IN THE EARLY DAYS

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVII, Issue 91, 19 April 1939, Page 3

IN THE EARLY DAYS

PIONEER BISHOP PUSHES BARROW. When Bishop Harper, the first Bishop of Christchurch, and Mrs Harper and 10 of their 15 children landed at Lyttelton in December, 1856, they were met by Bishop Selwyn, who escorted them to Christchurch. Mrs Harper and the youngest girl rode together on a horse, and the others walked over the hill to Ileathcote Valley, where vehicles ,-waited them. Bishop Harper, Bishop Selwyn, and others pushed and pulled a handcart on which bedding and other articles were stacked. The walking girls carried bundles containing bonnets and finery, which they were to wear next day. The first home for the Harpers was a small cottage in Cambridge Terrace, by the Avon river. This incident in “h{ew Zealand Centennial News,” is recorded in a book, “My Early Days,” written by the late Mrs C. G. Tripp, of Orari Gorge, Canterbury (a daughter of Bishop Harper). “Our house was very small, and when visitors came to see my fathersome of us had to go to the hospitable neighbors to make room,” wrote Mrs Tripp. Three of us slept in an attic bedroom, which we reached by a step-ladder. On beams over the beds our saddles hung, and on top of them our hall dresses, pinned up in the sheets.

“Mary (a sister) had become engaged some months before me, which gave time to send to England for her thing's, but- my trousseau was a very simple affair. My father, going to Wellington about that time, bought me three dresses—a white muslin with pink sprays on it, a black and white striped thin silk with blue silk flounces, and a brown barege, unmade. A riding habit was made in Christchurch, and I had one pair of boots and one pair of shoes. Everything else I made myself—rather different to the trousseau of a girl of the present day—and I know I had to buy boots a few months after my marriage, the rough country walking soon wearing out anything hut the strongest. , , , “Our wedding day was Septembei 23rd, 1858. My wedding gown or white silk and the bridesmaids’ white tarleton and little straw bonnets trimmed with ribbon were all bought at Miss Skillikorn’s general stores, also the wedding ring. Though my future husband had a large property, ready money was not plentiful, and lie had always said he had to borrow £8 for wedding expenses, and I only had 8s of my own. I had to come down the stepladder from our bedroom backwards in my wedding finery and Mary s room downstairs was so small that she stood on her bed to he dressed We walked to St. Michael s and both couples returned from church together in a new omnibus, the only other vehicle being a hansom cab without wheels, so not much use. Old Mrs Westenra made us pretty little bouquets of white primroses, these and a bunch of g'orse being the onlj (lowers to be had.”