2. Six Months in Wellington May-November 1850
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2
Six Months in Wellington
May-November 1850
WELLINGTON 1
May 7th, 1850
MY DEAR MOTHER,
To-day the Lady Nugent left the harbour on her way to Nelson, and I could not have believed, five months ago (for it is so long, within five days, since our first week of horrors on board), that I could ever have felt anything but intense joy at leaving her. Nevertheless, so it was, that when the time came for saying good-bye, I felt really sad. We went on board yesterday for a farewell dinner; the Captain's turkey from Mr. Drummond (Mr. MacRae's nephew) and Mr. Lee's pig's face from Taranaki, provided in honour of us, and water-melon. We contributed a Stokesley Tongue which Aunt Charlotte had sent us long ago, but which
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being uneaten at the time we left, we packed with other stores, and now out it came, as good as ever. We had many goodbyes to say, MacRaes, O'Loughlins, etc. Then came dinner, with a new passenger, a French Roman Catholic priest; an oldish, thin, angular man, but quite like a French gentleman, just come from Auckland. He said he had been nine years in New Zealand, and looked patient and meek enough to stay as many more as Monsr. de Pompallier, his Bishop here, might desire him. He was much pleased, poor man, at my husband volunteering to talk French to him. At last, dinner and all was over, and we had taken leave of everybody including Arthur's friends as well as ours, and then, as it was getting quite dark, we must go, the Captain sending us on shore in his gig; we had 'tremendous cheering' as we came round the stern of the vessel. The Captain almost cried as he wished Arthur good-bye, and shewed him our empty cabins. We had the Captain and Mr. Lee come to tea with us at eight, and little Kate MacRae spent the day here, and went on board at night with them. We were very sorry, too, to take leave of her, as she is a very nice child, and thoroughly well brought up.
They would have, I hope, a capital sail to Nelson; Mr. and Mrs. Fox went in her, and I hope they are there by this time, as the south-east wind still holds to-day, May 8th, and has made it pretty cold; how funny it seems here, wishing for a warm North wind. North-East is the good weather point here. Another curious thing here is the almost total absence of old people. To be sure, old women are to be found almost everywhere, and I had seen a very few of them, I supposed widowed mothers, who had come out with the colonists; but I never saw an old man here till yesterday, and even he was a very verdant one, coming home apparently from work; but his hair was very white, and he was really an old man anywhere. Our excitement to-day has consisted in calling at Government House, on our way to hear the band play, and seeing the bride and Mr. Eyre. We had sent up our letter of introduction yesterday, and thought it correct to leave cards to-day; but unwarily stumbling into the office door by
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mistake, we there found Mr. Ormond, the brother-in-law and secretary, and he insisted on handing us in. It was worth while going up only to see the inside of the house, for it would be really a pretty drawing-room in England; and there we found our deputy Queen sitting up in all the honour of reception, bride-cake, and a gorgeous dress, but tres bien choisie; I must say she is a very favourable representative, and is very pretty and agreeable in her manner; rather tall and fair, with good features, and very much more pretention about her in every way than anyone else out here. Mr. Eyre is a good deal like Captain William Drake, only younger and better looking. He was very civil.
I forgot to mention, yesterday, an earthquake, which we had quite early in the morning. I only, in the house, was awake, and heard and felt it; but plenty of people in the town had felt it, and even on board Lady Nugent it woke the second mate. It began like a low peal of thunder which rumbled on for a second or two, and then something seemed to strike the corner of the house behind our bed, which shook very perceptibly, and enough to make me giddy if I had been up, I think. As it was, I just went to sleep again, and we heard in the morning that it was considered a moderate shock but a rather noisy one. Nothing was thrown down in any of the rooms, or anything of that kind, but we are told that being in a wooden house we need be under no apprehension, as there has been no instance known of one falling, even in the great shocks eighteen months ago. Almost all the brick edifices went then, including the Hospital, and as almost all the chimneys are of brick, they too nearly all either came down or cracked. But then it is only fair to say that hardly any mortar has been used until lately, and sand and water is not very sticky.
Thursday 9th. Ascension Day and little Charlotte Pollen's birthday. There was no service to go to, but we had another lovely day, and a beautiful walk, home by the hill road or path through the manuca bushes, to Arthur's great delight. This is certainly a very pretty place, and the lines and shapes of the mountains are very fine, and I am
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afraid the atmosphere is prettier than at home; but then you know we are about the latitude of Florence. In the evening, Mr. Nicholson came to tea, and then Mr. Bulkeley came in for half an hour, as he was going his rounds on duty. He had spent the morning, he said, in sewing the crape on to his uniform for mourning for the Queen Dowager, which was put on to-day, 10th, just five months after the event!
Friday 10th. This was the day last year on which we crossed the Channel going to Paris, and where may we not be by this time next year? It is some comfort to think that at all events we can never go so far by sea again as we have been; as the voyage home is shorter, even going by Cape Horn. Our excitement has been two invites to dinner, from Colonel Gold, and the Lieut-Governor; both refused on the score of cold water, and early hours. 2 My husband has fairly engaged in it now, under Dr. Fitzgerald, and had his first packing on May 4th. He now gets up, at an unmitigated 6 a.m., into a wet sheet, and then lies packed, mummy fashion, till 6.45, when he has a wet sheet rubbing, in a great bath of cold water, and then tossing on a few clothes walks off to a renowned spring, from which he brings a can of superfine water for home consumption, and then comes dressing, etc., and breakfast at eight, if not before; at twelve another wet sheet rubbing, another walk or ride, and dinner at two; then another walk which lasts till dark, and then tea at 6.45; and about ten, or sooner, a warm hip bath for thirty minutes, and then bed. All our repasts are eaten patriarchal fashion, all together; as of course Powles is almost always in the kitchen, and Arthur must be with us, or there.
May 11th. Another lovely day, and still, which was a great matter for our drive of nine miles to Aglionby village, in the Hutt Valley, to have dinner with Mr. Daniel Wakefield; who is at present occupying an empty house there, and rides into town every day to attend to his duties as
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Attorney-General, such as they are. The Hutt is the great sight to be seen from Wellington, and is really a pretty valley; but its beauty here is supposed to consist in the great amount of clearing, etc., besides a number of comfortable little cottages, which are rapidly increasing since the conclusion of the Maori War about 1846; many people were killed and frightened away, but no one seems now to feel any fear of another outbreak.
Those disturbances had at least one good effect of causing a road to be made, for military purposes, which has made the place accessible; it is a very good one for a great part of the way. Wellington is on a hill, and completely surrounded by hills, and the two roads which have been made backwards into the country are bad, and very steep, and lead only to very small villages; so that the Hutt Road is quite the show thing. It runs along the level beach for more than six miles, round perhaps one-third of the harbour, and then where the river Hutt falls into the sea turns up into the valley, and from that part for some miles is excellent. Indeed, though some parts are very rough, and rutty, we were much surprised after seeing it to find that there are so few carriages kept. Mrs. Petre has a little pony carriage in which she drives herself about, but it is almost the only one. There is, indeed, too, a van on springs which comes into town from the Hutt every morning, and returns at night, but as that manoeuvre did not suit us, we had to charter a shandrydan for our own use; a kind of car, as we should call it, nearly as good as our Pentre Voelas one, only it has rather more the air of a light cart, with green rails all round, and no No. 1 on the door. We elders found it very rough, to tell the truth, but Arthur (who had been specially invited) told us 'he thought it was a very nice, pleasant carriage'. The last time he was on wheels was just five months ago, the fly that took us, on that wretched 12th of December, from Antonie to the water's edge! However, what is more to the point (as my husband would say), the German driver (and proprietor) took us there in rather more than two hours, and we came home still quicker.
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Mr. D. Wakefield is living in a good-looking house, with very civilized looking rooms, but quite unfinished; it is not his own, but belongs to a man who is gone to Sydney to get married, and means to have everything very smart for his bride, even marble chimney pieces, the first I believe in the Colony. Conservatories you see to almost all the good houses, but he has a very nice lawn too, in front, with plenty of geraniums in bushes, and other flowers. We walked from there to call on Mrs. Petre; a much larger house, but with less pretension than the other, and a very nice green lawn. Mr. Petre is Treasurer, which office is supposed, just now, to be accompanied by very light duty. Still, if he has nothing to do, he rides in nine miles every day to do it, and that is something. He went home about six or seven years ago to fetch a wife, and his present one was fetched home from school to marry him, and come out here! She bears her fate with great equanimity, even to the having of five children, the eldest five years old. She seems a sort of pet in the society here, and is very lively and good natured, and like Miss Sullivan, only with very good eyes, and not so lady-like looking.
Mrs. Petre was to have met us at our luncheon dinner, but was engaged at home entertaining their Bishop, M. Viard (R. C.), who has just been established here, in addition to the one at Auckland, and who was thinking of taking their old house in the Hutt for his own residence. They have only been a few months in this new one. At four we started again home and got in before six, thanks to our encountering the Resident Magistrate, Mr. St. Hill, a very good-natured little man, who rode after us for a long time, making remarks on poor Wilhelm's steed, and equipage altogether, that induced him to put forth all his strength and skill. We admired the valley on the whole very much, and the look of comfort and activity in the village, or town, was very homelike and satisfactory. It is wonderful how completely the look of anything at all like home and its ways carries it here (and with nearly everyone) above novelty and even actual beauty. In one of our first walks about Wellington
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we almost shed tears of sentimental admiration at coming suddenly in sight of bits of flat, well-macadamized road!--one of the short ones I mentioned.
We passed three native villages on our way to the Hutt; one, just where the road turns from the sea, up the valley and along the river Hutt, is quite a large one, with a very strong high paling, almost like a fortification, round it. Further up, too, we saw some very wild looking natives; two ran after us for some way, for the fun of talking to us. One of them had a long wooden spear in his hands, tapering to a fine point, and. about eight feet long, of smooth, hard wood. He gave it to us to look at, and, with the driver's interpretation, we made out that it was meant to catch birds, etc., by spearing them from underneath as they sit in the trees! I thought he looked with a longing eye at Arthur, having apparently no results from his chasse of that day, and to touch him if possible in a soft place I asked if he had any piccaninnies. He answered very cheerily, 'Oh yes, but in the ground'; pointing significantly down as he trotted after us. The natives are, on the whole, both better and worse than I expected. That is, some are quite good looking, civilized-looking people; among the men, very well dressed, and more like ourselves in colour, size and bearing, than the Lascars, for instance, or any coloured people that I have seen. Most of the large 'stores' have them as servants, and the Police are mostly Maoris and are a very efficient and well-drilled body, in a blue and red uniform. But when you see them in their wild state and dress, squatting about in their pahs (villages), they are really disgusting-looking creatures, with something very inhuman in their movements, and even features. At least, I am sure it is a much prettier sight to see that polite little Ourang-outang eating his egg with a spoon, and drinking tea, in the Zoological at five o'clock regularly, than to watch the dirty-looking set, pigs, cats and humans, whom we saw in the nearest pah to-day, all scrambling together for potatoes and Indian corn, in some wood ashes on the open ground. At the same time, you hear many stories of them proving that they have a strong sense of religion, and other good
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feelings; but they have no word for thank-you in their language, and people are to be found who add, no sense of gratitude in their heart; of course, though, there are some very good exceptions.
May 13th. We had an inspection of the troops by the Commander-in-Chief, Colonel McCleverty. It ought to have been a very pretty sight, but we had a Scotch mist all the morning which spoilt it all and dimmed the beauty of the new uniforms. Mrs. Daniell and Mrs. Petre each came in from the Hutt, with a troop of children, satin pelisses, blue bonnets and feathers, etc. Last night, the 12th, was the night of the grand ball at the Mess Room, given by the 'Bachelors of the 65th', but alas! alas! this deponent can say nothing of its spirit, success, and brilliancy, but from hearsay. Our minds had been fully made up to go; Mr. Bulkeley's room in a little cottage, close to the Mess House, had been promised and prepared to refit such portions of my dress as might not stand a two-mile of muddy walk, and then pour surcroit de bonheur, Mr. St. Hill had offered to drive us there in his own cart. We had a beautiful afternoon, and all looked well till dusk, when a storm began which lasted till nearly eleven, when, with cold water hours, my husband was safe in bed, and still then it was so bad that no one stirred out. After all, they had a very good ball, we heard, and the dancing kept up with great spirit till nearly six.
The Meander (H. M. S.), forty-six guns, came into the harbour in time for some of her officers to join in the festivities, although well drenched in getting on shore. You may remember the name at Borneo, and Captain Keppel's book thereupon, and therefore guess at our excitement about her. She is supposed to be a very fine ship, and I was pretty well able to appreciate the excellence of her appointments, well-squared yards, and tall tapering masts, etc., after four or five months in the merchant service. Arthur and I ran out to look at her before eight next morning, and heard her band performing 'God Save the Queen'
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in great style, to salute the Union Jack which was just rising on the flagstaff at Government House.
The Monarch, too, had come in after her repairs at Akaroa, where she had been for nearly a month. She started just a fortnight before us from the London docks, but was three weeks longer on the passage, lost her rudder off Cape Saunders (Otago) and was, I fancy, in great danger. She is an old Boulogne steamboat, cut down into a barque for coasting work here, and her owner came out in her, with a party of passengers who fought most desperately the whole way, and in short we are very thankful that we reserved ourselves for Lady Nugent and Captain Parsons. She is very pretty to look at, though, long and low in the water, and, with the Meander, makes the harbour look very gay. It was a lovely morning, too, after the storm, every vessel showing double in the water, as is usually the case here after a storm; in short, I wish you could have seen it.
The next day we went on board the Meander, which I wanted very much to see, having never been in a man-of-war before. My husband was unluckily out riding when the ship's boat came for us, so I had to go only with Arthur, but under the care of the Colonial Secretary (Mr. Domett, quite a gentleman, and clever), the Auditor-General (Mrs. Ormes Biddulph's brother, Mr. Thomas), the Attorney General, Mr. Wakefield, and Captain Richards, Commander of the Acheron, steam frigate, stationed here. We were received on board by one of the lieutenants, Mr. Murray, and some of the other officers, and found the difference in accommodation, cleanliness, etc., from poor Lady Nugent still greater than I had imagined. Captain Keppel is a great conchologist and has made a very large collection of shells, which he is always increasing by dredging wherever he can get soundings, and Mrs. Keppel helps him. I thought captains might not have their wives on board; but there she is, and it was on the occasion of her having done dredging, a long way up the bay, that (we found out) the hour had been settled for us to go on board, for she is odd, some say cracky, and never
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sees anyone, so that we must have kept out of her way if she had been there. As it was, we sat in the captain's cabin, looking at some beautiful sketches by Mr. Briarely, an artist whom they have on board, and who has been making drawings at Norfolk Island, New Guinea, Hobart Town, and other New places; and had the band to play for our edification, and then walked about and saw it all, including a little nephew of the Captain's, about eight, I suppose, but small, and dressed sailor fashion. The same boat with a very jolly little middy, the Honble. ----- Egerton, took us on shore and we met Captain Keppel as we landed, a very good-natured, dandy little man. We heard very little about Borneo, which seemed almost forgotten; they were more full of the last place they had been at.
Friday the 24th, and the Queen's birthday, was a very gay day, and luckily quite fine. The ships all dressed with flags, innumerable 'God Save the Queens' on the different bands, a review of the troops on Thorndon Flat at our end of the town, and actually at noon a Royal salute; twenty-one guns from the Meander, and then a flourish of trumpets, and discharge of small arms, or as the soldiers here write it and call it, a 'few de joy' on the Flat. Then, at one, a Levee, band playing and guard of honour; at two, the Maori feast to about five hundred natives which we went to see. It was, we thought, very badly managed, as they sat round in circles on the ground, composed each of a separate tribe, and ate their pork, bread and rice, without any attempt at tables, chairs, spoons, forks or any other sign of civilization, except waiting most carefully till grace had been said, to begin. The chief people in each tribe served round the food (pork and bread and butter) and sweetened tea, to their people before they sat down themselves. When the Governor and his wife appeared they all rose, and yelled most horribly by way of cheering, and then some of them danced a kind of mock war-dance; the performers chiefly women, who laughed and looked half ashamed of themselves, as if they thought we were laughing at them. The dresses were of all kinds and very amusing: several women wore large straw
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hats with ribbons and flowers, and one had an imitation-knitted shawl thrown over all as a veil. Several leaders in the last hostilities were there, shaking hands and very friendly with Colonel McCleverty, who told me that he had in those days seen a war-dance that shook the very ground where he was standing, although at a safe distance. They seem to have been very formidable enemies.
One old chief, still very wild looking, we talked to, and made him show us his green stone weapon. I don't know what to call it. It is more like one of those mermaid looking-glasses with a handle, in shape, than anything else, and made of the semi-transparent green stone which you see amongst Chinese curiosities; about a foot long or more, and with very sharp edges. These things are very heavy, and beautifully polished and smooth, and are formidable weapons enough, but they set a wonderful value on them when made in the aforesaid stone, and keep them as heirlooms in a chief's family for generations. The one we saw he assured us in Maori had killed many Maoris and pakehas (white people) and he ate them like pork, 'as you would cow'. The women had all sorts of finery added to their usual dress, and a good many had straw hats, with broad brims and bright coloured ribbons on them, and veils over that; one, a chief's wife, had a red cloak with a hood to it, but there were plenty still in only blankets. Some chiefs there are who have been educated amongst the whites, and who were much too grand to join in the feast, but stood and looked on, and then appeared in the evening at the ball at Government House. The evening before, we met two Maori ladies riding in elaborate riding habits, caps and veils, and even gloves. A native was following one of them, with her ball dress wrapped in a red blanket. These ladies at the feast only stood and looked on as we did, but I hope without feeling as we did as to the arrangements for the entertainment; for it was really like feeding pigs, or animals in the Zoological, and it seems very contradictory when we are by way of teaching them civilization by every possible means, to invite them to repast conducted just on their own principles. At Auckland,
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tables, benches, etc., are always provided for the birthday feast, and everyone seemed to think that this, which was the first grand one here, was rather a failure.
We had a most lovely night for the ball, and had only about as far to go as from Voelas hall door to the white gate. Mr. Bulkeley came to tea and to go with us; we were asked for 'Dancing at nine' on a magnificent printed card, and presented ourselves soon after 9.30, when we found everyone arrived and in superb ball-dresses, apparently just unpacked from London, specially Mrs. Eyre. We were, I think, all surprised at the general effect of the ball, it was so very good. The dancing was in three rooms, communicating with folding doors, the verandah outside, which is very large, enclosed as a relief to the room for walking about and flirtation when possible; but, as the Brigade-Major's wife, Mrs. O'Connell, told me the other day, 'there are only six young ladies here and two of them are old', and the married ladies all dance, and as far as I could judge, don't flirt. Beyond the verandah, a space was enclosed for the band of the 65th, and that from the Meander, which relieved each other, and played capitally. I hear that there was a very good supper, but cannot speak to it, as we came home just as everyone else was squeezing into it. It was a sit down supper, at least for all the ladies; some of the gentlemen had to wait till the first detachment had done. But that is not surprising, as there were 180 people there. The Meanders flags assisted not a little in decorating the rooms, which were really quite pretty, with flowers artistically twined round the pillars of the verandah. At the top of the room was a sofa on which Mrs. Eyre sat, without rising to receive anyone, bowing to some, and shaking hands with the more illustrious (such as ourselves!). There were about three Maori ladies (in what we should call morning dresses) there, and twice as many gentlemen, but they did not dance. Not so the officers of the Meander, who were all heart and soul in it from Captain Keppel, who seems the most good-natured of men, down to his little nephew, the incipient middy. The next morning they were all
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off, and the harbour looking quite dull without them.
On Thursday, May 30th, the Government brig returned from Nelson, bringing back the Judge, Mr. Chapman, Mr. and Mrs. Fox, and Mr. Wodehouse and a smart young 'settler' whom they have staying with them for the present. They had a passage of six days, a severe storm, which met them when they were within three hours of this place, and drove them twice back through the straits; and apparently such a supply of 'creature comforts' as was by no means calculated to make them forget their other troubles, besides the knowledge that the brig was so badly found in sails, etc., as to be hardly safe. The whole of which has been humorously described in an anonymous letter (though everyone knows who wrote it) from Mr. Fox to the Opposition newspaper here. It is very well written, but rather severe, and the other party is rather angry about it, though they cannot deny its truth. There was only one candle on board, and that was tallow, and other things in proportion.
Friday evening, we felt a little shock just enough to shake us both in our chairs, but without any noise, after a day of almost unceasing downpouring. The word rain gives you no adequate idea of the kind of thing. Saturday the 'Glorious 1st June' was much such another day, and another shock at night which, however, we none of us felt, being one and all fast asleep. I believe they are generally felt after severe rain. I ought not to omit the mention of the 29th, 'Royal Oak Day' and my husband's birthday. It was so satisfactory that we had a real English oak tree in a corner of the garden from which we each had a sprig; The difficulty was not to find it well out, but still green; it is now (June 3rd) completely brown from the great rain and south-east gale, which we had very strong and cold, so as to give us ice, but only enough to swear by; scarcely would it have cooled the butter for breakfast. When these winds come from the south it is really quite cold, for though we have a fire in the sitting-room, the draughts under the doors, and through all the boards, keep the room always within a few degrees of the outward air, and to say the least
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of it thoroughly ventilated. My husband, all encased in wet linen and all his flannel taken off, is however always warmer than I am!!--though sorely puzzled as to the means of getting a sufficiency of exercise for his reactions, without having all his exterior to correspond in wetness. One or two complete shower baths are enough, in the day, and the other times for exercise are spent in hopping and jumping about his room, at the imminent peril of breaking his head against the ceiling. All done with the greatest earnestness to obtain an end, as he would write an article, and eat his dinner.
Arthur is in one corner, imitating his father as nearly as possible, and looking more absurd than enough, and almost tumbling over in his endeavours to clap his arms very hard round himself (like a cold cab-man), and jump at the same time. He also enacts to the very life the packing in blankets and the rubbing sheet after it, and catches up every new word he hears, to reproduce as occasion may require. I am sure he would make you laugh excessively just now, especially in the little sailor dress, which looks quite natural upon him. He got so very thin at first in the ship, and though he is now, thank God, quite stout and fat again, and looks better than he ever did, he has remained of a slim growing sort of shape.
On June 2nd, Sunday, I am proud to say that I walked more than seven miles! First to morning Church, at the other end of the town, and back in time for Powles to go to the one near us; then after dinner a walk, and at 6.30, of course in the dark, to the same Church again, which we found then crowded; in the morning there were very few people. Mr. Cole, our clergyman, one of the party who came out with the Bishop, has five services every Sunday, but sometimes gets some assistance. In the morning at 9 he has a service for the soldiers, and as they go out, we go in, about 10, for the prayers are cut short, though there is always a full-grown sermon; then at 11.45 the Church near us; then he rides up the Hutt to Porirua, some miles, and returns again to the far-off Church, which is the parish
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one, for 6.30. They have begun at once here not burying in the churchyards; but close behind our house is the 'Cemetery Hill' with some tombs sprinkled over it, with neat white palings. Amongst them we found that of 'Charles Cater, Solicitor, son of C. C., Rector of Stokesley'; I never heard before where he had gone.
We have, as an officer in the Customs, a son of Taylor, the waiter, but grown such a fine gentleman that when William carried him a letter from his father, and began to tell him that he had seen him just before starting, he would not take any notice of him, and merely said his letters would give him all the news. Mr. Nicholson, after living here, ever since we came, an idle life half with the officers of the 65th, and half doing nothing, is at last on the point of going up the country to a station, to spend a little time in stock-keeping, and seeing how those matters are carried on. He is going to a Mr. Scroggs, brother to some very pretty Miss Scroggs, whom Laura and the Pollens know, and who sent him a letter by us, which was duly despatched by a safe hand.
A great part of Monday, 3rd, we spent listening to a case of murder tried at the Assize Court, then sitting. There were I think, five or four cases in all, but this was the only serious one. There is a ship now laid up, as they call it here, waiting for orders from home, and in it was left a boy of nineteen as caretaker. He was found murdered, and packed in a cask, about a month before we came into the harbour, and some days after we came we met in the road three prisoners, taken up on suspicion nearly three hundred miles up the country, which I think speaks rather well for the police; it was a private from Wellington who took them. I need not give you the details, but after a trial which lasted two whole days, and late into the second night, one was found guilty and the others acquitted, who seem to have been only his dupes. This man Good is supposed to be an escaped convict, transported for a military offence, from India. He is young, and very good looking, with a clever, bad, expression, and the most wonderful nerve I ever heard of. The day after the boy was murdered, the friends whom
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he had invited came to dine with him, and found Good there, who made excuses for the boy having gone 'up the country', and entertained and feasted with them all day, within a few yards of the murdered body. On his trial, too, he was, throughout, as calm as any spectator, taking notes and smiling at some of the evidence given, and this I hear continued even when sentence was passed. I only stayed in Court during a short part of the trial; being a case of life and death made it very disagreeable to me to be there, though I wanted to hear a case tried, which I never had before. Besides, the place allotted to me here was unpleasantly conspicuous, as instead of going to the ordinary gallery, where you cannot see, a chair was put for me close by the Judge, in his little box, en face de tout le monde. The execution will, I hear, be next week.
June 3rd.(this same day). We met Mr. Bulkeley very much elated at having received letters and newspapers from home, via Sydney, with which place there is constant communication here; the passage is only from a fortnight to three weeks. The Manager of the Bank, a Mr. Raymond, came here, from there, not nine months ago, and he knew Alfred Denison very well, used constantly to see him at parties there, when he came up for a month or two of mingled gaiety and business in his metropolis. It sounded so different to me from our idea of him sleeping over water holes, etc., but there, and even in New Zealand, which is so much newer, we find everything so much more civilized and like home, than we had expected, as to society and those matters. We are now, June 7th, at our third day of one of our bitterly cold south-east gales; I never saw such weather as we have had to-day, the water is coming in at our doors and windows, and at two or three soft places in the roof, and the wind everywhere; it is blowing up the face of the harbour, sheltered as it is, in clouds of spray, and part of our fence (a paling) is blown flat down, and in short even the people here say they never saw a worse gale. The whole house shakes with it, and we shiver, for fires cannot warm us, but then, it is so much pleasanter than on board ship,
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as to be delightful by comparison. Indeed, I think, whenever I am disposed to be uncomfortable now, the recollection that I am on shore will lighten every annoyance.
June 11th. We hear more and more accounts of the mischief done by the last gale, which everyone agrees is the worst they have had here, since the colony was established in 1840. Up the Hutt Valley large trees were broken and blown down, and the road there has been in places actually washed away by the violence of the waves, so that the communication is stopped for the present, as regards wheels. Mr. Wakefield told me he tried to ride in on the worst day (it lasted four), but could not. He got on some miles, and then, at a pass in the road where the spray was flying quite over the hills, he thought he would wait behind a fence (paling, they all are here of thin boards placed close together) till the gust was over. However, the next puff sent over the fence, and his horse, and himself, and they were blown thirty or forty feet up the gully, the horse down on his side so he thought it wisest to go home. We saw to-day a house where half the verandah had been blown bodily over the house, and other accidents, too long to relate. Last night we made a grand exertion and went out to tea to meet Mr. Hadfield at Mr. St. Hill's. As to our tea-party, I shall merely say that we ate plentifully of Sally Lunns!! and drank tea in proportion, but of our walk there I may say that it was diversified with an earthquake. Strange to say, walking we hardly felt it, though there was a noise like very distant thunder, and a little vibration, but Powles told me that in the house (where, from want of shelf accommodation, our cups hang on nails, as if at sea) the crockery all rattled. We have made a beginning of a poultry-yard in the shape of a lame cock, which came from we don't know where, and would not be driven away; and Arthur came home from his walk in a deep state of excitement, hardly able to say the words, but imploring me to come and see a hen which he and Powles had bought with a shilling's worth of Indian corn, for half a crown. You must not take this as the price of hens in general, but they had encountered a party who
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had got it in a present, and did not aspire to the glory of a hen of her own.
June 12th. We have had another visit from Mr. Hadfield, who goes to-morrow. Only conceive what his life must have been at first, landing amongst perfect heathen and all fighting, killing, and eating one another. Now, in his part of the Island, a case of cannibalism is quite unknown, and the fighting, too, amongst the tribes seems at an end. He has himself baptized 1200 or 1300 people, and in the first year he has here taught about two thousand to read and write!! He gives the Maoris a very good character, as a moral population, and says they seem most anxious to do the right thing, as soon as they know.
I have spent a great part of to-day at Colonel Gold's with a view to Arthur's making acquaintance with the children. It is a good thing for him to be amongst others, and he is generally very shy with them; however, to-day he soon got over it, rode on a donkey with a soldier to hold him on, to his great delight, and then ran and kicked about as merrily as any of them.
Mrs. Gold was a Canadian, Miss Geddie, and is very pretty, about twenty-six, I believe, has had eight children, and another expected in August, the eldest boy is nine, and there are seven alive. They seem nice children, and obedient to a word or look, but rather in the rough as to dress and so on, as may be imagined from their having, at present, only one nursery girl to wait on them all, and poor Mrs. Gold, though she seemed rather overpowered with them all, said she had been so unfortunate in her last nurse (one of these very self-sufficient and independent colonial young ladies) that she would rather wait a long time, on the chance of finding something good, than take another in a hurry. You hear the same from everyone here, and I should think the whole subject of maid-servants one of the great miseries of human life in N.Z. Every tolerably respectable woman has a husband and children, and does not wish to leave home.
The men are not quite so rare or so troublesome, as far as I hear; they seem to do all the work in every house. For
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instance, our little maid insists that William ought to light the kitchen fires, and thinks she does wonders by getting up, when we call her at seven, and doing the sitting-room (twelve feet square) before breakfast. I am obliged to turn a deaf ear to Powles' remarks as to her saucy answers, and general imperfections, as there is literally no one else to be had; except a deaf and dumb girl, who came out in the ship with us, and who knows nothing of service. There is not much smartness, as you may suppose, and our ring at the door, anywhere, is usually answered by a figure in the overall blue-serge shirt, the common labourers' and seamen's dress here. I have only seen one piece of inexpressible plush in the colony, and that was blue, and at Colonel Gold's; and I don't believe that appears every day, as I saw nothing of it yesterday. The Governor's (single) house servant, is in the white waistcoat and dress-coat style when he meets you at the door, and royally invites you to write your name; but even he is to be seen, in very demi-semi-toilette, before breakfast, helping in the stable, etc.
My husband's horse, of which William has charge, seems to have turned out very well. His paces are pleasant, and he is quite quiet enough at all events for a man; the only thing against him is that he is too small for anything like hard work, but that is not of any consequence at present. I am sorry to say that I have grown such a coward about riding that it is quite misery to me to be on a horse's back. But I must make an effort; as it is, you may say, the only way of getting about, and the two best and quietest ladies' horses are put at my service whenever I will send for them, as their riders are at present hors de combat. Mrs. Gold's is one.
June 16th. We have now lovely weather again, nothing can be more perfect, when the sun is out; when it is gone, and before it comes, it is very fresh indeed. The worst of it for me is that my husband's 'cold water' gives him such a perpetual glow, that he is always wanting window and door open. It is only six weeks since he began to try it, and no good was to be expected for two or three months at least; but he is certainly looking very much better
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already, and has owned to me that he has not felt so really well in all respects (but throat) for ten years and more. The throat, too, is rather better, but that is to be the last improvement, as it is acted on through the constitution, and no local application except constant wet linen.
I believe I shall have an opportunity of sending this via Sydney in a day or two, so I mean to let it go as it is. I believe this continual writing of little bits is, on the whole, the best way of keeping up such a correspondence as this, but it is not wholly satisfactory, as it seems so entirely of ourselves and our doings, and nothing but that, and yet what else have I to write?--unless it were numberless questions about home, and everything going on there, to the smallest particulars. It is not for want of thinking of you all that I don't say more of that.
Arthur is so much improved in looks I think you would hardly know him. He has another letter on the stocks to you. He makes me think so much of Charlie and says just the same sort of old things that he did, such as the other morning, when Powles was brushing my hair; he turned round and said, 'Why, what work there is to dress a lady'--and innumerable other remarks which I spare you. His birthday is to be to-morrow, poor child, three years old; and Mrs. Gold's three little children are invited to spend the afternoon with him and drink tea, to his immense delight, as though they are much older than him, five, six, and seven, they are very gentle, and they played together very well, and he is in extraordinary admiration of their dancing. He had never seen two people going together before, and couldn't understand it.
June 17th. Another gale, with rain which has put off the tea party, and given me another day, as the Louis and Miriam, which takes this (D. V.) to Sydney, cannot get out with this wind. We had two lovely days and shall now, I suppose, have three bad ones; so it is usually with this cold wind, the south-east. It looks ill for the 'Settlers' Ball' to the Lieutenant-Governor and Mrs. Eyre, to which we are invited for to-morrow. It is to be given in a building
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on the beach, about half a mile from us, and a pretty clean walk.
Are you not astonished at our gaiety? How wonderful it seems to think that the London season is nearly over, with all its different excitements, and we don't even know yet how you spent Christmas! If I let myself think too long together of the time it is since we have heard, and that when we do hear, how long it must be after its date, and how much must have happened to all but two of the people I care most about, I am much tempted to wish that N.Z. had gone comfortably under the sea, before I was born or thought of; but there is a bright side to everything, and there are plenty here, specially when there is no south-east gale going on. This is not nearly so bad as the last, but bad enough to keep me in the house all day, and my husband has had only two short walks, and one ride, in the rain.
Please to tell John that the pedometer is constantly in my husband's pocket, and is highly appreciated; it is quite an object to him, now, to know how far he walks. The aneroid, too, is doing its work well, and the results are written down every morning at nine. Only we ought to have thermometers on purpose for wind here, as it is quite provoking, when you are shivering with cold, to find it marking it exactly the same as if there was not a breath of air. It is in this way three degrees warmer to-day than yesterday (forty-six instead of forty-three), while our sensations would lead us to an exactly opposite result.
The Poictiers, which was the next N.Z. Co.'s ship coming out, is due now at Taranaki; but had not arrived last Friday, when there came a mail post from there by land, and even after it gets there it must go to Nelson next, and be there a fortnight, or more, before it comes here with our news. Besides the two passages, and probable bad weather.
I think I have not told you that I am in a most robust state of health, and either grown fat or else just going to begin. I have twice, on Sunday, walked to the far Church, a mile and a quarter each way, morning and evening, and taken a still longer walk in the afternoon. The evening
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service is at 6.30, and of course it is dark, but though we are so near Midwinter, it is light here long before seven. I know you will admire our early hours for being up then, and knowing all about it. Breakfast at eight, or as soon after it as Caroline (our young lady) will allow it, for which we have bread, potatoes and porridge, but no meat, and my husband no tea, but milk or cream and water; then at two dinner, and a good deal of it, but only one joint of meat and some pudding, and then tea at seven, with bread and butter, and then bed, in time for lots of beauty sleep. Our one ball is the only piece of irregularity we have yet committed, and then we were home at 12.30. Dinner-parties are refused, as they might come too often, but I suppose if we go to this ball to-morrow it will be the last, and so we make an exception in favour of such great festivities; especially as in a place like this people really care about our going. I must stop sometime or other, and may as well do it now, to be ready in time. I hope you will have heard of us about a fortnight before getting this, from Killegar; my husband wrote, by an opportunity like this, and begged them to write to you, and he now implores you to forward this small note to his Mother, as he does not write this time au long. Best love from us to one and all, and Arthur sends 'My love to Grandmamma, and to Aunt Frances, and to Aunt Louisa, and I think nothing else'. God bless you all.
One more addio and believe me always your very affectionate
CHARLOTTE
P.S. from Arthur: 'I send my love to Uncle Charles'.
Wellington
June 20th, 1850
MY DEAR MOTHER,
The Louis and Miriam went off yesterday, with twenty-six pages of writing to you, via Sydney, which we find, in fact, is much the best mode of communication. There is now in the town news, up to the 6th March,
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from London, which has come round by that way while we have still no news of the Poictiers which was to sail on the 3rd of February, except that she was spoken, a little this side of the Cape. We have had papers lent to us, with an account of the Queen's Speech, the debate on the Address, Mr. Adderley's motion, etc. You appear, too, to be having a very severe winter, and great floods down the East coast. The Sydney Morning Herald is our informant on all these matters, and it is now six whole months, and ten days, since we have heard anything of home! I sent off my letter on the morning of the Settlers' Ball, which, after all, was a very successful one as to weather, moon, champagne, and every other particular. It was kept up from about 9.45 till 4 o'clock, with great spirit, and there was a sit down supper, with speeches. The Governor's and his bride's health drunk, with great cheering, and one or two others.
You would have laughed to see one of my partners; a contract butcher not one bit too good for his situation, in manners or appearance; but having succeeded in making about £20,000, he has become the Hudson 3 of Wellington, and it is considered a good joke to ask him now to all balls, etc. As he is an old bachelor, or rather aspirant, he insists on asking everyone to dance with him, your unworthy daughter amongst the rest, as I had unluckily seen him one day, when he called, on Port Cooper business, on my husband, who insisted on my dancing with him, if I were invited. He is a square, fat, dirty-looking man, with a large grey head; and after asking someone whether a galop was difficult, and hearing 'no', he came to ask me to dance it with him. I said 'no', so he pressed for a quadrille, and not being prepared with an untruth, I was obliged to say I would, and got through it safely, notwithstanding his wonderful evolutions and prancings. Everyone in the room was laughing. He then went to one of the stewards and begged to be introduced to Mrs. Eyre, his great ambition being to dance with her! I danced, besides, with the Governor, Colonel McCleverty, Colonel Gold,
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and in short everyone dances here; even my husband was very near doing it, to keep himself warm. The Ball was given in the Mechanics Institute, and the Supper in the Inn next door. For music, we had again the band of the 65th.
It seems always wonderful to think that it is mid-winter, and indeed to feel it so cold, and still to see about us no signs even of autumn except among a few English plants in the garden. The woods are still lovely, and although the foliage is evergreen, it is not of the sombre colour that our evergreens are at home; there is every variety of verdure, up to the lightest and brightest shade. For drawing, too, they would be beautiful, as the stem of the tree is generally visible, perhaps feathered with some of the small ferns, with very picturesque tufts of something like gigantic blades of grass in the clefts of the branches; or, prettier still, the whole tree almost smothered with a great red myrtle, grown over it like ivy. The leaf is very like our myrtle, with the same bitter taste when you bite it; but the flower is very different, quite scarlet, and growing in bunches together, as large as a small orange. If possible, I shall bring some home, in some shape, but I am afraid it does not like cultivation and white people, for I do not see it in any of the gardens, or where there has been any clearing. I had never seen it growing till two days ago, when by sitting on the horse, with my husband walking, I got further than usual into the bush.
In coming back we came upon some Maoris, apparently in the deepest grief. A woman in a blanket was sitting on the ground, with her head on her knees, moaning and groaning most pitifully; while her arm was raised to hold the hand of a man, dressed in coat and trowsers, who was standing by, and crying if possible more bitterly, with the tears pouring down his face and clothes; a few other Maoris, were sitting near, looking rather woe-begone, and one was talking to a white man, whom we spoke to, and asked what it was all about, expecting to hear of some sad bereavement. But not at all; it was only, he said, a friendly meeting, and not having
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seen each other for some time, their delight was so great at having again met, that they took this very peculiar way of shewing their satisfaction.
June 22nd. We have had three shocks of an earthquake in the last twenty-four hours, and one of them very disagreeably severe. The first, I felt in bed, happening to be awake, about twelve o'clock last night; but the worst was at about ten this morning, when with a low rumble the whole house shook, and my husband and I, who were sitting by the fire, sat expecting the things on the chimney piece to fall on our heads. He assured me that I got as 'white as a sheet'. I will not undertake to say whether my pallor was caused by the boatlike motion, or by a visit from the 'pale coward Fear'; but I can say that it is a very awful sensation, and by no means pleasant. The other shock was a very slight one, about two o'clock, and I should not have felt it if I had not been sitting quite still and quiet. But the other was very decided; they say it is the most severe one they have had since the great shocks, nearly two years ao. Arthur did not feel it at all, but then he was out in the garden, and indoors it is always more perceptible.
We have a great addition again to the shipping in the harbour: the steamer Acheron, which is stationed here for surveying, has at last returned; one small party from her was left here, completing some work of the kind, and they seemed to have grown rather uneasy about her being so long behind her time appointed for coming into winter quarters, which was about May 1st. She is quite like a great black tub in the water, and very far inferior to the Meander in appearance; besides that her Captain, I hear, wears a moustache, and cannot therefore be an orthodox sailor.
Yesterday was the 24th, and Frances must feel very well if good wishes could help her; we never see wine now, but Arthur and I had a tea-party in her honour, in a little old broken set of doll's tea things. I asked him if he knew who it was for, so he said, looking very knowing, 'I've an idea it's for Aunt Frances, am I right?' In the evening we went out to tea at Mrs. McCleverty's, and had such a lovely moonlight, for
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our walk of nearly a mile, that it was almost pleasant, when we had once started; but we are so completely out of the habit of going out at night that it seems a tremendous effort, and my husband's groanings are deep and piteous as the dressing time approaches, though the evening may turn out pleasant enough in the end, as in this instance. For they are really very nice people. Colonel McCleverty has been a good deal in India, and is, moreover, a very pleasant, lively, good-natured person, well up in news and even new books, and knows a good many people that my husband does, and you cannot appreciate the delight of hearing even a name that you know, out here. Mrs. McC. is something like the Colviles, only better looking, and the kindest, gentlest person you ever saw, although very fond of a joke, and even of dancing, or any fun. Her eldest child is just two months older than Arthur, and there is another boy, now nine months, both born here. They live quite out of the town in a very tolerable house, under the hill, which shelters them from a great deal of the wind. The worst of the hill is that it at the same time deprives us of the sun, very early in the afternoon, so that the whole of the town is in shade now by three o'clock, while there is bright sun on the hill opposite, across the harbour, for two hours longer.
I shall hope to hear, sometime or other, (ah! when?) that you have seen a Panorama that was exhibiting of Wellington when we came away, and which Mr. Wakefield told me gave a good idea of the place, and then, if you could be inspired to know that we live close on the town side of Government House, you would have a pretty good notion of our whereabout, only that there are a good many new houses built, in every direction, since that drawing was made. It is a beautiful place, on some days, such as we have had lately in nearly a week of perfectly still weather. The sea like glass and the smoke and mist, or rather haze, which seemed too idle to rise, lying in straight lines of bright blue cloud half-way up the hills.
The gable-ended houses, too, look very well at a distance,
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and with the yellow cliff that runs forward, and breaks their line here and there, all seen double in the water and through a lovely atmosphere, make me think of some of Hungerford Pollen's Mediterranean sketches, and make me also more sorry than ever that I cannot draw myself.
On Thursday, we went out again in the evening, to Mr. Fox's, to meet Captain Stokes of the Acheron, and the two judges; that is, Judge Chapman, for this place and Nelson, and Mr. Stephen, the new judge for Otago. The first is at least clever and entertaining, though not very agreeable, but the new one does not seem to have much to recommend him. The malcontents here are indeed base enough to insinuate that the whole business of his appointment probably arises from his namesake and relation in the Colonial Office, as Otago does not seem to want a judge at all. There are hardly 1,200 people there in all, and the labourers are a singularly well-behaved orderly set of people, while the offences of the upper classes, much as they all quarrel and dislike each other, always stop short of a breach of the peace. They say there are scarcely three cases in the year that the Magistrates cannot dispose of; and now, instead of chartering a ship to bring them up here for a trial, a judge is sent down to them, to whom they must pay £800 a year, and £200 more for his staff, out of their small revenue.
Captain Stokes is a South Wales man, and I grieve to say very unsailor-like in his appearance and manner; he is not tall, but fat, with grey hair and a black moustache. His ship, or rather steamer, is also rather useful than ornamental, and very inferior to the Meander as to appearance, size, etc. But we hope to go on board some day, and shall then be somewhat better judges of her merits than we can be from our windows. It is a great thing to have a man-of-war here at all.
We were asked the same evening to Colonel Gold's, for 'some music'; the next day again to dine at Government House, where there was music and dancing till two o'clock next morning. Both these were declined on account of our
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early hours; but you see how gay we might be. I have been again at Mrs. McCleverty's to take Arthur to dine with her little boy, and Arthur's new gun which I had brought out for his birthday, was so real and imposing in its aspect that he (Master McC.) began to cry when he was shot with it, though I need hardly say that it has no loading; but the stock is of polished wood, and the children here are quite unused to any but the very commonest toys. The corner of our sitting-room, where Arthur has his bricks, donkey, maps, and doll's tea-things, is considered quite a show here; all the children who come to call are in wonder at the magnificence and variety of his possessions. One thing is that, being alone, his things last much longer.
Another vessel has come in from Taranaki, where the Poictiers (our first ship from home direct) was first to touch, and she was still not there a week ago! The news will be quite old when she does come. It seems to come so much quicker round by Sydney. How I wish we could have known this, or could make you know it rather.
Our fine still weather is gone. We had a storm yesterday, and to-day a downpour of rain, with a few breaks, and a little earthquake early in the morning. It is much warmer, but not nearly so agreeable; for three nights we had quite a sharp frost, everything white in the morning, and the washing that was left out stiff with ice, but then the sun was quite hot till two or three o'clock. It rises, of course, earlier here, at this season, than at home; on their mid-winter day, it shone full out exactly as the Acheron's 'seven bells' rang (7.30). We have beautiful sunrises (and of course always see them). It appears just over a blue hill straight up the harbour, and very near a high one, with a very fine outline, that has long been covered with snow.
Yesterday (July 1st) we had a visit early from Mr. Thomas, bringing with him Captain Mitchell, who is here for a few days after accomplishing what is here considered a great feat; viz. a journey overland from Nelson to Port Cooper, which had never been done before. He had a settler from near Nelson, Mr. Dashwood, with him, and
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an old whaler as a sort of servant, and a horse and mule, which established the important fact of the track being passable for cattle, so the stock for Canterbury can be brought overland, and thereby the great additional expense saved of bringing them by ship, which always kills a large proportion of those embarked, and added to the high freights here, would make everything of the kind very dear for some time.
The Governor ordered two cows from Sydney, which arrived a month ago, one of them pretty well, though much out of condition, but the other, though conveyed with care in quite a superior trader, was so much bruised and hurt, by tumbling about in some rough weather, that they had to kill her, a few days after landing; and as to freight, there is a man settled in the Middle Island, about sixty miles from here by sea, and he has lately tried bringing his wool over for sale, and paid for it just as much as he would from New South Wales to London, there being as yet no competition. Captain Mitchell belongs to an Indian regiment, and is here on sick-leave, having taken a great fancy to the country. Exploring seems to be his great delight; he has already been over a great extent of country, and says that if he could have got an extension of leave, he would have spent all next summer in wandering about the Middle Island. He is now obliged to go back to India, where he is always ill, but hopes, in a year more, to be able to settle all his affairs, sell out, and come back to settle in N.Z., perhaps at Canterbury. He gave us really a very interesting account of his journey, in which he had a good many difficulties, and nearly ran short of food, being reduced at last to very mouldy biscuit, which was wetted and spoiled in crossing one of the rivers, and an occasional bird shot. The rivers are generally the great difficulty in N.Z. travelling, but on this route he reports only three, at each of which a ferry might easily be established, and plenty of excellent water, springs, etc., throughout. The distance by the route they took was about 200 miles, as nearly as they could judge by their watches.
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Mr. Thomas is you know Mrs. O. Biddulph's brother, and is Auditor-General here, which is not, I believe, a very arduous office; but he has volunteered, lately, his gratuitous services to carry out a new system of banking, which employs him five hours every day, and is a little financial fancy of Lord Grey's, which the people do not much like. Perhaps they are like me, and do not understand the merits of the case; but it is quite enough that it should come from the authorities to be thoroughly unpopular. There are certainly many reasons for being dissatisfied with things as they are, but we take in the Radical newspaper, The Independent, which puts me always on the side of the officials, and whatever is most opposed to itself, from its very personal way of attacking them all individually; and its quarrels with the Spectator, the Government paper, are conducted on both sides, exactly in the Eatanswill Gazette style.
July 4th. To-day we have had the excitement of a letter, a real letter with post-marks, the first we have had this year! But it was only from Nelson, and nearly a month old! However we were very glad to hear the news of all our friends that we left in Lady Nugent and of how they were settling themselves. It was from Mr. Lee, one of our fellow passengers, and my husband had made him promise to write to us when he had chosen his own situation, but I fear the details would not amuse you; Mr. Tollemache's two maids had each at least one offer of marriage, and one was graciously accepted. To-day, too, my husband has sent a letter home, by another occasion, to Sydney; but as they often occur, I am waiting until the next. After eleven fine days, our weather broke up on Saturday, and on Monday we had another great south-east storm; the wind almost more violent than it was in the very great one a fortnight ago, and trees and fences are again blown down. It is still very cold and threatening, and is not yet, I think, all over; I think, so far, the weather has been colder than we expected, since the winter set in; about as cold as ordinary winter weather at home; not perhaps by the thermometer, but by personal sensations, chilblains, etc. But then we must
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remember that, from the rooms being small, we live with doors and windows much more open than at home, and even when they are shut, the walls are far from airtight, and there is no fireplace in either bedroom or dressing-room.
This month, and August, are considered the worst here, and we may have even snow, though it is unusual; last winter they had it on the ground for three mornings, but it never lasts a whole day. The settlers had never seen it before here, and Mr. Thomas told me his dog was quite frightened and would not step out into it. How curious it will seem too, to have a very hot Christmas Day, if we live to see it, and the windows ornamented with flowers something like lilac laburnums, (which is here a favourite for the purpose) instead of holly. So many things seem turned upside down; in expounding things to Arthur I often come to a standstill. Sun in the north! etc., it makes our books all wrong. Further, with what face can I now teach him I hope I may never be tempted to roam, From England, dear England, my own native home' vide 'English Boy' Original Poems.
His hen has turned out a wonderful creature, and lays two days out of three, and sometimes three running; in short it has appeared so good a speculation that we are to have a second. Eggs have been 4d. a piece, but are now down again to 2d. Milk, too, is 5d. a quart, for the winter, but we get it very good now. All imported goods from England are about double their original price in the shops here; sometimes more. For instance, a piece of chintz I got, though only a little common blue and white stripe, is 1s. a yard, and our frightful Axminster carpet 4s. 6d.; crockery and glass the same, with something additional from breakage. We are loudly lamenting that we did not bring more things with us. But people at home seem so little to know how you will really find things here, that even my husband, with all his opportunities, had formed no idea of what are the really useful things to bring out, and as for myself, not having been very available at the busy time, and moreover little disposed to turn my thoughts that way when I could help it, I don't think I at all realized that we should
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ever reach New Zealand at all, or that, if we did, we could ever aspire to anything beyond the barest necessaries of life, far less ever to have to consider appearance; and so we brought a very slender stock of most things; for instance, spoons and forks (of which we have only enough for ourselves) and, except the pianoforte, nothing but our cabin furniture; if a thought of their necessity ever suggested itself so did my husband's usual maxim of 'doing without them'; and yet, whenever we go and take up our station at Port Cooper, even he says that we must have a dinner service, instead of a few willow pattern plates and dishes, which we now all use, so as to be able to ask people, at least to dinner, if not to stay in the house, as soon as they land after their long voyage, which will be expected of us. It is, indeed, quite true that that is a moment when any attention or kindness is very highly valued, but between ourselves I must own that I look forward with some fear and trembling to these civilities; as we cannot hope that every individual who lands on the precincts of Canterbury will be invariably and inevitably 'pleasant gentlemanlike fellows' (for instance, my exquisite partner of the other night has landed) but, as Mr. Trollope says, basta, and let us hope that our solitude there at first may prevent our being too particular, and make every new arrival a valuable addition in our eyes.
My husband started this morning (July 9th) on an expedition which is to last (D. V.) about ten days, and which takes him about fifty miles up the coast to the north, for the destruction of teal, ducks, and pukakos innumerable; and is to terminate in a visit to Mr. Hadfield who lives about six miles from the headquarters of the battue. Dr. Lyall, of the Acheron, is one of the party; also Mr. Hutchinson, the engineering officer here, a clever little fat man, who sketches beautifully, and who returned about a month ago from a similar expedition to the same place, and is consequently leader of the band. Mr. Wodehouse goes too, for the sake of the expedition, but not the sport, as he is too delicate to bear any exposure, and does not even take a
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gun; and Mr. Bulkeley, who is going to walk there, and started consequently yesterday. It takes them two days to ride. William, too, is gone, which prevents my feeling at all afraid that John should suffer from cold, etc., as he can have everything dry and warm for him, each day, on his return; and as long as this is secured, neither cold nor wet affect him in the least. Indeed he is very much better for his nine weeks of water cure, not only as to his general health, but the throat, too, is comparatively free from uneasiness, and I rather hope, as does the doctor, that this break in the treatment may be of use in making a fresh start. However, I shall be, in more ways than one, very well satisfied to see him get home again. In the meantime, everyone here is very sorry for my loneliness, and civil about asking me to spend time with them. To-morrow, if fine, I am engaged, with Arthur, to spend the day with Mrs. McCleverty again; and to-day came Mr. Petre, with a note from Mrs. Petre, asking me to spend some days with them up the Hutt, and so, if it is fine, I go the next day, alone with Arthur, and Mr. Petre brings in the gig, or pony carriage, to drive us up himself. The road has become so bad from these two last severe storms, that I believe it is almost the only vehicle that ventures along it, but Mr. Petre does not know what it is to be afraid.
July 10th. and a pouring wet day, still, with heavy and unceasing dropping. I am rather in pain for my husband, and party, to whom weather will make the whole difference, but I hear that it is very usual for the weather to be perfectly fine up the coast, when there are storms going on here.
You would have laughed to see the start yesterday. William started an hour or two in advance, on a heavy strong cart-horse, in a fustian shooting-jacket and dress to correspond, with the thickest of possible blankets rolled up in front of his saddle, and portly saddle bags behind, and a gun over all. John said they stuck in the door that leads out of our domain, and while they reloaded outside it, he could not help saying 'Well, William, how they would laugh, if they
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could see us now in Portman Square,' to which William responded with one of his unwonted bursts of merriment. Powles tells me that he complains to her much of Arthur's absurdities when he is in the room, and says he shall die of his efforts not to laugh. I was glad to hear that he can wish and feel inclined that way, for he is generally as though without comprehension, on the most over-powering occasions. He says he was never better in his life than he has been here, and certainly, so far, we are very much pleased with him.
July 15th. Arthur and I returned this evening from Mr. Petre's, where we found our way very successfully on Thursday last. I had fully intended to be back on Saturday, but the day was too wet for me to persist in it, as I was to be driven in again by either the lady or gentleman of the house. The weather has been a great drawback to our pleasure here, being almost unceasing rain and mist, and the valley with all its new clearing and half-burnt stumps left in the ground, requires sun in the winter to make it look happy; in another way, too, I was sorry not being able when so far on the road, to see a little further into the country.
We took a little walk, on Sunday afternoon, with the children, along the road up the valley, which is excellent for some miles, and that was about all we could do. I was rather glad of the opportunity of seeing what the establishment was like, as they are about the greatest people here, and my experience goes to prove strongly the impossibility of getting anything like decent servants here. They have five children and three house servants; two maids, girls who are nurses and housemaids, and a discharged soldier with long black hair, a light shooting jacket (always) and dirty hands, who is everything else. There is great plenty and abundance of good things, excellent milk, cream and butter; but then Mrs. Petre always superintends it all herself, makes up the butter, and is some time in the kitchen every day. She always washes and dresses all the children, every morning, one a
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baby of six months old; and she says she very often lights the fire in the nursery herself, and then her two maids walk in as soon as they are ready. It is only fair to say, though, that the children are bad sleepers, and though she is almost like yourself in doing without sleep, perhaps they can't. They were very countrified-looking girls, with rough hair, and no caps, but their manner to the children wonderfully good and gentle.
Mrs. Petre, herself, is very young-looking and with wild spirits, and enjoys a ball, or a ride, or a scamper of any kind, and is sometimes very pretty. She is, like her husband, a Roman Catholic, and was a Miss Walmsley, and brought up, though an only daughter, at a convent, till nearly sixteen. Then came home Mr. Henry W. Petre, to his father's, Lord Petre's, the great house of the neighbourhood, from N.Z. in search of a wife. She was sent for from the convent, engaged before she was sixteen, married two months afterwards (all of which I heard from herself), and after a short bit of London, and other gaieties, came straight out here to settle, eight years ago, and they seem as happy as possible. He is immensely tall and thin and looks like a set of fire irons badly hung together, and on the top a head that would be good-looking enough if the features had not that sort of lengthened look that your may see in your own by consulting the back of a silver spoon. He is very pleasant, though, and good-natured, and quite a gentleman, and seems moreover duly impressed with a high idea of her excellencies; which indeed are manifold, for there is nothing she cannot do, all learnt out here, from receiving company, down to cooking the dinner they are to eat; and all pleasantly and well, and so as to be very much liked.
She says that she has been more than once without any servants in the house; for a fortnight once, but, luckily for her, there are two old ones of hers now set up for themselves, who, on a pinch, or in case of sickness, come in to help. One came from England as her maid, married to an old servant of Mr. Petre's and stayed some years with her. The children are all ugly, except a very big girl of four,
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exactly like Memling's Madonnas, that we saw so often in Antwerp, Ghent, etc.
There is a chemist here who has lately turned artist, and who has perpetrated a few likenesses, very like, but very bad, and he is making a group of the little Petres, in oils, which is to be sent to England, and copied there, in hopes of the likenesses being preserved, and the drawing rectified. I am afraid though, it will be rather a failure. If it were likely to be tolerable I should so like to have Arthur done, but I am afraid it would be only a disappointment.
Mr. Petre's house is quite a grand edifice for this part of the world. There are, in front, three windows and a door, and then a gable with a bow window at each end, with an attic over it, and three windows more down the two wings, one of which makes nurseries, and the other offices. It is built of lath and plaster, in imitation of the Essex farm houses, (their county) and rough-cast, and is raised on wooden posts two or three feet from the ground, which makes it very cold, as the boards of course do not fit, and the light came through the floor of my room, which gave it a very ethereal look; but in cold damp weather made it far colder even than this house. They have an excellent fruit-garden, that was begun by Mr. Molesworth ten years ago, but he is dead, and they bought the place and built this house, which they have only lived in for about eight months. Their clearings have been very artistically done, and a good deal of bush left, in patches, so that it does not look so bare as most places about, and their grand pride is a lawn in front of the house, now sown with oats, but which is to be real English grass, and which is already nearly free from stumps; at present the great disfigurement of the Hutt. For the bush, there, has been all cleared with fire, so that when trees are cut down, about three feet from the ground, which is as much trouble as they can take here, a black and very unsightly root is left.
July 18th My husband got back safely on Tuesday evening from Mr. Hadfield's at Otaki, 52 miles up the coast; all the better for his expedition, which has turned
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out well except as to weather--rain, rain, every day, just as we had; which was wretched work for sitting for hours in a canoe, wet to the knees, watching for ducks who wouldn't come, having been driven from those lakes by the great quantity of rain. And one night they spent, after this, in a sort of shed, without a fire-place, and rain coming in at the roof. However he stood it perfectly well, and seems all the better for it; all the game he brought back with him was three brace of ducks of different kinds, and a pukako, something between a grouse and partridge, to eat, but more like a gigantic water-hen, with a bright purple breast and red head, and very long legs; and no one else got even as much as that, solely on account of the weather, as the sport is usually excellent; the difficulty being not how to get the birds, but how to bring them home. After three days of sporting such as it was, they retreated upon Mr. Hadfield at Otaki, which must be a most interesting place to see and is by far the best specimen of Maori life to be seen in New Zealand.
He is himself both very good and very judicious, and as the whole village is entirely under his control, and you may say of his own making, it is like one of the communities of Primitive Christians. There are two chiefs living there in comfortable houses, with capital furniture, prints round the rooms, etc. One of them has selected the surname of Thompson for his start in civilized life, and has 3,000 or 4,000 acres of land, and is the same whom we met riding in with his wife for the Governor's Ball. The other is called Martin, and I saw and tried to speak to him when he came in on the same occasion, but they can neither of them talk English. If we are not obliged to go to Port Cooper before the fine weather comes again I am (D. V.) to go up and see it all myself, which I should like very much.
We have had a great disappointment about our letters. The Poictiers did arrive at New Plymouth, about three weeks ago, and we heard that they would have been sent on from there by the overland mail which comes down here once every fortnight, so as to avoid the delay of the sojourn there
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and at Nelson, besides the two passages by sea which may take a month. The mail, however, arrived last night, and you may imagine how blank we looked when there was not a single letter, and now we must wait for the ship. I do not however look forward to it with unmixed pleasure, for it is almost a terrible thing, to get your first letters after so long a gap.
The talk here, just now, is about the behaviour of the Governor-in-Chief, Sir George Grey, to our poor Lieut.-Governor, Mr. Eyre, (whose book on Australia I think you have). He (Mr. Eyre) had ordered a meeting of the Legislative Council on the 1st of August, to consider and legislate on various subjects, one of which was an increase of salary for himself, as he has never yet received as much as was promised him at home by Lord Grey; Sir George arranged matters here for his arrival, and managed to cut off nearly a tenth of the whole. He remonstrated, but in vain, Sir George insisting that the equivalents he had appointed were as good, or better, than the whole sum down; and now, when the matter was to be laid before the Council, he comes down with a 'stopper' on the whole proceedings and forbids the meeting, making poor Mr. Eyre look very foolish, after all the members had been summoned. They say that he has not any right to do it, and that Mr. Eyre has only to persist, and hold the Council in spite of him; but that would amount to an open declaration of war, and is not expected. In the meantime, it is 'nuts' to all the anti-Colonial Office Party, who love to see anything go wrong that affects only the Officials.
I do not envy Mr. Eyre his position one bit. The feeling amongst all the Colonists is that everything he does must be wrong, and that they are every bit as good as him. He is not at all popular; even the Petres are quite against him, in spite of being 'officials' themselves, because they look upon him as a nobody, sent here to govern them in spite of themselves, and he has only a very faint shadow of any power at all; while his position entails a great many of the restraints and annoyances of real state which are ill-atoned for by
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being 'His Excellency', and the first person wherever he goes. He seems to be a very good sort of person, only rather wanting in tact, and very anxious to do the right thing by everyone. Sir George Grey does not come so well out of this last business; indeed, it is supposed that he now prevents the meeting in order that certain inaccuracies in his statements may not meet the public eye. In the meantime, poor Mrs. Eyre is quite ill from a succession of colds, and a very bad swelled face, which has kept her in her room for ten days. They say the common disease of the place is that sort of thing settling down into a rheumatic pain, almost like 'tic', which is not very pleasant hearing for me. You know of old the evil dispositions of my teeth, and all that Rogers did for me at starting, and more too, left me before I had been two months in Lady Nugent, so I must turn dentist myself, and scrape sixpences, in the way he describes to you, for home-made-amalgam.
Talking of such things, we were rather amused by Mr. Elliot's (our fellow passenger's) description of his making a wedding ring out of a sixpence the other day. He took a whaleboat, and went visiting, from Nelson, the out-lying settlements, native as well as white; and one evening they arrived among some natives when four couples were waiting the next opportunity to be married. Now Mr. Elliot had got a missionary with him, and great was the rejoicing at his appearance, when the aspirants suddenly and sadly remembered that they had no rings! None were to be had nearer than Nelson (some days' journey) and yet, if they let this occasion pass, there was no saying how long they might wait for another missionary visit. So Mr. Elliot and one of the boatmen, both 'handy men', sat over the fire, and completed the four rings for the next morning's ceremony out of as many sixpences, first boring a little hole, and then heating it out larger, till the ring fitted and was well rounded. I suppose a fellow-feeling may have helped to make him 'wondrous kind'. We heard from Mr. Lee that Mr. Elliot's heart was so softened, on the journey, by the charms of one of Mr. Tollemache's maids (a very nice
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quiet cook or housemaid I don't know which) that he has at last committed himself, proposed and been most graciously accepted! No wonder, for he is evidently very well off, and very good tempered, besides an amount of information, on every conceivable subject, that you rarely meet with, and that she cannot possibly appreciate. But he is so excessively shy, especially with anything like a lady, that he was sure, if he married at all, to take refuge with someone much below him in position. He is here just now on business, but goes back to-morrow to settle at Nelson.
We have most dreadful weather, rain every day but one for a fortnight, and such rain too, and so cold, often mixed with hail, and frost at night. This morning (July 23rd) the ground was all white, hail down here, but on the hills real snow, and it has been raining or hailing almost all day. Everyone tells us that it is the worst winter that they remember here; this spell of bad weather has lasted so long. The roads, too, have all become so bad that they are almost impassable for carts and consequently no firewood can be brought, so that those people who had a good stock in, are lending barrow-fulls to their distressed neighbours. However, by great interest, we got a cart-full in, this morning, and we have still a little Sydney coal, which we bought when we landed, at £2 5s. a ton, and 4s. more for bringing it up to us. There is none now in the market.
We had last night another shock of an earthquake, the most severe that we have felt; the things on the chimney-piece all rattled, but nothing actually fell, and to-night we have been hearing wonderful noises, as loud as distant thunder, but unlike that, or anything else that I ever heard before. Powles, however, who has been near both Vesuvius and Etna, assures me that it is like the 'explosions of a volcanic mountain'.
July 27th. We have had two evenings devoted to society so as to stop our usual writing. One, an evening visit from Mr. Domett, who came and talked literary, etc., over a cup of tea; the other was going out ourselves to tea at Mrs. O'Connell's, the Brigade Major's
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very-much-better-half. She is not very ladylike, but good-looking, with something very pleasant about her manner, and, as her name may suggest, very Irish. He is always agreeing to whatever you say, as weak as water, afraid to ride on any but one horse, or fast on that, and very fond of a good dinner. He means to leave the service next year, and settle in New Zealand, and last night he imparted to us that they were thinking of Port Cooper and sheep-farming, which at present seems a wonderfully good investment here. It is almost as safe as land, and returns quite an average of 30 per cent, on your money. There is a Mr. Weld here, one of the great Roman Catholic family of that name in England, and we hear a 'very nice young man', who retains civilization in the middle of a bush-life, and started with a good capital. He expects, next year, to have 20,000 sheep and to make on them £8,000; £2,000 of which will pay the expenses of his sheep stations, shepherds, etc., leaving him £6,000 clear profit. At present he has not so large a flock, or proportionate return, as the expenses are comparatively much greater on a small flock.
We had, about ten days ago, a pretty strong earthquake in the night; so bad, as to make everything rattle, but to-day we had one rather worse, inasmuch as one thing was actually rolled down from the chimney-piece. It came just as William was bringing in the tea things, and the tray-full did not suffer, but it was a very smart stroke, every board in the room seemed to be pulled a different way and the motion made me feel half sick, but perhaps it was partly fright. Even my husband got quite pale for a minute, and William stared wildly at us. It was the first that Arthur has felt, and he turned quickly round: 'Is that an earthquake? Oh, Mr. Earthquake, had you nothing better to do than to knock Mamma's seal down from the chimney-piece?'--Not in the least frightened; and yet if he meets a spider alone, anywhere, he 'leaves the room instantly'!! And he has only just got over a similar antipathy to the black slugs with which the garden swarms! All such things were new and strange to him when he landed.
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July 31st. Still looking out for the Poictiers which will not arrive, but on Tuesday last (28th) we had a great event to us; the first letters. My husband had two from Mr. Godley, enclosing one to me from Mrs. G., and one from 'the Association', which was a duplicate of one already started by the Poictiers, but the Fairy Queen, by which they came, had made a quicker passage, and these came down from Auckland, to which she was bound, by a chance vessel. Then to-day, we have received, from the same opportunity, a packet of newspapers, eight Spectators, a Guardian, Morning Post and some Times, etc., more than I can read in a week, which is delightful.
I think I must try to do as someone in the town does. When he gets a batch of Sydney papers, he sorts them out, and then reads one at breakfast every morning, as long as they last. John, I need hardly say, has been over head and ears in them, ever since they arrived, and is much delighted with the Colonial debate. I wish Tom Cocks could have seen our delight in spelling over the well-known hand on the covers. I think Sara could, in their pamphlet days, scarcely have rejoiced more in seeing it. Still I have nothing from home! but I hope I may consider it at least negatively certain that you were all pretty well at the beginning of February, or Mr. Godley would know, and mention it; 'Hope on, hope ever' is what we must learn now. Fancy poor Mr. Wodehouse getting, by the same opportunity, the first letters he has had from England, which he left more than a year ago. But he has been moving about, and had desired his letters to be sent to 'P. O. Auckland', with which place there is, from here, very imperfect communication.
On Monday, we went on board the Acheron to see her, and have luncheon (our dinner), in the gun-room; that is, not with Captain Stokes, but with Captain, or, as he has it on his card, Commander Richards, who seems to be a sort of Captain for the surveying party. He has been at Wellington as long as we have, and we liked very much the little we had seen of him. Indeed, they seem a very nice set on board; including a Mr. Hamilton, who is I believe the draughtsman,
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and the Master, a very gentlemanlike Mr. Evans. It was rather a satisfaction to hear from him that he considered the storm (which, I confess, alarmed me not a little) that greeted our arrival at Stewart Island, as the worst he has known in New Zealand, famous for storms. The Acheron was then not in very good anchorage, and he said he was very uneasy about her, and we must have passed, too, within fifty or sixty miles of her, on that terrible 22nd of March.
The gun-room, though not considered at all smart, formed a very happy contrast with the cuddy in poor Lady Nugent, in every particular; not forgetting a capital little stove in one corner, with a bright coal fire, and no smoke. The chronometers are a sight to see; there are about two dozen, in a very safe little lock-up, each ticking away according to its own idea of the 'time of day', some by Greenwich, and all different; but from the whole, 'in a general point of view' they give us the true time every day at noon. Captain Stokes has some very handsome bloodhounds on board, enormous creatures, that nearly knocked Arthur (who was specially invited) over, in their delight at seeing our arrival on deck, and as we were coming away, I wished so that my Father could have been there, to see a figure prepared by the sailors: a large brown-and-white spaniel sitting up 'begging' as we used to call it, but looking very woe-begone, and very absurd, with a pipe in his mouth, and a sailor hat with Acheron on it, on his head.
Captain Richards took us home again in one of the ship's boats, with a lot of Examiners lent to my husband by the gun-room. It is quite characteristic, the way in which he manages somehow to see and read newspapers, and everybody here who gets any sends them to him, and he reads all, and longs for more. He has now plenty of time for reading, except, indeed, that eating, bathing, and then walking, take up a good many hours of the day.
In the evening, we had a visit at tea from Mr. Wodehouse, and Mr. Weld, whom I mentioned before, and who is now
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in Wellington for a few days. He is, I find, only partner, and holding the smallest share, with Mr. Clifford, another R.C. who is now 'at home', England. First came, of course, a discourse on sheep, and colonial matters in general; and then we got to books, of which he seems passionately fond; we were able to lend him all Tennyson and Ruskin, whom he knew only in reviews, and he went off very happy with that. Mr. Wodehouse is from Norfolk, and quite a smart young gentleman (I don't know whether I told you before) out here for his health, and for bringing, I believe, a younger brother, quite young and good-looking, and I fear consumptive. He is not one of the Wodehouses related to the Holbecks, but cousin to Lord Wodehouse. However, we have found out one mutual acquaintance, Mrs. H. Liddell, whom we knew, before her marriage, as a very outree beauty-flirt, and will not even admire. I told him how much we thought her improved. He is only staying here with different people (now Mr. Domett) till he makes up his mind where to settle.
The next evening we went out ourselves, to our Doctor's house; Mrs. Fitzgerald sings very well, and we went to hear her. However, they asked a 'few people' to meet us, which rather took off from our enjoyment, as only one could play, and two sing, badly; and yet for civility they must all be pressed to perform, so we did not get so many songs as we had hoped from her. She has a most beaming, good-natured face, besides being very good-looking, only figure, hands, etc., unsuccessful. Her brogue very strong but the pleasantest I ever heard and her 'tay boy' made us think of 'Paddiana'; but we like both her and her husband very much. Captain Stokes was there and went, unbeknown'st, sobbing out of the room at some of her pathetic songs. It seems he lost his wife, who was very beautiful and charming, on his way out. She died at the Cape, and there are sounds and songs which are still too much for him.
August 5th. And now comes our grand news; the Poictiers at last, on the 2nd, appeared round the head of the harbour, with a light wind, soon after breakfast, and in about
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two hours, she had anchored. I did little all the morning, as you may imagine, but stand at the window to watch her, and then go and poke the fire, and back to watch again. We could not get our letters till late in the afternoon, but then they were indeed worth waiting so long for, and I hardly know how to be thankful or happy enough, and so excellent of little Sara to have saved her distance as she did. As I ran over my letters I saw one in her hand, dated February 5th and one in Tom's 6th, and then I knew it must be all there. It was very charming of him to write to me himself, and then follow it up with another good account (by Mr. Pollard) next day, and then most fortunately Charles' letter dated 'xv' was in time to meet the ship at Ryde, with 'Sara doing as well as possible' which I conclude includes--Cocks Esqre Junr., No. 2. Happily for myself, I cannot help almost unconsciously fancying that the news of you all extends till much later than is really the case, in short till a reasonable time for letters to be on the road to anywhere, and then I don't know how to thank you all enough for all the letters which however troublesome to write, as I know a long foreign letter always is (if only in anticipation), were at least most thankfully received and duly appreciated.
From one or two 'parties' came little hints about postage such as 'as a parcel is going I write, etc.' Now I must answer this, once for all, by the remark that money is no object whatever; compared, that is, to the smallest fraction of news; and the postage out here is nothing.
We were at first rather frightened about our parcel 'forwarded by--Perceval Esqre'; who, it appeared, was no longer in the ship on its arrival here, having fallen a victim, on the voyage, to a Miss Gates, going to Taranaki (N. Plymouth), and there he had also stayed; and like Whittington's fortunate captain, in the story you gave Arthur 'would no further trip'; so that a long letter from his father in the 'Biographical sketch', with other preparatifs for our 'friendly intercourse', all fall to the ground. (N. B. Between ourselves we regret this the less as we hear that
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he was very unpopular in the ship and made himself very disagreeable). But then there were many chances to one against a gentleman in his predicament remembering 'a parcel' at all, and we suffered great anxiety of mind as to whether it might be still on board and not forthcoming, till next morning when it happily appeared.
I leave you to imagine the pleasure of opening it, and of finding every letter we had hoped for, and some besides, and then the books too! Arthur's earnest excitement in opening the parcels directed to him! I have still one from Uncle Tom in reserve, for when he got Uncle Robert's most beautiful one, he could think of nothing else, and knows it already by heart half through (from my reading not his own), in spite of all the forbearance he could muster not to, as he said, 'exturb me' reading my letters. He is planning letters to you all, and was wonderfully pleased with Frances' messages to 'Arthurkin'.
The purse my husband will thank you for. I think you must not write quite so much always, you know how much I dislike it for you when it keeps you up, or in, and you have always so much of it to do. You must get Louisa to write the historical parts, and only do yourself those that you only can say. Laura's was a most valuable dispatch, and I hereby do thank her most heartily for it, and for the accompanying letter. How I wish I could write to you all individually, also to Heneage; I am so sorry about the letter that went at Plymouth to the dead-letter office; I wish he had sent it though by the Poictiers. I wanted to have written to him, too, from Antonie, but was too busy, sorry and sick to write one more than I did. Also William, I am very glad he likes Cambridge pretty well, and please thank him very much for his letter. I am very sorry about poor Mrs. Dilke; and I am also very sorry too about your not going to town--and only try to console myself with hoping that it may have its good side in point of health.
This mail was so long on its road that we are already hoping, every day, to hear of the arrival of the April ship at Otago; we shall be then in great anxiety to see whether our letters
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sent via Buenos Ayres, on the voyage, had reached you or not. We reckoned that they might by the middle of March, and I hope you may get them before the last letters are finished. However, I am afraid it was rather a doleful account of ourselves, (though I know that I passed lightly over all our first horrors). But still any letter would be something. I am so afraid of your exertions on our behalf relaxing, and indeed of our appearing so ungrateful, as time passes on, and still no word from us. But you must remember that the largest number of ships ever known to go home, direct from here, is three (which took wool this year); one had sailed when we arrived, and by the two others, Woodstock and Cornelia, we wrote soon after we landed, and once since, by Sydney. I have three letters from that excellent little Charlotte Pollen. In all, we had thirty-five private ones, and have still the face to be longing for the next ship.
It is very good of Aunt Charlotte to think of us and our seeds; those she has sent will be most valuable; also the idea for a speculation in mulbery trees, but I am not sure that the plants are to be had here. It is, I suppose, rather characteristic, in an English colony, that the gardens here are full of English plants and trees. We have in this garden (e. g.) quantities of fuchsias, roses (which don't seem to do very well), sweetbriar, pinks, honeysuckle, daffodils (just now coming into flower) and so on and, besides the acacias, very few native things except one, very like an evergreen privet, and a low bush, like yew but covered with berries. There are grapes too, figs, nut bushes, and one oak, about eight feet high. Mr. Simeon has sent us the seeds of some quick growing creepers from his old house, Colburne, which will be invaluable in making the house at Port Cooper, if we ever get there, look a little green and verdant. There was not a blade of anything about it, when we were there, and I am sure it will be very hot in the summer. Already the sun has become again extremely powerful, quite unlike our warmest February days at home, though the nights are frosty and cold enough, and the winds piercing; but with shelter and sun, you may
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now sit out-of-doors all the morning with a parasol.
I am much afraid, from what the Spectator says, that the Panorama of Wellington did not do it justice, but I hope you saw it. It does look quite lovely on these fine mornings, and Arthur and I often go down to the beach to pick up shells, (which are not good here) and build houses in the sand, soon after breakfast. The only drawback is the wind which is, on the finest days, as violent as in a very good storm at home, so that it is really difficult to walk against it; but if you can find a sheltered place, you want parasols and summer clothes directly. The wind seems to rise with the sun, and to blow from it as hard as it can, all day long, and in the evening it is generally quite still again, and this is the way here, they all say, through the whole summer, which is much more windy than the winter, and rather trying to the temper of ordinary mortals, for it is a ferocious and dusty wind. And still it has its good side; for the fact of there being any dust to fly presupposes a tolerably dry road, a consummation most ardently to be desired, as without wind to dry them, the roads about here are always ankle deep in mud, to the great detriment of petticoats and boots, which wear out and look shabby terribly soon.
August 12th!! How much, and how often, I have been wondering to-day what you are all doing! Who is at Voelas? How many brace? Though indeed it is rather early to speculate on that, seeing that with you it is only about 8.30 a.m.; perhaps the ponies just gone from the door, and the breakfast things left in the hall! Perhaps too, it is raining, as it will sometimes, even on the 12th August. Is Sara there? and is Heneage? It is all very well for people to say that when you cannot live at home, or within a week of it, you may practically as well be in New Zealand! but only let them try being always four months, and generally six behindhand, in the most important news of their own people, and see whether they still think so. We turned out early to-day, to see the parade, and hear the band play, on 'Thorndon Flat' (did you see it in the Panorama?)
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When the weather permits, there is one every Monday, but they had ceased lately. Captain Stokes brought Mrs. Eyre there, and there were several gentlemen, quite a 'good park'. It is a great treat to hear the band, and then the soldiers look like home, and like civilization; perhaps I have, too, a little of poor Taylor's love for a red coat. I am sure I small miss them very much at Port Cooper.
Mr. Bulkeley has got leave of absence to go up and see his possessions at New Plymouth, and he says if he likes the place he shall sell out and stay there, I mean settle!! We hear that Mr. Tollemache has decided on a very good way of disposing of his whole property here, and that is, giving it over, with certain conditions in favour of Maoris, entirely to the Church; and it amounts altogether to about £20,000 in value. As far as the Colonists, bodily, are to benefit by it, I cannot help thinking that it is a great deal more than they deserve; they seem so entirely without any idea of making the smallest exertions for themselves. There are, of course, no tithes here; and both Churches were built, and clergy have hitherto been maintained, by funds from home, (charily), and some from Government. I believe literally nothing had been contributed to those ends, until six months ago, when the open seats on one side of the Church were appropriated to such parties as wished to have seats of their own, and they have paid their first quarter, which does not however amount to the sum required for the repairs just completed in the Church at our end of the town, which had got very shaky. Both the Churches here are built of the universal weatherboard (the only thing that successfully stands through earthquakes), and then lined with very handsome wood of the country, and the seats are all open and of the same, so that when your eye gets accustomed to the wooden buildings, they look very well. I say when, because at first they look very paltry. I must in great haste shut up, as the Lady Clarke goes off suddenly to-day, but another opportunity is to come directly, when I hope to send some more thanks specially to Charley, Hennie and Seymour for their letters, and please thank Uncle R. so
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much for the beautiful book, and Aunt C. for the seeds, and love to Aunt Anne. I have only time to say Goodbye, and God bless you all, always
Your very affectionate,
CHARLOTTE
WELLINGTON
August 23rd, 1850
MY DEAR MOTHER,
Our letters went off on the 15th by Sydney, acknowledging the arrival of the Poictiers, and all our good news, thereby. In a hurry they went at last, as the Lady Clarke sailed nearly a week before the time we had been told; a most unusual circumstance. Perhaps, though, you may get this first, as we are promised another opportunity next week, and nearly direct. The Fairy Queen is going home, only touching for a few days at Auckland, taking back a skeleton company of the 65th; that is, all the officers of one company. The privates are to be discharged here, in obedience to the new orders for retrenchment.
Since we wrote, we might have been very gay, as we have been asked, and engaged, out almost every night, but the throat not being very well, talking, etc. had to be avoided and we did not go to two parties at Government House. All the gaiety here is given about the full moon, for the sake of the light at night. Yesterday, too, was a very gay day--first a party of about thirty, including the Governor and Mrs. Eyre, at luncheon, on board the Acheron to which Arthur, poor child, was specially invited by Captain Stokes, but I am sorry to say was not well enough to be fit to go. I hope it may not last long, but at present he is quite out of sorts. We had a most lovely day and so it was very pleasant; the ladies collected and talked in Captain Stokes' cabin, then those who liked it went over the ship, down into the engine room, and then we all had luncheon in the gun-room. I am very sorry to say that the Acheron is to go out of her winter quarters, and
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move off to Nelson next week; we shall miss her very much as to the look of the harbour, and the officers are a very agreeable addition to the society here, though we do not individually go out enough to miss them much in that capacity. In the evening we went to Mr. St. Hill's to tea, and to meet Archdeacon Hadfield who has been in Wellington for a few days, but was going off the next morning to Otaki. He only comes down here now and then on business to see after the different Maori settlements about the town, and on Sunday last he baptized three adults, whom he had prepared when he was down before, and then left in charge of a clergyman at the Hutt to see how they would go on, as he is very much against their being baptized immediately on their conversion, and without thoroughly understanding what they are about.
We have had three or four most perfect days, and about as warm as ordinary fine weather at home; the sun very powerful and, wonderful to say, no wind. The fine days here are certainly finer, and the bad ones worse, than any I have ever seen before, though of course it is not really so cold, only, as I think I said before, you feel it much more in proportion, from the ill-built houses, and warm days coming in between. To-day is the third of rain and wind, but from the North, so that the thermometer still stands high; it is a fair wind, too, for the Poictiers, which sailed Sunday for Otago, not Port Cooper as intended. Mr. Pollard being the only passenger for that place, the Captain made arrangements for conveying his goods by a small coaster that was going there, and so avoids the possible delay of touching at another port. Aforesaid Mr. P. remains in the ship and goes with her to Sydney which is her destination after Otago. He does not promise very well, and we should not be at all sorry if he took a fancy to some other settlement.
The more we see and hear of other ships and passages the more we are and ought to be thankful for our own. The Poictiers left London, as you know, February 6th, and got in here August 2nd; less agreeable cuddy
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passengers, and more of them; steerage passengers more ill-behaved, and Doctor, though not drunken, so ill as to be of no use, indeed not expected to live for more than a month. He caught an ulcerated sore throat, and low fever, from someone who came on board with it, and most of those in the steerage had it. A man and two children died, and so did a child of the Doctor's, and another since he landed here. I believe, however, that they were very fortunate in their Captain, and the ship, too, was a much larger and finer one than poor Lady Nugent.
Mr. Bulkeley has just done rather a mad thing. He got two months' leave to go up and see his possessions at Taranaki, and upon this, chartered a little vessel in the harbour, of about ten tons, and into it for a crew he put himself, his soldier servant (a man who came out with us, who was valet to Mr. Ed. Howley Palmer, but spent a year in prison for bigamy just before he came out and who cannot find a place to suit him here) another fellow passenger of ours who has been almost everything but a sailor, and one man who, though not exactly a sailor, still understands it pretty well; and with this 'lot' he has started about a week ago for a voyage of 250 miles along this most dangerous coast. This gale, too, is all against him, and has been a very strong one. All the papers seem to say that you had a very severe winter, and in particular one very severe gale. 'An old lady blown in the Regent's Canal and drowned' and sad loss in shipping. We have a Sydney paper sent to us now, by dint of which we have already read Mr. Adderley's letter in the Morning Chronicle just before Easter. We have seen, too, that the Mariner did sail on April 4th, so we are hoping for her with the first breeze from the South.
August 27th. The wind is blowing to-day with all its might. My husband had ridden up the Hutt, meeting a soft gale from the North; it changed quite suddenly to exactly the contrary direction, so that he had to ride home, nine miles, against a bitterly cold wind with drenching rain and hail. My only walk was before breakfast,
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with Arthur, to look at the cauliflowers in the garden; which are already very fine and growing 'wisibly' in the last few days. It is quite funny to see the cabbages that we cut since we came here, sprouting up again as high as ever, and having evidently come to quite a different conclusion from ourselves about the cold; so do the weeds. We have daffodils out, and some narcissus; and there are both violets and primroses and crocuses out, though not in our garden. I need hardly say that we keep all our seeds most religiously to plant at Port Cooper.
I shall be very sorry to leave Wellington, we like so much our little cottage all on the ground floor, with its garden which is quite private and then the beautiful view, and such nice walks in every direction, whenever it is dry. After much rain the Hutt road is the only tolerable place, and indeed it is always the fashionable lounge, specially on a Sunday afternoon, when everyone walks there, from the Governor and his wife down to all the shop people in their best clothes. It is, by the by, rather descriptive of the climate here that the clothes are always quite in the summer style, such as white shawls with large bright flowers on them, straw bonnets with sky blue ribbons, and white cotton gloves; bright colours are quite 'the go' here.
I wonder who amongst you will take pity on our benighted ideas, and send us a chapter on the fashions. Mrs. Eyre in her trousseau, got a year ago nearly, is at present our model. We hear that Mr. and Mrs. Eyre are going next Monday, weather permitting, in the Acheron, to pay a visit to Nelson. We met Captain Stokes in our walk to-day, and he regretted extremely that his 'want of accommodation prevented his pressing us to join the party'. However he went on to offer, and for the second time, to carry us down to Port Cooper, as he is to be down there about the time we expect to have to move, and that would be a grand thing for us instead of some horrible little coaster, which shall now (D. V.) only carry our goods and furniture; for we must prepare for going into bare walls, with only one shop, about as good as Griffy Griffy's, but if
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possible more various in its contents, and all dear and bad. Port Cooper, however, is just now quite the fashion, quite the favourite idea here; so many people want to get land there, and are much disappointed to find that they must write to England to buy what is so near at hand, and so tempting to some people who are getting tired of being so shut up as they say, and feel, in a country like this, all of hills, without any ground where a plough can be used. Even in the Hutt they are as yet very little used, I believe from the stumps in the ground left to die down, and which are still in high preservation; and labour so dear, besides the short colonial hours, that digging cannot be made to answer for corn. It all comes from Australia, Hobart town, etc.
One of the applicants whom we should both be glad to satisfy and fix in the district, is Captain Mitchell (of the 84th in India) who has lately (as I told you) found out an overland passage from Nelson to Port Cooper. He is an ardent admirer of this country in general and Port Cooper in particular, and though he must go back to India for a year, to sell out, etc., he has promised to return (D. V.) in that time, with a cargo of Indian goods, to be disposed of at a great profit amongst the anticipated ladies of Lyttelton, Christ Church, etc. He has been eight years at Calcutta, (knew the Colviles well there) and says now that he does not wish to go back to live in England after so many of his ties are broken, and so on; and in short is so bent on establishing himself at Port Cooper, that he has gone down there with a stack of sheep and cattle, and materials for a house, with which he means to squat, as the phrase goes, and trust to his luck in getting a good choice of land, when choosing time comes for him. He is very lively, and evidently much used to society, (though I have myself seen little of him) and, if I may say so in the lowest possible voice, a good deal more gentlemanlike than the general run of young gentlemen who have hitherto wished to settle about Wellington.
August 29th. Yesterday came news by a Hobart town paper of the new little prince 4 on May 1st,
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to be called after the Duke, which I am so delighted at as to be nearly reconciled to the idea of another at all. One of the merchants here, a Mr. Bannatyne whom we know a little, has lately had out a case of new books of which he has given us the run. We have read 'The Caxtons' and begun some more, as it is of course a great treat to my husband who devours books, now that he has time to read, as I do bread and butter. It will sound very old and stale to you, but we like 'The Caxtons' very much, though some of the characters are unnatural enough, and some imitations of Tristam Shandy might have been left out with good effect. There is 'Shirley' too among them, Lamartine's 'Revolution of '48', and a good many more that were rather new eight months ago, and, what is more to the purpose, that we have never read.
Great excitement to-day in the poultry 'interest', as one of the new hens has begun to lay, and 'Peggy', as Arthur calls one of the oldest, 'gives notice' to sit. His mustard and cress, etc., are coming up famously under the hot sun (though we had a white frost last night) thereby shaming the dilatoriness of a solitary pea which he procured and planted at the same time, about a week ago, and which is still dead to the world, to his great surprise. We have magnificent cauliflowers, planted by our predecessors, and some rhubarb coming on; gooseberry trees very green, and the honeysuckle in full leaf.
I am sure you would laugh if you could see the Maoris with their tops, not of the humming kind either, which are pretty amusements for anyone, but regular whipping tops; men with grey beards, women, and children, are all equally excited about them, and now that roads are getting dry the pathway through the town is really alive with them, more men, too, than children, laughing and talking about it in the greatest excitement. As the soldiers marched by the other day with the band, a full grown woman (dressed in nothing but a garment of brown cotton, like a pinafore with sleeves, and sewn up behind) was following them whipping her top along as an English child would a hoop.
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All the girls, too, are capital performers, and generally with pipes in their mouths, and so are the tiny children of six or seven, who are very funny figures, with a piccaninny of the smallest size on their backs, a little blanket over both, and the little bare brown limbs slipping out as they work away and scream with delight. A peculiarity of the Maori babies is that they don't cry; I did once hear a child or about two, that seemed ill, crying, and that is all.
There is a Maori pah about a mile from the town and two more almost in it, being at each end of what is called 'the Beach'; that is the long street (about a mile and a half) if street it can be called, that has houses only on one side, and runs along by the sea. One pah is quite a large one, and we saw it quite in its glory the night before last, coming home from our walk; they were receiving a visit from another tribe and there was an immense number of them about. Oh! how we did sigh to be able to draw them. They were all quite in their best, even the canoes in which the visitors had arrived were drawn up on the beach, dressed out most elaborately with feathers. All over the enclosure were dotted down groups of men and women, in their newest blankets and cotton gowns, and in the centre of each group a large black iron pot, full of boiled rice which is a great delicacy, and a basket full of potatoes. I need not add, no spoons, or other implements than their fingers. Near the spot where we stood to watch them, (close to the kitchen, I should guess, from the number of black pots and loaves of bread tidily arranged) a Maori was striking on the ground with his weapon, and calling out very loud, apparently to invite those who were hungry to come for more. Then came a woman to shake hands and rub noses, with all those squatting round, as they do when friends meet; the crying was over before we got there. When the old lady, who was evidently of a lively ardent temper, had finished her greetings, she boldly stood out, shouting out a kind of recitative, her weight thrown on her foreleg as if she was going to fence, or dance a war dance, and striking her hand on her side at every instant. Wishing to be very
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correct, she had procured for the occasion a black stuff gown, and a green scarf, thrown over one shoulder and tied under the other arm; but as the gown was much too long, and had been made to fit a waist of much more slender proportions, it did not after all look so very well, as the top hook behind, round her neck, was the only one that would meet, and consequently much was left to wonder at, of her internal arrangements. Her wig, though, was the masterpiece. It was made of tufts of hair intermingled with feathers, which stuck straight up, the whole put on in the form of a wreath a la Norma, and with her ugly face, and blue tattooed lips, made her so absurd-looking that even the Maoris seemed to feel it; at least, they turned a deaf ear to all her blandishments, and no partner could she find.
The men are much better looking than the women; some are quite handsome, and most of them very lively, and fond of a joke. The other day we had gone into a pah to look at them and were trying to talk, as well as we could, to a crowd of them all round, when one man caught sight of my bracelet, and then they all flew upon it--'gold? how much?'--meaning 'did it cost'. So I took it off, and shewed them the hair at the back and pulled a bit of my husband's, to show it was his. There was a general cry of delight at the dodge, which was evidently quite new to them, and then the man who first saw it burst out laughing at his own notion, and made us understand very plainly by words and signs that when he was underground, the Wahine (me) would pull it, the hair, out and throw it away. A rude enough joke certainly, but it seemed very sharp, coming so readily from a face tattooed with every conceivable line, and ornamented with a large green stone earring! Their great delight is to point to my little chain hanging, and ask 'what o'clock' to show that they know it means a watch.
On August 31st we were again asked to Government House, 'no party' but to see something of us, so at last we went, and found, as they said, only Mr. Ormond, Mrs. Eyre, and a 65th officer, Mr. Ewen, who, happy man, is going home next week in the Fairy Queen. Mrs. Eyre
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sings well, and plays unusually well on the guitar and on the pianoforte (and harp, I believe, but that I did not hear). She is too, as I said before, very good-looking, and very well got up, and it was quite a treat to me to hear the music, and sit in a room so much like a drawing-room at home. But though I began by being quite certain that she was herself charming, I am obliged to qualify the term now a little. She is so very gracious, and talks such nonsense, with her little fine lady airs, that I am at last falling, in spite of myself, into the colonial vice of want of love to our rulers; while my husband has taken quite an antipathy to her, and thinks her 'insufferable'. She is, though, in every way so much the first person here, besides all the admiration due to a very pretty bride, that some allowance should be made for her head being a little turned. She so evidently thinks it such a very fine thing to be a wife of the Lieut.-Governor of N.Z., that it would be a pity she should be undeceived, especially as appearances rather favour the report that Mr. Eyre would not have been 'the happy man' he is, if his 'Excellency' had not softened her heart. They go to-morrow (D. V.) to Nelson, for a few days only, in the Acheron.
September 2nd. Exactly a month after the Poictiers, in came the Mariner, bringing many pamphlets in a big box, and Laura's invaluable journal. I wish she could have heard our intense admiration and gratitude, for she may suppose how fully it was appreciated, as it was the only letter of any kind that we either of us got. She mentions Mrs. Godley ill at Dublin, but I hope it is nothing bad, she had been unwell from cold, before they went up. Silence gives consent to all the others being well, I hope, excepting Aunt Anne. Influenza is so bad a thing for her, but the letter goes on some days after she was mentioned, and so I hope we may think of her as better. Arthur's recollections of her are still extremely lively, and he likes of all things to get me to tell over again about Paris, the Bois de Boulogne, and his feeding the fishes in the Tuileries Garden fountains. He still remembers Elliot too, very well, and Aunt Sara, and Aunt Charlotte with the little
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baby, but when he goes back to Grandmamma, Portman Square and even Stokesley, he is apt to make mistakes, though he fancies he remembers you all perfectly. I am thankful to say he is much better, eats and sleeps capitally, and is I hope going to grow fat on cod's liver oil, of which he drinks up a teaspoonful every morning, in milk, with the greatest delight, and he has left off meat for the present.
September 3rd. He and I had a tea-party, in honour of the day but it was too cold to have it out of doors, in spite of a very hot sun early which made us dream of it (vide a fresh stock of chilblains), and now we hope to do it on the 16th (D. V.) for Aunt Sara. We were rather sad at getting not a single letter through the P. O., no Spectators, etc. My husband specially was hors de lui at hearing only not very encouraging hints about Canterbury from the journal, and not anything official or detailed. He has been picking the brains of all the passengers in the Mariner who knew anything about it, specially a Mr. Mackworth, who is I believe eventually for P. Cooper, but is now only waiting till a vessel is ready to take him to the Auckland Islands, in which Adventure he has shares. He assures us that Mr. FitzGerald not only is coming out, but hopes to do so by almost the first ship, which we should of course rejoice at, now, but I still think it would be a pity for himself in many ways.
September 4th. A lovely hot day, and the band began again playing on the flat, which makes a sort of promenade for everyone (who likes music) between two and four. Next day came a gale so bad as to wake us often in the night, and which still continues.
September 6th. Promising another boisterous night. Acheron still here, as it is too bad for her to sail, or steam, off. We are daily expecting the Government brig from Auckland and hope to get some more letters by her, as we think the Lord William Bentinck, which sailed for that place a few days before the Mariner, may somehow have got our letters; neither Mr. Fox, nor anyone in the Acheron, got a single letter either, and we hear the same from many others;
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but no one cares so much as we do, either from being more used to it or from having less 'valuable' friends at home. Mr. Fox is a very old friend of John Burdon's, who came, I don't know how far, to marry him to his frightful little wife, a Miss Halcomb of Wiltshire, near Marlborough, who, by the by, was at school at Bath with Lola Montes! Two of her sisters came out to her in the ship before us, one so ill in consumption that she is since dead, and about the time that she died, Mrs. Fox was dreadfully ill, brain fever I believe, so that she was delirious for days and in a great state of excitement (at least) for much longer. Mr. Fox had a sad time, for the other sister got very ill too, and Mrs. Fox was quite unmanageable, and full of fancies; he seems quite a husband a la Tom Cocks, that is as near as he can, with a devotion worthy of a better cause.
We are hoping very much that you have just about got our first letters from here by the Woodstock; May 6th. Four months should be enough (D. V.) for a direct passage home. I wonder when, and if ever, you got those we wrote near the line. I suppose not before the Mariner sailed, or Laura would have mentioned it. The Fairy Queen is now announced to sail on Monday, 9th September, and 'Ensign Ewen' has offered to take a parcel for us, so I hope to send a small collection of nothing, letters, etc. enclosed in a flax basket made for me by a Maori woman (it is quite new but they can't do things cleaner than that) which perhaps Frances can find some use for..... I find we cannot send the parcel for reasons not worth explaining, but I enclose in this a warm bonnet cap made of albatross down for you in the winter, like the one that I wear (for clean tulle does not grow here), and is much admired by the Maoris. I have put too, a little more of the material in case of its not being large enough, or of anyone liking a ditto. Arthur too, is sending a letter to C. Pollen, and a picture to Dicky, which were not ready when I wrote to her three weeks ago. Pray look at it, for it is just what we see from our window and then will you send them on to her? Another is going to Laura. I am a little afraid
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of ruining you in postage, but feathers are not heavy.
I asked Sara in my letters, three weeks ago, to send me out some silk stockings. I am afraid I must now ask for a few gloves (seven Courvoisier at Waterloo House) a dozen short ones, if you please, two pair black, four rather dark, and six quite light, and three pair of long white; for I left all mine at home, little expecting to want them, except one or two cleaned pairs that came by accident, and they are things you cannot get here, and that it is a bore to be without. I am sorry to give the trouble, but I find I wear more gloves than I expected, being so much out, and then it is such fun getting a parcel of anything. I ought to say that unless the gloves are in tin (any old canister) they will mildew with the sea air. And any nice little book for Arthur I should be very glad of, if you will be so kind as to ask Tom Cocks 5 to repay you, which we hope he has money to do.
I am most anxious to hear how Sara's nursing went on and whether she had to give it up altogether, or only for a time, which Laura's letter did not quite settle, but I hope the first ship from Auckland will bring us that much of news, and now I must begin to fold up as the Fairy Queen is to sail in two or three hours. The Acheron is smoking away, just going to start too, so we shall have an empty harbour, comparatively. I need not ask you to give our great love to everybody, and to Stokesley, where we were this day last year! Powles has been writing to Coombes. I wonder what she says of the place, etc. She is quite as good a cook as ladies' maid, but I don't like having people 'out of their place'. I am always afraid of something coming that she don't like, and may take offence at. You think servants a bore at home, but it is worse here, much. William goes on very well and is really a treasure to us, though I don't like to boast. I must say Goodbye, God bless you all, my dear Mother.
Your very affectionate,
CHARLOTTE
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WELLINGTON
September 10th, 1850
MY DEAR MOTHER,
Yesterday we 'closed our accounts' and sent them on board the Fairy Queen, which did not, however, sail till this morning, and I wished to be in her perhaps as much as it is possible (for me) to wish myself at sea. if I did not dread the idea of a voyage so much, I should have wished it too much, so it is just as well as it is. On Sunday we had a grand ceremony in view from the back of our house, no less than laying the first stone of a R. C. Cathedral, with a procession and all form. It is a very small one, and belongs to the French Mission here, which consists of the Bishop and about six priests and I believe as many nuns, but I have never seen any of them. It is to be built very substantially, and with thick walls, but of wood, and there is to be a very good bell, and an organ. They had such a lovely day, bright calm, and warm enough to sit out under an umbrella, but still fresh in the evening, quite perfect; but I fear very uncommon here, where there are such unceasing storms of wind, even in the summer, and sometimes changing so suddenly in direction that you would think it blew from two places at once. The saying is in N.Z. that you may know a Wellington man by his having always his hand on his hat. A hat cord would not do; it would only enable you to bear it safely from one point to another, your head would never be covered. Almost everyone wears a cap, and the few who persist in the round hats have them of most curious form; Mr. Fox, for instance, has always in front a wavy line of brim, which has evidently, after many struggles, succumbed to a continuous pinch from a finger and thumb; and Mr. Domett's would be considered shabby on any decently dressed scare-crow.
September 12th. Just a year since we left Stokesley! little dreaming where we should spend the anniversary. My husband laughs at me so for remembering all these days, and 'Well what then?' I cannot say what, but still I like to think of them, it seems to remind me so clearly of
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many little details that I already spend perhaps too much time in thinking about, as thinking cannot bring people or things nearer. Here it was, at least, made sweet by quantities of violets, the first I have seen since our last spring, a year and a half ago in London. We have had two autumns, two winters, and one short summer since, but no spring. I never thought violets so sweet before, which is saying a good deal, and now we have quite an abundance of them. First came, in the morning, a large bouquet of them with Mrs. Eyre's compliments; then, calling at Mrs. McCleverty's , she gathered for me a great handful of large double ones, and I had another bunch given me of white and blue single; and last, not least, we found a large plant in the garden covered with buds; so the room is quite sweet, besides two nosegays of wallflowers, stocks, etc.
In the evening, we were lucky enough to get our pianoforte tuned by a passenger in the Mariner, who understands that, amongst other things, sheep farming and so on. He has really done it very well though it is not perfect; but it was so bad before that it is a great thing for us to have got him at all. Mr. Mackworth, whom I mentioned as having called on us (also a Mariner), is, we find, very musical; plays beautifully, and sings in a fabulously high tenor voice. I heard him to-day (13th) when we were calling at Mrs. Fox's, where he was tuning her pianoforte, which is a very good one; which kind office he also did for Mrs. Gold, who had out a new semi-grand one from Broadwood by the Lady Nugent. I believe that if anyone wanted to bring out a pianoforte, a square one is the best, because the machinery is much more simple than in one like ours (a low cabinet P. F.), where, if anything got broken, a mere tuner cannot repair it as he can in the square ones. And I think, too, that for anyone coming out for good, it would answer to bring out a more expensive kind than ours (£28 in its packing case from Wornham), for they seem to bear the voyage far better; Mrs. Eyre's, Mrs. Gold's and Mrs. Fox's hardly suffered at all, while I can afford now to say that ours was very bad. Our friend Mr. Giblin was drumming away at
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it from six to ten p.m. I wish now so much that I had more music, but I did ask Louisa to send me a little, but she must not copy it, which is only bad for her eyes; only play it a little while, and then ask Tom Cocks if he can and will pay her for it, and send it off to us.
The Mariner goes off (D. V.) early to-morrow, September 15th, by Nelson to Canton, and my husband is longing to go in her. I should like very much to see China, too, and it is a fine weather passage from here, after leaving this coast, but for my own part I think nothing but England could make me wish myself again on the highly poetical but very detestable 'bounding wave'. I cannot see a vessel leave the harbour (unless going direct home) without feelings of intense pity for anyone who may be on board. Still we have no news of the Lord William Bentinck, which is now our hope for letters. In case this reaches you first, I may as well say that by the Mariner, which arrived September 2nd, we had not a single letter except indeed Laura's journal in a box; which, though a host in itself, still does not give a detailed account of business matters, nor yet of all the home news, and we are now daily hoping for the Lord William Bentinck which sailed a few days before the Mariner and may, we think, have carried off all the P. O. letters.
September 15th. Sunday. To-day went the Mariner and we have now only one three-masted vessel in the harbour, which looks very empty without the Acheron, etc. It is quite pleasant, as the weather improves, to walk along the Hutt road on Sunday afternoon, and see it covered with smart-looking people (I was going to say well dressed people but that is not true).
We are quite delighted with the shopkeepers here, and indeed all the people of that class. We have made acquaintance with some very nice ones, and they are generally very civil. If we go into a new shop they seem quite delighted to see us, and it is generally 'yes we have, Mrs. Godley' to shew that they know who we are. But they have not an idea of pressing you to buy things, and very often you find the shop
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shut, and the door locked, the tradesman having preferred going out that day; or it is empty, and you might carry off half the shop, before your drumming on the counter brings in a boy with a hot potato in his mouth; the only one who will leave his dinner.
October 1st. I have so many things to write about I hardly know where to begin, but in the first place we have received all the letters that should have come by the Mariner, and had a regular feast of news, and thank you all for them so very much. I hope in the next you will say that you have the letters we wrote en voyage. It is so stupid, I know, writing so many times without anything to answer, but still we could not help it, and we have been, I hope, pretty good about writing. You ought, by this time, to have got both the letters we sent by ship 'direct' in May; one to yourself, and one to Louisa and Frances.
But to be orderly I must go back to September 16th, Sara's birthday, and duly remembered indeed, but what a different day from old times, when we used always to spend it at Cefn, and have a cake presented by Mrs. Palfrey, besides one made by Mrs. Clarke for the great tea-drinking in the evening. Here it was partly spent in preparation for the next day's expedition 'up the coast', as we call it, fifty-two miles, to Otaki, where Mr. Hadfield lives. You will not, I think, find it in any map; but it is on the west coast, about Latitude 40 1/2. Captain O'Connell lent us a bright yellow dog-cart to hold four (much the smartest carriage here), and we hired a horse, weak, and slow to the last degree, but the best that we could get, and on September 17th, a lovely morning, behold us starting quite en famille, my husband riding his own horse, William driving, with a hunting-whip of my husband's, Powles by him, and Arthur and I, in state, in the seat behind, much elated at the whole affair and at finding ourselves again on wheels which has become a sort of treat. I don't know which of us enjoyed the idea of the expedition most, but I do know who expressed such feelings most loudly. I was quite amused at Arthur's excitement; he was singing all the songs he knew, and they are not few,
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quoting about 'the stones did rattle', from J. Gilpin, and telling us of the feats to be accomplished up the coast with his father's gun; which, unloaded, and in its leather case, he took charge of, with the privilege of having it put on his side of the carriage.
We went along the Porirua road, which I think you must know now by name, through about sixteen miles of beautiful bush, down at last on to the beach of the Porirua harbour (and this is or ought to be in the map), which has a very narrow entrance, and stretches inland, like a lake with tide, and surrounded with low wooded hills, for several miles. Where the beach is not firm or smooth enough, the road is cut along the hill at the side, and it is very sufficiently good, although you do get a few jolts, enough to alarm you for borrowed springs. Five miles along this brought us to Pawatenui where we were to sleep; the public-house there being somewhat cleaner and better than the other houses of entertainment on the road. Even at Pawatenui we paid a visit, such a gay country is this! A 65th officer is there, in charge of a company now occupying the military post, and he, meeting us on the road, introduced himself, and took us up the hill to see the stockade and to call on his wife. They invited us to dine and drink tea, and spend the evening, which we firmly but respectfully declined, and went off for a walk; in which, however, we met with no adventure or striking novelty, not even a green parrot, after one that, at starting, flew close by us and made John go back for his gun.
In the 'Hotel', as Arthur persisted in calling it, we occupied the state apartments; a very quaint little building, out behind, about as large as the bathing house at Cefn; without a ceiling, and peeps of light through the roof, where we sat with the door open, to get the smoke to go up the chimney. It was all very clean, the furniture including a washhandstand, and two little beds which were screened off into a bedroom. We had some very good fried pork and potatoes, and plenty of eggs; and for dinner, tea, and breakfast, for five, besides two horses, paid only, £1 6s. 0d.
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The next morning we were up betimes, as we had (with a slow horse) rather a long journey before us. We began with eight miles of gradual ascent through the Horokiwi valley, still more striking in bush scenery and sharp cliffs than anything we had seen before; it made us think sometimes of the road near Beddgelert and Point 'Everlasting'. 6 At the top we went through a short cutting, and then came suddenly upon a magnificent view, which when it is fine, extends to Mount Egmont, (New Plymouth) and another separate hill, each more than twice as high as Snowdon. Unluckily we found the distance very misty, but still the view was very striking. The chain of thickly-wooded hills, which we had been winding up and through, leaves the coast at this point, and goes a mile or two inland, still running parallel with the sea. On the other side, the island of Kapiti, though eight miles before us, seemed nearly under our feet, at a distance of two or three miles from the shore; and immediately below us lay a strip of low land, and sand-hills, running down to a sandy beach that, with its lines of white surf, stretched away further than the eye could reach; the country, to my surprise, dotted over with little cultivations and native pahs, some deserted, but many in full activity; for it is a very favourite spot, being perfectly sheltered from all cold wind.
We had then to descend the hill, the road winding down, but pretty steep, for more than two miles. There had been a small landslip, too, near the top; but we, having had timely notice, came prepared with a shovel, and soon cleared enough from the road to make it passable, though it was rather a near thing, and an accident would have been unpleasant, as there is not any kind of fence between you and a precipice of I don't know how many feet, about 1,200. At the bottom of the hill there is a 'resting' place for man and horse, with the euphonious appellation of 'Scotch Jock', though kept by a Mr. Nicholls, who, like almost all the old whalers settled here, has a Maori wife. We did not rest long, as we were not to dine till Waikane, our next stage after eight miles
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along the beach; which, when the tide is at all low, makes a beautiful road of hard sand. Our horse, however, did not seem to admire it as much as we did, and refused to go at all sometimes; and the utmost efforts of William and the hunting-whip only induced a slow amble of a few yards, and then another walk, and then another stop.
Waikane is the most desert-looking place that perhaps ever was seen except the Manawatu further on. It is a collection of hills of loose sand, through which a river winds into the sea, and about it are a few very small attempts at houses, nearly all thatched and covered with a kind of coarse grass, all about the same colour as the sand; then there is a large Church, built by the Maoris for themselves, and the old pah which looks at first sight something like a garden (without the plants) and the palings of the fence are many of them painted of a dull red, and some are ornamented at the top with great carved figures in wood, as monstrous as any you can conceive. You must understand that the Maori huts are never built high enough to be visible over their paling; they are just high enough, and only just, for them to stand up in; with a hole dug in the middle where the fire burns, and the potatoes are cooked, and another hole in one side of the wall through which they creep in and out. Such huts as are in the best repair as to keeping out wind, etc., are in great request at night, and they pack in literally as you would put things into your little carriage basket, which I remember always much fuller than it could hold. It is so funny to stand at the door and see them come out, one after another, till they cover a place nearly twice as big as the house. Of course the civilized Maoris are civilized in their houses too, but that comes by degrees, and then, for their chiefs, they build them sometimes most beautifully, in reeds that look like beautiful wicker work, but at Waikane there are still plenty of the old-fashioned ones, though in many respects the natives there are very much advanced and enlightened.
There is a Resident Magistrate at Waikane: Major Durie, of the Spanish Legion, who, as soon as he heard of our arrival was very civil about offering us a fresh horse instead of our
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tired one; but there were two words to that arrangement, for in this country you must always 'first catch your horse', as there are neither stables nor enclosures; so that after eating a not very dirty dinner, we thought it better to make a real start, with such a steed as we had, than to waste our precious daylight in waiting any longer, on the chance of another. This same tired horse rather spoiled the pleasure of the journey! William walked the greatest part of the way, and we all did sometimes, but it was rather tiresome sitting there in a cold wind, either going a foot's pace, with a running accompaniment of blows and exclamations from William, or else, thinking ourselves very hardhearted when the poor thing broke into a mournful trot; though I believe he could go better when he liked. It was a wild scene indeed, on that misty afternoon, threading our way along the unending line of beach. We could see the tops of the blue hills, through clouds running parallel, a few miles inland, over the low sand-hills that began immediately after high-water mark; with here and there stunted-looking vegetation like hay growing, and this, mile after mile, till evening came on, without a single land-mark, except the little streams, which were none of them above the horse's knees, (except the Waikane river, but as the tide was low we managed to ford that too). At last to our great joy we saw our dear Mr. Hadfield coming down to meet us.
It was with him we were going to stay at Otaki, and as the last bit of road, four miles across country, literally, was mostly through swamp, and not very good, even for an N.Z. bye-road, he came to pilot us himself. We were very glad to turn inland, and to get out and walk through sand-hills, among which the carriage tumbled along pleasantly enough when it was empty; and then came a bit of swamp, and then one hole in it, so soft and deep, that both carriage and horse seemed to take root. It was nearly dark, and if we had been alone, I think we must have abandoned the hope of seeing Otaki, even by candlelight, for that night. But we had not only Mr. Hadfield, who knew so exactly the best bits of the road, or rather track, but Mr. Williams, too, his coadjutor,
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who had also come to meet us, and who persuaded the horse, in some marvellous way, that he could get out of the bog, and bring the carriage too, and then cross a river, deeper than any we saw that day; and at last to our great joy, the village, much scattered, but still a village, and its lights, came in sight. We were not a little pleased to find ourselves arrived, as you may suppose, and pretty tired too, though the last little bit was very pleasant, after our difficulties, bog, river, etc., were over, and we came to the meadows about Otaki; the evening dew giving us all sorts of sweet smells, though it was much too dark to see what or where they came from, as we trotted, on our feet, along our little winding path, Arthur talking as fast as ever, and not too tired, thanks to a precautionary little nap, which he had taken after his dinner, and to sitting on the horse before his father, when we lightened our vehicle.
Mr. Hadfield's house is a little low cottage, built of reeds, and thatched with a long reedy grass that the natives call 'toi-toi'. There is a door in the middle, and on one side his bedroom, and on the other his sitting-room; and through the sitting-room, a bedroom with a little bath-room, larger and better than the other rooms, with a large French bed with white curtains, carpet all over the floor, quite luxurious. This last apartment was all new since my husband was at Otaki, two months before, and indeed was I believe finished at that time expressly to contain me. I was the first lady who had ever paid Mr. Hadfield a visit, and was made much of accordingly; he questioned the servants, and then, wherever it was possible, had everything for us exactly as we had it at home. His only servant is a Maori boy of about fourteen, who was baptized a few years ago by the name of Cole; very good and intelligent, and of course very unlike anything you ever saw in the way of a servant. He has long been one of the best boys at school, but was quite new to his business as a servant; his long black hair unbrushed, his brown feet bare, black trowsers, and always a very clean white shirt, and over that one of blue serge; the regular colonial
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working garments. (William does his stable work in one). He, of course, cannot speak English, and, though very respectful, talks to his Master quite in a different way from our button-boys at home; addresses him as Harrawidda, their version of Hadfield (they have no Mr.), and in all his difficulties he had only to speak, and his voice, without opening the door, was perfectly audible from a little pantry, or exaggerated cupboard, formed by the end of the passage opposite the door, full of tea-cups, etc., where the mysteries of preparing the tea-tray were gone through. Mr. Hadfield only drinks water, so this was all new to him, and the first night it would have made anyone laugh, after many consultations through the wall, to see him come in with the tray, a knife, a Rockingham tea-pot, a slop-basin, and two cups without saucers, all looking as if they had lost their way, and didn't know where to stand upon it. He came just inside the door with this, and then, seeing me sitting in the corner expecting it, he was quite overpowered, and with the Maori for 'Oh', he disappeared. Mr. Hadfield had to go and help him, and we all to keep our countenance as well as we could. William and Powles lived at the schoolmaster's, an Englishman who talks Maori; and the kitchen was a little shed, just outside the house, and built of the same material. The reeds are bound together, like a Pan's pipe, with strips of flax, which is stronger than any string, and one side of the room is made all at once, with a hole left, if required, for window or door, and then stuck up and fastened to the wooden frame; and of course the beauty of the work depends on the evenness of the reeds, and the neatness of the fitting. Mr. Hadfield's is not a fair specimen, having been built in a hurry.
We have quite agreed that he is the nicest person we have yet seen, out of England. But I think I have already given you long descriptions of him. He first landed in the north where Archdeacon Williams had been for twenty-two years (the Father of Mr. W. now at Otaki), and when he had been there only a very short time, not long enough to learn Maori, the two young chiefs, now baptized as
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Thompson 7 and Martin, came up from near Waikane where they then lived, and begged to have someone come down and teach them the white people's religion and their ways. So he came with them, and after some time these two became Christians, Martin first sending away two of the three wives he then had, and they have since both spent some time, with their wives, up at the Bishop's College at Auckland, and are now the great people at Otaki, being cousins, and descended from two of quite the greatest Maori families of chiefs. Mr. Hadfield came amongst them two years before there were any settlers in the country, except a few old whalers, and lived with them for years in such wretched places, by the seashore, in the midst of loose sand-hills. It was he who persuaded them to move inland, at Otaki, and begin cultivations on the rich land nearer the mountains, build good houses, etc., and leave off roaming about, as their manner of life is, along the sea-shore, or up and down the rivers, in their canoes.
He has been a few times very near being tomahawked to death, for trying to break through their superstitions; but otherwise they are devoted to him, wherever he is known. At last he got so ill that he was carried, partly by men and partly in a boat, down to Wellington, never expecting to return; he was there for five years, suffering intense pain almost constantly, and always when he moved, and seeing every doctor of any pretention who came into port. At last he took to cold water, and, after a year's treatment, is able to do almost anything. For instance, during this winter he had to go a long way (73 miles) up the coast, beyond where we went, and after a fatiguing day, when it was quite dark, arrived at a river to be crossed, without a canoe; so he took off his clothes, put them on his head, and walked through with the water up to his shoulders; then dressed, in a bitterly cold wind, and went on again to another river, which however he crossed in a canoe, and was not at all the worse. However, as you are
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not so much interested in him as we are, I will excuse any-more 'biography'.
When the natives at Otaki heard of his coming back, they came together in numbers, and built him his present house in two days, refusing any payment, and Otaki is now his home; but being Archdeacon for a country about 150 miles long, he cannot be very stationary, so he had Mr. Williams to assist him in his home duties. He (Mr. W.) is quite a rough diamond; came out here as baby and neither he nor his wife have ever been out of New Zealand. (Her Father is another Archdeacon Williams, a brother; the two came out together.) As soon as the Bishop's College was established, he was, at his own earnest request, sent there; with a view to being ordained and spending his life in working amongst the Maoris.
The first sound the natives heard the next morning after our arrival was the Church bell, about six o'clock, when almost everyone in the village comes in to Morning Prayer; then school comes till about eight; men and women and all. The Church is not yet finished, and has been built entirely by voluntary contributions of labour; the Government Surveyor says, already to the amount of £2,500, besides of course material, which they get for nothing, in the bush. It is, I grieve to say, a barn-shaped building, ninety feet long, but with a nice high-pitched roof, and good lancet windows, and the inside is very handsome in effect, in the peculiar Maori style; with the one defect, however, of there being only one row of pillars down the middle made of four large 'Totara' trees. The ridge pole which they support is also solid Totara, ninety feet long, all painted red, and relieved with arabesques in white over the rest of the woodwork, in the roof. There is a large schoolhouse in which at present the service is performed.
The village is very pretty, and stands on a flat, with a brook, or small river, running through it. The bush, with very fine trees, comes close up to the cultivations, and has, so far, been left in patches of wood that ornament the country very much, but as anyone can go and cut for firewood Mr.
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Hadfield is afraid that they will gradually, as it were, melt away. Besides that, the trees so left generally die of their own accord, when they lose the protection of the bush around. There is everywhere a beautiful background of well-wooded hills, and good high ones too, and the village is quite scattered, and no two houses standing together, each one has about a quarter acre, if not more, for garden and potatoes.
Thompson's 8 house is really very pretty; it is weatherboard painted white, tall chimneys, a deep verandah with green trellis work, French windows opening to the ground, and inside done with Maori work, and red and white painting, which looks much better than it sounds. The garden is quite a large one, and beautifully kept, and full of English plants. He came to beg that we would come and pay him a visit, and we accordingly went there as soon as we went out, but that was too soon, and Mrs. Thompson, peeping and laughing, but unwilling to appear, requested that we would 'call again to-morrow' which we did, and found her fully prepared in full English costume, and the house all as neat as hands could make it; she complained after our visit (to Powles in confidence) that her stays were very stiff and disagreeable, so I have no doubt that a tolerably solid pain formed part of her English education at Auckland. In one room she showed me a quantity of coats and trowsers, some of naval, and some of military uniforms, all given by Sir G. Grey to old Rauperaha, Thompson's father (who is lately dead), and in another was displayed her own dress, worn at the Government House Ball for the Queen's birthday: a pink and white, soft-looking barege, with badly made flounces, and a black silk scarf. Mrs. Martyn's dress was also laid out, when we paid her a visit in just as good a house, and she is an uncommonly nice woman, really quite a natural lady, and so gentle and quiet in her manners, and even dignified; while Mrs. Thompson still bursts out laughing, and hides her face, a tout moment, like a true Maori, though she is
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perfectly civilized in manner and behaviour. Unfortunately, they can none of them talk English, beyond a few words, though they understand a good deal, and so we could only converse through Mr. Hadfield.
Mrs. Thompson has no children, which is a great distress, but Mrs. Martyn has several. Martyn himself is quite an 'exemplary character' and as gentle and retiring as his wife, and quite Mr. Hadfield's right-hand man in any scheme for the good of the natives. They have so much reverence for his opinion, and esteem for him personally, besides the influence of his rank, and on public occasions he comes forward as a great orator, which is a talent very much considered among them.
On Sunday we had a very full congregation at Church, and a Sunday-school of about 200 men, women, and children. Several classes were taught on the green in front of the school, and the turn-out was most respectable in dress, etc. Thompson and Martyn wear as good clothes as can be made in the Colony, and so do a few others, but the usual dress is a blue shirt with white trowsers, and the women have bright coloured cotton gowns with a shawl, or blanket, or mat, wrapped round them, and put over the head, or not, according to the state of the weather. They never wear anything else but their own thick black hair, which is generally, on Sunday at all events, oiled, and parted down the middle as we do, and looks very nice, especially when it curls well, as is often the case. The wild Maori head-dress is a la mop, and one frightful woman I saw here with it growing straight up at least six or eight inches, all over her head, and so thick as to look solid.
In Church everyone joins in the responses quite loud and in the singing; I heard them sing a Psalm to one of their own airs, with I thought a very good effect. Indeed, a certain Mr. Lloyd, a great authority in music, I hear says that he is sure that these airs cannot be of Maori origin; they must, he thinks, have been taught them by some Missionary Jesuits of whom they have lost the tradition; they they are exactly like the chanting in the R. C. Cathedrals,
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when it is performed by the priests and without accompaniment.
Mr. Williams went, for the Sunday, to a place about ten miles off. There is always some place wanting a visit from him, or from Mr. Hadfield; there are only native teachers, besides themselves, in the whole district, and so, wherever they go for Sunday, the natives assemble for many miles round, often in hundreds. Mr. Hadfield proposed to us to make an expedition to one of these places of meeting (of course on a river for the convenience of canoe travelling) thirty-five miles from Otaki, to shew us a little more of the country and to give us, as he said, 'a night in the bush'. Of course, we joyfully acquiesced, and putting the 'needful for a night' in my husband's saddle bags, started one fine morning for another drive along the beach road. After six miles we came to a river, which, the tide being high, was to be crossed in boats. The horses had their saddles taken off, ropes tied to their heads, and were then swum across, two going with each turn of the boat. I had ridden so far, as the vehicle had been sent on, in order to ford the stream at low tide, when it is passable; we had with us too 'Zacariah', Mr. Hadfield's head teacher, a very nice intelligent native; and an old chief from Otaki, who rode with us for company, who had in old times once all but put an end to Mr. Hadfield with his tomahawk for breaking through a 'tapu' (taboo) and who now trotted along most peaceably, with a little foal following. Another native drove me in the carriage, and they talked and laughed together most pleasantly; we were a funny looking party. Fifteen miles further, in a northerly direction, brought us to a much larger river, the Manawatu, where we were to leave the vehicle and proceed riding; it is never fordable, being about (vaguely) as wide as the Thames in London, and quite a sea running when there is much wind. We crossed in a canoe and had some trouble with the horses, my husband's swimming so fast ahead (our canoe having only two little paddles) that he broke loose and turned and swam back to the shore again. However, he was soon caught again, and a second attempt
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was more successful, and at last we were all safely across, and ready for another start. But you may imagine the delay that these rivers cause. The canoe is generally on the opposite side, the horses don't like taking to the water, or break away; in fact they are the great difficulty in N.Z. travelling, and many people are drowned in trying to cross without a boat, or from getting a bad canoe, and so on. They say more people have been drowned in N.Z. than have yet died in any other way.
Nothing can exceed the dreariness of the country at the mouth of the Manawatu. At low tide shores are left of mixed sand and mud, and there is nothing to be seen but little hillocks covered with loose sand, or else coarse stunted rushes. Then we came to swamp, with some tall reeds, and flax ten or twelve feet high. Mr. Hadfield led the way along a little track easy enough to follow (excepting through the loose sand), and after five or six miles it ran very much up and down steep hillocks which began to be covered with bushes, and something like vegetation; for our course was inland towards the hills. Just as it got dark we came suddenly into a considerable pah, and a large patch of bush, and I never saw anything nicer than the way in which the natives came flocking out to meet Mr. Hadfield, whose coming was unexpected. We had to pass quite through the village to get to the house we were to sleep in, which turned out to be a very pretty little reed cottage, with two rooms and a passage, and so well-built as to be a beautiful specimen of the style. The only imperfection was that it had as yet, being unfinished, neither furniture nor fireplace, and that the French windows were a good deal broken. Half a dozen natives took charge of our horses, and turned them out, for of course there was not a stable; and the rest came flocking round us doing anything they could.
There was, in the space before the house, a round hole dug about a foot deep, such as they use for ovens and fireplaces; and by this we sat on the ground, wrapped in blankets like themselves, and talking as well as we could, till the kettle was boiled, and other preparations made for
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tea. They made us a capital fire and the evening, though fine, was just cold enough to make us appreciate it. Mr. Hadfield's time was fully occupied in listening to all the stories they had to tell him, and giving answers to their many questions, etc. They could not have seemed more pleased if their nearest and dearest relation had just returned. A few of the old ones even gave a few notes of 'tangi' (that is, a grand cry all round, either for grief when someone is dead, or for joy on meeting after long absence) but as Mr. Hadfield does not approve of 'tangis' these were suppressed. He says that he cannot persuade the old Maoris to change all their habits, but they are very well content to let their children learn those that he likes to teach, and the young generation were evidently both better dressed, and better mannered. There was a young man most fashionably dressed, and even understanding a few words of English, who was the builder of the house, and came to us at the fire, to hear its praises, as well as we could express them, and to ask about Port Cooper, about which they are all very curious; and he had an old Father, as Mr. Hadfield said 'quite an old Maori,' dressed in an old red blanket, with a face tattooed till it was nearly black, who would come and look in at us when we were in the house, and at breakfast next morning there was the black face applied to the largest hole in the window and watching everything we did with the deepest attention.
Some of the men, and one of the women, were very good-looking. I wish you could have seen the group round that fire, with the bright blaze putting out the starlight, and lighting up such picturesque wild-looking faces. In the house, we found an old bedstead which was our table; one chair, some teacups, and a washhandbasin, and some blankets; we made a capital bed in one corner, of fern, and had our tablecloth as a curtain in the window. At the first dawn of day we were up, and at seven were in the canoe which was to take us back to the mouth of the Manawatu, by a winding course of more than thirty miles down the river, though, by the way we had ridden, it was only about
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nine. We had a fine large canoe and seven paddles, so that we went pretty quick when the wind was not against us. There were numbers of wild ducks, too, and my husband managed to get three brace, besides those we lost. The banks of the river were in some places very pretty, and the woods beautiful, hung over in some places with bunches and garlands of a gigantic white clematis; and another tree which is something like laburnum was nearly out. All the way down we passed a succession of little native settlements, the inhabitants all rushing out to salute Mr. Hadfield, and get a few words in return. Halfway down, a few white people are settled; one had a 'store' and another a steam engine (!) for a saw mill, etc. From this place the banks became flatter and less pretty, and from some difficulty about crossing the horses which had come to meet us, at the right place, we had to leave our canoe three or four miles up from the mouth, and ride to where we left the carriage, and then home again along the beach road. Our only misfortune was that in trying to persuade the horse in the carriage to go something beyond a walk, we angered him so much that he kicked his foot right through the splash-board against my knee. I was not at all hurt, but the carriage was, and being a lent one, of course, we were rather unhappy. However, I hope the saddler here can produce some patent leather to repair the breach; but we had to resign ourselves to very slow progress, and as it began to rain a little and get dark, the way seemed very long. At last I got out, and on to a horse again, and then we cantered home till the bad road came, after leaving the beach; we forded the Ohau as it was low water, and got home before nine; having travelled about sixty miles in the day, which is considered a great deal in N.Z., indeed, no lady had been there before.
Arthur spent the night that we were away from Otaki at Mrs. Thompson's; she had especially invited him and Powles, and a great part of the days was devoted to running about the village, at the head of a troop of perhaps twenty little native children, who were excessively amused at
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running after him, and in flying little kites made of reeds and grass (by Cole) which flew much more easily than our paper ones, and any length of string is easily got by stripping up the flax leaves into thin bits and knotting them together.
We went one day to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and were waited upon by a daughter of Martin's, who is there as a servant, receiving no wages, but by way of learning how to do things; which they think all right, and not at all infra dig. It was most amusing to watch her manoeuvres; she was so overwhelmed at such a large party, for with Mr. Hadfield, and a sister of Mr. W.'s, we made six, and when the large dish holding the leg of mutton had to be lifted off to make room for the pudding, she fairly despaired of ever getting happily through so hazardous an undertaking, and hung down her head, and clasped her hands, with a low cry. We could hardly help laughing, but she did manage it at last when pressed and reasoned with by Mrs. Williams, who was half annoyed, and seemed almost to think some apology was necessary. She has all Maori girls as servants, devotes a great deal of time to teaching them, and to teaching one class of girls to work, etc. Mr. W. has a number of boys in the garden something in the same way. Mr. Hadfield buys and grows a number of fruit trees to distribute, and they do extremely well; even at Motoa (the little place up the Manawatu) there was a wild standard peach tree growing at the edge of the bush and covered with blossom, and looking as wild as possible, though of course it had been planted, as they are not indigenous.
We took one day's rest, to rest our horses, at Otaki, after our expedition, and then left it with sorrow. Mr. Hadfield had some business in Wellington, and so, to our great satisfaction, he came down with us. We again found our beach road very long. The Waikanae river too was at high tide, so that we had to drag the carriage (partly under water) through backwoods, and unload it, to take the things across dry, in a canoe. Our principal luggage, it is true, was Arthur's tub, acting in concert with a bit of waterproof
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stuff as a portmanteau; but then we carried, besides, saddle bags, a gun, some Maori walking sticks, a large flax basket, given by Mrs. Martin and filled with shells, a canister of luncheon put in by Mr. Hadfield, and a kiwi, a wingless bird, alive in a box; besides extra coats, plaids and blankets, which we were very glad of. The whole business delayed us about an hour. Then we had the long hill to climb up, and there again found the evening too misty to get the distant view, though we had a beautiful gleam after a shower, just as we got to the top. Again we slept at Pawatenui, and had the state apartment. We had a very cold night there, quite thick ice on the water next morning, to the great detriment of a flock of little goslings, six of whom were killed, and another was found by Arthur so numb with cold that it couldn't walk; however, we warmed and revived it so well that the landlord made it a present to him. It took us seven hours to get home the twenty-one miles, walking up and down hills, which was a great chance for the gosling, who had got quite well, and enjoyed a little swim in a puddle at the roadside extremely; you can fancy Arthur's delight, and the number of times that it had to be peeped at, under all its warm coverings, to see that it was really alive, and 'singing its little song'. Next morning it was found dead in its bed (!) and as he says 'its grave is to be seen in the garden'.
Our kiwi was not much more successful. It was a most curious beast, with a head and whiskers like a rat, a long, long bill like a woodcock, but not so straight, coarse feathers, pointed and feeling like fur, legs like a miniature ostrich, and a short round body with make believe wings as big as a just born chicken's. I defy anyone to see it run without laughing, its head swaying from side to side at each stride, and a sort of abandon in its gait, that you see in some of the little figures with large heads in Punch, running away from some monster. It was a night bird, and quite stupid in the day, could hardly see to eat its food, even worms and raw meat, and would run its head into any dark hole it could find. We had it for about a week and
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then one night it ran away, just after it had been fed, and we could never find it. It was very cross, and would scratch and peck anyone who came near it, but so very funny and odd looking that we were sorry to lose it.
We found all safe and well at Wellington, and met with a most agreeable surprise in our little walk down the town. We met the Post-Master who told us that our Mariner letters had all turned up, and insisted with, I may say, true Wellington good-nature, upon turning back with us nearly a mile, and re-opening his office to give them to us, as the next day was Sunday. There is, of course, no penny-postman here; only when any ship comes in you go to the P. O. to see if it has brought you anything. Then came a very pleasant evening, as I need hardly say. Everybody so good about writing. I am very glad to hear of the going to London being all settled, and I shall hope, in the next ship, for a chapter on spring fashions from Louisa. She and Frances are both very good about writing lots of news, but they need not be afraid of repeating, for they are sure to tell things in different words that make quite variety enough; and how is Ruby? I wish that one of them would be so kind as to write just a few words, that a letter has come from N.Z., and that all are well, and Powles better than she was in England, to her sister, Mrs. May, 19 Elizabeth Terrace, King's Road, Chelsea. She has no time to write by this opportunity, as we are sending by the Hooghly, a chance ship, that has called here on its way to Sydney from Port Cooper, where she has been carrying cattle. Captain Mitchell bought all her cargo, 200 head of horned cattle, and has left them at his station there, quite across the plain, about fifty miles from Lyttelton, which he has chosen in hopes that its distance from the port, town, &c., will prevent its being chosen by any of the first comers. He has come up himself, and is going on to Sydney and India, to be back (D. V.) in a year. I hope he will, for he is a capital colonist and very energetic and effective, as my husband says.
Mr. Wodehouse is come up with him and Captain Thomas, who gives capital accounts of all the doings at
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Lyttelton. There are about sixty houses, but the workmen, etc., who make up the community there, are, I fear, a bad set enough, many of them convicts from Sydney, and instead of our life there being at all secluded, or lonely, I am afraid one of our greatest wants will be anything like privacy. The land about there is in great request just now; there is so little available, about the port, that if the settlement comes to anything, it must become very valuable. Captain Thomas was much pressed, the other day, to sell one quarter acre for £500. The Captain of a ship wanted it, engaging to spend £1,000 on an Hotel on it. The people here are all full of it, and I think, if we could sell land on the spot, half Wellington would come and buy.
I think my husband will be twice as well and happy when he is at some work again, for he has too much time here to think about how his throat is. He caught a cold at Otaki which threw him back again, in that respect, but he is himself very well and looking so, as everyone remarks. We go out walking now between six and seven which is the pleasantest part of the day, and Arthur and I take a little walk down to the sea to try which of us can throw stones the farthest. We are wondering how soon our Illustrated Newses will begin to come out, which we asked you to send us. Captain Stokes lent me his, with the Britannia bridge in it. He is back here again with his Acheron, owing to an accident he met with at Nelson; the assistant master and three men drowned, and a midshipman (a Mr. Paget, son of Ld. W. Paget), and three more only saved by a miracle, from a boat capsizing in the swell there. He still says he will be back in a month to take us down, but I am afraid it will not answer, as we must travel with our goods, and every scrap of furniture, on our backs, as it would be very inconvenient to do without them, either here or there, and it would not do to carry our saucepans, etc., by one of Her Majesty's steamers.
We are going to-day to a pic-nic, given by Mrs. Petre and another lady, at a place about eight miles off, to about twenty of the elite of Wellington. Not however, Mr. and
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Mrs. Eyre; they have gone up the coast further than we did, riding with a light cart in attendance, with a tent, etc.; I don't know how they will get all this across the Manawatu, but we shall see. She was quite ill from fatigue when she got to Otaki, we hear, but recovered and went on. She is very delicate, I think.
I may ask you to send me out a silk gown of some rather dark, cheap kind; a made up skirt with flounces, if they are still to be had, would be thought beautiful here, and cannot be bought. I can get scrub gowns, but everything wears out so fast here with fading in the hot sun, and mud, and so much out-of-door work. I have asked for stockings and gloves, and now must ask if Pattison can furnish two pairs of thin boots, on my old last, but with wide ends; and anything you like to send us, and will ask Tom Cocks to pay for, we shall be very grateful for.
I must stop. I have not time for the loads of love I would send, if I could, to everybody. Sara and the baby, I long to hear more of it; and everyone individually at home. Many thanks to William for his letter. Please to ask C. Pollen to read this instead of a special letter this time. She too is a Princess about writing, and now Goodbye, and God bless you one and all. Always, my dear Mother,
Yours very affectionately,
CHARLOTTE.
WELLINGTON. October 23rd, 1850.
WELLINGTON
October 24th, 1850
MY DEAR MOTHER,
This morning, very early, sailed the Hoogly, to Sydney, with a regular pamphlet to you. It was what we call a chance ship, that is, it only called in passing, and did not come with any cargo. I don't know when this can go, we have no ship at present 'laid-on' for Sydney, and the English ships direct will not sail yet; not till the sheep
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shearing is over, and some of the wool ready to be sent to the London Market.
I mentioned in finishing my letter yesterday that we were going to a pic-nic, given by Mrs. Petre and another lady. It was in a very pretty spot, of course, in the bush, and the day quite lovely; even the wind kept quiet, and everything went off very successfully. We had a very extensive dinner, more than we (twenty-four people) could have eaten in two whole days, and then we had a very pretty walk in the bush, then coffee al fresco, and then we came home, and the rest of the party stayed a good deal longer. We arrived at seven, just as it was getting dark, and found that the Government brig had come in from Nelson, and a brigantine from Hobart town, bringing English news to the end of June. The death of Sir Robert Peel, and the shameful attack on the Queen by Mr. Pate. It is so dreadfully tantalizing getting bits of news in this way, and then no more for months perhaps. The June ship has not yet been heard of, and when she does come, all her news must be about a month older than this. There is something so sad in Sir Robert's end that we 'cannot choose but grieve,' and what a difference it will make in parties, &c.; but I spare you reflections, and 'retrospections on the future,' as it is, in one sense, with us. I wish I had the man here who said 'that as soon as you were out of England, even in Wales, you might as well be in N.Z., as in France or Italy, or even Wales!' I do in many ways, for indeed it was Charles.
Yesterday, at breakfast, we were surprised by a very early visit from Thompson, our dear Maori chief, from Otaki, who came to tell us that, as Archdeacon Williams was going home to England for two years, he had suddenly made up his mind to go with him, and see all that he can, and to come back by a Port Cooper ship, and see that too. He leaves his wife behind, as he says he cannot afford to pay for her too, and it would be very expensive for him; but the poor woman is so sad, she almost cried as soon as she saw me, expecting me to allude to it. The Government brig is going to Auckland, and will take him and Mrs. Williams
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(the daughter-in-law of the Archdeacon), who is going there to see her friends, and then he expects to go on by a ship, direct to England, about December. So that I hope he will arrive while you are in London. I should be so glad that you should see him, and talk to him about us. I have shewn him my picture of you and said that he must go and try to see you, and I am sure you would like him, and he assures us that he will try to learn to speak English well, before the voyage is over. He and his wife have been dining with us to-day, and Dr. Fitzgerald came too, to talk Maori for us, so we gave, for us, quite a grand banquet.
Arthur and I spent a very hot hour in picking gooseberries for a large tart. (Fancy their being quite ready on the 24th April, which October 24th answers to.) Then we had roast beef, and a coursed rabbit, the finest I ever saw; a present from Captain Stokes whose dogs caught it at a place about ten miles off, where some tame ones were once turned out. This was quite a new dish to them, and so were some artichokes that Colonel McCleverty had sent us; they were much amused at nibbling the leaves. Thompson, in putting pepper on them, upset some over his plate, on which Mrs. Thompson burst out laughing, and said, in Maori of course, that if he did that in England, the 'pakehas' would laugh, and think him very vulgar; and then she went on to say that she had told him he must try to eat very little or they would wonder at his appetite. But a sweet arrowroot pudding was their great delight, mixed with the tart; they could not help remarking that it was 'Kapai' (called 'carpye') 'very good'. Mr. Wodehouse called, just before dinner, and stayed to see them; and as soon as we had done we all went off to hear the band playing on Thornden flat which it now does once a week from two till four. It is a sort of reunion, so many people come to walk up and down, or sit in a corner to get out of the wind, and Thompson kept walking about, and making the most enlightened bows to all his friends. Most of the gentlemen there had been up the coast and entertained at his house. He told us, too, that Mr. Hadfield was very
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stingy, and would not spare us for a day, or he would have got us to dine with him and given us 'whitebait'. It appears that there is a little fish just like it, often caught at Otaki, and elsewhere, in great numbers, but we have never seen any.
October 25th. We have got home such a nice new table to-day, a sort of library shape, 3 feet by 3 feet 8 inches, with two drawers, beautifully polished, and made of 'remu', one of their best woods here, like a light rosewood, but much prettier I think. The Government brig has brought us back Mr. Domett, who has been spending six weeks at Nelson. He brings us news of our fellow passenger, Mr. Elliot, who has set up two mills there, and is a very good colonist, he says, but we do not hear that he is yet married. I told you that he had been softened, on the passage, by the charms of 'Ann', Mr. Tollemache's housemaid, and proposed to her soon after landing there. The two other attendant damsels are also engaged, or at least said to be, which has I fancy put Mr. Tollemache out of humour, for we hear of his behaving very crossly about two town acres of his there, which had been left unoccupied as a sort of common, and were the only possible cricket-ground about the place. These he has not only ploughed up and fenced, but let, with a special condition, that they are not to be allowed to revert to their old purpose. Of course, they are quite his own, but after saying that he didn't want money and should give his whole £20,000 worth of property here to the Church and other public benefits, one is disappointed to find him obstinately refusing to hear reason on a point which, if he chose even to give the land, would be so small to him, and so great to the town.
The Governor and Mrs. Eyre are gone up the coast, and Mrs. McCleverty and child, and Mrs. St. Hill and Mr. and Mrs. Petre and three children have all been, since we came back, as far as Otaki. They say I set the fashion, but I suppose I did help to shew how perfectly easy it is. However, Mrs. Eyre has tried to do too much riding in a day, and knocked herself up by the time she got to Otaki, where they stayed with Thompson. Mr. Hadfield was away.
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November 1st. Still no news of the June ship, but we have been thrown into a disagreeable state of excitement, by the news in the Sydney papers a day or two ago. For, excellent as it all is as to the success and wellbeing of Canterbury, yet for the moment, we are much afraid that the emigrants 9 may arrive before we can get down there, and that they must arrive before the funds are forthcoming for some desirable preparations. We are to go down (D. V.) by the first ship. My husband had even thoughts of chartering one himself. The Barbara Gordon, which sailed about the 1st of May is due here now, en route to Lyttelton, and by her we expect to get on. I would say hope if I could, but I dread the sea again so much, and am besides sorry to leave Wellington, and the people there who have been, one and all, as kind to us as they could. We hear, by all sorts of side-winds, how much is thought of Canterbury: 'two thousand people to be sent out in the first two months', and so on. The people here talk of nothing else; everybody wants either to go there, or to buy a bit of land. I believe the love of roaming must grow upon indulgence, for they seem to think nothing of moving. As for me, my 16,000 miles have only made me more cat-like than ever, and given me a positive enjoyment in being still at all.
My husband is sending home (by a ship advertized for January) four boxes of plants. One of them is for Uncle Robert, and will you kindly undertake to tell him about the contents; that he must remember that they are all from 'the bush', and are therefore accustomed to a place thoroughly well sheltered from cold, and sun, to a great degree; the ferns, especially, will not bear a great light on their crowns, and fade down directly. We are told that they do admirably in greenhouses with light only at the side, in fact, a room with only enough fire to keep out frosts. There is an understanding man, a few miles from here, who collects plants, and fills cases to send home, and he is to do it for us directly, as the season has just begun for getting the different
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specimens. The Kauri (cowry) tree is not to be had here. The fuchsia tree grows all about, but the flower is small, and faded-looking, compared to 'our English fuchsias'. The Rata, red myrtle, tree is, I hear, magnificent, when it is in flower, but I have not seen it here yet; what we found in flower, when we came here, was a creeper, or rather a parasite tree, of which species there are immense numbers in the bush, many trees having three or four stems, half as thick as themselves, running up to the highest branches. A smaller kind is a clematis, about ten times the size of ones at home, and that looks quite lovely now, about the woods, with garlands and crowns of large white flowers among the dark green leaves. I thought it would look so well at the back of the Stokesley conservatory, and I hear a cool greenhouse would suit it exactly. Most people kill N.Z. plants by giving them too much heat, which they can no more bear than they can frost. The smaller clematis is not so handsome, but has a very sweet smell. Then there is a species of cineraria (as the man tells me, who is employed about it, and who makes quite a profession of preparing these cases, for parties wishing to send home plants) which is again very sweet, and grows here into a small tree. The cases have to be made with the boards grooved into each other, painted and glazed, and the openings filled carefully with putty to exclude the air entirely. The first English ship is advertized to sail on January 20th, the Lord William Bentinck having been 'taken up for England', as the saying goes, and, either by her or the next, I hope they will go. Mr. Weld and Mr. Fox are both going home (D. V.) in the summer, and one of them will, I am sure, take charge of them.
November 11th. On Saturday, 9th, came our letters from home by the June ship (the Eden), only the letters, though, by an overland mail from New Plymouth, where she first touched, and so much news, and though it is not all good, still with so many well we have a great deal to be thankful for.
November 16th. The Phoebe Dunbar July ship) has at last come in, and on my birthday, the 14th, so
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that I felt something like home getting so many home letters. Arthur had a tea-party for me, out in the garden, and while we were at it, the letters arrived and all good (private) news, and we read letters till bed-time. I am quite filled with admiration, and still more with gratitude, at you all for going on writing so well, only how could anyone tell you to expect letters at the end of June! We thought ourselves so lucky for finding the Woodstock just going to sail in May when we arrived here; and we are now most anxious to hear whether you got those, our first letters, before the Association ships sailed, which we now see advertized from Plymouth, on September 10th. So perhaps we may have one, at least, in by Christmas Day, which would be pleasant for us, even if the works, road, etc., are not quite ready for them. There are funds, however, now, for going on, and no time will be lost in setting to work. We go down (D. V.) by the next ship, the Eden, which is daily expected from New Plymouth and Nelson.
I must go back to November 6th when H. M. S. Fly (sloop-of-war 14 guns) arrived, with the Governor, Sir George and Lady Grey on board, and bringing down from Auckland the Barbara Gordon's (May ship's) mail, by which John had several letters, and I had one from Mrs. Rogers, and from little Charlotte P. who is quite a princess about writing. Your Eden letters came only two days later, and so we had quite a feast of news, and must now make up our minds to wait patiently for the next. I cannot say how glad I am that our Epistles en route by the Maid and Persia arrived safely. I quite long to hear of the next long pamphlet from here, May 6th, having done the same. I thought it best, at the time, to write down everything in one, so that I might tell everything, as it were; and now I feel ungrateful for not having written separately to everyone who has written to me, but it is not for want of thinking of them; that is all I can say.
On November 7th, the Governor and Lady landed, received by a guard of honour, band playing 'God save the Queen', and salute of nineteen guns from the Fly; which I
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heard, but did not see, being occupied with a sick headache, without any sickness though, and only about two hours long, which is, I suppose, the way of having such things here; the other symptoms were all perfect. Anyhow, I was quite forthcoming in the afternoon, and went out to tea. On the evening before, we had been out also, to Mrs. Fox's, where we were asked 'for a little music' and I went, attired in my most stately silk morning gown, which I had found always before to be the general thing here. Even in a muslin with high-body, I was unlike other people. We arrived nearly the first, and found only Mr. Dillon, the Auckland Colonial Secretary, who had come on shore, with a new constitution, of Sir George's own drawing up, in his pocket. This was, of course, a great piece of news, and occupied the elder gentlemen all the evening. Then arrived a number of ladies in white dresses, short sleeves, white shoes, and bouquets; and before we retired, which was at a very early hour, the round table had disappeared from the middle of the room, and they were all dancing. N. B.--six of the bouquets, including my own, were presented by Dr. Prendergast, the doctor of the 65th Regiment; a somewhat absurd and unpleasant individual, who is by way of being enlightened on all subjects, and very fond of flowers, but does it all badly, and his fun is to present ladies with bouquets, more especially Miss Halcomb, Mrs. Fox's sister. Report says, however, without reciprocity on the lady's part; and indeed her passage too is taken with Mr. and Mrs. Fox, by the Lord William Bentinck for London, in January. They go home because, the N.Z. Co. being defunct, so is his Office out here of Chief Agent thereunto, with £1000 a year; and so, having been here eight years, and no children to hinder their movements, they go back, and will return again, or not, as they like best.
When Sir G. and Lady Grey landed, they went straight to the McCleverty's house, and lived there for two days. They cannot bear Mr. Eyre, and as he and his wife did not return from 'up the coast' till three days after, they made that a good excuse for not going to Government House;
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and when they left Colonel McCleverty's, they went to Mr. Domett's, the Colonial Secretary here, who gave up his house to them, and dwelt with Mr. Thomas, Sir George's half-brother. We went to make a state call the morning after their arrival, and found My Lady extremely gracious, and far cleverer than Mrs. Eyre, but with a very satirical expression, and way of talking about everybody, which is evidently the reason of her being so little liked. She has beautiful black hair, and still better brown eyes, and a very good forehead and complexion; but her nose is too long and peaky, and her mouth twists about in rather an ugly way. In the evening, we went there to meet them, and saw Sir George, whom we do not love much better. He is tall and plain, with a rather red tip to a rather long nose, and rather expressive eyes. His manner is supposed here to be perfect, and fascinating, because he can generally talk anyone over to his own opinion; but we both thought him very stiff, and not very agreeable, though you see at once that he is quite a clever man. I need not tell you how he has been lately convicted of something very like a falsehood, in full council, and other things not quite likeable, in spite of all his undoubted ability.
What is much more to the purpose for us, is that he forthwith engaged my husband in conversation, and told him that, rather than the works on the road at Lyttelton should be stopped any longer, he would 'presently' advance £2,400, from the local treasury, to set them going, now, during the summer, while they can work best. I rather wonder that my husband could avoid thinking him perfection, after such a volunteer as that, for of course he was much pleased. To me he said that he used to know Tom Cocks, and that he and Mr. O. Biddulph used to tell him he was too fond of late parties, and altogether 'too fashionable'.
The Captain of the Fly is a clever, agreeable sort of man, and a beautiful artist; figures, landscapes, portraits, anything you please, but he doesn't look much like a sailor;
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name. Captain Oliver. Mr. and Mrs. Eyre returned on Saturday, and on the Tuesday we went to a party at Government House, and met all the elite of Wellington. It was stiff, hot, work, sitting as I did in a very hot room, inventing conversation, opposite the two Lady Governors, who don't love each other at all, but were both very civil to us, and when Mrs. Eyre went to sing, and Mr. Eyre took his usual place at her side, Lady Grey not only smiled herself, rather wickedly, but tried to incite us to do the same. In short, we think her somewhat ill-natured, and not much to be trusted, though she took what I suppose she thought the straight road to my heart by being very much devoted to Arthur. She begged me to let him pay her a visit, as 'Mr. Thomas was always writing in such raptures about him to Auckland' and when she did see him, at the bandplaying, she spent all the afternoon in talking to him, and telling me how charming he was. The next day they all went off to the Auckland Islands, where Sir George is to assert his supremacy over Mr. Enderby, and they have struck awe into our hearts by promising on their return to stop at all the settlements, and to pay us a very long visit at Lyttelton.
The new Constitution was a private piece of Legislation of Sir G's; proposed, as they cannot get on any longer with the present state of things, to last till the representative institutions, now promised, can be first concocted in the House of Commons at home, and then set a-going out here. I can assure you, on my husband's authority, that it is a very bad bill and a sham, and accordingly the Constitutional Settlers had a meeting last week, and firmly, if not respectfully, declined to accept or have anything to say to it. I suppose Sir George will be very angry when he hears that, out of at least 350, (only 900 'male adults' in the settlement) only one person voted for the bill; for he had done everything to talk people over while here. The meeting took place the day after he went, and my husband was at it; proposed the first resolution, and spoke for ten or twelve minutes. From this you may believe he is much
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better. I am quite afraid to write it for fear of a drawback to-morrow, but at least I may say that he has gained eleven pounds since May; he now weighs eleven stone five pounds, and looks as fresh as a daisy. I hear his speech was immensely admired; the people here all think him something rather wonderful.
November 20th. We find that a mail goes off to-day to Sydney, and must therefore close in a hurry. I hoped we should have been able to go on writing till our departure from Wellington, which is now, I believe, to be in a few days. The Eden is still expected every day, but not come, and my husband is getting into a great fuss about getting down to his work, now there are funds to go on with it; and so we are (D. V.) to go down in the Acheron, about Saturday next, without any servants, and with just as much furniture as will enable us to carry on till the Eden does come, with Powles, William, horses, and goods; which will, I suppose, be about a fortnight. Captain Stokes has been exceedingly civil about taking us, offering to wait for us if required, and to take any amount of furniture, etc.; but we don't wish to trespass too far; and besides, it is no small business for Powles and William to pack up everything in the house, and they will be very glad, I think, to have us out of the way. For it is a great move when you have to take with you every shelf, etc. that you want. I hope that, with steam, we shall not be more than sixteen hours doing the 150 miles, which is a great matter as we are all sure to be very ill. I am quite sorry to go.
Also I am sorry, too, that I cannot tell you of the little portraits arriving, and of Frances' books for Arthur, which he is looking forward to with great delight. He was beginning to write to her, and then he said of his own accord he would wait till he got the books. He is now writing to you. You would laugh if you could hear him keeping us au fait in the shipping line. There is a flag staff at Government House, where they signal every vessel coming in, that is visible from the Heads, and his business, and great ambition, is to be the first to tell us when anything is put up, and he
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knows them all now, and comes in 'it's a topsail schooner, Father' or whatever it may be, and he hardly ever makes a mistake. He has got back to white frocks again, as trowsers are too hot for this weather. About ten days ago real summer began, and I am only afraid now of its being too hot. So far it has been delightful, and much less wind. My husband even, thinks it perfect; we sleep with our window wide open, and have only a little fire sometimes in the evening.
The gardens are all looking lovely, and the things grow too quickly. I mean that vegetables, for instance, have run to seed before you know where you are. Yesterday, in Mrs. St. Hill's garden, which is much the best here, we saw one or two little wood-strawberries ripe, and one cherry nearly so. The flowers were beautiful, roses of all kinds in perfection.
To-morrow there is to be a flower show in the Theatre, band-playing, and next day 'Colonel Gold and the Officers of the 65th' give a sort of early 'eight o'clock' ball. We were very glad to find there too, at Mrs. St. Hill's, which is his town house, Mr. Hadfield, looking pretty much as usual. He had, nearly a month ago, a very bad fall from his horse, and was a good deal hurt, which was very alarming for such a delicate person. By the by, no one mentions what poor Lady T. Finch died of; we saw in the papers that it was in Tilney Street. I am so sorry about it, and for poor Lord Aylesford. Now will be Lady Bateman's time, I think, if ever. I saw some weeks ago, in a Sydney newspaper, a death that must be Mary and Charlotte Finch's brother, of whom they never spoke, except as a child. It said 'Heneage Finch, Esqre., son of the Honble. Admiral E. Finch, at his seat Hoxton Park, Liverpool' (in Australia); with a long paragraph to say it was from the injuries inflicted the day before by a savage bull, and how, with his usual benevolence, his last moments were occupied in soothing the affliction of his family. Perhaps it has appeared in the English papers, by this time, but I mention it in case you should not hear of it in any other way, as they never spoke of him. Poor Louisa, to have another tooth out 'on Saturday, with Chloroform'. I think I must have
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three or four ditto, as soon as I get back, (if we ever do). I am looking forward to her notices on fashions. What fun it will be for her, too, if aforesaid event comes off, laughing at all my gowns and bonnets that may survive the journey.
I cannot resist giving you commissions, in hopes of inducing a box, and we can well afford now to pay for such things. I did ask for a gown, stockings, gloves, and boots, and now will you send me a bonnet? shall we say, something of a strawy nature, with a nice trimming. You know that my head is of a good size. All this only when quite convenient, as patience is a virtue of necessary acquirement here, in matters from England, and a month or two more makes no difference (alas). I am afraid, too, that our letters may not arrive according to their dates, but that we cannot help, and you must remember that I would much rather not get the things than give you much trouble about them. Arthur says 'I send my love and I'm picking gooseberries'; with such a hot little face, and nothing on but his stays and a smock frock, it is so hot still, though very pleasant. Only, I am obliged to curtail my walking a little. We are in an abundance of flowers just now, the room is quite like a nosegay. Please give my great love to all, and to Aunt Ann and to Stokesley, and to everyone, and now I must stop as some visitors have stayed till the mail is just going to close. I fully meant to have sent a note to thank Laura herself for her very 'valuable journal', it is so very good of her to write so beautifully, and now Addio, God bless you all.
Yours very affectionately,
CHARLOTTE.
Miss Sigel, 10 too, I fully meant to send a note to.
November 21st.
