Part 16 (2/2)
Capital trout-fis.h.i.+ng, some good deer-shooting, and a fine supply of rabbits, hares, and wild ducks help to console the sportsman for the scarcity of dangerous game. As might be expected in an educated people pa.s.sionately fond of out-door exercises, well fed and clothed, and with sun and sea air for tonics, drink is not their national vice.
Gambling, especially over horse races, has more claim to that bad eminence. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the land rings with denunciations of drink, while comparatively little has until quite lately been said against gambling.
Of colonial art there is not much to be said. Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quant.i.ty. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings.
Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, reading, and flower gardening are the three chief refining pastimes. The number and size of the musical societies is worthy of note. So are the booksellers' shops and free libraries. The books are the same as you see in London shops. There is no colonial literature. As for flowers, New Zealanders promise to be as fond of them as the j.a.panese. There is a newspaper of some description in the Islands to about every 1,500 adults. Every locality may thus count upon every item of its local news appearing in print. The Colonists who support this system may be a.s.sumed to get what they want, though, of course, under it quality is to some extent sacrificed to number. As a cla.s.s the newspapers are honest, decent, and energetic as purveyors of news. Every now and then public opinion declares itself on one side, though the better known newspapers are on the other. But on the average their influence is not slight. There is no one leading journal. Of the four or five larger morning newspapers, the _Otago Daily Times_ shows perhaps the most practical knowledge of politics and grasp of public business. It is partisan, but not ferociously so, except in dealing with some pet aversion, like the present Minister of Lands. You may read in it, too, now and then, what is a rarity indeed in colonial journalism--a paragraph written in a spirit of pure, good-natured fun.
The working cla.s.ses are better, the others more carelessly, dressed than in England. The workpeople are at the same time more nomadic and thriftier. Amongst the middle cla.s.ses, industrious as they are, unusual thrift is rare. Their hospitality and kindliness do not prevent them from being hard bargainers in business.
Compared with the races from which they have sprung, the Islanders seem at once less conventional, less on their guard, and more neighbourly and sympathetic in minor matters. In politics they are fonder of change and experiment, more venturesome, more empirical, law-abiding, but readier to make and alter laws. Hypercritical and eaten up by local and personal jealousies in public life, they are less loyal to parties and leaders, and less capable of permanent organization for a variety of objects. They can band themselves together to work for one reform, but for the higher and more complex organization which seeks to obtain a general advance along the line of progress by honourable co-operation and wise compromise, they show no great apt.i.tude. In politics their pride is that they are practical, and, indeed, they are perhaps less ready than Europeans to deify theories and catchwords. They are just as suspicious of wit and humour in public men, and just as p.r.o.ne to mistake dulness for solidity. To their credit may be set down a useful impatience of grime, gloom, injustice, and public discomfort and bungling.
In social life they are more sober and more moral, yet more indifferent to the opinion of any society or set. Not that they run after mere eccentrics; they have a wholesome reserve of contempt for such. British in their dislike to take advice, their humbler position among the nations makes them more ready to study and learn from foreign example. Though there is no division into two races as in London, it would be absurd to pretend that social distinctions are unknown. Each town with its rural district has its own ”society.” The best that can be said for this inst.i.tution is that it is not, as a rule, dictated to by mere money. It is made up of people with incomes mostly ranging from 500 to 2,000, with a sprinkling of bachelors of even more modest means. Ladies and gentlemen too poor to entertain others will nevertheless be asked everywhere if they have either brightness or intellect, or have won creditable positions. You see little social arrogance, no attempt at display. Picnics, garden parties, and outings in boats and yachts are amongst the pleasanter functions. A yacht in New Zealand means a cutter able to sail well, but quite without any luxury in her fittings. The indoor gatherings are smaller, more kindly, less formal, less glittering copies of similar affairs in the mother country.
Brilliant talkers there are none. But any London visitor who might imagine that he was about to find himself in a company of clownish provincials would be much mistaken. A very large proportion of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often pleasant and interesting talkers, refres.h.i.+ngly free from mannerism or self-consciousness.
They both gain and lose by being without a leisured cla.s.s; it narrows their horizon, but saves them from a vast deal of hysterical nonsense, social mischief and blatant self-advertising. Though great readers of English newspapers and magazines, and much influenced thereby in their social, ethical, and literary views, their interest in English and European politics is not very keen. A cherished article of their faith is that Russia is England's irreconcileable foe, and that war between the two is certain. Both their geographical isolation and their const.i.tution debar them from having any foreign policy. In this they contentedly acquiesce. Loyal to the mother country, resolved not to be absorbed in Australia, they are torpid concerning Imperial Federation.
Their own local and general politics absorb any interest and leisure not claimed by business and pastimes. Their isolation is, no doubt, partly the cause of this. It takes their steamers from four to six days to reach Australia, and nearly as long to travel from one end of their own land to the other. Most of them can hardly hope to see Europe, or even Asia or America, or any civilized race but their own.
This is perhaps the greatest of their disadvantages. Speedier pa.s.sage across the oceans which divide them from the rest of the human race must always be in the forefront of their aims as a nation.
Industrious, moral, strong, it is far too soon to complain of this race because it has not in half a century produced a genius from amongst its scanty numbers. Its mission has not been to do that, but to lay the foundations of a true civilization in two wild and lonely, though beautiful, islands. This has been a work calling for solid rather than brilliant qualities--for a people morally and physically sound and wholesome, and gifted with ”grit” and concentration. There is such a thing as collective ability. The men who will carve statues, paint pictures, and write books will come, no doubt, in good time. The business of the pioneer generations has been to turn a bloodstained or silent wilderness into a busy and interesting, a happy, if not yet a splendid, state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about New Zealand are numerous enough. A critic need not be fastidious to regret that most of them are not better written, useful and interesting as they are in the ma.s.s. Every sort of information about the country is to be got from them, but not always with pleasure or ease. To get it you must do a good deal of the curst hard reading which comes from easy writing. And even then, for the most part, it is left to your own imaginative power to see--
”The beauty, and the wonder, and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades, Changes, surprises.”
The undoubted and agreeable exceptions, too, require in you some knowledge of the Islands, if they are to be enjoyed. How is that knowledge to be obtained? A hard-headed student with a hearty appet.i.te for facts might, of course, start with F.J. Moss's careful and accurate school history and the latest Government Year Book in his hand, and would soon be well on his way. Those who like easier paths to knowledge may try Edward Wakefield's ”New Zealand After Fifty Years,” or Gisborne's ”Colony of New Zealand.” When one comes to periods, districts, or special subjects, the choice is much wider.
To begin at the beginning; ”Tasman's Log” is little but dry bones; of Cook and Crozet I have written elsewhere. Of the writers who tell of Alsatian days, none is worth naming in the same breath with Maning.
Personally I like Polack and Savage the best of them, despite the lumbering pretentiousness and doubtful veracity of the former. Earle and Major Cruise are more truthful than readable--conditions which are exactly reversed in the case of Rutherford. If, as is said, Lord Brougham helped to write Rutherford's narrative, he did his work very well; but after the exposure of its ”facts” by Archdeacon W.L.
Williams, it can only be read as the yarn of a runaway sailor, who had reasons for not telling the whole truth, and a capacity and knowledge of local colour which would have made him a capital romance-writer, had he been an educated man. As a picture of the times, Rutherford's story in the ”Library of Entertaining Knowledge” will always, however, be worth reading.
The missionaries have not been as fortunate in their chroniclers as they deserve. The tumid cant of Nicholas is grotesque enough to be more amusing than the tract-and-water style of Yate and Barret Marshall, or the childishness of Richard Taylor. Much better in every way are Buller's (Wesleyan) ”Forty Years In New Zealand,” and Tucker's ”Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn.”
Among the descriptions of the country as it was when the colonists found it, Edward Shortland's account of the whalers and Maoris of the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield's of the founding of the New Zealand Company's settlements, Dieffenbach's travels, and Bidwill's unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest to read.
On the Maoris, their myths, legends, origin, manners, and customs, William Colenso is admittedly the chief living authority. For his views it is necessary to go to pamphlets, and to search the Transactions of the New Zealand Inst.i.tute, where much other good material will also reward the seeker. To John White's ill-jointed but invaluable compilation ”The Ancient History of the Maori,” every student henceforth will have to turn. The selections therein from the papers of Stack on the South Island Maoris, from Travers' ”Life of Te Rauparaha,” and Wilson's ”Story of Te Waharoa,” are less stony than the more genealogical portions. Sir George Grey's collection of the historical and legendary traditions of the race has not been superseded. Messrs. Percy Smith and Edward Tregear edit the valuable journal of the Polynesian a.s.sociation; the former has made a special study of the origin and wanderings of the Maori race, the latter has produced the Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary. General Robley has written the book on Maori tattooing; Mr. Hamilton is bringing out in parts what promises to be a very complete and worthily ill.u.s.trated account of Maori art.
As narratives of the first twenty years of the Colony two books stand out from among many: Thomson's ”Story of New Zealand,” and Attorney--General Swainson's ”New Zealand and its Colonization.” It would not be easy to find a completer contrast than the gossipy style of the chatty army medico and the dry, official manner of the precise lawyer, formerly and for upwards of fifteen years Her Majesty's Attorney-General for New Zealand, as he is at pains to tell you on his t.i.tle-page. But Swainson's is the fairest and most careful account of the time from the official, philo-Maori and anti-Company side, and may be taken as a safe antidote to Jerningham Wakefield, Sir W.T. Power, Hursthouse, and others. A comparison with Rusden, when the two are on the same ground, shows Swainson to be the better writer all round. Of Rusden's ”History of New Zealand” no one doubts the honest intent. The author, believing the Maori to be a n.o.ble, valiant, and persecuted race, befriended by the missionaries and those who took missionary advice, and robbed and cheated by almost all others, says so in three long, vehement, sincere, but not fascinating volumes, largely composed of extracts from public papers and speeches. Sweeping condemnation of the Public Works policy, of Radical reforms, and recent Socialistic experiments, complete his tale. The volumes have their use, but are not a history of New Zealand.
Of early days in the pastoral provinces we get contemporary sketches by Samuel Butler, L.J. Kennaway, Lady Barker, and Archdeacon Paul.
Butler's is the best done picture of the country, Kennaway's the exactest of the settlers' every-day rough-and-tumble haps and mishaps, and Lady Barker's the brightest. One of the volumes of General Mundy's ”Our Antipodes” gives a nice, light sketch of things as they were in the North Island in the first years of Governor Grey. Dr. Hocken's recent book has at once become the recognised authority on the first years of Otago, and also has interesting chapters on the South Island before settlement. Fitzgerald's selections from G.o.dley's writings and speeches is made more valuable by the excellent biographical sketch with which it opens. Dr. Richard Garnett's admirable ”Life of Gibbon Wakefield” is the event of this year's literature from the point of view of New Zealanders.
Of the books on the Eleven Years' War from 1860 to 1871, Sir William Fox's easily carries away the palm for vigour of purpose and performance. Sir William was in hot indignation when he wrote it, and some of his warmth glows in its pages. It is a pity that he only dealt with the years 1863-65. Generals Carey and Alexander supply the narrative of the doings of the regulars; Lieutenant Gudgeon that of the militia's achievements. General Carey handles the pen well enough; not so his gallant brother-soldier. Of Gudgeon's two books I much prefer the Reminiscences, which on the whole tell more about the war than any other volume one can name. Sir John Gorst describes the King Movement and his own experiences in the King's country. Swainson takes up his parable against the Waitara purchase.
Gisborne's ”Rulers and Statesmen of New Zealand,” though not a connected history, is written with such undoubted fairness and personal knowledge, and in so workmanlike, albeit good--natured, a way, as to have a permanent interest. Most of the many portraits which are reproduced in its pages are correct likenesses, but it is the pen pictures which give the book its value.
Of volumes by travellers who devote more or less s.p.a.ce to New Zealand, the most noteworthy are Dilke's brilliant ”Greater Britain,” the volumes of Anthony Trollope, and Michael Davitt, and Froude's thoughtful, interesting, but curiously inaccurate ”Oceana.” Mennell's serviceable ”Dictionary of Australasian Biography” gives useful details concerning the pioneer colonists.
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