The Book The Queen Gave Us

Te Ao Hou, September 1963, Page 26

The Book The Queen Gave Us When the Queen and Prince Philip left New Zealand at the end of their recent visit, they made a personal gift to the people of New Zealand to commemorate the occasion. It consisted of a very beautiful and famous book of 60 coloured prints, ‘The New Zealanders Illustrated’ by George French Angas, published in 1847. There are some other copies of this book in New Zealand, but it is now very rare. The Queen's copy, which is from her own library, is a particularly fine one. This precious book is being kept at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, where anyone who wishes to do so may see it. The New Zealanders mentioned in the title of Angas' book are of course the Maori people; in those days, and for long afterwards, when people spoke of New Zealanders they were referring to the original owners of the country. When Angas visited New Zealand in 1844, travelling through many parts of the North Island, the Maori people still retained most of their old traditions, even though, as he saw these were changing so fast. Angas recorded their way of life with great sensitivity and

‘The children’, Angas wrote, ‘are frequently pretty, gay, interesting little creatures, very inquisitive and full of observation’. ‘When a man of rank dies’, he wrote, ‘a great lamentation is held over the body … the mourners uttering the most melancholy cries, shedding tears … the women cutting their bodies with sharp flints and broken shells … the widows placing leaves upon their heads’.

When Angas drew them, these Maori implements of war were used mostly for ceremonial purposes. fidelity. The accuracy of his drawing is amazing, and could have come only from an artist possessed of an intuitive and warmly sympathetic understanding of his subject. This is very apparent in his drawings of people, but it extends equally to the things which surrounded them: their domestic possessions, their houses and fortifications, and the great forests and mountains among which they lived.