ALFRED DOMETT.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18266, 27 December 1924, Page 9

ALFRED DOMETT.

HIS NEGLECTED MASTER-

PIECE

ISPICIiALT WIUTTITf FOR ''TM PSMg. 'j

(Bv Cyrano.)

The scanty creative literature of New Zealand presents an interesting, example of a writer who is recognised but not read. Everybody who seriously studies that literature has to take notice of Alfred Domett. His epic is quoted by historians and Naturelovers, and passages from it are in the anthologies. His leputation hovers dimly in .sight of a large class of educated people who are interested in the story of their own country without being deep students of it. They are aware in a vague way that Domett was a remarkable mail, and thev may know something about his friendship with Browning. Very few of them, however, could tell you anything about the long poem tliat his friend declared to be "a great and astonishing performance." and Tennyson praised as containing "intellectual subtlety, great power of delineating delicious scenery, imaginative fire.'' ''Ranolf and Amohia" lies on the shelves of New Zealand Publio Libraries in the aura of a classic, but it is not read. I have never seen a copy in a New Zealand shop, or in the collections of bookloving friends. I have questioned some of these friends, men who read widely and have a more than average knowledge of books bearing on New Zealand, and all confess not to have road the poem. Not only is the book out of print, but in an acquaintance with English newspapers and magazines extending over a good many years, I do not remember to have seen it made the subject of an article—or even mentioned. For all the notice that is taken of it at Home, it might be as dead as the poetry of Robert Montgomorv. "Ranolf and Amohia," however, is too valuable as an epic, and too interesting by association, to deserve such neglect. To begin with, it cannot be separated entirely from its author and his romance. Domett's career illustrates some of the finest influences that went to the marvellous development of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. A young man of high ideals, very remarkable intellectual curiosfty and vigour, and striking fecundity of expression, the dear friend of one who was to be a mighty poet, Domett must have had a successful career in England had he followed the path indicated for him. We can picture him a prominent lawyer and eventually, perhaps, a judge, and the author of volumes of verse and of philosophy, which, though they might not have taken first rank, would have won him an. enviable reputation. He would have been a prominent figure in Victorian literary circles, welcomed for his disposition and"his critical faculties in the company of greater men, and the memoirs of the time would have mentioned him frequently. Fate, however, had much stranger things in store Tor him. The spirit of adventure took him to New Zealand in the very early days of that colony, and his choioe of a field could not have been happier. Not only were men of character and ability needed there to lay the foundations of a nation on the British pattern, but the qualities of the Maoris —a most fascinating race of warriors, poets, and orators—and the extraordinary beauty and variety of the scenery, were such as to appeal powerfully to his sense of romance and stimulate his exuberant imagination. Educated Pioneers. The student of New Zealand history must be.struck by the exceptional qualities of the early pioneers. For no other colony was the selection so carefully made by governing circumstances. Against the lawlessness of the preGovernment days had to be set the devotion of the missionaries. Among the early secular settlers were many men who combined culture with strong character and unusual ability. Domett was one of a number whose literary taistes left some mark on the life of the new land. His own experience was varied. He was in the Nelson district at the time of the terrifying Wairau massacre, when a blunder sent a brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and others to their death at the hands of Maoris who disputed the possession of land. The "Wairoa" of Browning's line addressed to Domett—"How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end!"—is this Wairau river of tragic memory. Domett took an active part in the agitation against Governor Fitzroy, and Fitzroy's successor. Grey, struck by Domett's ability, found him important work to do. During the next twenty years he held several high positions in the Civil Service, and rose to be Premier. One of these posts - was Resident Magistrate and Commissioner of Crown Lands in the district of Hawke's Bay. Napier was a child of his administration, and it was he who named three of its streets after Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning. "It may be doubted," says the editor of "Bfowniijg and Domett" (Mr F. G. Kenyon), "whether many of the colonists haCd an extensive* acquaintance with the works even of the second of these authors, thoiigh 'ln Memoriam' and 'Maud' Jad now been published, and he was already Poet Laureate, but it is safe to assumtf that the'third name conveyed no idea to anyone except tho Commissioner himself." To which it may be added regretfully that the Napier people of those days probably knew more about Carlyle and Tennyson than the present generation knows about Domett. His Premiership of some fifteen months was marked by the outbreak of the second war with the Maoris in Taranaki, the extension of the struggle to the Waikato, and difference of opinion between the Colonial and Imperial Governments over responsibility for Native affairs. Domett, who was judged by the shrewd William Gisborne ("New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen") to have been unsuccessful as a Parliamentary politician, must have been glad to, retire from an atmosphere of strain and war, and go back to the Civil Service. In I§7l, at the age of sixty, he returned to England, with the manuscript of his epic in his luggage, the fruit of the leisure of a busy thirty years spent in pioneering work in a community that gave little thought to, poetry. | A Problem for a Publisher. Domett had published poetry before he left England, but it was not sufficient to give him a reputation that would outlast his long absence. His short pieces have some distinction, and one of them, "A Christmas Hymn," is reprinted in the second volume of "The Golden Treasury." They are, however, slight in volume, and have little to lift thepi above .the ruck of so much of that "cultivated" Victorian verse whieh so few .people read now. It was not surprising, therefore, that Mr George Smith, of Smith, Elder and Co., Browning,'? publishers, hesitated to accept an epic of 14,000 lines, especially when even, a cursory reading of the manuscript wonld reveal all too clearly its defects as a saleable book. Domett had not told a plain tale. Probably no great publishing house ever put oat an epic so heavily weighted with slabs of more or less indigestible metaphysics. In. the first edition version of "Ranolf and Amohia," the reader is ai once intro-

duced to the hero and,heroine at Rotorua, the thermal region of New Zealand. Then the story goes back to describe the origin and boyhood of Ranolf —a lad of Devon blood, brought up in the North of Scotland—his seafaring, hi* intellectual and spiritual development. and his choice of a career. Domett took some fifty pages to cover all this, and meanwhile the hero and heroine were waiting -at Rotorua. Religions and philosophies of Asia I and Europe are discussed in verse at ! astonishing variety and power, but the j subjects are so abstruse and difficult, ■ and so alien to an epic. that, in spite ! of Domett's fertility, intellectual boisterousness and humour, many of the speculations are well-nigh unreadable to the average man. To mystic depths and mistier. Hegel shrouds Himself and Truth in denslier lolliup clouds, Like Arab genie sore opprest in flight: His splendour flashes through redoubled night. Thoughts are the earoe as tilings; and what is true Of one must be so of the other too. So, non-eiistcnce, as a thought nrU3t be, Like pure Existence, a reality. Of Being absolute, and uncombined With qualities of any form or kind, What car.- wo know or predicate aright? The reader, scenting a story, but faced with this .sort of thing on page after page—a thing which, like Calverley's parody threatens to ''extend from here to Mesopotamy'—is tempted to do what Rp.nolf himself did when confronted by an Hegelian paradox; What could a youth with risable organs do At this philosophy's last grand exploit? But 'ding the bosk the distance of a quoit' Away—and Tiith a shout of laughter loud. Light a cigar—and blow as clear a cloud? No wonder Mr Smith hesitated. Probably he would have declined the venture altogether if the second edition version, which was published by another house some years later, had bewt submitted. Domett actually lengthened his poem Itr some four thousand lines, and added greatly to its philosophical content. Beginning with Ranolf's boyhood, he took .117 paces to bring him to Rotorua, and in the process wrote of religion and philosophy with even greater gusto. • Engaging Humour. In this astonishing review of thought from Buddha to Darwin, Domett's humour is sometimes engaging. How many a sage has solved the Universe, Yet left the wondrous Mystery none the Worse! And what good fun he makes of the doctrine of Chanoe, which, especially in the second edition, - is one of the villains of the piece. "Come any Muse of—Fog! Tour fond voice raise 1 Chant to great Chance some—disenchanting praise! He said: 'Against Resistance Pressure strained Through Space, while Atom-showers in myriads rained; I bade the glorious hurly-burly whirl, The oldsters cling, the Dervish-dances twirl; t I —hounding on the boundless blindman sbufl, To build the Universe was God. enough!' Sufficing God—this Chance!" Yet even Tennyson found the first version of "Ranolf and Aniohia" a> little difficult to read." If he ever grappled with the second he must have been surprised that the poet should have made his epic a still more tortuous obstacle race. Ranolf's introduction to New Zealand is through shipwreck in sight of p°rt. The only survivor, he is • rescued and cared for by the Maoris. The scene of his romance, the Rotorua region, is a land of cold lakes, hot springs, mountains, and superb forests. The time of the story is about a hundred years some two decades before the British Government, under pressure of Wsikefield and his friends, set up the flag in earnest in New Zealand, and brought the old "Alsatian" days to an end. The firearms that the-young Englishman carried were mysterious novelties to the Rotorua Maoris of Domett s romance. Soon the savage genius of Hongi, the great chief of the far north, was to give the real Maoris tragic proof of their power. On the shores of Lake Rotorua Ranolf rescues from Maoris of his own party, Amohia, daughter of a chief who lives on Mokoia island, in the hike. Mokoia figures in tho most famous of Maori tales, the love-story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai. Hinemoa, living on the mainland, and denied a canoe, swam out to Mokoia to join her lover, and Amohia is a descendant of this roonantio union'. Domett lavishes a Meredithian enthusiasm and wealth of detau on his heroine. Amohia is depicted as beautiful, athletic, humorous, intelligent, •charming <uid tender. Some of the love-making is reminiscent of Richard Fever el," yet here we have one reason whv the story has not appealed widely to 'New Zealanders. It is true that the Maori occupies a unique position among savage races that the Empire has subdued. He enjoys full political rights, the possession of Maori blood is not necessarily a bar to social advancement, and tho fate of the race isnot destruction, but absorption. J>o ifiuropean mother, however, would really i>e pleased to hear that her son or daughter intended to marry a Miion. _ Many New Zealanders with memories or blanket-clad Maori women in the streets of New Zealand towns or a,t> the doors of whfires in Maori villages, ■women with tattooed faces and pipes in their mouths, find it difficult to see Amohia! and her romance just as Domett paints them. The course of true love does not run smooth. Amohia is betrothed to a T.aupo chief, but it is set free by a landslide, which overwhelms him and his village, a fate that really overtook a chief in that region. Then political considerations suggest a union with a ■ Northern tribe. The tohunga, or priest, of Mokoia, set on this marriage, plots to murder Ranolf, but Aniohia, who i a desperately in love with the handsome young stranger, rescues him, and then resolves to sacrifice everything else by joining him at his camp on the mainland. Hinemoa swam from that shore to Mokoia; Amohia swims from the island. Domett follows the old story closely in some respects, but his treatment of the adventure is characteristic of his diffuseness. The Maori tale is direct and simple; told with primitive artlessness. One hundred and fifty words are used to tell how tho girl swam across. Domett, having put Amohia into the water, must devote more than twenty pages to her journey, and describe at length not only her thoughts about the stars above her, but his own! Even when he has brought her across, and placed her, like Hinemoa, In a warm pool, he must postpone the discovery of her by Ranolf for another twenty-five pages, during a great part of which Ranolf listens to and muses on Maori legends. Ranolf and Amohia marry in native fashion, without ceremony, and then wander off on their honeymoon through country that is both weird and lovely. Probably most readers will consider this the best part of ■ the poem. It is a true idyll, the story of the blissful love of two young and joyous spirits who are cast upon the very lap of luxuriant Nature. They live ia and about the bush, drinking in and discussing its glories, visiting geysers and the wonderful Pink and White Terraces (one of the great sights of this region until they were destroyed by the eruption j of 1886), and mingling Maori legend and European philosophy with their love-making and sight-seeing. To New Zealanders these chapters are perhaps the most valuable. They abound in living descriptions of scenery. No one j has equalled Domett in power of de-j picting in words the loveliness of this land of bine mountains and long dis- j

tances, or in homage paid to the majesty and beauty of its trees. It was a wondrous realm beguiled ( Our youth amid its charms to roam. O'er scenes more fair, serenelr wi.d, Noi often summer's glory smiled: When flecks of cloud, transparent, bngh., No alabaster baif ?o white— Hung lightly in a luminous dome Of 6apph:re—seemed to float and deep Far in the front of its biu-e steep; And almost awful, none the leas For its liquescent loveliness, Behind them sunk —jusi o'er the h:li, Tile deep abyss, profound and sti-i The bo immediate Infinite; That yet- emerged, the same, it seemed. Tn hue divine and melting balm. In many a lake whose crystal calm L T ncri"ped, unwrinlded. ecarceiy gleamed. Where 3kv above and lake below, Would like ODe sphere of azure B how, Save for the circling beit aione. The softly painted purple zone Q£ mountains—bathed where nearer seen In sunnv tints oi sober With velvet dark of woods between, All o-ioesv -looms and shiftmtr sheen; While here and there, some peak of snow Would o'er their ;enclev:-r noiet lean. Passion for Trees. The passages about trees an accusing ring in the ears of generations that have to wantonly destroyed so much forest, wealth and beauty. It has been said of New Zealand that an axe and u box of matches shoul'l be quartered on its coat of arms, and it would therefore be well if every New Zealand child were made to read the words of passionate and understanding appreciation that Domett addresses to the glories of the bush. Raaolf. reluctant, even amid the abounding wealth of the old pre-sawmilling days, to cut down a nikau palm for food, is a fine example for the heirs to a depleted estate. When Mr Kipling wrote of "the kowhai's gold, flung for gift on Taupo's face," had he read this 1 ; Then the limber-limbed tree that will shower its Corollas—a saffrony sleet, Till Taupo's soft sapphirine face is Illumined for wonderful spaces With a matting of floating flowerets— Drift-bloom and a. watersward meet For a watersprite's fairy feet. No one else lias described so well that most beautiful feature of the northern sea coasts and lake sides, the pohutukawa. This "iron-hearted myrtle" clings to the cliffs and projects its great trunk and limbs —tipped at Christmas time with red bloomsover the blue water. In spots similar to those where Kanolf and Amohia rested, many a party of holiday makers, perhaps taking a bo&t right into the green tent of the tree, have echoed the wonder and delight in Domett's pages. This sublimated honeymoon is brought to an end by the forgiveness of the chief of Molcoia, and by war. The tohunga has raised tribes against Amohia 'a father, and the island is fiercely attacked. Domett has Scott's power of depicting a battle, and his* vigorous verse resounds with the defiance of the war-dance, the clash of arms, and the' pitiless fury of hand-to-hand combat, in which no quarter is asked for or -given. Maori songs may be somewhat Anglicised, but they have the ring of savage strife. Hit cni, hit out My battle-axe, stout! Ha, ha! you ehould tell The sound of it well, How it played Long ago On your crashing stockade. And the warning sung in unison by six hundred warriors:— Take with spirits heavy lnden, Take your leave of wife flJid maiden; Press, ha! press in last embraces To your own their weeping fac«s! Press them paling, Weeping, wailing, All your efforts unavailing! For see, for see, Th© brave and the strong At your gate-ways throng! . , . See, see, how advancing in line* victorious All your efforts scouting, scorning. To the fort you lurk dismayed m, Brave nud strong We tramp along! Ha we come! exulting, glorious As'those mountain-summits hoary I Proud as mountain-peaka arrayeoi m The magnificence .of Morning We come for glory—glory—glory. We come! Wo come! After being hard pressed the defenders among whom Ranolf bears himsetf as a hero shonld rout the enemy. Then Ranolf becomes tired of liib hf ®. ajn ,° n j' savages, and pines for the interests of civilisation. Amohia is tae problem; should lie take her back to the Homeland? What would his friends gay, and how would she bear the change r* Now however, comes news that the Northern chief who had been named aa Amohia's husband is on tbe war-patn for revenge, and Amohia, feeling certain that if the enemy comes he must prevail and Ranolf be killed, resojy* 38 to save him by giving herself to tms man. So she disappears and report comes that she has been drowned, and Ranolf seta out for the coast to take the ship to England. At a coastal village lie finds Amohia, a prisoner anu helps her to escape and go on ooard with him. The inference is that thelovers go to England. Domett carries the actual tale no further than the sailing of the ship, and devotes the last pages to the development of Ranolf s philosophy. It is not a satisfactory ending. Ranolf won a pear} of price in Amohia, but the setting of their happiness was New Zealand, not England. Many pioneers found happiness and honour with Maori wives, but it was in the country to which they had come. One pictures Amohia as Ranolf saw ner in his days of doubt, taken Home— To choke in some fine atmosphere of niea Punctilios and proprieties precise? Be drilled into the trite and tedious round Of petty duties, poor amusements, found In formal life by strict convention bo-und? A Little Lower Than the Great. In the admirable introduction to their anthology ot New Zealand verse, Messrs \V F Alexander and A. E. Currie describe the poem happily as resembling "a luxuriant forest, crowded with exuberant growths, vocal with the sound or bird and waterfall," through which the main story meanders "as carelessly and almost as aimlessly as the two lovers thereof wander on their enchanted honeymoon." Yet Domett is not a great poet in ©ither th© restricted or the wider sense of the term. Though he was finely equipped for writing poetry, he lacked the little more that is bo much. He had energy, imagination, remarkable fertility of epithet and metre, and high intellectual power, but lack of true inspiration or of discipline left him a little lower than the really great. We find in him philosophy, humour, great stretches of highly picturesque painting, and human drama, but not the white magic of poetry. Every now and then, say the New Zealand critics quoted above, one comes across such x line as "wind-swept, a waft of sea-birds white went scattering up the sky." This is a fine line, but most reader* of "Ranolf and Amohia" will carry away impressions of scenes rather than of lines. It has been said that his poem suffered through his being oat of touch for 60 many years with the world of contemporary poetij, and his preoccupation with politics. This may he so; had he written in England with poet and critic friends at his elbow, the epic might have been less diffuse, though we must bear in mind that it was just this diffuseness that he increased when he revised the poem after his return. Had he spent his life in England, however, he would not have written "Ranolf and Amohia." To New Zealanders at any rate, there is this great satisfaction in his career, that if he sacrificed some measure of possible poetic achievement by emigrating, he wrote the foremost work of imagina-

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tion yet produced in their country. Had he spent his prime among the smooth, set and ordered conditions of England, he might have attained to a higher technique, but there is no certainty that his work would be better known to-day itinn much that was done by contemporaries who had a high reputation in their own time, but are. now well-nigh forgotten. His choice of New Zealand gave him a 6trikingly original theme, and in his story he embodied a great deal of the fabric of this wonderful country's beauty and history. He captured and preserved much that might have been lost in pioser concentration upon material tasks. "Ranolf and Amohia" may have few rer.der.-,. but there it stands, an epic of Maori and pakeha life amid conditions that have passed away for ever, a store-house of Maori custom and lore, and a repository of unequalkd impression* of Nature's loveliness. To this treasure the student at least most turn, and through him the poem will reach suocessive generation*.