Candid Comments On Kaitaia

Northern Advocate, 26 January 1938, Page 2

Candid Comments On Kaitaia

“Antipodean Journey,” by Margaret L, Macpherson (Hutchinson).

Many Kaitaia people will be slightly scandalised by Margaret's unexpurgated anecdotes of the days when she assisted the late Colonel Alien Bell to carry the banner of progress in the Far North.

Whe . the Colonel was returned to Parliament he found that he could not carry on his newspaper unaided, hence the appointment of Margaret Macpherson as the first woman editor in New Zealand. In her book she scandalises the scandal-mongers of Kaitaia, and her writings are tinged with a little r.weet vindictiveness.

When Margaret left the North to lake up broadcasting and special writings she was admirably restrained, but from the safe seclusion of Fleet Street, she opens a broadside in one of the liveliest and most readable commentaries upon the Dominion to appear in years.

Gossipy Treatment,

The treatment is unmethodical, disjointed, gossipy and most of her observations appear to be entirely superficial; but, nevertheless, into this chatty, informal, account of her return visit to this country—she had previously lived here for many years—she sems to have woven something of the texture of life and of history. As one reviewer says, newspaper people, till they can slay their adversaries in a book, are completely at the mercy of their readers. Margaret does not lose her opportun- j ity for retaliation, telling the story of

how “The Northlander ’ struggled to put the “Winterless” on the map. “Oh. how we shocked them, Colonel Bell and I, and our little party of progressives,” she exclaims. “When the infant town needed a sanitary system, they thought that the lady editor who could bring herself to mention so indelicate a subject was certainly no lady. When late at night I used ‘ to stay reporting the proceedings of the district council (which, so heated was the controversy, sometimes sat i all night) the local women used to say, ‘What can she be DOING at this time of night, in there with all those men?’ That was how their minds worked.”

Relieved In Direct Action. When the bluff Allen Beil first stood for Parliament a friend said to him jocularly, “You must be sure to kiss all the babies. I believe that is the standardised way to win votes.” “I don’t believe in indirect action,” was his reply, according to Margaret. “So I kiss the mothers, not the babies!”

Of course, this bon mot was repeated throughout the length and breadth of the Bay of Islands electorate, but it did not prevent his election by a good majority.

“Antipodean Journey” also tells a very revealing story concerning a halfcaste Maori girl, who went away to Auckland and became the mother of a child. Then, in great distress, the

girl wrote to Mrs Macpherson that she was stranded. Unable to leave her editorial chair. Mrs Macpherson was unable to go to her assistance, but Colonel Bell very charitably agreed to do so.

“I can’t carry my baby up the gangway on to that boat,” said the girl when the cab drew up at the wharf. “I just can't. Everybody will be looking at me. They all know I’m not married.” Colonel Bell’s response was instantaneous. He put one arm round the girl and took the baby on the other and marched her up the gangway. “It was a grand action,” says Mrs Macpherson. “and typical of the man. But the local gossips gave it out that he had seduced a native girl and flaunted her and her child before the electors. Those gossips, how they made us suffer! Many a day 1 laughed hardily when their tales came back to me, and many a night I shed baffled tears into the pillow. But we loved the North, and we kept plodding along.” There are many more intimate glimpses of people and things in the volume. The result, whatever we may say about the author’s lack of literary

graces, is an entertaining narrative