N.Z. HISTORY RICHMOND-ATKINSON PAPERS SPAN 50 YEARS’ GROWTH

Press, Volume C, Issue 29602, 26 August 1961, Page 3

N.Z. HISTORY RICHMOND-ATKINSON PAPERS SPAN 50 YEARS’ GROWTH

(Reviewed by R. C. L.)

The Richmond - Atkinson P»per». Edited by G«y H. Scholefield. Government Printer. 2 vols.

The sheer magnitude of this work is the first thing that strikes one about it—for it is the largest collection of New Zealand private papers yet to be published, and it spans 50 years of this country’s growth. This being so. it is surprising that, by refusing to send review copies to the daily newspapers, the Government Printer has not helped the work to receive the publicity it deserves. Though the Government Printer refused a request from “The Press” for a copy of the work for review, the book is judged of sufficient historical importance to merit a review, notwithstanding. The first New Zealand letter in the collection was written in Auckland on February 7, 1851, and has something to say about “the gentlemen colonists” there, who “spit on the carpet as they smoke their filthy little short pipes.” The last of the letters is dated July 10, 1906, and contains a reference to Seddon’s funeral, which none of the Supreme Court judges attended—a fact which this letter attributes to “Stout's foolish petulance over the matter of precedence.” That the collection should focus on so many aspects of New Zealand life in the period thus covered, is

scarcely to be wondered at, considering the conspicuous part played in our public and national affairs by various members of the Richmond and Atkinson families. James Crowe Richmond, who was a consulting engineer by profession. was Colonial Secretary in the Weld Ministry, and was Commissioner of Customs, as well as Native Minister in the Stafford Ministry of 1866. His brother, Christopher William, held similar portfolios in the first Stafford Ministry, of 1856, and was later elevated to the Supreme Court Bench. As for the Atkinson brothers, Arthur and Harry, the former edited the ‘Taranaki Herald,” and was a member of the Taranaki Provincial Council and of Parliament, while the latter rose to be Premier and received a knighthood for his services to the country. The question as to what led . these middle-class families to emigrate to New Zealand is discussed by Dr. Scholefield in an introductory chapter to these Papers. There he states that for the English middle-class as a whole, the 1840’s “opened in a climate of profound perplexity.” In emigration many people found a way out of such perplexity. And so it was wat James and Henry Richmond, faced with uncertain prospects in England, decided to try their fortunes in New Zealand. They sailed from Gravesend on October 3, 1850. and arrived at Auckland on February 1, 1851. A fortnight later, with Maori guides th assist them, they set out to walk to New Plymouth, the settlement in which they intended to commence their new life. Henry Richmond's journal describing the course they followed, and the experience of each day's trek, is contained in these Papers. As for James’s impressions of the journey, they are recorded—after the lapse of 37 years—in the “New Zealand Parliamentary Debates” of August 1, 1888. Speaking then in reminiscent vein, in the Legislative Council, he recalled some of the highlights of that memorable excursion.

The small holding the Richmond brothers purchased in New Plymouth had been partly cultivated by its previous owner, but on much of ‘he 17 acres it comprised, bush was still standing. Each day. therefore found the young men felling trees: and sometimes they would lay down their axes and take up pick and shovel for roadmaking—an occupation in which Maoris would assist them for 3s 6d a day. Then there were fences to be made, corn to grind, and bread to bake. Their sister. Jane Maria—at home in England—whenever she received their letters telling of these various employments, must have been seized with a womanly conjecture as to how these bachelor brothers of hers found time to cope with their washing and mending. Fortunately for them, the day was not far distant when she would be able to relieve them of these cares. For. at the end of 1852. she, in company with her mother, her brother Christopher and his wife, and with Harry and Arthur Atkinson, sailed for New Zealand in the ship Sir Edward Paget. When Jane (then 28 years of age), finally arrived at New Plymouth, with what zest she Chief Justice) dated June 17. entered into her new-found pioneering life! Her employments. she writes, consisted of "a daily succession of

bread and butter making, sweeping, cleaning, interspersed with starching and ironing, or a faint attempt of gardening.” Her mother did not like to see her committed to such a round of hard! work. And yet Jane was doing no more than many pioneer women, similarly placed, whose rank and station in life had placed them above such menial tasks before they emigrated from England. There she had moved in genteel circles. Not that she was one to give herself airs, but the decorum of her class was such as to preclude her from the performance of certain tasks. She might, for example, learn a foreign language and be thought nothing the worse of; but once let her begin to teach such a language for pecuniary gain, and she would lose caste socially. One would have thought that suoh class distinctions would find it hard to survive admist the rough and tumble of colonial life, but there is abundant evidence to the contrary in the Rich-mond-Atkinson Papers, which relate for example that when the Hursthouses were about to book their passage from England to New Zealand, they might have saved £lOO by booking intermediate cabins, but that by doing so they would “undoubtedly lose caste on their landing at Wellington.” Another of the letters, in describing a ball given by the Taranaki Freemasons, states that it was attended by all classes—“both nobs and snobs,” and that in the community where it was held, it would have been impossible to muster 150 people belonging to the “genteel class.”

In line with these observations are some remarks of C. W. Richmond, recorded in a letter he wrote while in Christchurch in October, 1857. There was—he asserts—“no snobbish exclusiveness at Christchurch —no’ such ridiculous airs as some of our halfbred New Plymouth people affect to give themselves.” To return to the busy Richmond-Atkinson colony at New Plymouth, the work of breaking in their properties proceeded apace, and it was not long before the five farms they occupied aggregated one thousand acres. The two families named the settlement they had established Hurworth. To trace the fortunes of the family group is scarcely possible within the limits of this review. Let it suffice, at this point, to note that in December, 1854, Arthur Atkinson and Jane Maria Richmond were married, and that in November of the following year, C. W, Richmond was; elected to Parliament to represent the town of New Plymouth, being elevated to Cabinet rank shortly thereafter, whereupon his assumption of high office in the State rendered it necessary for him to reside in Auckland, which was then the seat of government. Thither, accordingly, he moved with his family in 1856. From this time onwards C. W. Richmond's letters take in the wider horizon of New Zealand affairs, and begin to assert the need for something more than a narrow, provincial outlook in tackling, for example, the problem of Maori-pakeha relations which were then fast deteriorating. ‘The colony”—he writes—“must learn to feel as a whole. Our absurd provincialism is greatly in the way of this as of most other good things.” There is much in these papers that points to the difficulty of calling the New Zealand Parliament together in its early years. They mention, for example, that in 1858 the Nelson members sent a manifesto to the Premier, pointing out that their pri-

vate affairs were too urgent to allow them to attend Parliament. Nor were the Nelson members alone in their refusal to attend that session. The Wellington members also absented themselves “en masse” —a fact noted by C. W. Richmond in a letter to his uncle, T. Richmond. (This letter, in the original manuscript collection, has been mnitted from the work under review.) “Are all the Otago members going to the session? I hear Canterbury is lukewarm about attending." Thus wrote Mrs Gore Browne to C. W. Richmond in February, 1862. Here, then, is a weight of evidence illustrative not only of the difficulty of calling Parliament together. but also of the provincialism that was the bane of New Zealand politics during the first two decades of our parliamentary history.

These papers contain a small body of correspondence that passed between Mr Justice Richmond and his fellow judges. (Richmond was appointed to the Supreme Court bench in 1862). In this category belongs a letter of Sir George Arney’s (the then 1868, and adverting to the proposed appointment of deputy judges-in-Admiralty *

within New Zealand. At that time Sir George Arney was the sole New Zealand judge possessing authority from England to hold a Vice-Ad-miralty court, and as he resided at- Auckland, it was

only there that the court could be held. It is interesting to note, in this connexion, that in January, 1864, the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce had begun to press for the jurisdiction of the Vice-Admiralty court to be extended to Canterbury. The Richmond - Atkinson Papers are further noteworthy for the evidence they afford of the readiness with which men of the pioneering period made themselves useful about the house, thus easing the burden of their over-worked wives. C. W. Richmond, during his early married life in New Plymouth. used to go, broom in hand, about the beach cottage which he and his family occupied, sweeping it like a veritable whirlwind. His brother, James, took a delight in scouring and polishing saucepans. “A perfect fidfad in the home”—was how his mother chose to speak of him. Writing to James Richmond in March, 1863, the Provincial Superintendent of Taranaki, Charles Brown, concludes his letter with these words: “I cleaned an arrear of 3 dozen knives yesterday.” Moreover, Henry Richmond brought great ingenuity to his kitchen tasks. He invented a dish drainer, a description of which is given in\ the list of “specifications of inventions” published by the New Zealand Government in 1874. A similar aptitude for household employments remains to this day one of the distinguishing characteristics of New Zealand men. May it not be a persisting trait inherited from those earlier times?

Their documentary coverage of much pertaining to the Maori wars is a feature of these Papers deserving of notice, so richly informative are they on this subject. In his introduction to the Papers, Dr. Scholefield notes that the Richmonds were superb letter-writers. It is to be regretted, therefore, that he has made so many deletions from the original rrianuscrips—a fact which leads one to question his reported assertion, in a recent issue of The New Zealand “Listener,” that “the real point of publication of the Papers now is that the student in Auckland and Dunedin, or elsewhere, wiR not have to come to Wellington and grub through the original letters for the back-

ground he wants.” By dividing the work into sections, and prefacing each with a background commentary, Dr. Scholefield enables the reader to keep the march of events as portrayed in the letters, in historical perspective. His explanatory footnotes, though sparingly provided, are always helpful. An additional aid would have been a glossary of Maori words, seeing so many occur in the narrative. (As it is, the word pikau is wrongly, spelt “pikaw” on page 82 of Volume 1.) Other mis-spell-ings occur in the bibliography at the end of the same volume. The index to the Papers is noticeably deficient in subject headings. There is none supplied for postal services, for example, despite the fact that several letters in the collection bear upon this topic. It is some 30 years since the Richmond - Atkinson Papers were presented to the nation. Their publication by the New Zealand Government lends official recognition to their value as a historical collection. If the same sort of recognition were accorded to other fnanuscript collections such as the Sir Donald Maclean Papers and the Stafford Papers, or the journal of Henry Sewell, splendid additions would be made to the literature dealing with the early years of New Zealand's history. Now in his eighty-fourth year. Dr. Scholefield must perforce leave it to younger historians to tackle the editing of these other collections which lie like a harvest for the reaping.