THE LEGACY OF GUILT: A life of Thomas Kendall

Te Ao Hou, March 1969, Page 53

THE LEGACY OF GUILT: A life of Thomas Kendall Judith Binney O.U.P. for the University of Auckland, $5.80 reviewed by B. Kernot This is a penetrating study of one of the lesser known personages in New Zealand history. Thomas Kendall was a man of modest talents and achievements who, despite his relative obscurity and ultimate failure, has for some time caught the attention of writers and historians. Why this should be so is really the point of this biography. Kendall arrived in New Zealand in 1814 as the schoolteacher at the mission established by Samuel Marsden. The foundation and tribulations of this first missionary venture in this country form the background to this account, but the background never dominates the subject and it is the man himself who stands out and captures our interest. His evangelical upbringing had taught him to regard ‘heathen’ life and culture as the work of the Devil. As a missionary he felt he had to destroy that life in order to bring about the Kingdom of God in New Zealand. However, unlike Marsden or his colleagues he was sensitive to the Maori life around him, became fascinated with it, and tried to understand it. He was unable to reconcile this inner conflict and was tormented with an overwhelming sense of guilt, for, he believed, Satan had ensnared him. He never repudiated his religious beliefs but neither did he lose his fascination for Maori life to which he responded with a deep emotional attachment. Mrs Binney suggests that his trading in muskets and his seduction of a young Maori girl, for both of which he was dismissed from the Church Missionary Society, indicated a deeper conflict than desire for gain or lust. In their different ways they represented his attraction ‘to a whole way of life to which his passions and his curiosity drew him, but which seemed the very substance of all that the evangelical beliefs had taught him to think repulsive’. This is a scholarly piece of work which may make difficult, but never dull, reading. Chapter 7 is particularly difficult since it concerns Kendall's muddled attempts to explain Maori religion and is of more interest to scholars than the general reader, but it can be skipped without disturbing the flow of the story. At five dollars eighty it is a fairly expensive book but should appeal to the serious reader as a sensitive portrayal of a man whose faith and experience were in conflict.