Artists of the Hobson Album, 1: Edward Ashworth, 1814-1896

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, 1 May 1985, Page 22

Artists of the Hobson Album, 1: Edward Ashworth, 1814-1896

JANET PAUL

Preparations for the 1940 centenary of British annexation brought into organised focus a sense of the value of New Zealand history and its records. The Under Secretary of Internal Affairs, Joseph Heenan, was a man of exceptional wisdom, enthusiasm and drive. Under his direction a Centennial Branch and an advisory committee were set up and Eric McCormick was appointed editor of centennial publications. Work on an historical atlas was begun. Regional and subject histories were planned and through W.J. Jordan, High Commissioner in London, the return to New Zealand of the visual and verbal documents of our history was actively sought.

The Rendel family, only descendants of William and Eliza Hobson, responded with the donation of letters and a large album which proved to be the single most important visual record of the northern and central landscape of the North Island and the customs of its Maori people during the first three years of British occupation. This album had been presented to Mrs Hobson by her friends in June 1843 when she and her five children left Auckland, nine months after the death of her husband, the first governor. We do not know for certain whether she took the album with her or left it to be completed and brought to her in Plymouth, in 1845, a date inscribed on one of the last drawings. Nor, on looking at the album, was it possible to attribute the work to known artists or writers. Only five drawings had either initials or signatures. These problems of attribution, with background history and catalogue notes, will be presented with the facsimile of Mrs Hobson’s Album, edited by Elsie Locke and Janet Paul, which is to be published this year by the Government Printer and the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust.

It is now possible to name the contributors and to suppose that the impulse to collate such an album may have come from the young architect Edward Ashworth who, from late November 1842, acted as tutor to Mrs Hobson’s two elder children. The sepia frontispiece to the Album is the work of Edward Ashworth, as are two watercolour paintings of Government House and two Auckland landscapes done from its vicinity. The other identified contributors to Mrs Hobson’s Album are B. Connell, Wiremu

Hoete Ririkakara, Dr John Johnson, William Mason, Felton Mathew, Edward Shortland, Te Whero Whero (Potatau I) and Joseph Jenner Merrett. Available published sources provide biographical information, from John Stacpoolc’s biography of the first architect William Mason to the vivid pictures presented by Una Platts in The Lively Capital (1971). This series of articles is intended to background the lesser-known contributors. One, Joseph Jenner Merrett, is an artist and anthropologist of sufficient historical importance to warrant a separate monograph.

Edward Ashworth (1814-1896), the son of a barrister, was born at Colleton near Chumleigh, Devon. He trained as an architect and surveyor in Exeter and in London. 1 He may have been drawn to visit New Zealand since a sister and brother-in-law, Joseph Newman, owned land first at Kohimarama and later on what was called the Tamaki Road (now Remuera Road), Auckland. - In London Ashworth had visited ‘New Zealand House’ and described the visit in his journal. There he had been

speedily answered in a most encouraging strain by those who had never seen the boarded dwelling, the rude tree bridge, the bulrush hut, or the split pale fence of a colonial property. The reply was “They must have persons to see after and erect

public buildings, churches, bridges, canals jetties wharfs docks & dwelling houses: they must have them: they cannot do without them Sir!” 3

The young man had also been misled by ‘rascally gents in London’ who had persuaded him ‘to lay out his cash in goods perfectly unsaleable in so over-stocked a market’. 4

Ashworth left London, 19 May 1842, on the barque Tuscan (181 tons; F. Ormond master) bound for New Zealand via Port Phillip, where they arrived on 28 September. 5 There he made an accurate

and vivid watercolour of the Clubhouse, Melbourne, and grazing sheep. Ashworth kept a lively, informative journal on shipboard and, unlike most emigrants, continued to note his impressions and activities once he had arrived.

Meantime we opened the harbour of Auckland, & were sadly disappointed at the brown & barren aspect of the country, which threw out the white boarded dwellings with a strong relief, which perhaps gave them a doubly desolate and isolated appearance; on the high land, east of the town was the long government house, in a conspicuous situation, a church of brick in process of erection, & a solid barrack for the soldiery near it. No trees, but 2 or 3 ragged ones near the water’s edge; no roads, no hedges, apparently no cultivation at all.. , 6

The passengers were immediately ‘dumbfounded by the news of Captain Hobson’s death two months previously’, 7 but the young Ashworth made use of his second letter of introduction, to the Harbour Master. Captain Rough entertained him and helped him find lodgings (1 room, 85. a week). Ashworth quickly put up his

professional plate as architect and surveyor: ‘I felt obliged to people for not ridiculing my pretensions.’ But no work resulted. Instead Ashworth again sought Captain Rough’s help to find tutoring; and was introduced to Mr Cooper whose five sons he taught twice weekly for six months. A persistent sickness caused Ashworth to call on Dr Davis, whose eldest daughter, ‘a blooming little girl of 13, was put under my tuition, and a very amiable and obedient scholar she was for a few months, till the badness of the time prevented her proceeding’. 8

In the meantime Captain and Mrs Rough had taken to Government House Ashworth’s letters of introduction. The young man was invited to call. He went expecting to find ‘an elderly, prim, pompous and ceremonious lady’. To his surprised delight he was introduced to Eliza Hobson and found her ‘comparatively young, beautiful, most aimiable [sic], and unaffected’, sitting in a drawing room smelling of flowers and furnished with unusual elegance—not only a gilt chandelier but ‘paintings, a handsome piano and some cases of highly ornamental books’. Mrs Hobson arranged that Ashworth ‘should attend 3 times a week to teach her eldest daughter and son’.

Ashworth spent his first few months learning the arts of housekeeping and cooking and coping with the ‘oviparous propensities of blowflies’. He suffered the prevailing poverty and comments: The higher classes also felt the prevailing poverty, surgeons bills ran up, attornies found it was useless to sue, Land surveyors were without employment, cargoes of provision were forced off at auction sales. The only class that seemed to do well were the sans culotte mowries; they had no rent to pay, their coarse food cost them nothing, but they would have their 6 d for a bundle of firewood & 1/- for a kit of potatoes. Their potatoe plantations were nearer than the ‘Tatnaki farms’ & their long canoes well adapted to carry firewood & to hang out many fish hooks, supplied the town plentifully... backloads of potatoes wood maize &c to the doors of the towns people. 9

While he made his expenses teaching he purchased a ‘spot of ground not 110 ft sq’ and spent ‘the best part of 12 months in framing and boarding and shingling my domicile’. Lacking work he was tempted by the high interest (12V2 to 15 per cent) to lend money; but without adequate securities ‘I lost more principal than I gained interest’.

How to exist on an ultra economical plan was now the question; for my finances being somewhere between 3 & £4OO & no prospect of increase, what could I do? I determined to build a little house of my own, & live rent free, for the veriest holes containing 2 board d rooms were letting at from 1()5. to 155. per week. I went to work to purchase a spot of ground in the town. Town lands were sold by Government at an upset price of 100£ pr ac. but in reselling there must of course be profit so for about 2 perches of land of wh the upset price was 125. 6d. per p. I paid

£l3 per perch—This was the only suitable spot I could see & the surveyor who was agent for it pointed out the advantages of its being a corner allotment tho I could see no corner nor indication of streets. High Street the east boundary was only I found to be 16V2 ft wide, & my valuable angle was most wofully wide (I afterwards found) of a right angle. I ought to say wofully narrow, wofully acute. The law expense for this location about 15ft by 37 was to be 2 guineas, but I ultimately paid above 3V2. I next set to work to purchase timber, the noted New Zealand pine that makes such prime spars, this is sold by the lineal 100 feet, boards being equalized to a foot in width—l 4 shillings per hundred was asked at some sawpits on the beach, but by the advice of my acquaintances I waited the arrival of a raft, when any quantity could be had for 105. or even 85. per hund d, °

Ashworth’s watercolours of Auckland most probably were done when he was tutor to Mrs Hobson’s children —that is, during the first half of 1843. Some of his spare time must have been spent working on the presentation album. Ashworth’s name is one of those on the farewell address presented to Mrs Hobson. 11

He notes the effect of colonising hardships on the women (his sister, perhaps, or a friend’s wife is the model): ‘She had landed in the colony 2 yrs before a delicate pretty young woman; she was so still, but sad coincidences of poor fare, of hardships & hope deferred... were visible on her pale but once rosy cheek...’ 12 His brief and clearheaded account is a critical record of the early layout and administration of Auckland: ‘An unwieldy government establishment swallowed up the slender funds for supporting the dignity and authority of Victoria in these islands... capitalists seemed aware of the puff and humbug that had been promulgated about New Zealand and kept their cash safe in England.’ He added to the cultural life of Auckland on 29 July 1843 by giving a lecture on Grecian architecture at the Mechanics Institute.

On 4 December 1843, Ashworth set off on a journey up the Waikato to collect a debt from ‘the rascal H’, a fellow passenger with Ashworth on the Tuscan , a part Indian who used to talk of his studies in Edinburgh.

Roguery is my theme, and I will describe my own sufferings from it, during a short residence in the colony of New Zealand. In the voyage from England, being one of 6 intermediate passengers, I was rather drawn into the company of one of them in prejudice of the rest from his being the only man of education of the lot, excepting only a scotch farmer of Dumfries & the Scotch are always wise & well instructed & given to useful knowledge, though they are at times inaccessible & reserved as they ought to be, to hold true the national emblem of the angry touch me not thistle flourished around with a legible Nemo me impune lacessit

H., for so I shall call him, was of Indian extraction as his dark yellow complexion, black eyes & hair betrayed, tho his large features, short neck & stature did not seem to belong to asia. His father he told me had been the military governor of a fortress in Hindostan. He was a good natured easy fellow, slept half the day & smoked nearly the other half amusing himself in discoursing of the gaieties of London at night to the mates as they turned in & turned out for their watches. 14

‘H’ is identified as a William Hamilton, described in Maori Affairs records and Diocesan Office, Hamilton, Records of Baptism of Church Missionary Society at Otawhao, as a ‘Trader of Puketaha’. He had opened an apothecary’s shop in Auckland and practised medicine before decamping with some of Ashworth’s money to Wanake near Te Awamutu. 15 Ashworth and his party set off in a canoe from Onehunga Beach, crossed Manukau Harbour at a place he called Cowry, going from Waiuku to Awaroa stream then on to the Waikato river and Pepepe.

He gives us one vivid and unusual detail. He was asked ‘Are you not hungry?’. When he had agreed he was, he was ‘surprised & pleased’ to see the Maoris ‘collect about a bushel of sand on the bank of the river & spreading it over the bottom of the canoe light a fire & set on the pot while we were progressing’. 16 After journeying up the Waipa river to Whakawhaka they finally arrived at the settlement Ashworth describes as ‘Whanakay’. His interview with Hamilton yielded no more than a promissory note made out to Hamilton’s brother in England and Ashworth returned up the sea coast from Raglan to the Manukau making drawings of his resting places. From the Hamlin’s Mission Station at Orua he travelled by canoe. His companions ‘hoisted 2 or 3 blankets as sails having a small mast with green flax shrouds and a sprit to spread the blanket. ..’ The whole journey took twenty-four days: the final difficult days he describes graphically.

Evening closed in & no sort of settlement or shelter was visible: the waves of the flood tide were rapidly advancing to the steep bank which marked, “Hitherto shall thou come & no further & here shall thy proud waves be staid,” so as it was dark, I crawled up the steep & got into a thicket of bushes, supped upon some cold potatoes, got into my blanket in the closest cover & had some disturbed sleep. The noise of the sea influenced my dreams which pictured a number of natives beckoning me on to a village, then I woke & though I knew myself safe from all intrusion of pigs reptiles or human beings, I could not divest myself of a feeling of horror inspired perhaps by the thundering of the sea close by me, I rose about 6 next morning, Sunday, & resumed my barefoot march, my bundle galled my shoulders to which it was corded & my legs were aching. After walking above an hour I saw that the coast tended inland forming to all appearance a narrow bay, & that my route onwards must here be circuitous, though hitherto it had been nearly straight. Moreover the waves of the flood tide were rapidly advancing & threatening to drive me for refuge to the bare loose sand cliffs that backed the beach, where 1 must wait for the ebb several hours. 17

Once back in Auckland Ashworth finished the paling fence and advertised his ‘Household furniture & the house itself on its allotment of land with garden fenced in’, his drawing table, instruments, carpenter’s and joiner’s tools, views, maps and drawings. 18 The land had cost him £4O and the house £SO without labour. He received for the lot £74 Cb. 1 Id. 19 Ashworth left Auckland on the schooner Thomas Lord, 29 January 1844, which called at Whangarei harbour and the Bay of Islands where Ashworth made his last New Zealand drawings.

As the brown forbidding shores grew more & more indistinct I endeavoured to get a last fond look at the Farms where 2 or 3 real friends were daily endeavouring to reclaim the apparently worthless soil from the weeds & wildness that overspread it, I pictured one in particular resting from his hard hopeless unremunerating toil of 6 days & recalled the particulars of my last visit when I with a friend found him

alone working in his maize field: around & adjoining it were small patches of wheat turnips & potatoes defended from the inroads of stray pigs by trenches & banks thrown up by the indefatigable industry of 1 man. He dropped his hoe on perceiving friends & led the way to his flimsy weatherboard house despite 2 sash doors in its front designed a double debt to pay as door & window combined & a few English flowers creeping up the posts of a small shingled verandah: the domicile looked very hovel like as to its back premises wh were raupo huts. Some fowls, 2 or 3 pigs & a solitary cow, a valuable piece of live stock in the incipient colony formed a sort of farmyard. The host kindly asked us to take a draught of milk but when I looked at the distrained well drained udder of the poor beast I lost all thirsty ideas... 20

He arrived at Port Jackson, 15 February 1844. -1 The Mitchell Library holds detailed drawings of Sydney buildings which suggest that he may have spent some months there before going on to work in Hongkong for the remainder of 1844 and 1845. Back in England Ashworth wrote on Chinese architecture and gave many papers on church architecture to the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society. He rebuilt and restored churches and built new ones at Withecombe, Exmouth, Topsham and Exeter where he had started practice in 1846 and lived until his death. He died at the age of 81, leaving a widow, two sons and two daughters. 22

REFERENCES To assist the preservation of the originals of the Ashworth notebooks, references are given to the typescript transcription prepared by the Library in 1967. A copy microfilm is available for general use and the originals may be consulted if necessary. 1 The Builder, 21 March 1896. 2 Joseph Newman’s land purchases are recorded in the New Zealand Government Gazette, 1842, as follows: lot 53 (March, p. 122), lots 19 and 13 (June, p. 201, 202). In a communication from the Auckland Institute and Museum to Mrs I. Winchester, 18 November 1969, Joseph Newman’s wife’s name is given as Ashworth. 3 Edward Ashworth, Journals, 1841-45 (MS 1841-45). Typescript copy of selected passages from his three notebooks: ‘Edward Ashworth’s green notebook’, p. 5. 4 Ibid.

5 Port Phillip Gazette, 1 October 1842, p. 2. 6 Ashworth typescript, ‘Brown notebook, Journal of a Voyage from London. .p. 1-2. 7 William Hobson died 10 September 1842, six weeks before the Tuscan arrived. 8 Ashworth typescript, ‘Edward Ashworth’s green notebook’, p. 33. 9 Ashworth typescript, ‘Waikato journey... from green notebook’, p. 57. 10 Ashworth typescript, ‘Edward Ashworth’s green notebook’, p. 30. 11 Southern Cross, 10 June 1843, p. 1, col. 3. 12 Ashworth typescript, ‘Waikato journey... from green notebook’, p. 69. 13 Southern Cross, 12 August 1843, p. 3, col. 2. 14 Ashworth typescript, ‘Waikato journal... from green notebook’, p. 1.

15 Communication from Edinburgh University to Mrs I. Winchester. William Hamilton from Chunar in the East Indies matriculated at Edinburgh University 1835-1838/9 but did not formally graduate. 16 Ashworth typescript, ‘Waikato journey... from green notebook’, p. 27. 17 Ibid, p. 46. 18 Ibid, p. 62. 19 Southern Cross, 13 January 1844, p. 1, col. 4. 20 Ashworth typescript, ‘Waikato journey... from green notebook’, p. 68. 21 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 February 1844, p. 2. 22 Obituary, The Builder, 21 March 1896.