1992 - Hobhouse, Mary. The Selected Letters of Mary Hobhouse - Family Life, 1861, p 66-81

Nelson, Jan 8 1861

My dear Eliza

The Synod is obliged to sit in the Chapel & began its session yesterday evening after service at 5.30, & resumed it this morning from 9 till 1.

1. Mr Bagshawe Rector of Motueka
An able zealous man of the evangelical school.

2. Mr Butt Wairau
Come out w. the Bp. when he first came. A high Calvinist, and bad man of business, 10 children running wild.

3. Mr Bird
Sent by Edmund as Tutor & Chaplain to a sheep farm on East Coast. Very good, very deaf, very dull.

4. Mr Poole
Richmond - 8 miles frm. this. A remarkably weak individual.

5. Mr Tudor
Who you surely know has been living with us for more than a year.

6. Mr Bowden
Living now in Nelson.

7. Meysey Turton

8. Mr Codrington

9. Mr Brown
Taranaki -- in an amateur capacity.

There you have a catalogue raisonne of the Clerical body of the Diocese.

I hope not to ask for anything more for the next 6 or 8 months. Before concluding though I must get hold of my slippery husband to ask him if he can wait so long.

Groceries. I beg therefore to have another

1 cwt of composite candles at 11/6 per doz none of the better kind.

56 lbs yellow soap at 48/- as before.

12/- or 15/- worth of starch, as before,

1 Quart orange flower water that is about 24?

1 doz bottles lemon & almond essence at 1/6 ea.

3 vanilla do.

2 lbs candlewicks for moulds (Deborah is bent on some candles for ourselves!)

Books etc. On the other side I make a list of little books I want frm. S.P.C.K

Clothing etc. A few small articles I am writing to the Thomases about, & also some little things of leather & cutlery & haberdashery for presents to young ladies; & to maids. I hv. conferred the greatest delight by some the Thomases sent me before. I suppose my order may be from £5 to £7, and the shoes I asked them to get by last mail will be £2 more. Please tell them when there is likely to be an opportunity. I have resolved against any order for Scotch goods just now.

Baths a nest of 3 or 4 tin baths, of this sort of shape & proportion not so flat as the sponging baths sold in shops. They

must have some kind of lip. Diameter of biggest at top 2 ft 8, at bottom 1.7. If any are made stronger than tin such as galvanized iron, they wd. be better.

S.P.C.K Packets of reward cards.
4 of No. 1 Hymns 10d.
4 No. 2 Parables
4 No. 3 Life of our Lord.
4 Seashore birds at 1.0
2 Ditto extra 2/6
6 No. 7 Picture tickets at 6d.
Wild Flowers Cold, in 1 vol with descriptions 18.
3 more sets Parkers Cottage prints & N. Testament
6 Book of poetry for schools. Bell. I would rather not have these unless the woodcuts have been renewed. The copy I got out had the pictures all blotted & effaced.

Edmund bids me add
6 toothbrushes. Metcalfe 66.s

and I shd. like to have 3 rather softer than those of his, & as narrow as may be. I hate a thing that scratches one's gums as one uses it.

Also a strong but not very large tortoiseshell (combing) comb, for I cannot use bone, though I grudge the cost of tortoiseshell. Done.

The College, Nelson. Feb. 1861.

My dear Augusta, [Mary's cousin]

I was overwhelmed with shame when at the end of the year I reviewed my own letter-book, in wh. I conscientiously register all letters sent & received, & found what a balance was against me with most of my correspondents. But I hope to make up for my delinquencies in a measure now that I am quite strong again, & I have the more need to make the most of the present because if my delightful Nurse were to leave me at any time I suppose I shd. find my day hopelessly consumed by the charge of the baby. She is the only Nurse I have ever seen or heard of here, children being generally consigned to the care of some girl varying in age from 12 to 18.

When the Bishop of N. Z. first came out, he & Mrs Selwyn

lived for some time either in tents or huts made of bulrush, for which one pitied them, but now that I look at the subject from a nearer point of view I see that being intent on their missionary work themselves & not having any servants, it was by far the best thing to make it clear that they were not living like civilized people. When people are in those circumstances they ought to reduce their establishment to that of an officer on a march. But I am amused at remembering that Lord Midleton told me the Bp. of N. Z. had fixed the needful amount of a Colonial Bp.'s expenditure at £350 per ann., when the rent of houses here is about the same as at Blackheath, provisions about the same, & for an establishment of a housekeeper, a nurse, & 2 raw girls (without a man of any kind indoors) one pays £90 a year. For a tolerable gardener you pay £2.2.0 a week or £109 a year, a handsome sum to spend on vegetables & flowers. I do not say a flower-garden, for that, in the common sense of the term, is a thing absolutely unknown here.

And by the bye what can be the meaning of a Pistol-gram of a baby, I saw advertized in recent newspapers. My little son's talents are daily developing & most diligently cultivated by his nurse who informs me that he must very soon have a toy of some kind, one of those horrible looking things made up of rabbit skin in the similitude of a boneless legless cat or dog, is what she recommends. He has a pair of great blue eyes wh. I suppose will some day be like Edmund's.

January 20, 1862

I have been re-perusing this long lost MS with some curiosity to see whether it still serves as a correct account of things. It was written just as the baby was recovering from the illness that so nearly carried him off, & now the great blue eyes have sunk down behind a pair of immense fat cheeks & instead of looking thoughtful & wise, twinkle incessantly.

The Wood, Nelson, March 2d 1861

My dear Eliza,

I must try to express my gratitude & delight at the splendid trousseau for my son. I had deliberately refrained from asking to

have any things sent, in the idea that either they must be bought at those expensive children's shops, or else entail an immensity of trouble. The preparation of clothes for baby before its arrival seemed to me such an overwhelming undertaking... and I have such a strong feeling of the fragility of those tender baby lives that I should have an almost superstitious reluctance to order things a year beforehand.

Great was the rejoicing of the maids over the promised cargo, for they all think me terribly regardless of appearances, & I must own that up to this time I have been guided entirely by my notions of what he finds comfortable, not what others think becoming, & as there is a tremendous glare here, instead of a stand up hood I give him to the great distress of the household a white dimity bonnet with a dark blue lining to the front of it.

It would have been a sad fate for him if he had had to wait till either Deborah or I had made his clothes, for she never gets through more than the regular course of repairs or alterations & I never take a needle in my hand except when now & then Edmund reads aloud to me for half an hour, & then it is generally to sew on buttons or patch up rents for him. I little thought what the charge of a baby was when I talked of having it myself. From his having to be fed, he gives a great deal more trouble than a sucking baby, & being so often ailing he has unfortunately got the habit of being constantly nursed in one's arms, so that his Nurse never has many minutes to spare for needlework. She washes his clothes & does out the nursery, & that seems the most that she can get through.

Of course he is out of doors almost all day, which is not favorable [sic] for industry.

Your godson is well, but I cannot say thriving for his teeth are tormenting him and he seems to me to grow smaller instead of bigger. He is decidedly a small baby for 7 months old. He is excessively good and when he is in spirits very funny. For nearly a week after Edmund's return from Auckland he would only stare at him with a look of grave and almost reproachful enquiry paying no attention to his songs or whistling, but having thoroughly learnt him by heart he is now exceedingly fond of him, and begins making demonstrations to attract his notice the moment he sees him.

5 March 1861

In the winter nights what with schoolmasters & Chapel, our [candle] consumption is enormous. In fact 2 candles in the drawing room, & in each of Edmund's, Mr. Tudor, Mr. Wilson, the nursery, & the servants' hall, makes 7 candles burning at once, so that in a long winter's evening there is not much less than 1 lb burnt, without the Chapel.

Nelson, March 9, 1861

[To Fanny]

If the English summer has been healthy for children, it is a great contrast to ours for there has been much sickness amongst them here.

It would be delightful to have a garden here under a clever gardener who would make the most of the capabilities of the climate. With a little trouble one might have flowers almost all the year in blow, but left to themselves they flower in immense profusion at one season & then stop altogether. When one has many other things to attend to, & not too much head to manage them, an additional charge of any kind becomes a bore, so I make up my mind to go with a few common flowers, & concentrate my pains on the tidiness of the garden a point sorely neglected generally. Mr. Turton has made his little garden a perfect model. I cannot say what an addition Mr. Turton & Mr. Codrington are to our inner circle of society, in fact they constitute it. My sister & Mr. Turton take long rides together & as he is a gregarious person the advantage is a mutual one. I am still in suspense as to the duration of her stay here, as it must depend on whether her husband can come here & whether he feels justified in giving up his profession soon.

Monday Ap 8

[To Eliza]

It is I think a disgrace to this place that having just spent a quantity of money on large shewy buildings for Governt. offices & College, of a very unsubstantial nature, they have no provision whatever for insane people except 3 little wooden rooms wh. are now quite full, & no provision for infirm or old people but a range of miserable dilapidated buildings, like a street in an Irish village. These were originally put up as barracks for the earlier emigrants & in their undilapidated state were for that purpose quite adequate, but now they represent alms houses, workhouse, & supplement to the lunatic Asylum. I never was there till the other day & the stench in the middle of the square wh. the buildings surround, from some neighbouring outhouses seemed to me enough to supply cholera & diptheria [sic] to the whole inmates.

There have been no victories [in Taranaki] except of large forces over handfuls of Maoris, and we have certainly done nothing in this campaign to lessen the profound contempt of the natives for British soldiers. What this new General may do I don't know but now we hear rumours of peace being patched. 1

If so it will probably all begin over again in a few years unless they (that is the government) will find some better system for managing Maori affairs. The Maoris wisely enough have profound contempt for the collective wisdom of the millers and public-house keepers of N.Z. as expressed in the debates of the Assembly and unless a Governor can have full powers to conduct native affairs I don't see how they are to be conducted. How can the natives expect justice when the people who covet every inch of their land, are the makers of laws? I seldom say anything about these matters because it is useless to write unless I could write a volume on them, and as for this particular land question one may as well try to get a bird's eye view of a complicated case in Chancery, as to put it into a few sentences. I have always delayed telling you what I could of the natives round us, (apart from these affairs) hoping for time to write fully, and alas! the time has never come.

Our Sunday School too flourishes greatly both as to Teachers

and children, but we sadly want funds for it, or rather we want funds to enable us to establish one or more offshoots in the outlying districts. You ask something about the thickly peopled parts of the Town. Have you realized that in the very centre, the rows forming the street are incomplete, spaces between every 3 or 4, yet to be filled up. I wish I could send you drawings of the grand streets! Most of what are so called in the map are either wide roads or green lanes dotted with houses and trees.

But the great want of all is more clergy. Ed and Mr. Turton are quite unequal to the work of this place as they do it, & there are country districts crying out too.

I am in bed myself today, having got a chill the night I stood at the open window, and besides a chill I have got something about me which has made me very uncomfortable for a week past, so I am scribbling in a horizontal posture.

Soon after the [Brown] girls came here last year I asked one of the elder ones whether such & such people from Taranaki were ladies? She was quite at a loss, & could not tell me in the least, though they were people she knew quite well, to what class they belonged. I must say it disturbs me to find how common minded a person the said Mrs. Brown is, and how entirely without interests beyond her kitchen & wash tub excepting indeed that of kindness to her neighbours. The girls are such nice intelligent creatures that it is very vexatious to find that the whole conversation and observation at home turns on their neighbours' children and the shopping. And it is vexatious too to see them come to Church in such shabby badly made garments that they catch one's eye as they sit amongst neatly dressed farmers' daughters & Sunday School girls.

And now for a closing summary. Edmund is well, but his head is certainly not strong. My belief is that it has never recovered the pressure of our last year at home. He spares it more than he used to, but not enough. However it is useless to worry him with vain entreaties about it.

April 10, 1861

The winter 2 months shorter as to vegetation than at home. There is an extraordinary exuberance of vegetable life. On the other hand there is an exuberance of animal life in the shape of

slugs, caterpillars, green fly & blight of every kind that is exceedingly annoying. I hope some day to give you an account of the native & adopted trees that are about the Town. I will only mention now 2, a thick shrubby mimosa wh. I think in 2 years fr[om] sowing will make a thick bushy hedge 6 feet high of a splendid full green. The other the blue gum adopted from Australia wh. whilst quite young & has not attained its final shape, shoots up into lordly pyramids & out tops all its neighbours.

There is just arrived from Taranaki permission for all those who live in or near the Town to return & many will go, but it is a great risk. No one believes in this treaty wh. is not signed by half the parties concerned, & war is sure to smoulder & break out again. It is just a year since our Taranaki refugees came tumbling in upon us late on Easter Eve! I shall never forget the procession that appeared to me to be advancing as I stood at the door.

As extraordinary misconceptions seem still to prevail with regard to Col[onial] households I really must endeavour to give you a sketch of ours during the last 15 months.

Girls cannot be had even in the rawest state, at a moment's notice. The first, who came as a footman was a very nice creature of 14, who tho' she appeared 1st in netted red worsted sleeves & wide gilt bracelets, addressed me as Mrs. Hobhouse & volunteered a good deal of conversation, soon dropped these practices partly by being so desired & partly by instinct. Next we secured a y[oun]g lady as housemaid of distinguished family, for her father was a schoolmaster & she had been apprenticed to a first rate house in Oxford St. She soon captivated our softhearted Mr. Philpotts (who had an undying attachment to a girl in Oxford but seemed always to require another on the spot) for whilst I in my simplicity, had tho[ugh]t he was proof against any attachments here, he had, after flirting with a widow & proposing to a young beauty who refused him, consoled himself by making love to Elizabeth so they were engaged, after which much to the black eyed damsel's surprise I helped to restore her to the bosom of her family. Do let me tell you the costume in which my strong kitchen maid appeared, as I found her the day after her arrival standing at the sink. It will give you an idea of

what people allow their servants to wear. Faded & washed out skirt of a non washing material over a large hoop, loose jacket of another material, & tawny hue, black velvet & large spangles on her head & in her ears large drop gold earrings!! At Church a flounced muslin, & bonnet richly trimmed with white jessamine! I have given the girl no peace till this style of attire is in process of reformation. The spangles & earrings & jessamine I was peremptory about, but it is a long time before the idea of tidiness & becomingness can be forced into their heads. People submit to see such figures in their houses because they are afraid to speak wh is a total mistake. A vigorous paternal (or maternal) government is the only thing for these raw households & the only way I can reconcile myself to the expenditure of tho[ugh]t & time this entails is by considering the household as a training school, in wh. the good -- religious, moral & professional -- of the scholars is our main object.

Visiting ones friends in the Country
Spring Grove Parsonage, April 27

Two days ago Edmund and I left home to have a rustic holiday. Mr. Codrington always warned us he had only 1 empty room to offer and that we must bring our own furniture.

On Thursday then Ed preceded me on foot. I set forth in a cart (not a dog cart but a real cart) in which were piled bedstead, mattrasses, folding chairs, a wash tub full of provisions and innumerable blankets. Reclining luxuriously on this pile I jogged on for the space of 12 miles on the only road out of Nelson that boasts of much length.

[Mr. Codrington's] first enquiry however was startling.

'Have you brought any bread?' 'Bread? No! I thought your difficulty was about meat!' 'Well, it is difficult sometimes to get meat, but we have had no bread for a week!'

I began recounting my stores -- beef, cheese, rice, tea, sugar, coffee. Even spice, plums and suet to shew how to make plum pudding, but bread there was not, & when Edmund arrived hungry & we were all to sit down to tea 1 1/4 scone was all the farinacious food that cd be mustered. After much pondering I suggested potatoes & with these & tough beef steak we appeased our hunger.

May 10, Spring Grove Parsonage

Today has realised the idea of the young lady who tho[ugh]t that col[onial] life was a perpetual picnic. Ed wanted an early breakfast bef his start for Nelson. Nurse can't get up & disturb baby, & the Swede doesn't, so I made a grand display of activity by getting up myself, drawing water for our baths, making coffee and laying breakfast (in the kitchen). Afterwards Nurse set to, to stew & bake our dinner & Mr. Codn & I sat down in the open air waited on by a butler of 8 years old (Nurse's child) a most useful & important personage. We dined in the garden not by choice but because otherwise we should have dined in kitchen or nursery. I know you are dying to know what the dinner was. An admirable one I assure you, a stew of mutton & veg marrow (quite original), beautiful potatoes, a bread & apple pudding baked in a camp oven & afterwards a cup of coffee!

But bef the last light of a rosy sunset fades out of the sky let me tell you how lovely the view is here. I sit in the verandah looking across a wide flat valley bounded by a chain of mountains (or rather chain behind chain) that runs down to the sea to the left where Nelson is and up into more mountains to the right. Immediately in front of me are expanses of meadow dotted with houses & clumps of trees, in wh there is nothing unEnglish, but, to the left, masses of flax and cabbage palm trees rising out of them give a distinctly foreign aspect. There are some fine mountain tops towering over the rest & sprinkled with snow, which soon will quite cover them, but on the whole the outline is too broken for beauty or majesty.

Tomorrow alas! I must leave this for good. I can't leave Edmund to contend with impending hospitalities caused by Synod alone, & Maria is coming again on Monday so I can with ease of mind leave baby to his good little nurse's care.

There has been nothing but constant round of Influenza, bronchitis, ulcerated sore throat, low fever and diptheria [sic], which is not yet concluded. Even in the Oxford fogs that used to prostrate the newly arrived undergraduates, I don't think these could have been anything like the sickness there has been here for 9 months past, in proportion to the population.

Nelson, June 11 1861

My dear Eliza,

Your little godson really begins to have a biography now, & one of the most important facts about him is his fortitude & good temper though he can scold & roar as forcibly as any baby in Nelson at times. The time to see him in full force is when he gets off all his clothes in the evening & sits up on his nurse's knee slapping his own fat legs & pulling his toes. In the morning the pleasure of being naked is clouded by the expectation of washing, a ceremony which hitherto I have thought it needless to repeat at night. He is so completely changed in the last 6 weeks by getting fat & robust that I really shd. scarcely recognize him as my old baby. He is now what at 3 months he promised to be, poor little fellow, a solid, merry, active baby. He is much less interesting looking; for his great blue eyes have sunk into his cheeks & his transparent fragile look has quite gone off.

Nelson, August 10, 1861

My dear Eliza,

Next, our precious little Wakky 2 cut a tooth, the first in his head though he is nearly a year old, & that caused great excitement especially amongst the Clergy. He took it very quietly himself & only exhibited a slight accession of peremptoriness in his orders. His nurse informed us with great gravity next day that he had 'got to know he had a tooth'!

And now, such is the excitement of this place we are diligently rehearsing for a concert wh. is to buy a piano for the Harmonic Society. I confess I don't like selling tickets for our performances, but this is considered an idle scruple.

9 September 1861

[To Henry Hobhouse, Hadspen House]

You kindly ask whether we should like to have any more seeds. When opportunity offers we shd. like very much to have about a dozen acorns, walnuts & Spanish chestnuts, for the sake of having them from Hadspen. They shd. be packed in charcoal, in a glass bottle like the last. There is now an abundance of young trees in one of the two Nursery grounds here, of all ordinary

kinds, and a good many choice ones. The Canterbury people have discovered that they can get trees 10 or 12 feet high out from England by having them taken up in winter and the roots matted. They are merely put down into the hold of the ship and planted on arriving, and it is said that they come out here as if nothing had happened. It seems to me however that there must be considerable risk & trouble in it.

We are fortunate enough just now to have got a man who is waiting for more remunerative employment to work at putting our garden in order at the low wages of 5/- a day. You may judge how lucky we think ourselves when I tell you that the Board of Works have just been advertizing for 100 hands at 10/-a day to prepare the course of the tramroad which they are making to carry the riches of the Dun Mountain down to the Port, & the day is 8 hours work. There is a great rush to new gold and coal diggings at the mouth of the Buller River on the W[est] Coast which has raised wages for the present. This makes me rejoice (in spite of butter being 2/6 per lb) that we have got rid of our cows. An excellent horse is a much less troublesome member of the domestic circle. One does not live in fear of his turning to beef instead of milk, and I or the kitchen maid can catch him if necessary, besides he mows the lawn as neatly as some of the hands we have employed to do it with a scythe.

Nelson, October 11, 1861

My dear Eliza,

I seldom have felt more unequal to the bustle & strain of a mail than I do at this present, whether from the remains of a bilious attack or from over-fatigue in gardening, or from the oppressive spring weather wh. is making us all complain I don't know... 3

22 October 1861

My dear Eliza,

Flounced muslins not suitable for colonial wear, want constant ironing, as I discovered as soon as I ceased to have a maid, besides the trouble of getting up. Besides we are told, & the

goods by last ship as well as the elegant ladies who crowd public spectacles in the pp of the Illus[trate]d News, confirm the statement that flounces are quite gone out.

Nelson, All Saints Day, 1861

My dear Eliza,

Your report to Edd. of what she herself [Mrs Selwyn] says about these heterogeneous menages wh. they used to have, interested me much. I had myself come to the same conclusion from the evidence of people who either lived with them or saw their interior often in those days, as well as from our own experiment, but I had no idea that Mrs. Selwyn herself wd. hv. admitted it. With regard to ourselves I long ago meant to have told you that you must think Edd. is strangely altered if you suppose it possible that punctuality & order shd. be sacrificed to anything in his house, or a general system of muddle acquiesced in. Whether one's guests are many or few, high or low, there is no reason for not sitting down to meals as punctually as the clock strikes. Edmund thinks our miscellaneous inmates were not our own choice, but I cannot agree with him, for Mr. Philpotts might hv. been in a lodging just as well as Mr. Wilson and we needed never have embraced our good stupid friend Edmd. Jennins [sic] in our domestic circle. But I never made any opposition to that kind of life at the time because I thought it much better to let the experiment be fairly tried. If it really was either necessary or a furtherance of Edmd.'s work, personal comfort was not a valid argument against it.

I shall try to get away from home & from the babies [sic] for 10 days this month or next for I confess to requiring change, though I despise myself for doing so, both in mind and body. I cannot shake off the weight of fidgetty little trifles wh. I know to be mere trifles but they are like the cords of the Lilliputians.

1861, Residents of Nelson District

[Unaddressed]

I will begin with the Waimea Valley district and Wakapuaka, which constitute the neighbourhood of Nelson.

Stoke - 4 miles from Nelson. No resident clergyman. Sunday

Services by a lay reader, and Mr. Turton once a month. 2 or 3 gentleman farmers (that is people who have raised themselves somewhat above common farmers) are the principal people here. The rest are small farmers and cottagers with a bit of land.

Richmond - 8 miles - d[itt]o. d[itt]o. as to residents. One a clever, sensible, right thinking Cornishman - Mr. Barnicoat is very well-known to us and a useful man in Church matters - No resident Clergyman now. Service every Sy. morning by Mr. Codrington rivers permitting.

Spring Grove and Waimea W. about 2 miles apart - and 13 or 14 from Nelson.

A church at each served partly by Mr. Codrington (resident at Spring Grove) and Mr. Poole (resident at Wakefield). At Spring Grove there is a shop and a public house, also a cluster of houses within a quarter of a mile. At Waimea W. you look about in vain for a thing to which to give the name. At Spring Grove, besides the Parsonage there are its near neighbours, within 5 minutes walk, Mr. and Mrs. Tuckey. They have Mr. Bowden's former farm -- (and a station in the Wairau). They form our daily society when we are at Mr. Codrington's.

The nearest neighbours after them are at Waimea W., Capt. and Mrs. Blundell - very nice people, but with a family of unruly, unmannerly boys and girls growing up round them. One or two other families of small gentry are near them. On the opposite side of Spring Grove, that is S[outh], and up close to the hills are 2 new families - A Mr. and Mrs. Miles lately married, said to be connections of the Bristol Miles's, and a Dr. Cusack and family, a great acquisition to people on that side of the troublesome Wairoa for one he is a very able medical man - formerly in practice in Dublin.

Wakefield - up almost in the mountains, very scattered and no rich people except Ed. Baigent Esq. who came out here as a footman (whether in or out of livery does not appear) and now has a saw-mill. An empty schoolmaster's house has been converted into a Parsonage for Mr. and Mrs. Poole - but their means being very small and their family large, they do not think they can remain there, and talk of returning home. Beyond this no civilization nor any road.

Wakapuaka NE of Nelson, a district not a village. No resi-

dent Clergyman. Two schoolrooms 4 and 7 miles respectively from Nelson are lent for Sy. Service. Mr. Tudor had the charge of this district, and of the Maoris beyond. Edmund takes the services as best he can now, and occasionally Mr. Bowden goes out, but he undertakes no regular Sunday duty.

The aristocracy of Wakapuaka, consisting of three families, as I mentioned before -- are Mr. Pierson -- Mr. Collins junior, and Mr. Mackay -- a Scotchman and one of the earliest settlers. They are all people with whom one associates on terms of equality. There are a few farmers and a good many cottagers scattered about besides.

Collingwood - Mr and Mrs Halcombe, as you know, are settled there. There is no one there who makes the least profession of gentility, except a Mrs. Johnson, wife of the collector of I forget what. There are a few farmers, pretty well off, and the families of some of the diggers. Mr. Halcombe has several distant services in the schoolrooms up the valleys.

Motueka A Church - Clergyman Mr. Bagshawe who also (unfortunately for his parish, but fortunately for education) has a small boarding school. He was Principal of the College here, and is an able and zealous man. At Motueka there is a most distinguished circle of society - Dr. Greenwood's family, Lieut. Pocock, R.N. and his wife - the Bagshawes, our remarkable friend Mr. Jennings - Campbells - he is said to be brother to a real Scotch baronet and I believe it is true - and 2 or 3 less distinguished families but all in condition to associate with each other. Compared to any of the others, this seems a gay bustling place. There are 2 shops in it and a nice little Inn.