ROBERT HENRY CODRINGTON

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 23

ROBERT HENRY CODRINGTON

APPRECIATIONS IN “THE LOG.” EARLY DAYS IN NORFOLK ISLAND. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, October 13. The current issue of “The Southern Cross Log” contains a great deal of appreciatory matter of the late Dr Codrington. The Rev. C; H. Brooke and the Rev. Canon Penny have written personal reminiscences covering in successive periods nearly the whole of Dr Codrington' s mission life. Of Dr Codrington’s work at Norfolk Island the editor of “The Log” finds it difficult to speak at all adequately. “It went on so quietly and unostentatiously, yet it meant so much. His intercourse with the boys was based on friendliness and sympathy, without any assumption of superiority. The Melanesian, always a gentleman in his fundamental instincts, was ready to respond to this treatment, and Dr Codrington, like Bishop Patteson, was able to open to him regions of thought and knowledge which a superficial observer would never have supposed him capable of entering.” Mr Brooke remarks: “There was never any self-assertion about Dr Codrington, though it must have cost him considerable self-restraint to put up with my own selfassertive self. But he knew how to reduce one to one’s proper level without

wounding one’s rather sensitive pride. Like Bishop Patteson, he loved the boys’ for their own sake, and asked for no better society; affording as they did a rich mine of philological knowledge and island folklore, with which, and by indefatigable labours (or love), combined with consummate skill, he enriched the brilliant and instructive pages of his two standard works : ‘Melanesian Languages’ and ‘The Melanesians.’ Their author wrote to me as follows a year ago: ‘I have been engaged in settling about my books. . . All that I have left are being packed to go to Mr Ray. Such things it seems ought not to be altogether thrown away, yet there are few indeed who care tor them. There is something pathetic in parting .with old MS., notes, etc., that recall old times and and the people of old times. ... It seems like digging one’s

own -grave. . . . That my language work lias been useful, Ray is a proof.’ I have a general and most precious recollection of endless walks and talks together among the pines of Norfolk Island —talks full of kindly criticism of his companion and the Norfolkers, and bantering remarks concerning all self-satisfied folk. Reality was the keynote of all he said and did; and not until you needed it, would you discover the warm sympathy and deep attachments that lay beneath the rather chilling surface; but, of course, at that time I was a raw, rash youth who needed snubbing, and it is only now in recalling those early days at Norfolk Island that I realise how much of whatever is good and sound in me I owe to my intimate association with such a wise and candid friend — faithful and true to everyone he met.” Canon Penny joined the Melanesian Mission in 1875 during the interval between Bishop Patteson’s death and Bishop John Selwyn’s consecration, at which time Dr Codrington was in charge of the diocese, and among other duties he was head of the Training College for Native teachers at Norfolk Island. ‘‘And nothing surprised me so much,” he writes, “among my new surroundings there as his wonderful influence over the scholars. He held them in the hollow of his hand. They loved him and respected him, and therefore they obeyed him implicitly. It was a -remarkable situation, and I remember how it struck another stranger, the captain of a whale-ship, who had landed at Norfolk Island and who had come to see our school. ‘You white men would be in a bad way,’ he said, ‘if these niggers were to rise.’ And this was a fair comment on what he saw from his point of view, for he did not realise the influence that kept the young men in hand.” One of Dr Codrington’s winning characteristics was his keen sense of humour, readers are told. “Whether it was Mrs Colenso's devotion to homoeopathy—her patients, ~to Dr Codrington’s amusement, used to call her medicine ‘tank water’ ; or the weird eccentricities of the Norfolk Islanders; or the mistakes we made as new chums, in trying to speak with Melanesian tongues, he always saw the amusing side of a situation —but in a kindly spirit, and increasing years had no effect upon his merry heart. But he could be stern also, and even alarming. I have seen Melanesians, who had been behaving badly, cower under the lash of his rebuke; but I never saw him lose his temper with them, though I recollect seeing two Norfolkers running away from the verandah of his house, as if escaping from a fire. They had visited him to discuss a question of ‘Seventh Day Adventism,’ that, a ship’s cook, who had deserted his whaler and established himself as a preacher at Norfolk Island, had been expounding to them. And they had come to Dr Codrington, not to ask his advice, but to argue with him, presumably in the hope of effecting his conversion. When these visitors had gone I went to his house, and he said to me: ‘I now know how it was possible for men no worse than I am to burn people.’ “In his latter years at Chichester we have often laughted over suoh memories as these, and his recolleotion of them was ever fresh and keen. We shall never forget him, nor his hospitable house, nor his garden so characteristic of himself. The banana-tree, whose fruiting he came to despair of seeing. was, strange to say, actually bearing fruit at the time of his death. And thus we think of the end of his long life; his wanderings over and resting among the friends who loved him, waiting for the Master to call him Home.” As a Prebendary of Chichester. Dr Codrington lived mosbly a retired life, full of literary and philological interests, and for some years he continued to attend Melanesian committees at the Church House, and other meetings to him with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop John Selwyn, the staff delegated the choice of a successor to the last, whioh resulted in the appointment of the Rev. Cecil Wilson, Vicar of Moordown. lie used to say that he felt altogether out of touch with the later developments of the Mission; and his temperament and his supreme veneration for Bishop Patteson both disposed him to look to the past for the golden age. But his love for the Mission never failed; he never lost his sympathy with the young; and the newest recruits for Melanesia found a warm welcome in S. Richard’s Walk.