HUNDRED YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 10

HUNDRED YEARS

BIRTH OF WELLINGTON

CELEBRATION IN STORY

FACT AND FICTION

(By "Quivis.")

So the barque Aurora, 550 tons, having left Gravesend on September 18, 1839, with 148 in the steerage and 21 in the cabin, dropped anchor in Port Hardy on January 17, 1840, made Port Nicholson Heads on the 21st, and on the following day, January 22, beat into the harbour against a northerly and anchored off Somes Island. "A most beautiful voyage," wrote one passenger. This, the arrival of the first emigrant ship, is kept as Wellington's birthday. Because Monday, January 22, 1940, happens to be Wellington's hundredth birthday—incidentally, the real birthday of New Zealand as a British settlement—the day and the place have become the focal centre for special celebration. The New Zealand Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai is one expression. The new history, from which the initial quotation was taken, is another. It is fitting that the story should be told from a new angle, that of the city and its province. The origin of the book "The City of the Strait, Wellington and Its Province— A Centennial History," by Alan Mulgan (published for the Wellington Provincial Centennial Council by A. H. and A. W. Reed," Wellington), is explained in a foreword by Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, Mayor of Wellington, and chairman of the council: The Wellington Provincial Centennial Council felt that the Province's celebration of the National Centennial should include a history, handy in size and moderate in price, of the Wellington settlements, so that this generation and its successors might know what were the forces that led to the foundation, of these settlements, what manner of men and women pioneered the province, and how development has proceeded from the camping life of 1840 and earlier to the smoothly-ordered civilisation of today.* Within this order of reference the author, a practised historian, has done his work exceedingly well. Those who are fairly familiar with the history of New Zealand will find in' this work much that is fresh and of special interest. Those who tackle the story for the first time will gain much from the localisation of the theme, if they are of Wellington City or Province, because they will see in it an account of the growth of something they know in their own lifetime, whether it is city or settlement in, : ~the hinterland of the city. The peculiar advantage of this method,of approach in New Zealand history must have been realised by the author in the course of his work, for he says in his preface: Every organised settlement in New Zealand history from the great undertakings of the New Zealand Company to smnll enterprises like Waipu and Puhoi, lias its special interest. The adventure that planted a colony on the shores of Port Nicholson, whence settlement spread- north and east and west, was thy first of its kind It set off into the blue with no assurance of what it would encounter m land provision or government. The New Zealand Company did mor c than any other non-official agency to found New Zealand. UNIQUE ASPECTS. It is the quite unique features in the activities of the Company, and its vigorous agents, the Wakefields, and their contact with Maori chiefs of unusual character, together with -the undercurrent of forces represented, by the whalers, the traders, the mission- 1 aries, the settlers, and the officialdom of the Government, that have called for fairly lengthy treatment in a book of this size, but Mr. Mulgan here, and there does break fresh ground in a rather well-trodden track. Thus of the famous Bugler Allen in the fight at Boulcott's Farm, March 3, 1846, he says: Allen's conduct was brave enough without the embroidering it has received. When he tried to sound the alarm the camp had already been awakened by gunfire. Nor was he the boy that popular accounts report him to be, a mistake that has arisen from the word "bugler." He was a private twenty-one years or age. Of early Wellington in the provincial period Mr. Mulgan gives many interesting pictures. It is true there were few public amenities or utilities in the town. .. . Un«l the late sixties the only public lights seem to have been the lamps over the doors of hotels. Then, the Board ol Works installed kerosene lamps in the streets. It is not surprising to read that moonlight evenings were chosen tor parties. The only public^ water supply was one brought from the Tmakon slopes to serve Government buildings, and the Board of Works felt unable to take advantage of it Houses used streams, wells and tanks. Sanitation was most primitive Lambton Quay sections were dotted with cesspools,,. . . The community was poor. The author then traces the growth of modern Wellington which really began in 1870 when the town became a municipality and when also "Sir Julius Vogel, by bringing forward his policy of public works and immigration, gave provincial as well as national history a sharp turn." The decade that followed was_ marked by exceptional activity in many directions. The province built its first railway, from Wellington to the Hutt Valley, and before the ten years were out the city was linked with the Wairarapa. The province received large numbers of immigrants, anrt their activities nourished the. business ot the centre. The city made, its nrßt .important advances in the provision ot public utilities. To the decade belong the beginnings of a city water supply; the introduction of gas lighting; the establishment of a steam tram service; the placing ot Wellington College on its Pjesent site; and the legislation that set up the Wellington Harbour Board. And so through the "hungry eighties" and the prosperous nineties the story of "The City of the Strait" runs rapidly but with an immense amount of useful detail, through to the present century and on to the present day. Mr. Mulgan is an Aucklander, but he has an eye for modern Wellington. It must be admitted frankly that here and there Wellington is a dingy place; especially in its older parts, but with improvements in buildings, gardens, and parks, it grows more gracious every year. It is a city of surprises; one is likely to find something interesting or beautiful round a corner. The latter part of the book is devoted to a series of chapters on what the author calls "The Out-Settlements," namely, the Wanganui, Rangitikei and Manawatu, and Wairarapa districts. Their story also is most interestingly told together with the growth of their principal centres. Most readers will agree with the author that there is great scope for the writing of distript histories, for difficulty of communication has made most of the development of New Zealand highly individual and local. "The Centennial," he says, "should give an impetus to the writing of district histories,"-' anji he quotes T. A. Gibson's "The Pur- ' Chase and Settlement of the Manchas.

ter Block" as "an excellent example on a small scale." Another of the different type, mentioned by the author, is "Te Hekenga," the memories of the late Rod McDonald, of the Horowhenua, recorded by E. D. O'Donnell. In- the meantime "The City of the Strait" is an exceedingly interesting book both for reading and for reference. A- series of appendices gives information as to the settlers by the first group of ships landing in 1840, a Political Roll of the provincial period and after, and statistics of population, etc. There are many interesting illustrations, including reproductions of old sketches, prints, and photographs not easily accessible elsewhere. A FAMILY CAVALCADE. History and story are derived from the. same Latin word "historia," but they have come to differ in meaning, though both the historian and the story-teller have the same purpose of creating the illusion of reality in the mind of the reader. The historian is supposed to stick to facts in re-creating the past; the story-teller, or the historical novelist, takes more of a poetic licence in mingling fact and fiction. la "The Hundred Years" (Robert Hale, Ltd., London), Sir James Elliott, M.D., LL.D., who in recent years has added the pen to the scalpel and the sword as the emblems of . accomplishment, follows fact far more closely than the average historical novelist and fills his book with a whole gallery of characters who actually lived in New Zealand's hundred years and helped to make her history. In fact, the only fictional characters are the hero and his family to the third generation, and a few of their intimate friends. Tha story starts with the hero, a youth, Oliver Scott, in a Sydney sailors' inn, the Whalers' Arms, at Miller's Point, in 1839, and ends with Mr. Savage and the Labour Government in 1939. It might ba thought that the difficulty of handling such a theme would ba so great as to preclude any chance of success. If so, Sir James has achieved the impossible, for he has managed to re-create the past and make it live as vividly as Mr. Mulgan has done in his "City of the Strait." The "hundred years" reels off like : a "cavalcade" or moving picture, withi real characters stepping on and stepping off, much as one would imagina them doing in real life. Here, for instance, are Dicky Barrett, and his fel-low-whalers, Love and Guard, the Wakefields and the Maori chiefs, Sir George Grey and Dr. Featherston, Sit! Julius Vogel, Sir Harry Atkinson, John Ballance, Richard John Seddon, and W. F. Massey, with the Mr. Coates and '.the Mr. Savage of a later day. The hero founds a family and ait estate in the Wairarapa, his children marry and have children, all with the background of history, of time' and place, moving past like the scene from, a railway carriage. The narrative has, of course, its unevenness; its course does not always run smooth; but /it does. run and it carries the readeu through to the end. Read in parallel with "The City •of the Strait," "The Hundred Years" gives yet another angle to history. If not a complete success, the experiment shows marked originality and has been fully worth while. Here is the summary of""The Hundred Years" by the last of tha Scotts on the last page: , The material progress of this country) has been prodigious. It has cost us a. great debt, which we can. meet provided our population increases. It has not increased much in the last two decades. . . . Spiritually and intellectually, we have made little progress. The age, ia my opinion, is blatant, vulgar, and selfish.' New Zealand, although set like a citadel in the far sea, cannot escape the trend of the world. . . . The progress "of air navigation brings us into rapid contact with other nations, apd we -shall''^har* their progress. First.'the Maori" canoe, then the sailing-ships, then the 'fast, steamer, now the aeroplane and wireless —what next? Peaceful progress or devastating war? This Centenary celebra- • tion is a memorial of the past and aa incentive for the future. We face it' with hope. What more" can I say now at the - end of "The Hundred Years"?