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Check to Your King

Chapter Eighteen — The Rosy Sofa

page 165

Chapter Eighteen
The Rosy Sofa

The storms, sweeping away the few poor roads, had rendered part of the journey to the Bay of Islands, where Captain Lavaud's ship lay anchored, impassable by land. But Lavaud had been warned of Crusoe's marooned condition, and his letter gave instructions for a signal-fire to be kindled on the high bluff overlooking the Bay as soon as he arrived there. Under these wet auspices comes Charles out of the wilderness, cursing when flint and steel can't start a spark in the sodden heap of brushwood, blessing the Maoris when they drag their dry fern bedding from a near-by hut and use it to start the fire. The tongue of flame thrusts up; a long-boat detaches itself from L'Aube.

“France, I come!” cries Charles, and precipitates himself into the long-boat, manned by twelve hefty fellows from Brittany.

“I was received on board L'Aube with unexpected distinction, and Captain Lavaud immediately intimated that he expected to retain me as his guest during my stay. A boat was to be placed at my disposal whenever I wished to go on shore, and I began to think that my long trials were at last brought to a close, and I should once again see my family in circumstances of happiness and comfort. In the morning, Captain Lavaud showed me the orders he had received concerning me from the King of France, given under the sign manual.…”

This attention, comprising an order for “protection toute espéciale” to be afforded the Baron, had a shade less than its face value in the New Zealand market. Captain Lavaud had immediate problems to face; Charles, he discovered, was simpler in every respect if treated as an elementary sum in subtraction. This is perhaps why, after his first optimism, Charles adds ruefully: “I can never forget the civilities with which Captain Lavaud received me, but I cannot forget either…”

It is no use. Captain Lavaud had a most difficult role to enact, the role of the good loser. He did it perfectly, with a gallantry which still calls forth admiration from historians of all nationalities.

I cannot like the man. Because he was such a good loser. Because he lost with an air; while the others, surly old Jean Victor Langlois, page 166 Charles de Thierry, the French settlers for Akaroa, merely looked fools.

That insensate passion for losing magnificently… consider a pair of fingers snapped under the nose of the man who invented it.

If ever my own dream-army were beaten – which is, however, impossible – it would receive no instructions to form in a square, give a performance with the cavalry, and die with band playing, colours flying. On the contrary, it would be instructed to run like blazes, taking cover in the rough country. Then, when the oncoming forces assembled to repose themselves, they would be tactfully received by a specially selected corps of beautiful virgins – indigenous to the country. To “fraterniser et les corrompier”, as did the citizens with the Guard of Paris during the French Revolution, would be the duty of these young women, for whom the élan of martyrdom would be added to the natural human satisfaction attached to any new experience. After a few weeks, re-assembling my army on a dozen sides at once, I would strike with any weapons available. If the virgins also were killed, no matter. They would have lived.

Captain Lavaud's position was this. He had arrived in command of L'Aube, ostensibly, at least, to see established upon French soil in Southern New Zealand a French colony.

But by the time he arrived, there was no French soil in New Zealand. From June to September of '39, the French Chamber of Deputies had argued as to what steps should be taken in the matter of this colonisation. On November 4th, they got as far as their diplomatic recognition of the independence of New Zealand. Meanwhile, Captain Hobson was on his way from England to Sydney, and they were still talking when he arrived.

Four years later, M. Guizot, who placidly ruled the Chamber of Deputies, “dormant fort bien sans gloire”, and describing all more energetic souls as “the war-party”, explained that Lavaud was but crossing the Line when English sovereignty was proclaimed in New Zealand.

After Waitangi, the sovereignty of the North Island was never in dispute. But much less clearly understood was the process by which British power became established in the South and Stewart Islands, and many people never understood at the time that such power had been assumed at all. (It was in the South Island, of course, that Captain Langlois had made his land-purchases, and that the French proposed to settle.)

At a later date, Guizot took the Deputies into his confidence, alleging that he had received formal notification that on May 31st, page 167 1840, the Queen's sovereignty was declared over both South and Stewart Islands, by proclamation of Lieutenant-Governor Hobson, and again on June 17th, when, at a native pa in Cloudy Bay, Major Bunbury, of the 58th Regiment, who had gone south to collect signatures for the Treaty of Waitangi, hoisted the Union Jack, and received from Captain Nias and a party of marines landed from H.M.S. Herald the royal salute of twenty-one guns.

That the original business was a ceding of New Zealand by the chiefs under treaty, and that the signatures of the southern chiefs were far from complete at this time, occasioned much bristling of moustaches in the Chamber of Deputies. What use? New Zealand, after all, was a small island group; the matter was ended.

On the soil thus narrowly lost to France, a very different view prevailed. For a time the fact of English sovereignty in the South Island was kept secret from the French emigrants. None of this debate, as far as men knew, was apparent to Captain Lavaud while L'Aube lay anchored at Russell. Whatever he had learned before arrival, whatever Captain Hobson had told him the moment he came ashore, he was there ostensibly to see French settlers established on French soil. The game must be played out. Why? Because there were the Nanto-Bordelaise chestnuts to be pulled out of the fire. Once establish the settlers – whoever really owned the soil – and there was a much better chance that England would pay compensation to the company. This reasoning proved correct. Some years later, the Nanto-Bordelaise Company was bought out, or, rather recompensed by a very considerable sum from the English Government.

The French settlers themselves lost nothing by the arrangement except their right to live under their national flag, which you may rate according to your views. They made a charming settlement, at all events, retaining their French characteristics, and bestowing on the little settlement of Akaroa – still extant – a touch of individuality.

Meanwhile, the things Captain Lavaud must avoid were these: He must not run his nose into serious trouble with the English. Guizot wouldn't like it.

He must not create a panic among the French settlers on the Comte de Paris, or the sailors on his own vessel.

He must not unnecessarily complicate the issue with minor details. Of these, Charles was one.

All this necessitated an elaborate little comedy-drama, perfectly staged, with the green Russell hills as back-drop, the trolling voices of sailors as chorus, and that ramshackle old gabled page 168 residence, Government House – until the famous portable house should arrive and be set up at the new settlement of Auckland – as its setting.

L'Aube carried two French priests for Bishop Pompallier's mission. The weather sparkled into a false springtime, sun danced on the wavelets, powdery foam glistened white as the seagulls' wings. The tiny town stood out in morning light. English colours floated bravely there. A little north lay anchored Her Majesty's ship of war, the Britomart.

Captain Lavaud saluted the Britomart's colours as his ship drew near shore, but not the Union Jack over Russell. No formal acknowledgment, then, of British domination. The sailors chant, the gulls bob about like scraps of white paper… how tempting to a literary man! Charles, glorious in a new broadcloth, expands his chest four inches. What a fine place the world is! He is going to pay a visit to the Lieutenant-Governor. (“For Hobson the man I had every possible regard, though I often wished the Lieutenant-Governor at No. 10 Downing Street, and No. 10 Downing Street at Timbuctoo.”)

Winter roses had been planted at the arches and pilasters of the old house, their soft flurry of petals dropped against the dark green of wrought iron. The house smelt agreeably of the resinous wood which had built its high doors. At mid-morning, for the first time, Charles made his bow to the Lieutenant-Governor's lady, Mrs. Hobson, who was wearing a crinoline of lavender-flowered soubrise, opened in front to show the waterfalls of lace with which this year's fashion had deluged London and Paris. Her throat showed creamy and rounded above the stiff-shouldered gown which descended into leg-of-mutton sleeves, jutting out above tight bodice and tiny waist. Canova had ridded women of their Iron Maiden, the steel corset; but the whalebone and leather receptacles in which the little creatures must move, breathe, and even smile, still kept them vase-shaped. Women are wonderful.…

You are about to meet an enchantress. It doesn't happen every day with the wives of Lieutenant-Governors, Governors, Residents. Most of them smile and smile and refuse to be villains, however one wishes they would. They are all silver photograph frames – corralling signed pictures of Royalty – inferior orchestras, fat red lines of women waiting to be presented, and nothing to drink. But not Mrs. Hobson. She makes Captain Lavaud forget the hard knot in his thoughts, and muse, “After all, there's nobody in the world who can lose as well as a Frenchman.” Her husband thinks, “Dear Liz! How she carries it off. If anyone in this world can turn a page 169 swarm of buzz-flies into Red Admirals!” And as for the Baron de Thierry…

“She was surrounded by so many of the elegancies of civilised life that I felt a pang at having brought my family to a country where they were still unknown, and which, even now, they had no chance of enjoying. I would have forgotten past troubles if I could have carried my family to comforts like those with which I was now, for a moment, surrounded.”

Enchanted Liz! Life is so transitory for the male, so lasting under the touch of a woman. A deer trots by in an English park, a rose flowers, its petals swish softly to the turf, and you think, “Over and done with.” Oh, but not at all. Circe threads her needle. Come back in a week's time, and you will see the fine antlers branching on tapestry, the rose-petal redder than ever Nature meant it, efflorescent on her plump cushions. You find it tiresome? I don't know. Nearly all the genuine ghostliness in the world is created by women. Powder-closets, mirrors, just those unnecessary, fitful things which are so inescapably intimate. A woman, you see, is the one who knows how to desire the past, because her life is all one smiling regret for that particular bough or dingle of youth which she never had. Men make the past their servants; that achieves tradition. But women are slaves to the past, and that achieves ghostliness.

Everywhere in the Governor's surroundings, Circe had been at work. The drawing-room where they chattered was ornamented with rosy sofas and chairs, all hung in tapestries upon which English countryside scenes were depicted with a good deal of vigour, stiffness, and beautifully tucked-in corners. The whole of it was the work of Mrs. Hobson's fingers. Cherubs looked impudently through their frozen storm of buds. There were gentlemen in hunting-pink, raising sleek hats to young English misses. This little strifeless world.… How exquisite, really, were women, who could fancy a world without strife, and then seat themselves in their high, apple-scented chambers, and like devout little girls stitch it into being.

Nor were the rosy sofas all Mrs. Hobson had contrived. Hadn't that sick, weary man, her husband, been once a bronzed sailor, stationed at the Bermudas? Now Fate had taken the ripe juices of those days away from their lips. But see Liz, with her finger at her mouth: “There's my beloved Bermudas,” she whispers to Charles, and indicates a pile of the most ravishing tropical fruits, sultry as a harem's jewels.

Charles feels his mouth water. Wax, every man of them. page 170 “Impossible to have detected them from the works of Nature,” he writes fervently.

Mrs. Hobson plays the harp, and there is a grand piano, its keys honey-coloured from the touch of the years that so loved it. Harp's music ripples soft and dim, an obscure creek, carrying the sad thoughts far away. “The Baron de Thierry played a harp solo at the masquerade, and an Imperial lady fell in love with him.” He looks at his own hands, which can control the machinations of six bullocks. By and by, he plucks up courage. The company is quite silent; for once in his New Zealand life Charles has an audience that don't argue. Governor Hobson sits with his eyes shut, his face waxen pale. The chords speak on, declaring out of the cavern of dreams their oracular message. Mrs. Hobson doesn't fall in love with him like the Imperial lady, but she smiles and is very amiable.

“I left with an invitation to spend the night at Government House whenever I pleased, with a bed on one of those delicious rosy sofas.”

I wonder if Crusoe came into her mind that night, when Captain Hobson officiated with the back hooks on the lavender frock? No other gentleman present has put on record his admiration of her wax Bermudan fruits. But no.… In the lamplight, she must have wished only that the sharp face seen over her shoulder were less the colour of untinted wax itself.

At one o'clock next day the Hobsons lunched at Bishop Pompallier's house. There was a party of fifteen at table, among them Captain Lavaud, Charles de Thierry, and Captain Stanley, of the brig Britomart. Mrs. Hobson's presence seems to have gone to these gentlemen's heads. She was a sprite, setting wit and laughter loose among them. See how Captain Lavaud smiles and raises his glass.…

“There was one at table whose intelligent countenance bespoke a man ready for any daring enterprise. That one was Captain Stanley. Towards the end of the dinner, he asked Captain Lavaud if he had any letters for Sydney, as the Britomart was sailing there at the close of the day. Lavaud seemed taken aback, and murmured something about the shortness of the notice. I did not quite collect what he said. I was struck with an air of mischief which brightened Captain Stanley's eyes. Dinner was a very cheerful meal, with Captain Hobson in high good humour, and everyone in better spirits than I was, but I kept up appearances as well as I could.”

At the end of the meal he had opportunity for a word page 171 with Lavaud, and asked when L'Aube left for Akaroa.

“In a day or two, Baron, in a day or two.”

“Captain Lavaud, they are tricking you. You'll find the British flag flying when you get there. Captain Stanley is bound south in the Britomart.”

Lavaud's handsome face reddened angrily.

“What do you mean, Baron? He has asked me for letters for Sydney, where the Britomart sails this evening.”

“He may send your letters, but he will never deliver them. He means to get the start of you.”

“You are deceived, Baron.” Lavaud turned on his heel. But his anger was a thing of the moment. Next morning, he was the same light-hearted host, taking part like any schoolboy in fishing for crayfish off the stern; and, when a prodigious rusty-brown monster had been hauled up protesting from the deeps, sending it off, beautifully garnished, as a gift for Mrs. Hobson. Each morning of L'Aube's stay, Government House was regaled with fresh French bread; the ship's boat, in charge of a young “aspirant”, making the three-mile journey to Russell. One night there was a brilliant ball for the officers at Government House; the following day Captain and Mrs. Hobson lunched aboard L'Aube. Rivals for territory… who could credit it?

Charles contrives to extract a word or two about his own affairs. Once the Captain, in high good humour, buttonholed him and told him to ask for 20,000 acres. “Hobson's all but promised me you shall have 10,000, Baron, and he's a man of his word.” But two days after the Britomart sailed there was a change in Lavaud's attitude. Charles was summoned to the Captain's cabin.

“Baron, persuade your family to join us here. I'll take you all down to Akaroa, and thence you can sail for France in the transport vessel. Come, you'll travel as guests of the French Government, and you'll create a sensation in Paris. I give you my word of honour you shall have employment in France. I could wait here three or four days to enable your household to be taken on board.”

That prospect of creating a sensation in Paris, with his little travelling-circus, the wheels all polished… it should have appealed. What then? Roots put down at last in a hard soil, when he had drifted over three-quarters of the globe, and never yet called a country “home”?

“I told Captain Lavaud it was too important a matter for me to decide without consulting my family, and, asking him to put me on shore on the Waitangi side of the Bay, left at once for Mount Isabel.”

page 172

One has next to consider these de Thierrys, in their kitchen with the wattle-and-daub walls, the boys stretched out before the fire like young animals, changed into homely, shapeless clothing after their day's wrestle with the mud; Emily in her rocking-chair; Isabel helping Margaret Neilsen to put away the supper-things, the blue-and-white earthenware, the silver teapot said to be an heirloom, and, anyhow, with a fine Jewish nose.

Do you remember the celluloid mannikins, with the most serious faces and inch-high bodies, whom you could tip about to fantastic angles, never over-balancing them? Concealed under their pantaloons or petticoats was a secret weight of lead.

Emily de Thierry must have resembled one of those sensible mannikins. The world tipped her this way and that. She was never overbalanced. She must have been secretly weighted with something… common sense, dignity, humour.

Perhaps the taste for fantasy grew upon her, until finally a curate's face looked just as odd, or, rather, as normal-odd, as a cannibal chieftain's; while neither looked as sane as the face of a cow. One will never be able to tell. She stuck to Charles. She went on cutting bread-and-butter. She was a great woman, a heroine, a martyr, too, and in appearance she strongly resembled Queen Victoria.

Then the children themselves; they were born all over the world; in London, Cambridge, Paris, New York, Baltimore. They had inhabited three separate kingdoms, counting in Queen Pomare's, and leaving out the extra two provided by their father; also America, the West Indies, Colonial possessions in the crudest phase, and a native republic. (I suppose that is what one must call New Zealand, before the British Crown took it over.)

By the time one has ended such a career, one is more than an émigré, one is a Wandering Jew – a fugitive, trying to escape from the habit of insecurity.

They had been two years on Mount Isabel, in a life wild, rough, risky, and very lonely. The eldest was twenty-one, the youngest not quite seven. Whether they were tired of being at one moment sprung from royal loins, at the next merely a spinnet-tuner's brats; whether the royal salutes and dog-fights were a confusion in their ears, nobody can say. They are not here to present their case. Unlike their father, they were all very uncommunicative, proud, peculiar, secretive. They never destroyed any of their father's papers or souvenirs. They merely locked them up, hid them, and refused to elucidate. That they ever wrote a line or made a speech themselves is more than I have been able to discover.

page 173

Does not this proud silence indicate that perhaps, even at an early stage of the game, Mount Isabel was to them more a home than a hated shore of castaways? They made a good deal of their own fun. They had the piano. They loved one another dearly. Of Isabel, Charles says she never in her whole life did anything wrong; but I am sure that is one of the pardonable exaggerations with which people make the dead sound so dull. A friend of her Uncle Francis saw her in young maidenhood at Mount Isabel, and wrote to Paris giving Francis a précis. “Everyone coming from there is amazed at her beauty,” wrote Uncle Francis to Uncle Frederick.

Charles told his family of Captain Lavaud's suggestions. 10,000 acres – perhaps – from Governor Hobson, or the journey to France as guests of the nation, with employment promised at the end of it. Then he informed them that they must make up their minds and let him know. But if he stayed on and everything went wrong, he added cautiously, they mustn't blame him. After this, he went out and sat in the parlour, its windows all a-weep with rain. The impossibility of getting his geese and turkeys back to civilisation occurred to him. Here they must stay, running wild like Crusoe's flocks.

The door opened; he was standing again at his fireside. All the flushed faces smiled, all were decided. “Mount Isabel… Mount Isabel… Mount Isabel.” Only one said another thing, and that so low that the others did not hear it. She said “Irapera,” and smiled at him, as she gave the little name the natives used.

The young voices ring around him like swords. The de Thierrys have no nation. What of it? They are a nation in themselves.

Almost immediately Charles is back on L'Aube, getting scolded by Captain Lavaud, who is really vexed at the minor problem which insists on remaining problematic. Lavaud assures Charles that he is distrusted among the white settlers.

“Do you think, Baron, that France will risk a war with England in order to determine your rights?”

“I spoke to him very seriously,” writes Charles, who, of course, would think a war with England none too strong a means for France to express her annoyance at his treatment. He recalls, with considerable dignity, that he is a Frenchman, and that one who has rendered his country service should not with impunity be molested.

Captain Lavaud takes down from a shelf the Code Napoléon. It has tricoloured edges.

“To my mind, Baron, there is only one test whether a man is page 174 French or not. It is here in the Code Napoléon. Has a man been drawn for conscription in the French Army? If so, he is French. If he cannot produce his ticket, then he may belong to what nation he pleases, but he is not a Frenchman.”

Captain Lavaud bows and turns away. Charles stares after him.

“I might have said, ‘What, then, are a Duc de Guiche, a Duc d'Harcourt, a Vicomte de Chateaubriand, a thousand more, doing in France?’”

Staircase wit. For once, argument sticks in his throat.

He left L'Aube with Captain Lavaud's handclap on his shoulder, and in his pocket a letter of recommendation to the captains of French warships and merchant vessels which might need provisioning at the Hokianga.

“I also ask the Captains of French merchant vessels to have the goodness to comply with this invitation,” wrote Captain Lavaud, “being perfectly convinced that they will take pleasure in assisting a countryman who for so many reasons deserves, as you do, that everything should be done in his favour.…” Lavaud refers further to the provisioning as “the means of repairing the ills which have been inflicted upon you by robbing you foot by foot of what you had so rightfully bought and paid for”.

Some months later, we have Lavaud's letter endorsed by one Varien Leveque, commander of L'Héroine, who, having fully provisioned his brig at Mount Isabel, is satisfied with the prices and quality of the goods supplied.

A Monsieur de Belligny, arriving a few weeks later with letters from Captain Lavaud, whom he had met at Akaroa, told them the end of the mock battle between L'Aube and Captain Stanley, of H.M.S. Britomart.

The three days' start that the Britomart had of L'Aube was lost in a heavy gale, which caught the English brig before she won to Cook Strait, tearing her sails, and carrying away so much of her sparring that she limped along wounded over a sea still very rough, and was sighted by L'Aube, coming along undamaged by the wind, but farther out from the south coast than the Britomart.

The race ended in something like earnest. L'Aube cracked on every stitch of canvas, and her white sails moved like a tower towards shore. But Stanley ran up every rag of sail on the Britomart, and his inshore position won him the race to Akaroa.

The Jack flew gaily, and not without Lavaud's good graces, for the French ship's carpenter was lent to put up a flagstaff and help in building a house for the first English magistrate at Akaroa. Tragically enough, two graves were the first French imprints on page 175 shore; for the first solemn occasion when the transport ship, Comte de Paris, put in, was the burying of two infant colonists, dead on the voyage. The vessel arrived at Akaroa three days after L'Aube.

“Captain Lavaud pushes his attentions to the English to heroism… poor old Langlois grumbles like a bear with a sore head, but nobody cares to take any notice of him. The settlers will live on, unmolested and peaceful. Akaroa is won, the French have lost, and I am again for France, my dear Baron.”

M. de Belligny's prophecy was perfectly correct. Langlois's emigrants were landed on August 19th, 1840, and in '45 Lord Stanley directed the payment of a grant of £30,000 to the Nanto-Bordelaise Company, for their somewhat problematical “rights” in New Zealand. It is scarcely necessary to add that Jean Victor Langlois quickly fell out of favour, in France as in New Zealand; sulked, argued, apologised, argued again, became a discredited man.

Extract from a letter written in 1840 by the Baron de Thierry to Governor Hobson.

All my people with the exception of three Frenchmen who are also going, have left me in consequence of the persecution to which we are exposed… I do more for the satisfaction of an English administration than a Frenchman should, but I have already mentioned in former letters that I have strong English sympathies, and cannot help listening to them. It is now for Your Excellency to decide whether I must apply for redress to the Government of France, for the justice you are so well able to do. For your own sake, this must be my last appeal.

I have the honour to be,

My dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

Charles, Baron de Thierry.

Extract from the letter in reply:

If the French Government should feel disposed to support the claims of a subject of France, I can contemplate no other course of proceeding by that nation, or any other nation in amity with Great Britain, than by friendly negotiation through their respective Governments.…

The Code Napoléon has tricoloured edges, and says one cannot be a Frenchman.

page 176

A letter comes from the Bay of Islands, informing Charles he must take the Oath of Allegiance to Queen Victoria before his land-claims can be considered at all by the Commissioners.

He writes all night, pointing out that he has been educated at English universities, held a commission in the 23rd Light Dragoons. “The father of my wife is a dignitary of the Church of England…”

From the hinterlands of memory comes a picture of an old man; indeed, he seems amazingly old, seen through these wise shadows. He sits at a table in a horribly clean little cell, writing, writing, justifying existence with a quill pen. “The candle a little closer, Charles. Ah… so. Your Royal Highness will then remember.… Always, they cry, I push myself to the fore.”

The old man looks up, though the thin-legged boy at his side keeps his eyes studiously averted. The face of the old man, weary, querulous, bitter, is Charles de Thierry's own.