APPENDIX
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1, Betsy (Anne Sainsbury)
Mr Lush wrote in his journal on 20 October 1851: "I immediately wrote a note to the Postmaster at Auckland requesting to know whether there were not two more letters for us - as well as one for Anne Sainsbury (who, poor girl, begins to feel the long silence of her friends at Farringdon)." This extract accentuates the loneliness likely to be felt by a fifteen-year-old girl leaving her friends and the land of her birth for the other side of the world in the company of strangers and in the capacity of a servant.
That her employers were kind to her and interested in her welfare there is no doubt. Betsy was taken for long walks and drives; she shared the small treats enjoyed by the Lush children. Though she was not "as one of the family", in the Victorian phrase, it appears that by close association with the Lush family she may have acquired a better education - and perhaps more exalted social standards - than would normally have been available to one of her position in England. This may account for her rejection of apparently eligible suitors complained of by Mr Lush.
The journal for 4 June 1867 has a final note on the fortunes of Betsy: "By the way, I have heard that Anne (Betsy) Sainsbury who left us to set up as a Milliner at Sydney is married to a Captain McDougall - but seeing that out here where everybody seems so fond of having a handle to their name, that if a man has a yatch [sic] of 6 tons and sails it, he is forthwith dubbed 'Captain', one cannot say whether she has done well for herself or not; though it sounds grand I fear it is all sound and nothing else."
2, Ewelme Cottage
It will be seen that the building of Ewelme Cottage is no more than casually mentioned in these journal-letters, but on 8 August 1865 there is reference to its first alteration; the owner records that it is "enlarged and much improved" but gives no further details.
It is on Charles Lush that we depend for earlier information. The site of the new house was conveniently opposite the Church of England Grammar School where Charles was a pupil, and was planned originally to facilitate his attendance at school. He wrote on 20 October 1863: "During the morning lessons a man came to the school door and Mr Kinder went to see who it was.... I found he was one of Hunter's
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men and that Hunter 1 wanted to know about the situation of our house, and I had it put four rails back from the front fence and put square with the road and enough left between the wall and the lower fence for a cart to go by with ease. As soon as I went back to the school they commenced putting the plate together and thus have begun our house in real earnest." The family came into Auckland in time for the school term that opened on 25 January 1864. Charles notes on 22 January: "Kerr's cart came in the morning and was loaded with things we had packed up last night to go to our new house near Parnell: we had dinner at our new house."
Mr Lush worked hard in his Parnell garden; a gardener charged ten shillings a day, so young poplars and cabbage-trees were carted in from Howick to be planted by Charles and his father and his brother Martin. They all went to "Hay's the gardener" and brought home three young oak trees and a horse chestnut, and there was a further consignment of twenty young karaka trees from Howick. In July 1866 there was real progress; Mr Lush wrote: "Anderson, our next door neighbour, came to form our grass plot into a level croquet ground: this will be no light nor inexpensive job; the land falls away so rapidly from the house it will take him a fortnight if not longer and his charge is 5/0 a day, so I expect our croquet ground will cost me an outlay of 60 or 70 shillings: but we could never use our set of croquet without this alteration, which will also improve our garden, beside reminding us of the terraces at Ewelme."
3, Auckland, at War
From the journal of Charles Lush, 30 October 1863: "When school was over I ran down to our house and found Hunter there, then I and Martin walked back with him to his own shop. Before we got there I heard the band playing and on looking saw a number of people marching up from Parnell and I found they were about 220 of the Militia who were on their way to the front. Hunter has a Maori working for him who was looking out of the upper window at them and as they passed by Hunter's shop some of them caught sight of him, and they began crying out, 'Oh there's a Maori, there's a Maori', and then he put his head in and did not look out again.
"31. Before I went to school I heard the band playing, it must have been somewhere about Mechanics Bay; after I had been on the school ground a little while the school boys heard it and some of them ran along the road to meet it, but I kept by the school fence; very soon I saw them coming along, about the same number as yesterday; Mr Hoyte 2 was a little in advance of them and when they came near Mr Kinder's house the band struck up again, for it had left off when the boys went to meet them; as they passed by the school gate Mr Hoyte proposed a cheer, and nearly all the boys gave a loud cheer which deadened the sound of the music very much."
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4, Earliest Howick
From Our Antipodes, by Col. G. C. Mundy: "The following day [16 December 1847] I visited with the Governor the second cantonment of pensioners, called Howick. The first ten or twelve miles of the trip were made in the harbour-master's whale-boat, along the southern shore of the Waitemata harbour. We met several large native canoes, full of pigs and other provisions for the Auckland market, running at a great rate before the wind in a rather heavy sea, with sails of canvas or blanket - most of the owners giving us loud salutations as we passed. Turning into the Tamaki River, an inlet of the Waitemata, we landed on its right bank, and proceeded on foot. At a landing-place a police guard turned out to His Excellency, consisting of a little old English corporal and three strapping young Maoris. Their uniform, well adapted to their duties, is a blue woollen shirt worn as a frock, white trousers, with black belts, carbine, and bayonet. Well-looking, erect, and smart young fellows as a martinet would wish to see - I can imagine no race better adapted for the ranks.
"A walk of about three miles across a peninsula separating the Tamaki from the Thames River brought us down upon the embryo village of Howick, the destined location of Captain Macdonald's company, on the mouth of the latter fine stream; ten miles further from the capital than the other pensioner settlement, and cut off from it by the Tamaki, across the narrowest point of which there is a ferry, about 100 yards in width. Its position, therefore, is much exposed should the natives at any time prove hostile.... Of the meditated village there is little now to be seen but a plan of the streets - (which I recommended should be named after celebrated military leaders and battles) - and the rudiments of a church, chapel, hospital, &c. [Colonel Mundy may be confusing Howick, where All Saints' was being built, with St John's College, where the chapel was built in 1847, also St John's Hospital earlier the same year. As far as I can discover there was no hospital at Howick.]
"There are about 120 veterans and their families to be located at Howick. The next generation, springing from this colocation of old soldiers, will be a valuable addition to the white population. Without appearing to be severe upon the present one, I cannot think they will do much more than subsist, and sot, and smoke over their acre of scoriae; - happy if their rough habits and ignorance of Maori character do not embroil them seriously with this people, in whose power they undoubtedly are at present."
The following extract is from a report sent from New Zealand to the Colonial Church Chronicle by "M. A. M." - presumably Lady Martin. The emigrants, who arrived in Auckland by the ships Sir Robert Sale and Minerva in October 1847, spent the night before their arrival at Howick at St John's College. The pensioners may have stayed for a time in barracks at Auckland for they do not appear to have been in occupation during Colonel Mundy's visit to Howick which he gives as December.
"The tide, unfortunately, did not flow till very late - past eight o'clock. The interval was occupied by some in listening to stories, while others amused themselves in the College room with a great swing which the Bishop had put up, holding six at a time. I and my party returned to
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Auckland in a little Scotch cart without springs, 'made comfortable' with fern instead of heather, and yet it was rather jolty as it went along the unmade road....
"All were not, like ourselves, fortunate enough to get home that night, for owing to the tide and the fewness of the boats, it was nearly midnight before the last party got off; and then many remained asleep in the barn. The ladies had not come prepared to stop the night, and so there were many curious substitutes for nightcaps. The bed was huger than that of Ware, being the thrashed straw with which the floor of the barn was littered.
"It was necessary to get them all to lie with their heads to the wall, and their feet inwards, in order that a sail might be drawn over them; but some of the party were so tired that they had fallen asleep before the arrangements for the night began and no amount of shaking could induce them to move... however some excuse must be made for a tired woman, five-fourths asleep, and sleeping too on shore, and without rocking, the first time for nearly 4 months."
5, Revd G. A. Kissling
The Revd George Adam Kissling was born in Southern Germany in 1805 and came to New Zealand with his wife on 2 May 1842 in the ship Louisa Campbell under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society.
His first appointment to a district near the East Cape had to be cancelled: his health, already weakened by service in West Africa, was giving concern. Recalled to Auckland, Mr and Mrs Kissling were given charge of Maori schools in that area, first at Kohimarama and later, when St Stephen's School for Maori girls was opened on 17 December 1850 on the site of what is now Parnell Primary School, they became the first principals of St Stephen's.
Archdeacon Kissling, as he later became, was a signatory of the deed that gave the Church of England in New Zealand its own constitution in 1857, also the first vicar of the cathedral parish of St Mary in Parnell.
6, Thomas Spencer Forsaith
Thomas Spencer Forsaith came to New Zealand in 1838. After a number of picturesque and rewarding commercial ventures, in 1847 he opened an Auckland drapery store; his shop, built in brick, was an impressive contrast to the surrounding wooden buildings.
He was twice elected to the General Assembly where he made his mark as an honest politician with the courage of his own somewhat unpopular convictions, but it is for the leadership of the "Clean Shirt Ministry" that he is chiefly remembered. This lasted only three days and was so-called because Mr Forsaith confided to the House that, when summoned from his shop to the Governor's presence, he stayed to change his shirt.
7, Charles and Caroline Abraham
While at Eton, George Augustus Selwyn and Charles John Abraham became lifelong friends. When Selwyn was appointed first Bishop of New Zealand, Charles Abraham, then a highly successful master at Eton, promised
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to join the Bishop within ten years. He did so in August 1850; he became the first Archdeacon of Waitemata and took charge of St John's College during the Bishop's long absences in various parts of a huge diocese.
His wife, Caroline Palmer, was an enthusiastic artist; in spite of poor health she managed to produce numerous landscapes of the surrounding country, including the panoramic view of St John's College reproduced in this book. In 1857 Charles Abraham and his wife went to England where he was consecrated first Bishop of Wellington; after that, apart from an occasional visit to Auckland, the Abrahams' connection with this journal ceases, though they were long remembered as friends by the Lush family.
8, Sir William and Lady Martin
Contemporary judgments on the service given by Sir William Martin, first Chief Justice of New Zealand, were not unanimously flattering but even those who opposed him seem to have respected his integrity.
"In a Colony torn as this has been by Party contests," wrote Governor Gore Browne, "Dr Martin holds the enviable distinction of being universally respected by all parties and both races of her Majesty's subjects.... Indeed it would be difficult to add to the esteem which has accompanied him in his retirement from Public Life.... The utmost that can be desired is that his successor may be his equal."
Born in 1807, he was a comparatively young man when he landed at Wellington in 1841. He brought with him to Auckland a prefabricated house that was erected at Judges Bay for his wife's reception a year later. Her first sight of Auckland included a glimpse of blanketed Maori workmen digging the stiff clay soil for her garden.
Mary Anne Parker of Islington was married to William Martin early in 1841. Handicapped though she was by an inability to walk or stand for any length of time, she emerges from this journal - and from her own unselfconscious account of life in early Auckland - as a remarkable woman in many ways, with an aroha for the Maori people that is remembered still. She and her husband established Auckland's first hospital - a cluster of raupo huts on the shore below their house, where Maori patients were cared for under the Martins' supervision. Both wrote educational books for translation into Maori, and Lady Martin bound the copies, that came from St John's College Press in brown paper, with needle and thread. They also adopted the orphan daughter of a Maori clergyman.
William Martin was knighted in i860; in 1873 he and his wife left New Zealand for the last time. Their closest friends, Bishop and Mrs Selwyn, were installed at Lichfield, so Sir William and Lady Martin decided to live reasonably near to them in the comparatively mild climate of Torquay. Here the autobiographical Our Maoris was published in 1884, soon after Lady Martin's death.
9, St Stephen's School for Maori Girls
In the late 1840s the original St Stephen's school, in the charge of Mr and Mrs Kissling, was burnt down. It had been established at Kohimarama
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and was attended by a number of pupils from the East Coast as well as those from nearer localities. In the interval between the fire and the end of 1850 when the new building in what is now St Stephen's Avenue was ready, the children lived in a large wooden house in Sarawia Street. Unfortunately no other details of this temporary school have been found but this was the place visited by Mr and Mrs Lush with their "five sacks of linen" to be washed by the Maori pupils - "to teach them habits of industry".
When St Stephen's School was established these activities achieved an almost professional status under the guidance of Lady Martin and Mrs Selwyn, who writes: "To bring some grist to the mill and to find some employment for the women we set on foot a Laundry under the name of The New Zealand Female Aborigines Washing Establishment! It seemed to invest the washing bills and one's clean clothes with a dignity unknown before - N. Z. F. A. W. E."
10, Revd Arthur Guyon Purchas
Born near Chepstow, England, Arthur Guyon Purchas was an amazingly versatile colonist. From an early age he seems to have considered the possibility of emigrating to New Zealand and to have fitted himself to be useful in an uncivilized environment.
Like so many of "Selwyn's men" he had listened to one of the farewell sermons and, meeting the newly-consecrated Bishop, had asked his advice: should the young man go straight out to New Zealand or finish his hospital course and surgical degree first? The Bishop recommended him to stay.
After qualifying and waiting almost two years for a reply to his letter, Dr Purchas decided to go out to New Zealand and see the Bishop. He sailed for Nelson as ship's surgeon in the Slains Castle. The Bishop happened to be in Nelson at that time, so it was arranged that the impatient candidate for Holy Orders should return to England briefly then come out again to attend St John's College. Before leaving England he was married to Olivia Challinor and they sailed in April 1846, arriving at Auckland the following October.
He was appointed to the charge of St Peter's church, Onehunga, in 1849 and applied himself briskly to having a church, parsonage and schoolhouse built. He was a settler who through his interests as well as his qualifications contributed much of value to the developing community of Auckland. As a fine musician and an inspired teacher he was much in demand; scientific knowledge and an inventive turn of mind helped him to appreciate and use natural resources in the new country before many people had realised they existed. He saw education as the first need of the Maori race and undertook in his own house the care of a family, children of a rangatira Maori mother and a European father, who later themselves contributed much to New Zealand. (See Appendix, 15.)
11, The First of the Maori Ministers
Rota (Lot) Waitoa first met Bishop Selwyn on Kapiti Island in 1843 and, returning with him to Waimate, stayed in his service until ordained in 1853.
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A woolly-haired Maori with what Mrs Selwyn called "an African cast of features", he was a man of integrity and exceptional intelligence. He passed through various stages of St John's College - pupil, college butler, junior master and holder of an Eton scholarship. Then, having been made deacon, he went to the East Coast to carry on the work of Archdeacon Kissling.
His wife Terina (Serena) was an excellent housekeeper and an able helper in the work of the Mission but unfortunately she died young. Rota went back to Auckland for a time, for the comfort his friends there could give; he also felt he needed instruction from a refresher course to cope with the theological problems put forward by his flock.
He returned to Auckland to die in 1866 and was buried in the churchyard of St Stephen's chapel at Judges Bay. On the stone above his grave are the proud words: Te Matamua o Nga Minita Maori - The first of the Maori Ministers.
12, Revd Frederick Thatcher
Architect, churchman, secretary and close friend of Sir George Grey - Frederick Thatcher was another colonist able to turn his hand to a variety of occupations. Arriving at New Plymouth in 1843, he became an auctioneer; in Auckland he was successively superintendent of Public Works, secretary to the Governor, clerk of the Executive Council, and an officer in the Auckland Militia. He was ordained by Bishop Selwyn in 1853, and became Vicar of St Matthew's, Auckland, where he envisaged a stone church and so inspired his parishioners that he was able to establish the foundations of a fund that provided the present stone building.
His talent as an architect appears to have been employed at least to some extent in the Selwyn churches of Auckland also in one, long forgotten, that was built at Waikato Heads, Archdeacon Maunsell's station. A contemporary drawing shows a typical Selwyn structure and one of Archdeacon Maunsell's letters acknowledges the help of an Auckland architect with details that suggest it was Frederick Thatcher. This is confirmed by the journal of the Revd W. C. Cotton. Before he left New Zealand in 1868 he had designed the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Wellington and served another term as secretary to Sir George Grey. Born at Hastings, England, in 1814 he died in Derbyshire on 19 October 1890.
13, Henare Taratoa
In the private chapel of Bishop Selwyn's palace in Lichfield, England, was a remarkable historical window, intended to commemorate the act of a Maori leader at the battle of Gate Pa near Tauranga, New Zealand.
"The Maori general in question was named Henare Taratoa. He had been educated by the Bishop at S. John's College from about 1845 to 1853.... Henare sided with his countrymen in the war, but held to the Gospel as was shown by the action the painted window records. He was commanding the native forces at the fight after the disaster that befell the English at the Gate Pa. The English charged their rifle-pits and drove them out; the Maoris slowly retreated, facing the enemy, and were all bayoneted, showing a courage that won the admiration of the English. When Henare's body was searched they found on him the 'orders of the
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day' for fighting. They began with a form of prayer and ended with the words (in Maori): "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.' These were not idle words for on the occasion of the panic that occurred amongst our troops at the Gate Pa a few days before, several officers, naval and military, had got inside the Maori redoubt, and were left there, severely wounded. One dying of his wounds was tended all night by Henare Taratoa. The dying man asked for water. There was none inside the Maori redoubt... but there was water inside the English lines at the foot of Gate Pa; and Henare Taratoa crept down amongst the fern within reach of the sentries, and filled a calabash with water, which he successfully carried back to refresh the parched lips of his enemy."--Life of G. A. Selwyn by H. W. Tucker, 1879.
14, The Elusive Miss Clinton
This eccentric lady appears in the New Zealander, 21 December 1850, on the passenger list of the ship Sir Edward Paget as the Honble Henrietta Clinton. She arrived at Auckland, unheralded, with the expressed intention of sharing Bishop Selwyn's work but went back to England only a few weeks after her arrival in the Colony.
Two years later she reappeared in Auckland - again aboard the Sir Edward Paget. According to a fellow-traveller, Christopher William Richmond, Miss Clinton made her presence felt from the moment she set foot on deck, accompanied by a manservant. By the time the ship was approaching the Isle of Wight Miss Clinton was threatening to go ashore at Cowes unless the Captain could guarantee less noise from the younger passengers, and when one of this group announced his sudden engagement and imminent marriage to the daughter of a Cowes grocer, "Miss Clinton declared she would quit the ship" if a passage were arranged for the bride. Richmond refers to her as "the Auckland Soeur de Charite that is to be", but gives no further account of her except a long description of "a fine row at dinner".
She returned to England for the second time in the ship Commodore, sailing from Auckland on 9 August 1853.
15, W. R. Gundry and Family
William Richardson Gundry of Cornwall, England, came to Auckland in 1844 where he started a grocer's shop; in 1849 he became a chemist and druggist.
There are several references to the Gundry family in these journals. Margaret Rautangi, his wife, was a daughter of the northern chief, Patuone, and their children were described as "remarkably handsome and intelligent, with a strong artistic strain". The boys and girls were educated by the Revd A. G. Purchas at his Onehunga parsonage, then sent to England to finish their education. One of them, Arthur Gundry, was a gifted artist and a pupil of John Kinder's.
In A Record of St Andrew's Church and Parish by the Revd E. P. de L. Willis, there is a note on this young man: "The Font was erected to the memory of Arthur Gundry, a young half-caste Maori artist who had gone to England to pursue his studies and who had the honour of having at least
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one of his pictures accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy. He died suddenly at the age of 23."
Arthur Gundry's grand-niece, Mrs Mary Wi Repa of Opotiki (herself an artist), tells me that he also sketched Queen Victoria in pencil at the Queen's request, and that she gave him in return a signet ring with her crest on it. The old fashioned two-storied house that was for many years the Nurses' Home at St Helen's Hospital, Auckland, at one time belonged to the Gundry family.
16, Colonel Haultain
Theodore Minet Haultain had a distinguished military career before bringing out the Eighth Division of New Zealand Fencibles in 1840. His term of service with them was seven years, during which he lived for a short time at Onehunga and then at Panmure, finally leaving the Army to farm at Mangere. During the Waikato campaign he commanded the 2nd Waikato Regiment and in 1865 was elected to the General Assembly. He became Defence Minister in the Stafford Government and subsequently held several official posts.
17, A Letter from Mr Hills
The following extract is taken from a letter of 25 August 1850 to Bishop Selwyn from E. Hills, the former Howick parish schoolmaster. He explains why he was dismissed from the position to which he was later reinstated by Mr Lush: "... because I was not subservient to the measures of Mr Fisher 3 and Mrs Smith, as they wished me to be, in allowing the girls of the School to go to her (Mrs Smith's) house to work, and at the same time take them as present in the school.... It was determined by Mr Fisher and Capt. Smith and the person who now holds the situation named as my successor ere he came to the village [presumably Sergeant Pearce], Capt. Smith of course vouching for his efficiency to conduct the school.... I now keep a school on my own ground and the Church school is literally broken up and the schoolmastership a sinecure."
18, Lord Robert Cecil
Lord Robert Cecil eventually became Marquis of Salisbury and Prime Minister of Great Britain but his interest for readers of these journals lies in the lively diary he kept during his short visit to New Zealand in 1852.
Bishop Selwyn was away when he visited St John's College. "Mr Abraham took me into the Bishop's house and introduced me to his wife and Mrs Selwyn. They live in a comfortable little drawing-room with lots of books.... The ladies dined here [in Hall] too.... We were waited on by College boys who take it in turn to perform that office. The College cannot afford servants, and it is absolutely necessary the white boys should work as well as the Maoris in order to convince the Maoris that they are not being made drudges of.
"... When I rode home to my Inn, the first thing my landlord asked me was whether I did not think the College very like a jail - not a bad specimen of the popular feeling against the Bishop."
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A visit to Lady Grey brought a charge of "undisguised flattery" against the Bishop's friends; "Lady Grey who was a good deal at the College when the Governor lived in Auckland gave me many instances.... Even at breakfast in the College, when the Bishop speaks, everybody leans forward to listen. These are trifling traits doubtless, but they serve to indicate the flaw which has marred so much of the Bishop's work - conceit. Lady Grey, however, is very caustic and feels for her husband's alleged grievances."
On 20 July: "The Church at Howick is wooden, small, without any noticeable feature.... The Clergyman, Mr Luck [sic] receives from the Government exactly Sergeant's pay - about £50 a year. We lunched with him and his wife and after lionizing the Church we rode back."
19, The First Bishop of Melanesia
John Coleridge Patteson was yet another Old Etonian attracted to New Zealand by Bishop Selwyn, who consecrated him Bishop of Melanesia in 1861. He sailed with the Selwyn party that had been visiting England, on 29 March 1855, landing at Auckland on 6 July; an immediate and rough introduction to colonial conditions was a midwinter walk to Taranaki with the Bishop and Archdeacon Abraham. From then until his appointment to the diocese of Melanesia he made numerous journeys to "the multitude of the isles", collecting students for St Andrew's College at Kohimarama, and returning, before the winter, what Mrs Selwyn called his "hothouse plants" to their own sunny climate.
He became closely involved with Melanesia and its needs. When he was martyred in 1871 on the island of Nukapu, an English newspaper said, "two hemispheres mourn his loss".
20, The Voluntary System and Mr Churton
The Revd J. F. Churton, first incumbent of St Paul's church, arrived in Auckland before Bishop Selwyn; by 1842 this earliest Church of England building was half finished. Described as a good parish priest who engaged the affections of his people, Mr Churton found himself at loggerheads with his energetic and dictatorial Bishop. The basis of their disagreement was the Bishop's insistence on fixed salaries for his clergy. In his diary for 19 July 1857, Lord Robert Cecil explains the situation, while praising Mr Churton's work for the citizens of Auckland: "The Bishop's plan of having the local subscriptions paid - not direct to the Clergyman - but into the Bank of the Archdeaconry Account and then paid by the Archdeacon to the Clergyman, saves an immense deal of personal collision between the Minister and the people." Unfortunately the matter remained a lasting grievance with Mr Churton though there appears to have been little or no opposition elsewhere.
21, J. Thorp and Family
In 1839, Mr Joshua Thorp (1796-1862) bought a block of land at Te Kouma Bay, Coromandel. Three years later he made his home at Puke, near Paeroa on the Thames River, calling it Belmont after his family's place in Yorkshire; and in 1854 he bought the Beckby property at Clevedon, which became the family home. Here he and his wife died, and their eldest daughter Catherine married Francis Browne of Clermont, who had
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been at St John's College, Cambridge, with the first incumbent of All Souls' parish, the Revd Vicesimus Lush. Mr Thorp gave the two-acre site on which All Souls' church stands.
Mr Lush makes many references to the generous hospitality he received at Beckby. The strong-minded younger daughter of the house, Charlotte, stayed at her post all through the war period in spite of protests from the authorities. Her brother Hampton carried on the family work for Church and community until his death.
22, A Bavarian Christmas
From the journal of Charles Lush, 24 December 1863: "I helped Papa to decorate the Church for Christmas day. In the evening we all, except Edward, went to the Stockade to see the Germans receive their Christmas presents: all the presents were numbered and there was one box which had a number of slips of paper with a figure on each, and another box had slips of paper with a name on each. Then a person was fixed upon to take out the slips of paper with the figures on them, one by one, and at the same time there was [one] of the names taken out of the other box... so it was mere chance what present they received. One of the Ladies got a shaving case with razors and all complete."
Anne Lush received a huge stick of liquorice wrapped in gilt paper. A tree twinkled with lights and gay decorations and the party ended with the singing of Bavarian carols.
23, St John's College as a Social Centre
After leaving his first New Zealand home at the end of 1850 not without reason does Mr Lush refer to the College as (among other things) "that refuge of the afflicted". Apart from its use to the whole community as a cottage hospital, that in the earliest years was equipped with the rare luxury of a resident medical man - Dr A. G. Purchas - as well as a nurse of wide experience, it also qualified as an orphan home.
Bishop and Mrs Selwyn had virtually adopted the Hector family before 1850; their permanent home was the College and at least one daughter, Anna, was married from there. Lizzie Maling, 4 mentioned in the Lush journal as a "young friend of Blanney", was ward of Captain and Mrs Rough and during the Lush term of residence she was a guest of the College while her guardians were in England. Caroline Abraham does not mention her cousin Sasa's 5 reaction to these and other unfortunates collected under the Bishop's roof, but she does reveal that Willie Selwyn, their elder son, "does not endure all his Father's adopted daughters at all - but has good taste in the selection of those whom he will acknowledge as Sisters".
The diary of John Greenwood, former pupil at St John's and later a junior master, gives a vivid picture of College activities that tends to contradict the gaol-like image created by the Bishop's enemies. Certainly
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everyone worked hard and sometimes at rather unexpected occupations. "Busy after dinner cutting out clothes for the Maori Boys", Greenwood records in 1852 - and regrets that he is unable to attain a degree in this useful line.
Harvest Home was always celebrated, and less formal parties - some of which went on well into the small hours - seem to have been fairly frequent. A particularly lively affair was the occasion in Hall that marked Mr and Mrs Lloyd's wedding. "Mr Lloyd had sent out a quantity of all sorts of cakes, tarts, biscuits, &c., and a very large plum cake which cost 4/, and so in the evening after Chapel, Mr and Mrs Lloyd came into the Hall and sat on the dais with Mary [Greenwood: the diarist's sister]. We received them with tremendous cheering, gong, trumpets, &c., and then with charades, games, songs; the Maori war dance, &c., agreeably interspersed with Kai and Negus, made a very merry and very noisy evening. Certainly Mr and Mrs Lloyd and Co. did laugh with a right good will.... Mrs Lloyd was quite frightened when a number of the Maories came in with mats and spears and danced the war dance with appropriate yells, &c. Altogether the whole affair went off capitally and I went to bed very tired, stiff and hoarse."
Music, drawing and painting were encouraged as hobbies, as was discussion and the use of the library, in the Bishop's house. Mrs Selwyn's invitations to breakfast were much sought after; she and Mrs Abraham were always ready with encouragement in any form of the arts.
From John Greenwood's and other accounts it seems that in the early 1850s an almost continuous stream of visitors, convalescents and unfortunates of all kinds, shuttled through the College to be advised and consoled by the Bishop, his wife - and the supreme head in the medical field after Dr Purchas's departure: Mrs Selwyn's "Old Nurse".
24, The Campanile, or What They Said at the Time
It was Mrs Selwyn's vision that provided a peal of bells - with the help of friends in England and the sale of her own diamonds - for a future cathedral to be built on the land Bishop Selwyn had bought in Parnell with this in mind. They were designed for the tower of the Cathedral Library near old Bishopscourt, now known as Selwyn Court.
Vicesimus Lush inspected the bells on 19 June 1864. He was disappointed. The tower was not strong enough to support them; instead of being rung they were struck by "machinery" and could not be heard a hundred yards from the tower.
The Revd Richard Taylor had better news of them by 1866: "Mrs Selwyn has presented a peal of eight bells, these are placed for the present in a tower adjoining the Library until the future Cathedral shall claim them. As a proof that everything is reversed at the antipodes, these bells are placed in the ground chamber of the tower and the ringers ascend to the room above... and ring the bells under their feet." The peal was subsequently lent to St Matthew's church, Auckland.
25, St Andrew's Melanesian College, Kohimarama
Charlotte M. Yonge, Victorian author, gave this college its name and endowed it with not inconsiderable royalties from her novel, The Daisy
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Chain. The land on which the last of the original buildings still stands was occupied in the 1840s by a school for Maori girls, which was eventually burnt. In December 1859 the Melanesian scholars at St John's College were moved to this warmer and more sheltered position after a dining-hall, kitchen, store-room and shelter wall had been built from "Rangitoto stone" or scoria. A school-room eighty feet long was moved to Kohimarama from St John's, also a dormitory where the students slept in hammocks, "laced to the walls". The College was transferred to Norfolk Island in 1867. Appropriately two tall Norfolk pines have survived on the original site; according to tradition they were planted by Bishop Selwyn and Bishop Patteson of Melanesia.
