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Letters from Early New Zealand

Lyttelton. May 31st, 1852

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Lyttelton. May 31st, 1852.

My Dear Mother,

It is nearly a month since I finished my last letter; I don't think I have ever been so long without writing. You will see that we have in the meantime made our move over from the Plains, and moreover that the Stag has arrived, with all its news, and most thankful I am that it started when it did, so as to give such much better accounts of my father; you must have had a terrible fright, and I can figure it all so well! I cannot help frightening myself so much, when each ship is coming in, that it is quite an effort to open, the letter, at first, and if the ship had sailed a few days sooner, my news would have been bad enough. Still I am not quite happy until I hear again, for he must have been very ill, and you sadly alarmed. How well I know how all the house must have looked! I do not know how I shall ever have courage to come home; which must be like receiving six posts in one! The Stag had a very long passage, 133 days, a whole month longer than our's, which seemed quite enough; the good part of which is that it will not seem so long waiting for the next account, which may come in a fortnight now. Only, God grant it may be good, when it comes. I am so afraid of your making the best of things, in writing to me! and then I am not at all glad of the plan of your going all to London so early; he is always so well at Stokesley. I wish that had come into the plan for the spring. But though I may think pretty constantly of all this, it is not of much use writing it all down. I am very much obliged for my parcel, which came very safely to hand, and on a very cold day, so as to give a due value to the warm nature of most of the contents. I need hardly tell you that such stockings are not to be bought, out here, and that they are to be given only to the deserving. Powles is very much obliged to you for hers. Three pairs I gave, too, to William, who has kept well, so far, I am happy to say; and three page 308pair, I gave to Charity, instead of to Elisabeth, whom I have not liked much, since her marriage. She is so tremendously ladylike and grand, now, and I should think would hardly condescend to wear woollen stockings. Captain Parsons described her wedding as "a great effort", the bride appearing dressed all in white, veil, etc. I am really glad to find that dear John had made his start, for I had been dreading it so much for you, all the more, too, for his having prolonged his stay so much beyond what he first intended. Being in N.Z. is a good breaking-in for the way in which, only, one must expect to fraternize with such as he is; where you may think a great deal of them, hear very little and seldom, and see nothing, or next to nothing, except in hope. My husband is not a little distressed and disturbed, at not hearing from Charles. He has not answered a single letter—though they were many of them full of business— since all that has befallen him. I suppose he has not courage to begin, but I wish he had sent only one page, which he has not done, to either of us. Sara is very good, and sends me quite a long letter in spite of all her troubles, which seem quite curious out here. One knows it is not so, but from this distance, English nurses and nursery-maids, when carefully selected, assume an almost roseate hue, from the possibility which exists of finding satisfactory ones, and which does not exist here. I wonder what Sara would say to a little creature who came to me last week, from the Roses; a sister to their nurse, who came out with them, and has been with them ever since the eldest child was born. This sister joined them on board ship, and they consider her a treasure. She is about four feet high, and, being only fourteen, consents to help me as well as she can for £12 a year; being, moreover, remarkably small for her age, just a size or two bigger than Arthur, and a little round head with her hair àl'enfant, tied up in little plaits behind; and yet the people here are almost ready to fight for her, because they think she has been used to tidy English ways. Mrs. Simeon has a constant succession of servants, they are always all going, which must be worse, I should think, than keeping bad ones, but it is true that they give her warning quite as often as she does them.

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We are very anxious that the Stag should arrive before we come back into the Port, but the season was getting very late and cold for our quarters there, and we were obliged to come in, though very sorry to leave the Plains, and the sunshine—of which we lose several hours, between morning and evening, from the high hills here—and the river, and above all the Bush, and the birds singing; but it is a sort of home to come back here, and have all our things come-at-able and so on, and I am now quite glad to find myself here; only it is not nearly so jolly for Arthur, in the way of a playground. The only event we had, after I finished my letter "per Duke of Roxburgh", was Mrs. Russell's ball which I mentioned then as to be, and it was most successful. She had a lovely night (though cool), a full moon, the best music that could be had, and all went well; but you can imagine the effort it must have been to give it, from the fact that every room in the house was used! The sitting room for dancing, her bedroom for the same, with tea at one end, the other bedroom as a card room, both made smart with white and fluted pink calico; and the kitchen was supper room, while the little maid's bedroom, out of it, was a very cold cloakroom, in which Powles, who went to help, nursed poor old Mrs. Townsend, who laid violently ill with spasms, for the greater part of the time, while her daughters, even Sara's friend, were dancing about, and seldom coming even "to enquire"! I walked there, more than a mile, and back, staying only for the first hour or so; but Powles, William, and Wheeler, who all helped, were not back until six in the morning. There were about eighty people, and really a quadrille of quite good-looking people. Some of the older ladies enjoyed it excessively, but some of them had come a long way in carts, and groaned a little. Amongst others, the Chaplain of the Fatima, a very sleepy, gouty, gentleman, who had come with his wife and sons, on the top of a featherbed, in a cart, about six miles of very rough road. His wife was dancing about, declaring she never had laughed so much in her life, but he came grumbling to my husband, with his snuff-box in his hand, that, "the fact was, the Colony was too young for balls". But now my husband's courage was up (he had thought me page 310very hard-hearted beforehand for insisting that he ought to show himself), and he suggested to him, very mildly, that he thought the incompatibility lay rather in his own years than those of the Colony: "We must ask your young people,"—and they certainly all looked as happy as possible. Sir G. Robinson's son, and all the party, came to it, and though they were a good deal amused at the line of carriages, were evidently rather astonished at our "braverie". One of the young gents in company, a son of Sir Mathew Blackiston in Northamptonshire, has taken a run for sheep here, by the by. It was rather colonial, the young ladies who were asked to come and dress at Ilam, their home being a long way off, said in their note, that they would be glad to do so, but they were afraid they must come early, as the man who was to drive them over must be back in time to milk the cows. They began to dance at about nine, and went on, literally, till just daylight, and then the party left in the house had a substantial breakfast, while some mattresses were prepared; and then the ladies went to rest, and Mr. Russell went off to his station, till "setting to rights" was over.

You must be left to imagine the business we had in getting all our goods over here, packed on horses. We had, during our stay of four months, accumulated a great deal of property there; every scrap of which had to be brought here, and then the tent struck, which William went back to finish when we had completed all our business. We had a lovely day for the grand move, and performed the journey very successfully, calling at the Roses in Chiristchurch on our way, and dining at Mrs. Puckle's. The Port has come to be a sort of home to us, and that feeling, and the comfortable house (as we think it) make up for many wants. The Stag came in when we had been only a few days back here, meeting as most of the vessels do, with some bad weather just outside, which kept her for one night, anchored outside the Heads. My husband's public news is so far satisfactory that the Association seem to be coming over to his views, and we are very much relieved to find Mr. Fox not coming out. My husband is most anxious that Mr. Sewell should, whether in a public or private capacity, page 311so as to secure their meeting here. These letters say he comes out in August; but there have been so many people "coming", for so long now, that we leave off expecting, and only hope (that is when they are worth hoping for, as I suppose he is). But I hear he has a wife and large family, which is always rather alarming, out here, in such close quarters. My husband does not expect him to come then, but has, on the contrary, written him a long letter, my copy of which has rather curtailed this epistle, and I have so little comfortable writing time. I have so many visitors, and then should like much more time than I find for Arthur, and then in the evening, we have almost always someone at tea, and not infrequently I feel myself too stupid for writing, which I know is a very bad reason for not doing so; but still, when a letter is going so far, one cannot treat it with quite the same want of ceremony as a few lines scribbled to save the penny post, just as the time is up! To go back to the Stag. We found the great Mr. Bowler and his family, all exact dittos of each other, on board, and he is, of course, equal to boxes of despatches, and piles of reports, in himself. A new Mr. Perceval, too, was on board, and a new Mr. Ward, about neither of whom have I much patience to write. The first was twenty-one on the 19th May, two days after his arrival, and celebrated the day by getting married, yes, utterly married, to a Miss Mathews, who came out in the ship with him; older than himself, and with no beauty, etc., to plead his excuse, such as that might be. She is, no one knows who; only came out with a sister, rather older and uglier than herself, for no apparent object but the speculation, as far as one can guess, of what might turn up on the voyage. They borrowed a wedding ring from the landlady of the Mitre Hotel (which they have since lost, by the by, but as Mr. Charles Perceval, the happy man, informed us, they are having two new ones made), and they came for my saddle, to ride over and honeymoon on the Plains, where they are now established, in the house built by the eldest brother; which was just about to be sold, to pay as much as it could of his debts. There is, I suppose, some arrangement now made for not selling; but the absurd thing is that the eldest brother, page 312who acted bridegroom's man, walked the bridesmaid, the eldest sister, about, to such effect (keeping her engaged, I suppose by agreement, out of the way of the couple at home in small accommodation), that in a few days he actually proposed to her, too; and now I believe that is to be, as soon as some difficulty about the debts can be got over. Is it not a nice business? I believe, however, that each of the young ladies have a few hundred pounds, so that in that point of view they might make a tolerable start, if they were at all likely to keep steady. The second brother, the latest arrival, was in the Army, but could not keep straight there, and had to be withdrawn, and was then sent out here! to do still more exactly what he liked, still further from any control. That is the great mistake that people make about this place. It must be a very steady young gentleman who can get on well here (unless under very favourable circumstances), and yet many people seem to imagine it a kind of training-school, of which the very air will reclaim those who can literally be made nothing of at home, and it is really quite painful to read the letters my husband gets constantly from parents, asking to have his private and confidential opinion of their sons, and of how they are getting on, when perhaps he has never seen them, and only heard of them in the most disagreeable way. The youngest, Mr. Spencer Perceval, who came out at Christmas, has, as I think I told you, undertaken the place of undermaster (there are two of them) at Christchurch, in the Grammar School now established under Mr. Jacobs, who was engaged, I may have told you, by Mr. Jackson, as professor in Classics, for the College. He, Mr. S.P., seems a very good steady boy, or man, and I quite honour him for choosing to make himself useful in such a way; the only objection to him, in that capacity, is a very bad habit of stammering, which I hear some of the parents are much afraid that their children will learn. He came into Port to see his brother, as soon as he heard of the Stag's arrival, and was just in time to walk into Church with his brother, for the wedding! He was here afterwards, and tried to make the best he could of it, and thought that being married might steady both his brothers. I hope the father and mother may take the same page 313view of it, but it does not promise well. Even Captain Parsons, who is, as you may imagine, not very particular, volunteered to tell me that, after he got on board the ship at the Heads, he had seen such flirtation as he should have noticed seriously, if it had been his ship. This was specially the eldest brother.

Then comes Mr. Crosbie Ward, the new brother on shore, engaged to the second Miss Bowler! I believe the respective ages are nineteen and sixteen. However, Mr. Bowler, I hear, says it is at all events not to be for a year; he and his family are to go on, and live at Wellington. Hamilton Ward is living with his brother, and is quite out of our care now. He goes on very well and steadily, and all that, but has become much too "Colonial" for my fancy, much too fond, for his age (seventeen), of making a good bargain; which seems to have been his nature, always, under a most childish exterior, and his very peculiar circumstances have necessarily increased the tendency not a little. I wish, for this reason, that his father had sent for him home, if only for a year or two. I am sure, if he lived, he would have come back here; but he might have learned that there are things in the world to care for besides "stock" and money. As to these matches made up on board, they are so inevitable that the only wonder is that we have, by the Association ships, had so few. It so chanced that a great many of our young ladies, including our beauty, came out in a ship together, with hardly a young gentleman on board, not one "eligible"; and so it has fallen out, somehow, that we have only heard of one match made up on board, before, by all our ships; and that was one of the first, and the wedding did not take place for six months. The bride in this case will be eighteen next October, and has just presented her husband, who is very poor, with twin daughters; and her mother, who was staying in her house, had a son two days after! And the same thing, ten days after, expected of the only woman servant. It is the wife and daughter of Mr. Watts Russell's Scotch agent, who turned out so badly here.

I was stopped in my writing, yesterday, by Mr. Lee, come In from his station, to see a brother who has arrived in the Stag. He interrupted us the day before, and is not near so nice page 314a person. Mr. Lee is to be a sort of neighbour to Messrs. Wortley, Hamner and Woollcombe, who, I am sorry to hear, lost a great many sheep in their journey with them up the country, in taking them to the Station. Mr. Hamner is very much liked here, and such a capital man for work, and so steady, that it is expected that he will keep Mr. Wortley in order. His name is "the Colonel", amongst them all.

They went off to their Station just before our festivities here, for the Queen's birthday, which took place here, you may like to know, as well as at home, on the 24th of May, Monday. Miss Westenra and her aunt, Miss Roche, who is as much admired as herself, came in on the Saturday to stay with us, for the occasion, and then we had a series of tea-parties, and company at dinner, and so on, and on the night there was a grand ball, which was highly successful. I did not go to it, but my husband was there for a short time, and I lent the pianoforte, and otherwise contributed as we could to the general hilarity. In the morning there was a Regatta, and some sports, which, I grieve to say, went off very "flatly", from bad management, but the day was so lovely, and everyone looked so happy, walking about in their holiday clothes, that it did not much matter. The ball was especially lively, and everyone seemed much pleased, including 116 school-children whom we had at tea, in the room that was to be the supper-room; and then they sang several songs, and then "God Save the Queen" and then cheered for us until we were glad to escape from the room, and I think many of them "hurrard" all the way home, and for some time after. Mr. and Mrs. Russell, and all the aristocracy of the Plains, came in for the day; except I think, the poor Roses. He, however, had some business in the Port, and came in after it was all over, and stayed with us for two days. He is a most melancholy man, though he really was, for him (as we have known him out here), quite cheery and pleasant. He told us they meant to do without servants; the nurse, they cannot get rid of, just now, for she has been ill; but he says he is scrubbing the kettles, pans, and rooms himself. He spent his money very fast, and has built, as I think I told you, about the best house out here, and now he declares suddenly that he has page 315not a farthing, and that they must do without servants altogether. It is so hard upon her, I am really quite angry about it, but that unfortunately does her no good; and now I cannot say how sorry I am to hear that the baby is so ill, the doctor does not think it will live. They scarcely ever do, born soon after the voyage, but this one has lived five months, and though it was not a very fine one, I was in hopes it would be an exception. I hear it has had an attack of water on the brain, but the immediate danger is from something else, but it is all quite sudden, for they were all well when he came over here, a fortnight ago. The nurse, though delicate, is well enough to be a great comfort to them in a case of such illness, for Mrs. Rose thought a great deal of her, so I am very glad she was there. Poor man, he went, the day he came into Port, into Mrs. Cookson's with me; and Mr. C., who is an old college friend, made him sit down to some pigeon pie, and Mr. Rose, as he helped himself, began, "Oh! how snug you look" (it is a tiny dark room, very plain even for out here). "Now, I've got a big house, I often wish I had a small one, because it is warmer." Now that is just him, as we have found, he cannot be pleased, and the Cooksons say he was just the same at home. We all laughed, we could not help it; and he went on to say all the disagreeable things he had to do, saying: "I suppose it is to punish me for grumbling".

June 11th. I have just heard from Mrs. Cookson that the poor little baby died yesterday, so they must be in sad distress. If her people should talk to you as if they were very low about her, you must not be surprised, but I do not think they need be anxious; his land is so good, and in spite of temporary distress he must get on well, and they are quite sure to like the country better, in a little while; and when things are cheap, as in all human probability they must be, after this winter, they will be easy, and not feel it necessary to take these panics, and pinch so much. The money that he told my husband he landed with, ought with ordinary management to have set them up quite comfortably, but I am afraid he is a bad manager, and he is enough to make three wives miserable. I never met with so depressing a man, always bearing in mind that he is in intention page 316excellent. While I was writing this, in came Mr. FitzGerald, and he says he has it from Mr. Rose himself that he landed here with £2,000, and has besides the interest of £15,000 to live upon; in short, that he is better off than anyone in the Colony, almost! And yet he is cooking the dinner, and scrubbing his own floors, and, what is infinitely worse, making his wife just as uncomfortable, because there is some delay in the arrival of dividends!! Another piece of news I hear, that the Stag is likely to go to-morrow, and therefore it will be well to send some letters by her; though from the long stop she is to make at Wellington, it does not seem likely to be a very good opportunity. Your two friends, Mr. Blencowe and Mr. Robinson, with the Rev. Mr. Hogg, have taken their passage by her to Wellington, and hope to see something of the northern Island. They were here several evenings, during the time they have spent in the Port, but have been making expeditions in all directions, and the two friends, as I think I told you, pay us the compliment of remaining here! Did I ever tell you a piece of news we had not long ago from Wellington, that our dear Mr. Hadfield is going to be married? I cannot say what difficulty we find in believing it, and we are, moreover, sure that the lady cannot be worthy of him. She is a Miss Williams, sister to the Mr. Williams you may remember our speaking of at Otaki. Mr. Hamilton declares he is doing it to have someone to look after his schools when he goes away. Oh! I forgot to say those two young gentlemen seem very nice, but very quiet, and young. Everyone likes Mr. Hogg, and his preaching has made quite a sensation here.

I have not thanked you nearly enough for my parcel; Arthur's stockings fit beautifully, and the gloves will bear a little keeping, and are so very nice. Even the doing it up must have been very troublesome. The piece of holly came quite safe (and the paper), but it is a little shorn of its glory; for Arthur, as soon as he saw it, seized upon it, and took off the berries, which he brought to me in great triumph, for he was going to plant them! and thought it a very good idea. I believe they will not grow. However, they will have the opportunity now, if they like to try. I am almost in page 317despair when I think of the way in which one or two of your letters speak of "not writing any more", but I cannot help hoping that your next letters would encourage you to do so, without any fear of their finding us gone from here, I cannot remember saying anything at all like an announcement even of a time being fixed for going. At all events, I hope you will to the very end write on a few lines only, but still something. No one could more fully sympathize than I do in the dislike to writing a letter to no purpose; but a few lines would not matter so much, if written just on purpose to save the chance of what would be so great a disappointment as a ship without any word or news of home, I have not time to read over, but my husband has just been criticizing some sentence in which he says I have put "such much" something! I laughed, and pretended to be very indignant, to Arthur's great amusement, and he stood laughing by me for a little bit, and then he said to me, in rather a low voice, "But I must say I'm quite on father's side, I don't think it sounds well". And I couldn't say either that I did. He made a drawing of his two vessels, from nature, as a present for his father, on his birthday, a fortnight ago; and I kept showing him the mistakes he was making till he rather lost his patience, and he put down his pencil and said: "You object to everything I do, it's as sure as rubbing one's hands makes them warm, quite according to the laws of nature". Almost as grand an expression as the one which made Lady Vaughan think it time to send her son to school, wasn't it? I was very glad you mentioned Powles' letter, she seemed quite pleased that everything had got safe. No one writes to her; her people have been very careless. I feel quite greedy, with every time a parcel of letters, and she nothing, and now I must send off my letter, I do not write, by this opportunity, to Sara, as it is not a specially good one; this is enough. Good-bye once more. God bless you all. My best love to all

Yours very affectionately,

Charlotte Godley