Edward Gibbon Wakefield

New Zealand Tablet, 24 September 1908, Page 9

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

. A paragraph, that is now going the rounds of the New Zealand press, well illustrates the remark made by Beaconsfield ,'. in his Sybil: 'Quit the world, and the world forgets you.' The right hand of New Zealand should forgets its' cunning "ere the memory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield— one of the foremost .founders of the Dominion — should grow dim or blurred in Ao-tea-roa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. But nowadays the world moves at so dizzy a pace that the greatvhuman land- . marks of yesterday are often but specks upon the dim horizon of to-day. It is a curious commentary upon the evanescence of fame ' that the tomb of Edward- Gibbon Wakefield should have to' be ' discovered,' amidst a tangle of overgrown plant-life, at this time of the day. Yet so it is. The paragraph in question says :— ' An interesting discovery has been made in the old Wellington cemetery. Hidden among a small forest of shrubs . and vegetable growth has been found an unpretentious tombstone bearing - an inscription that shows it marks the last resting place of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, whose name is intimately associated with the early founders of the Dominion. The task of renov*atirig the neglected spot has been put into energetic hands, and if no monument is reared the memorial tablet and its surroundings will be placed in decent order.' The ' forest of shrubs and vegetable growth ' is a ..fit emblem of the manner in which new names and deeds and interests spring up and smother the memory of men who served their country well and even filled a generous space in its strenuous and pioneering day. Fame, like fortune, is fickle. As Samuel Butler saj-s of one^of his metrical heroes : ' For though Dame Fortune seem -to smile," And leer upon him for a while, She'll after shew him, in the nick Of all his glories, a dog-trick. "" The mob of men are as fickle as both fame and fortune. To the good they often behave as the Parisians did" towards some of its demi-gods. They laid Mirabeau in the Pantheon— the national Valhalla— amid a pomp and circumstance seldom . accorded to human clay of lesser state than royalty. Later on, .. they ' fired ' Him from his niche of fame, and in his place set up the bones of Marat. Later .on, they clianged their minds once more, 'collected' Marat, and .threw 'him into' a sewer. - Passive neglect here, careless oblivion there, active dishonor yonder— weeds in Wellington, cobwebs in Washington, 'the sewer^ in Paris— the methods of de-niching may vary. But the weedsand the cobwebs ' get there ' first and stay" longest. Fame— or notoriety— suffers little from the. dishonor that is active; The remains of Cromwell (the author of the savage massacres of, Drogheda and Wexford) were disinterred in Westminster Abbey, drawn on a cart to Tyburn, taken out of the coffin, hatiged, and beheaded ; and the cranium was keptf hanging on Westminster Hall for twenty' years. The^ Madhi's tomb at KlTartoum was tipped open by shells, and his bones, were disinterred and cast >; into the Nile. Among the hero-worshippers who worship such gods,' neither of these two fervid fanatics' memory suffers from the senseless dishonor wreaked upon their inert - clay. Both honest- fame and mere notoriety are safe till the spider "spins ,and. the weeds begin to grow. -