WOMEN PIONEERS OF NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29366, 19 November 1960, Page 3

WOMEN PIONEERS OF NEW ZEALAND

[Reviewed by

R.C.L.]

Married and Gone to New Zealand. Being Extracts from the Writings of Women Pioneers, edited and annotated by Alison Drummond. Paul’s Book Arcade and Oxford University Press. 192 pp.

The letters, journals, and reminiscences of eight women who were living in New Zealand between 1840 and 1850 make up this slender volume. The eight are: a missionary’s wife, Marianne Williams, of Paihia, a governor’s wife, Eliza Hobson, nf Russell and Auckland; then Jessie Campbell, wife of an early Wanganui settler, and Sarah Greenwood, a Motueka settler. Next is Catherine Chapman, of Karori, Wellington—wife of the resident judge there. She is followed by homely Sarah Higgins, of Nelson, and Sarah Selwyn, of Auckland—the bishop’s wife. Last of the writers is Mary Ann Martin, of Judges Bay, Auckland—wife of New Zealand’s first Chief Justice, Sir William Martin. Of most of these women it could be said that, had they remained in England, they would rarely have had to soil their hands with doing domestic chores, and that as for hard work out of doors, it would have been quite foreign to them. And yet, here in New Zealand, they turned to and did men’s work. Jessie Campbell milked cows, and Catherine Chapman proudly relates how she helped her husband clear their Karori section. All these writers took a womanly pride in the way they managed their respective households. But their letters and journals, as we might expect, range beyond the intimate confines of hearth and home, and take in something of the larger New Zealand scene.

For example, in the journals of Marianne Williams—written as they were, within earshot of the crack of Hone Heke’s musketry—we learn how reluctant the missionaries were to be implicated in any way in the military moves initiated by Governor Fitzroy to meet the emergency in the far north. Nothing could be more explicit on this point than her journal entry of August 27, 1844, which describes a missionary deputation that waited on the Governor, “to appeal on account of all their teams and drays having been ordered to the Kerikeri by 7 o’clock in the evening, to convey guns and ammunition for the troops.” The general restiveness and tension that characterised that early testing-time of Maoripakeha relations, is reflected also in the journals of Sarah Selwyn. With the Bishop and their small son, William, she journeyed overland from Wellington to Otaki, in 1845, to visit the ailing Archdeacon Hadfield. And while there.

she met the chief, Te Rauparaha, who—as her journal narrates--was one of the Maori leaders in the Wairau affray, and was “exceedingly hated by the English settlers.” Her journal hastens to add, however, that Te Rauparaha was anxious to be once more on friendly terms with the colonists, and that he wished to go to Wellington and show his goodwill, but was afraid to do so “except under the Bishop’s lee.” At this point, the curious reader might well ask how Te Rauparaha intended demonstrating his goodwill. A letter of Colonel Wakefield’s to the New Zealand Company of May 19, 1845, supplies the answer to this question. For, Wakefield reports that Maoris in the Hutt Valley had then begun to occupy land belonging to the settlers, and that Te Rauparaha, wishing to restrain “the more truculent of his countrymen,” was bent upon coming to the Hutt, but feared to do so lest he might suffer insults from the colonists. But, to return to Sarah Selwyn’s journal, it mentions how the odium the Bishop drew upon himself by thus affording the chief his protection, did not prevent “all the rank and fashion from coming to call; or the wife of the editor of the local paper from sending a fine plum cake to Willie just as her husband was denouncing the Bishop in thundering articles.” In introducing the autobiography of Sarah Higgins, contained in this book, Mrs Drummond rightly describes it as “a vividly uncluttered picture of early days in the Nelson settlement.” Certainly it is eloquent of the primitive living conditions and the near-starvation that faced emigrant labourers who made Nelson their home in the early

1840's. It recalls how some settlers gathered sow thistles and boiled them, and how the men became so weak that they could work for only a few hours at a time. “Our next-door neighbour” —writes Sarah Higgins—“had a little baby girt It was a sorry time with the poor women in their baby troubles. Poor woman, she used to sit .Up and cry for food.”

Another early Nelson settler was Sarah Greenwood. What a cheerful acceptance of the pioneer’s lot was hers, judging from ’her letters, included in Mrs Drummond's book. For they depict her. in one place, wet through “almost to the waist,” from working out of doors, and yet happy to recall how thoroughly she enjoyed the meal thus prepared. A note of gaiety is struck in her writing when she describes the quadrille party at which she entertained

guests in her Motueka home, her dining room being cleared for the occasion, when dancing was kept up till 11 in the evening “with a little singing between whiles.” The refreshments, she notes, were very simple—“cakes, negus, wine, and stewed plums and cream mixed in a tureen.”

Three of the most delightful letters in this collection are those of Eliza Hobson, the wife of our first Governor. One is astounded, in reading them, at the scale on which she entertained guests, while resident at the Bay of Islands in 1841. “Scarcely a week passes”—she wrote then—“without our having a dinner party of 16 or 18 persons.” Not much has been written about the wives of our early Governors. All the more interesting it is, then, to find in this book half a dozen references to the wife of Sir George Grey. Not that they tell much beyond the fact that she was clever and beautiful, and “a Governor’s wife at 16.” But even this is something more than Sir George Grey’s biographers have cared to divulge hitherto.

One further point of interest that arises from this book lies in its occasional use of words that are now either quite uncommon, or obsolete. Thus, on page 44, occurs the word “stirabout”—defined in a footnote as “a paste made with flour, sugar, and boiling water.” And then, on page 69, we read of surveyors sent to “cut lines” through the Chapmans* property, at Karori. That was in November, 1844. Fifteen years later, a New Plymouth early settler, C. W. Richmond—in a letter written to his uncle, Thomas Richmond—uses the same expression, which he defines thus: “Cutting a line consists in chopping through the undergrowth, particularly the supplejacks.” This usage is perpetuated in the place-name, White's Line, near Lower Hutt, and Nobs' Line, New Plymouth, but has not yet been listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. To conclude, then, the pleasure that Mrs Drummond has found in steeping herself in the -writings of these women of early New Zealand is now, thanks to her industry, one that the reader may likewise enjoy. As editor and annotater, she has performed her task with insight and imagination. Her use of footnotes is noticeably sparing, and two of these need correcting. One—-on page 89— states that George Duppa left New Zealand in 1870, whereas the actual date of his departure—as recorded in the “Nelson Examiner”—was September 20, 1863, when he left Nelson after selling his Amuri property for £150,000. The other is an error of spelling on page 49, where G. H. Schofield should read “G. H. Scholefield.” It remains to mention not only the plates, but also the line drawings (done by the editor’s husband), that are an attractive feature of this book.