Trials of a Pioneer

Evening Star, Issue 23503, 17 February 1940, Page 14 (Supplement)

Trials of a Pioneer

WAITING FOR MAILS

“ August 16 [1859] Mr Kempthorne left for Auckland, taking with him a large budget of letters, which we have been busy writing for some days past. Mine were written with a very sad heart, for while all the others were rejoicing last week over the letters they had got by the Planet, no letters came by it for me, either from Auckland or England. “ August 30.—Another disappointment for me. Mr Baker arrived from the port with two saddlebags bulging out (which is always a good sign of letters when coming from that quarter. Strange to say, he appeared just at the very moment Mrs Leonard [Williams] and I were saying ‘ This is a good wind for letters,’ and Mr Leonard told me he had dreamt wo had got them. [Leonard Williams, son of William Williams, was afterwards second Bishop of Waiapu]. “ I was at tea with Mrs Leonard and holding baby, so she very kindly, with Ellie in her arms, went off to the bishop’s house for my treasures. Mr Baker himself came in soon after and said he had only got one letter for me. I felt sure others would be enclosed, but was struck dumb when only a thin note in Mrs Montressor Smith’s handwriting was given to me. T ran off to he a few minutes alone, for I felt this second disappointment very hard to bear. Mrs Smith wrote from Humphrey’s house, and I felt quite mystified that no letter has come from either

A Misadventure and its Sequel In these days, when mails arrive by air from Britain, it is impossible to realise what “ Home ” letters meant to the pioneers, who might have few relatives in this new land. The journal of Mrs J. W. Slack (Eliza Jones), of a date not long preceding her marriage to the missionary, tells of a trial—almost a tragedy—which was caused by a miscarriage of long-awaited correspondence, and the anguish it produced. Miss Jones, whose new home was in Auckland, was making a prolonged stay with Bishop JVilliam Williams, at Poverty Bay, assisting in his school for Maori girls. Extracts from his journal are published in ‘ Further Maoriland Adventures, J. W, and E, Stack.’

himself or Emma. 1 fear my letters have all gone astray. I try to be patient, and wait for time to unravel the mystery. Humphrey [her brother in Auckland] and Emma would never be so unkintl as not to forward on my dear, dear English letters, even if they could not write themselves. Mr Leonard Williams very kindly sent a special messenger to the port, 10 miles away, who rode off, in pouring rain, to inquire again. “ I spent a busy afternoon with my Maori exercises and mending the boys’ clothes, full of expectation all the time the messenger was away that he would bring back what I longed for, but alasl When he got back it was only to say no letters had come. I was inclined to rush off and spend the evening alone, but thought better of it, and soon recovered enough to teach Rebecca a little, and to sing a hymn, and read aloud one of the reviews from ‘ The Times ' to Mrs Williams."

It was a long time before the mystery was explained. On November 10 —three months later—we read : " Since the last entry in my journal a strange thing has happened. A hatbox belonging to the Bishop was opened by chance, and there, inside it was my long-lost packet of English letters. The box came from Auckland by the vessel which brought the mail, hut no one thought it contained anything but the bishop’s hat. and so it remained unopened until the hat was wanted.”

the undecorated human fac® is unpleasant and ignoble.” Of the journey from Dunedin to Christchurch he writes: “ This train—express—goes twenty and one-half miles an hour schedule time; . but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting and' the cars so comfortable In New Zealand these fast expresses run twice a , week.” Later he notes:— “ Sunday. 17 : Sailed ..last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton. 11 So we did. 1 remeriiber it'yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that night may forget some, other things if they live a good while, but they will not live long enough to forget that.” Transport has improved since! Bernard Shato in 1934 George Bernard Shaw visited New Zealand from March 15 to April 14, 1934, but did not come further south than Christchurch. . / Asked if he had any suggestions to offer as to how New Zealand, if, to use his own words, she ceased ramming her butter down unwilling throats overseas, could pay her way, Mr Shaw suggested that New Zealand should drop butter and concentrate on producing something other nations Wanted but could not produce. “ AS far as i can make out,” he said impishly, “ you discovered nothing except Maori gatoposts, for which there is not h very large demand ” When asked by a photographer on the departing Rangitane to smile his brightest at the thought of leaving New Zealand, Mr Shaw remarked: " If 1 showed my true feelings I would cry; it’s the best country I’ve been in.” A remarkable thing about New Zealand newspapers, he pronounced, was that there was still a literary Press here. It was quite up to the level of the English Press. Rupert Brooke in 1913—Got All Things, But Not Paradise Rupert Brooke was in Auckland, in 1913. “It’s a sort of Fabian England,” he wrote, “ very upper-middle class and gentle and happy (after Canada), no poor, and the Government owning hotels and running char-a-bancs, All the women smoke) and dress very badly, and nobody drinks. Everybody seems rather ugly—but perhaps that’s compared with the South Seas. ... , “ The queer thing is that they’ve got all the things in the Liberal or mild Fabian programme—eight-hour day (and less), bigger old age, pensions, access to the land, minimum wage, insurance, etc., etc., and yet it’s not paradise. The same troubles exist in much the same form (except that there’s not much bad poverty). Cost of living is rising quicker' than wages. There are the same troubles between unions and employers, and between rich and poor.” James Anthony Froude Visits North Island James Anthony Froude, tfie eminent historian, visited Auckland with his son in 1885. “We had intended to visit both islands [he writes in his ‘Oceana’]; to sec Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, see Lake.Manapouri. Lake Wakatipu, and the New Zealand Alps. We found that the distances were so great and the means of accomplishing them so limited that

half our time would be ipent in coasting steamers. In trying to see everything we should see nothing properly, and we had to limit our ambition. There has not been time for local varieties of characters to form among the colonists. After learning what people were thinking and saying in Auckland we should know tolerably what they, thought and said elsewhere. In the North Island only should wo have a chance of seeing anything of the Maori.” So the trip was confined to Auckland, with a visit to the Pink and White Terraces (destroyed in the following year), and a short stay with Sir George Grey on his island of Kawau. The time was that of the Russian war scare, and the fear of what might be about to happen at Home was to Froude’s decision to hasten his visit.

He might easily have been a colonist himself. “ The sight of New Zealand,”he writes, “ gave me very strange sensations. Forty years before I had thought of emigrating and settling there. It was at the revolutionary, time which - preceded the convulsions of 1848, when the air was full of Socialism and republican equality. Arthur; Clough and I had come to a conclusion that we had no business to be 4 gentlemen,’ that we ought to work with our hands, etc., and so we proposed to come to this place and turn farmers. Clough wrote his ‘ Bothie of Tober-na-Yuolich.’ constructed a hero who should be the double of himself, married bira to a Highland lassie, and sent them off instead. I, with all my life lying behind mo, was here at last, but was flitting by like a ghost.”