" The Long White Cloud." MR. W. P. REEVES'S NEW BOOK.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 157, 31 December 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

" The Long White Cloud." MR. W. P. REEVES'S NEW BOOK.

[from our special correspondent.] London, 19th November. In giving to his new book on New Zealand the curiously inexpressive and unsuggestive title "The Long White Cloud," Mr. W. P. Reeves has, I think, made a mistake. Nor does his appending of the Maori version, "A tea roa," make the title much clearer or more explanatory to English readers. I regret this error of judgment, as I deem it, because I regard the book as an exceedingly able and useful one, which will put forcibly into the heads of slow - going Britishers a number of new ideas about New Zealand and its history. Therefore, it seems a pity that the circulation of such a work should be impeded, as I fear it will be, by a curiously out-of-the-way title. Practically, Mr. Reeves's new book may be regarded as the complete building of which his "Story of New Zealand" was the mere framework. At the same time, it is much more than a mere expansion of the earlier and slighter work. In my own opinion, it will always remain an important standard work on the colony. I have read it in the light of a wide personal knowledge of all parts of New Zealand, and of close personal acquaintance with the principal later actors in the dramatic historical scenes so vividly depicted by Mr. Reeves. And while I distinctly differ from the view he has taken in certain cases, alike of a public event or transaction, and of the men by whom it was performed, I do hot hesitate to express my judgment that in the. great majority of cases Mr. Reeves has taken a view which is alike clear-sighted and just. " The Long White Cloud " is not exclusively a history or a descriptive work. It combines the two characteristics. Mr. Reeves's descriptions of New Zealand, scenery are always excellent. He has a peculiar knack of bringing into prominence its special and most attractive features, and, perhaps under the influence of old memories of my own, I have been greatly struck with his easy, but masterly, sketch of the difficulties encountered by the early settlers in Canterbury and Otago, by the skill with which he has differentiated the temperaments of those two pioneer races, and the force with which he has shown how both made for substantial progress. But the book abounds in felicitous points of this kind, brought out with singular lightness of touch, combined with vividness of colouring. In his illustrations of a personal character, Mr. Reeves seems to me to hare been generally no less happy. Time and space will not permit me to indulge in long quotations, but let .me take one or two instances haphazard. What, for instance, could be better than this sketch of Captain Fitzroy, who was Governor of New Zealand in the early '40's? " Captain Fitzroy was one of those fretful and excitable beings whose manner sets plain men against them, and who, when they are not in error, seem so. Often wrong, occasionally right, he possessed in perfection the unhappy art of doing the right thing in the wrong way. Restless and irascible, passing from self-confidence to gloom, he would find relief for nerve tension in a peevishness which was the last quality one in his difficult position should have known. An autocratic official amid little rough, dissatisfied communities of hard-headed pioneers was a king with no divinity to hedge him round. Without pomp, almost without privacy, everything he said or did became the property of local gossips. A ruler so placed must uav natural dignity, and requires self-commard above all things. That was just iae quality Captain Fitzroy had not. It was said that the blood of a Stuart king ran in his veins ; and, indeed, there seemed to be about the tall, thin, melancholy man something of the bad luck, as well as the hopeless wrong - headednesa, of that unteachable House." Or to give a still more striking instance, and one which will appeal more directly to the appreciation of modern colonists, here is this picture of the late Sir George Grey :— " The many honest and acute men who did not keep step with Grey, who were disappointed in him, or repelled by and embittered against him were not always wrong. Some of his eulogists have been silly. But the student of his peculiar nature must be an odd analyst who does not in the end conclude that Grey was on the whole more akin to the Christian hero painted by Froude and Olive Schreiner than to the malevolent political chess player of innumerable, colonial leader-writers. Grey had the knightly virtues — courage, courtesy, and self - command. His early possession of official power in remote, difficult, thinly - peopled outposts, gave him self - reliance as well as dignity . Naturally fond of devious ways and unexpected moves, he learned to keep his own counsel and to mask his intentions ; he never even seemed frank. Though wilful and quarrelsome he kept guard over his tongue, but, pen in hand, became an evasive, obstinate controversialist, with a coldly-used power of exasperation. He learned to work apart, and practised it so long that he became •anable to co-operate on equal terms with any fellow - labourer. He would lead or would go alone. Moreover, so far as persons went, his antipathies were stronger than his affections, and led him to play with principles and allies. Those who considered themeselves his natural friends were never astonished to find him operating against their flank to the delight of the common enemy. Fastidiously indifferent to money, he was greedy of credit ; could be generous to inferiors, but not to rivals ; could be grateful to God, but hardly to man.' Both of these seem to me simply perfect in their truthfulness and just appreciation of 'the men described. Few people will find the tersely and vigorously written account of the New Zealand wars other than interesting. I do not know any book in which so instructive a view of the colonial situation- in those days can be found within so small a space. So, too, the general political history of the colony, while naturally coloured in some degree by the personal opinions and perhaps occasional prejudices of a writer who was at a comparatively recent date one of the most ardent of Now Zealand's party politicians, is yet, on the whole, fair and accurate. The one exception which forcibly impresses me, owing to the close personal knowledge I happen to have of the .circumstances of the case, is the one-sided account Mr. Reeves gives of the historic march on Parihaka directed by Mr. Bryce. I am sorry to see that , Mr. Reeves has not thought proper to amend his version of this affair which he gave in his " Storj of New Zealand," and which was criticised on the appearance of that little book. Mr. Reeves studiously ignores the allimportant fact that the object, both expressed and understood, of the march on Parihaka was to arrest the notorious murderer Hiroki, who was illegally sheltered by Te Whiti. It was no mere question of lands or reserves or of " public opinion which had conjured up the phantom of an imminent native rising," as Mr. Reeves alleges. It was simply a direct and necessary enforcement of the law of the land. I am quite well aware that Mr. Reeves's position at the time of those events led him to take a particular view of the Bryce proceedings, just as in my own case I was in a position to know exactly what really haj>pened. But I do think it is a great pity that by this suppression of an undoubted historic fact Mr. Reeves should have left a blot on an otherwise admirable work. The book, which is excellently printed and got up, and which is published by Messrs. Horace Marshall and Son, is enriched by a number of capital illustrations, which include many charming views of New Zealand scenery and several excel*

lent portraits, including j a really beautiful picture of Sir George Grey from a photograph taken since ma last arrival in England, by Russell, 6f Baker -street Assuredly there is no better portrait ex.' tant of Sir George Grey as he appeared immediately prior to tUe final failure of his mental and physical faculties. Already the oook ha?j received several highly favourable notices, among which I may quote the following from the Daily News. It devotes a whole column to the book: — "This is an admirable book with a shocking bad title — at lease from the stern, utilitarian point of view. But the title is the man, for though Mr. Reeves is the London business representative of a great colony, he is human, sympathetic, full of poetic fancy, and evidently has a passion for natural beauties, which he prudently keeps under control, out of deference, we suppose, 'to his hard* . headed clients at the other end of the world. The average New Zealanrler, especially the Scot, will wonder what on earth a long white cloud has to do with, j his adopted country. He is an unemotional person. He has probably never seen one of that splendid race of savages whose land he has possessed himself of for a song ; very likely the only word in their musical language he knows is ' kapai,' the Maori for ' good,' which he is well aware New Zealand most assuredly is — good business. And little do we blame the average man — Scot, Celt, or English — for his indifference. What is scenery tp him? Not a thing of beauty, but a positive scourge. Most of his capital goes in changing it ! There is not an uglier thing in the world than a burnt forest, and before he can get at the land the forest has to be burnt. In bis eyes the timber-clad slopes are certainly not magnificent. Glorious rivers shining in the sun — pooh ! they run thror jh gorges at torrent rate, and have cost many more lives than Omdurman. In fact,, your settler is ever at war with nature, which he curses with heartiness. But we at Home here, and especially those who are on the look-out for new homes in a fresher, a freer, an infinitely healthier land, will be obliged to Mr. Reeves for his picturesqueness and his vivid story which is yet amply and judiciously fortified by facts. In all the very considerable literature dealing with those wild and magnificent islands in the South Pacific, we know no single volume -which is so eminently readable or so likely to be useful in creating an interest in them. It is a model of what such a book should be — a story, yet a true story ; full of facts, yet not a guide-book. New Zealand is commonly called the political laboratory of the Old World." Another long review of Mr. Reeves's work appears in the Echo, in which it is described as " a book that it is difficult to overpraise and not easy to find fault with if one so desired." The author " knows his country as lew men know their native land ; " he has had " those unique opportunities of acquiring knowledge that belong only to those who help to make history ; he is filled with a boundless enthusiasm tempered always by the kindly cynicism of a successful man of the world, quite unembittered and satisfied, though suffering from no illusions, and kept always from all the more serious errors of judgment by the saving grace of humour. Then what a subject he has ! The life story of a land which for beauty { is an earthly paradise, of which the social j laws are so near perfection that there are no paupers and no millionaires, where the i climate is one of the divinest on earth." New Zealand is described as the "paradise of pioneers ; " the author's estimate of Sir George Grey, "a brilliant piece of work ; the book itself, delightful with its suggestions of sunny skies and forests of ferns and dreams of daring democracy."