouse."

If you are searching for heroic figures, arc there any more satisfying than the Mair brothers ? Why tell your children tales of the Greek runner, Plieidippidcs, when, here at your hand, is the tale of Gilbert Mair—brave "Tawa," the fleetfooted, leader of the Arawa contingents, and very embodiment of all chiefly attributes; or the picturesque von Teinpsky, captain of the Forest Rangers, soldier of fortune in Central America, gold-seeker in California, before he adventured here? And there is a more pacific hero, that old Scot who solitarily explored the fiord country—Donald Sutherland, discoverer of the Sutherland Falls, who had a pleasant whimsy that there were diamonds in his domain, and accordingly earned a lonely bush defile Sinbad Gully. And for a lesser-; known story—a story of prowess in the every-day man—l like that of the young Wanganui settler, Richard Deighton (told in the "New Zealand Wars"), who took a letter from the Resident Magistrate at Wanganui to Sir George Grey in Wellington, containing evidence of Te Rauparaha's treachery. His sister sewed the letter into the collar of his coat, and he marched most of the way with a party of hostile Maoris who intended to join Te Rauparaha! If these tales do not satisfy you, go back to the old race who first held this land. Maning, in "Old New Zealand," says of a rangatira that, mingled with many barbarities, he took part in acts which, had they been performed in ancient Greece, would have immortalised the actors.

The Maori Heritage. The compiler of "New Zealand Short Stories" says of the Maoris: They may, in the process of absorption through the oenturics, leave us with a slight golden tinge, and with our worship of the practical mellowed by a love of high poetic imagery. True it is that their legends —as collected by Gilbert Mair, Elsdon Best, Maui Pomare, Jas. Cowan, and other authorities would grace any literature.

What thrillers could be fabricated out of their lore of the house of learning, and I defy any race to produce more romantic and expressive lovers. Here is an old man's description of HineTitama, the Dawn Maid (taken from Elsdon Beet):

Her skin was smooth as tho karengo seaweed ; her face was like unto a summer day: calm and beautiful; verily lier skin resembled the breast cf tlie beautiful koirangi bird, and the shimmering beauty of the quivering, heated air.

I have reserved the story: that I cherish most to the last; a story that, to my mind, out-tops any tale of warriors and heroc'3; a story that connects that older history of the Mother Country to our own, and makes us one with her. It is the day of the attack on Boulcott's Farm, ancl ie told by James Cowan: — ' _

A little later that morning John Cudby, then a youth of seventeen, who was engaged in carting commissariat from Wellington to the troops at the farm, harnessed up in the yard of the "Aglionby Arms," Burcham's Hotel, near the bridge stockade, aiid drove out into the bush for the front, unaware of the fight which had just been waged a short two miles away. Cudby had previously had the protection of an escort of 15 men under a non-commissioned ofliccr, but, to use his own words, "the poor fellows at the stockade were worked to death, and so I said I'd do without them in the future." His sole companion henceforth was a clerk, the military issuer. A double-barrelled gun, loaded with slugs, was carried in the cart, but it never became necessary to use it. The carter and his companion were in the middle of the bush, jolting over the boggy, coTduroy patches of road, when they were met bv two men in a cart driving furiously from the camp. One of them shouted: "Go back, boy, go back! The Maoris have attacked the camp!" But Cudby did not turn his team. "I dursen't go back," he cried in his broad English dialect, "I dursen't go back! I've got the rations to deliver!"

There! That is a true New Zealand story for you!