BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

MULGAN’S NEW ZEALAND "A Pilgrim’s Way In New Zealand,” by Alan Mulgan. Oxford University Press, London. A. J. Fyfe, Ltd., New Plymouth. In a foreword to this book Lord Bledisloe commends it for careful research, the author’s capacity for wordpainting, his lightness of touch, and his success in writing of the Dominion in a maimer that should strengthen New Zealanders’ “common pride in their country and its short yet stirring- and romantic history.” The praise is well earned, for Mr. Mulgan has undoubtedly succeeded in his “attempt to paint the landscape of New Zealand and to describe the community that has been developed in a hundred years of ordered life—both against an historical background—as a visitor might see them under a New Zealander’s guidance.” The attempt needed no small daring, for prosiness and parochialism are influences ever ready to deflect the purpose of one who would write of the history and the charms of his own country. Mr. Mulgan has kept free of both of those defects, and has written a book that will be welcomed by all who are proud of being New Zealanders and who would like their friends oversea to know some of the reasons for their pride. The reader is taken, so to speak, on a tour that begins at Auckland city, goes first to historical North Auckland, thence through the thermal districts to Hawkes Bay, back via Taupo to Wanganui, with a run up through Taranaki before a visit is made to Wairarapa and Wellington city. From the capital the tour extends to Nelson, and through Marlborough overland to Christchurch, thence to Dunedin, and. from the “University City” to the Lakes districts, the gold workings and back to Mount Cook. The final journey is from Canterbury to the West Coast and so the tour that “began in the North with the red of the pohutukawa against the blue sea, we end with the red of the rata against Southern ice.”.

Mr. Mulgan has clothed that bare skeleton of construction with much that is delightful and stimulating. The history he gives is never stodgy, it is compact but illuminating. “History,” he says, “clings to Paihia, the mission station founded by the stalwart Henry Williams in 1823. It is now a summer resort. At Kerikeri, up a tidal arm stands a massive stone building erected in 1833. An even older building, the oldest in New Zealand indeed, is a wooden dwelling built in 1819 and still inhabited by the descendants of the first occupants. Heart-timber from the New Zealand bush lasts a long time!” Or take his reply to the question so often asked by the visitor “What sort of a life is that on a dairy farm in New Zealand?” Mr. Mulgan states frankly that the question cannot be answered in a few words. “I could show you,” he says, “every grade of life in the dairy world, from rank sordidriess to comfortable culture. I might take you to homes where there is nothing but cow, where the children milk early and late and go to sleep in school, where meals and manners, are rough and men go straight from the milking shed to the table, where there is not a flower or a vegetable about the house and not a book within it . . . I could show you well-appointed homes on smiling farms, where manners are gracious and interests wide. So mych depends upon the man and his wife and so much upon his finance ... . Character counts for more in the country than l.i the town,. for in the country one is fighting Nature and reinforcements are not always at hand. The backblocks pioneer not only has the land to break in: he faces an isolation that may be perilous to life and sanity. But if it is hard for him, it is doubly hard for his wife.” That is straight talk, and shows much sympathetic insight into one of the most exacting forms of husbandry.

Rotorua “is a spa and a wonderland together, a place of healing, a place _of beauty and a place of extraordinary and sometimes terrifying natural phenomena.” The ways of living in the .Hawkes Bay station homestead “are like those in an English country-house, only freer.” Mt. Egmont is. “the most beautiful mountain in New Zealand,” and its symmetry is well nigh perfect. “The atmosphere of lies about New Plymouth,” whic^f‘suffered cruelly in the Taranaki ,war, when settlers crowded, side by side with British red-coats in the little settlement with its back to the sea.”

Mr. Mulgan writes with felicity of the four chief cities. He pokes kindly fun at the self complacency of Auckland’s citizens but pays tribute to the floral graciousness of their city. There is an aroma of the picturesque “uncivilised” days of early European colonisation about Auckland. There is also the marvellous beauty of the coast line on two seas, the hills, the open spaces, and to these gifts of nature there has been added its inhabitants’ civic pride, not always wisely directed, but increasing in its sense of responsibility and opportunity. There is little that is picturesque about Wellington. It has none of the military history of Auckland, none of the connection the northern city had with the powerful Maori tribes. Wellington does not take much account of yesterdays, it is the future that appeals. Yet Mr. Mulgan claims, and rightly, that Wellington’s climate and beauty deserve more good tribute than they have received, and he chuckles a little over the air “of importunity and .wire-pulling” that hangs over the capital as the home of the Civil Service. In Christchurch he finds the foundations laid by men with ideas and taste are still enduring, and that upon them has arisen a city with an air of maturity and old-world distinction. Mr. Mulgan does not overlook the paradox that this “so English” city was largely the work of four University men who were Irish by birth and family! Dunedin has not only beauty of buildings and surroundings, but a tradition of learning and service to compensate her for being the smallest of the four main centres. “In industry and commerce the city laid lasting foundations,” but its “greatest pride is in its University, which its people have developed with more affection and isdom than the other centres have displayed.” The broad view of the cosmopolitan and the warmth of love of home have had their share in the making of this most fascinating volume. They have kept step perfectly throughout the long journey traversed.

“Eight New One-Act Plays of 1934,” price ss, postage 4d; “Six One-Act Plays of 1935,” price 3s, postage 4d; “Clive of India,”, by Lipscomb and Minney, price ss, postage 4d; “1066*—And All That, ’ by Sellar and Yeatman, price 3s 9d, postage 4d; “Eden End,” by J. B. Priestley, price 7 S ’gd, postage 4d; “End and Beginning,” by John Masefield,” price 4s 6d, postage 4d. A. J. Fyfe, Ltd., “The Book People,” New Plymouth.*