Motif for the Picture.

To the writer of this article the picture of “The Little Emigrant” has, for many years, been an object of admiration, and curiosity. Recently Mrs. Sheat told the story of how the picture came to be painted, and this prompted the writer to follow the trail of investigation that led to that old wooden cross at Otahuhu. Here is the story as Mrs. Sheat related it:

“My elder sister Jenny, who was seventeen years older than me, told me that one Monday morning at the end of January, 1865, as she and a friend were busy washing at our home at Richmond, near Nelson, two ladies arrived on horseback. My sister Jenny would be about 17 1/2 years of age, with rosy cheeks and a fine figure, and as she was the eldest of a large family she had to take charge of the household to a large extent. The two visitors were Miss Greenwood—daughter of Dr. Greenwood (one time head-master of Nelson College) and the other was Miss Laura Herford—an artist, of Hampstead, London. Miss Herford was a dear friend of Miss M. M. Montgomery, who was an aunt (by marriage) of my father's and lived in London. Miss Montgomery, who was then a very elderly lady, had sent Miss Herford directions to find out my father, Mr. T. J. Thompson, with whom she corresponded. My father had left England twenty-four years before as one of the first settlers in the New Zealand Company's Nelson Settlement.

“Miss Herford came on a sad mission. On receiving news that her brother, Major Herford, had been wounded in the Maori War, she had set out for New Zealand. She was determined to nurse him back to health, but he died before she reached New Zealand. She had letters of introduction to Dr. Greenwood, and so rode up from Nelson to Richmond to find my father, whom she had never seen before. Of course, ladies rode side-saddle in those days.

“My sister used to relate that Miss Herford was so charmed with my elder brothers, Fred and Tom, who were then six and three years of age, respectively, and with the twins—that is my brother Ernest and myself— who were then a fortnight old.

“Miss Herford brought many kind messages to my father from his old friend, Miss Montgomery, who was a patroness of Miss Herford in her art. Of course, Miss Herford was most interested in chatting with my mother as she lay there with her twin babies. My mother recounted so vividly to Miss Herford of how the first Nelson settlers left home in 1841 to come to a wild, new land—of the parting from friends, and of the long voyage on which, as Mark Twain has it, the passengers ‘grew up together’ for nearly six months on the crowded emigrant ship, Lord Auckland. What must have appealed most of all to Miss Herford was my mother's mention of her wistful longing for her old home in Leeds as she sat often by the high bulwarks looking out over the ‘wide, wide sea,’ dreaming of home. My mother always had an intense love of ‘Home.’ She was only fourteen when she left Leeds, and she never moved away from her new home in Nelson. She lived to be eighty-six.

“Miss Herford listened intently and said: ‘Mrs. Thompson, you have given me my motif. I will paint you as the little emigrant lass thinking of home.’ So she painted the picture on her return to London. She got her niece, Helen Paterson, to sit for her. The girl in the picture has long golden hair and large blue eyes and rosy cheeks. My mother's hair was dark, and she had dark blue eyes and rosy cheeks. But for all that my mother gave the artist her thought—her motif.

“Miss Herford was returning to London with many good wishes from my parents. She called at Adelaide to see her widowed sister-in-law—Major Herford's wife and her little children. She continued to write to my parents regularly until her death in 1870.

“My sister Jenny used to tell me that they put their washing aside on that midsummer's day in 1865 and prepared a very nice dinner, and laid it out daintily in the old parlour with the bay windows and the big open fireplace. My father had built all that part of the house, and had made the windows by hand. They shifted in about 1860. The four new rooms were added later by carpenters as the family grew.”