Chapter Eleven
Contemplation and Loquats

The loquat-tree in the yard was covered with pointed golden fruits about the size of bantams' eggs. These, though dusty and rather disappointing to bite into – the big loquat-stones taking up nearly all the room – were fun in a way, because their tart flavour, though queer, was not too queer. With the Island fruits, you simply couldn't tell. Some tasted like whipped cream, others oily and horrible. You ate grenadilla, which was lovely, with a spoon, and Margaret stood over you grimly, saying, “Don't you swallow them nasty little pips, Miss Isabel.” When there are millions of pips in one grenadilla, how can you help swallowing some? You can't keep spitting them out: it isn't ladylike; and to extract them under cover of your hanky makes you feel self-conscious. page 88 People who laugh too loud are horrible… like Hateful Captain Jones, who made you bite the gorgeous scarlet capsicum pod, and then shouted while your eyes streamed tears and you coughed and spluttered.

Papa knew how to handle Hateful Captain Jones. He didn't say much, but they played nap that evening; and when they had been at it for an hour, Hateful Captain Jones was as red as a beet, and Papa kept saying gently, “Dear me, how unfortunate!” Later, he jingled pieces of gold in his pocket. They had formerly belonged to Hateful Captain Jones. “I am not a gambler,” said Papa, with his Divine Right of Kings look. “Let me see, I wonder if we can buy a doll anywhere on this wild island?”

Now it wasn't the wild island any more, but Sydney, with dusty loquats in the back yard, and the wind lifting more dust, fierce and reddish, from raw clay roads. The heat was a great sticky blanket over everything. At night you wriggled out of your nightgown and lay quite bare between the sheets, trying to extract their cool linen feel. You had to be careful to wake up earlier than Margaret, however, for if she caught you bare, she would be in a state.

Mamma's room smelt lovely of toilet-vinegar and sixpenny bunches of the wild, cheeky little native roses. Why they were called roses, goodness knows. They were pale pink and curly, but otherwise there was no resemblance. However, most of the people in New South Wales were English-born, and Mamma said they must feel homesick for roses. She smiled when she said this, but her eyes grew wide and a little queer. She wore her lovely fair hair down over the strawberry-coloured peignoir; and when you came in to kiss her good night, she would squirt toilet-vinegar at you from the little gold-topped bottle – toilet-vinegar smelling heavenly cool.

Mamma had a friendly smile, Isabel decided, though Papa was more exciting. Once, on a reckless impulse, she had confided in Mamma that she had been sleeping bare between the sheets. Then she hung her head, overcome with sudden shame. Already she could hear Margaret's voice, “Fie, Miss Isabel!… A great girl of nine years old! Whatever will your papa say?” She caught her lip between her teeth, so that she wouldn't cry out, “Please don't tell Papa!”

But Mamma only smiled that funny smile. “Look,” she said, and whisked one leg out from the strawberry-coloured peignoir. It was a cream-coloured leg, with slim ankle and pretty foot, but the amazing thing about Mamma's leg was that it, too, was perfectly page 89 bare. Before Isabel could remark on this the leg whisked out of sight again. It was the first time, really, that she had thought about Mamma as having legs at all. With Papa you couldn't help noticing, because gentlemen wear pantaloons.

Isabel sighed a little, stretching her own sunburnt toes. Ladies became such queer shapes as soon as they grew up. Sydney was quite a fashionable place, and on several occasions they had gone driving through Pitt Street and George Street, the main roads of the town. There you saw ladies shaped like vases and hour-glasses, with bonnets like coal-scuttles or flower-pots. The gayest things about them were their darling parasols, which opened up in big frothy petals of silk and lace. Even Margaret admitted that Sydney was “ceevilized”, though, of course, there were black fellows on the outskirts. You never saw them in town. They lived outside somewhere, probably where the little native roses grew curly and wild.

There were queer enough people hanging about in Sydney itself… a terrible man with stony blue eyes who wore a snake-skin waistcoat, and let great coiled snakes, black and mottled, fix their fangs in his savage bare arms and hang on. Then he shouted in a hoarse voice about his infallible remedy for snake-bite. Once they saw a gang of men with immobile square-cut faces who were all chained together at the ankles.… Once an old woman, who said, “Listen to the mocking-bird, my pretty dearie.” The mocking-bird, which had a sharp-pointed bill and was about as big as a kingfisher, but buff-coloured instead of shining blue, suddenly opened its beak and gave screech after screech of laughter. Isabel didn't like it.

“Are we going to live here, Papa?” That was what Baby Will asked wherever they went, because he was too little to know better. But Isabel knew the answer off by heart. “We're going to live in New Zealand, we're only tarrying here.”

Odd to think of the different places where they had tarried.… She built up a picture of the place where they would live for ever. It was not large. It had rooms with flowered curtains, and a piano with a really fine tone, so that Papa could play without making a face. He was always bothered because the piano in this Sydney house had one bad tooth, and you had to keep pressing on the pedal if you wanted any expression. There would have to be fowls outside, red-brown, speckly, and white, because they make such funny sleepy noises in their chests, and when you slide your hand under them, feeling for the new-laid eggs, it is lovely and warm. Isabel would have one special fowl, who would lay a brown egg regularly page 90 every day. They could have a golden setter dog, named Rover, and inside the house would be a bedroom smelling always of toilet-vinegar and native roses, with pale blue curtains and a blue silken brush-and-comb bag on one wall.

Isabel paused. “Why, that's just like our house here,” she thought. But then an improvement occurred to her, In their own house, there would never be any need to wriggle under ghostly white tents of mosquito-netting at night – because, if you didn't, in the morning you had to keep scratching at horrible little red mounds, which came up all over you in the most awkward places. And then Margaret made you show your legs, dabbing at you with cotton-wool and citronella, and saying, “Well, them skeeters certainly had a fine dinner off you last night, Miss Isabel. What did I tell you, now?”

Still, even without the skeeters, it would not be practicable to draw this house for Papa. When they played together in the evenings, “Little house, big house, pig-sty, barn?” Papa would wrinkle up his nose and smile, saying, “Pig-sty?” Then you must look offended and haughty, and cry “Palace!”

* * * *

In September of '37, Sir Richard Bourke mentioned Charles in an official dispatch to Lord Glenelg.

“I have declined interfering in any way. Nor have I considered it my duty to interpose any obstacle to his proceeding to New Zealand, of which country he claims to be a Sovereign Chief by right of his purchases. He denies all intention of interfering with the interests of Great Britain, and professes a reliance on moral influence alone for the authority he expects to acquire among the natives.”

This is the result of a private interview granted by the amiable Governor. “I found him what I had expected,” writes Charles. “A courtly and polished English gentleman.” Encouraged by this reception, he unbosomed himself at once concerning the threats of the former Assistant British Resident, Lieutenant Thomas McDonnell, who, on vacating his office, had become one of the British subjects to dig their toes in on the disputable 40,000 acres. With many oaths, the Lieutenant now declared that if the Baron de Thierry sailed up the Hokianga river, he would be received by the battery of guns in front of the Lieutenant's house, Te Horeke.

“Has he Your Excellency's authority to do this?”

Sir Richard smiled.

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“Certainly not. I have only to tell you, Baron, if he annoys you, that the battery at Te Horeke is commanded by a high hill at the rear. You should know what to do.”

His Excellency goes even further in fatherly advice and warning.

“I shouldn't like to see you in trouble with the British Crown. If any crime which requires capital punishment should be committed on your territories, don't under any circumstances take matters into your own hands. That would mean trouble. Leave it to the natives.”

Both by letter and in this audience, Charles offered to resign his cherished Sovereign Rights if he could be assured of British protection for his settlers. Sir Richard maintained that he had no authority to extend this protection; Our Charles therefore stood firm on the necessity of “a paternal Independence, and the power to make laws”. His demeanour in Sydney seems to have been rational. Learning of the many British subjects settled on his Hokianga claims, he wrote to Sir Richard, offering to permit the lot to remain, on receipt of a very nominal rent, and “the overlordship of the soil”; to allow those who had contracted to supply timber from trees cut on his estates to confirm their contracts, on paying him a royalty of ten shillings a ton of 40 cubic feet; and in the case of native residents, not only to leave them undisturbed, but for every acre they had under cultivation to allow them freehold of three further acres. Another suggestion, which would doubtless have struck a frightful blow at the dignity of the white, was his calm proposal that every white man on his demesne should devote one day per month to the construction of public roads.

“As a further proof of my goodwill towards the natives, I offer to distribute among them two hundred red flannel shirts (or one hundred to be distributed half-yearly), for a period of ten years from the day I am confirmed in possession of my lands. I go not among the natives to obtain cargoes of produce for muskets, gunpowder, and ardent liquors.…” (This high-mindedness is terribly tactless, by the way. So many white men do go among the natives for precisely the reasons cited.) He further proposes to Sir Richard that every white man caught trafficking in arms or liquor with the natives shall forfeit a bond of £100 on first conviction. Imagine the embarrassment of numbers of the Hokianga population!

Old, blind, worn down with the years, Samuel Marsden, who started mission work in his wild New Zealand, lingered on in Sydney, longing in vain for the strength to revisit the country where he had left his heart.

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“I have this day seen a Frenchman, his name is the Baron de Teirny.… He expects to do great things there. Whether he will give the missionaries any trouble or no, I know not. I shall write to put them on their guard. I have had an interview with the Baron. I shall see him again before he sails. He tells me he purchased for the purpose of improving the natives of New Zealand.… I fear he will be greatly disappointed in the end.… I fear you will not be able to make out my writing. I am so blind.…”^*

Samuel Marsden warned Charles against the dangers of raising his settlers in Sydney, but the advice came after a considerable number of recruits had been gathered together by newspaper advertisement. In all, ninety-three white settlers, men and women, collected for the expedition. One authority primly describes them as “persons of a very infamous description”, but this is exaggeration. They were rag, tag, and bobtail, but Charles took the precaution of securing with every prospective settler a written official guarantee that no criminal conviction stood against his or her name. He appointed a Keeper of the Stores, Hargreaves, whose pretty daughter, Jane, was to marry his young surgeon, Dr. Cooke, before the expedition sailed. There was a tutor also, a gentleman, Charles says, of High Classical Attainments.

Old friends and new turned up in Sydney. Charles shook hands with Captain Hobson of H.M.S. Racehorse, who dropped a hint that the present lawlessness of New Zealand was likely to have a short run for its backers' money. Richard Jones and Stewart Donaldson, both well acquainted with the Hokianga, drank Margaret Neilsen's lemonade, and warned Charles against all manner of serpentine scoundrels, especially the ex-Assistant British Resident, Lieutenant McDonnell, who, it would seem, on retiring from his official capacity, had devoted himself unswervingly to unneighbourly practices, and was the chief lopper-off of kauri timber on the de Thierry estate.

“Honest missionaries, honest merchants, honest Lieutenants of the Navy,” writes Charles, referring to the timber-wolves. The British frigate Buffalo passes through Sydney waters, refitted with spars at Hokianga; the timber, every stick of it, had come from those acres which Charles still believed to be as surely his own as parchment, ink, and law could make them.

The quaintest protégé fished up from the vasty deeps was nothing less than an authentic Maori chieftain. As the adventurous Maoris so often did, Chief Tiro had slipped aboard a sailing-ship at the Hokianga, and was now wandering happily through New page 93 South Wales. Charles received him like a brother. The large chief sat at table with the family, and slept under their roof. Tiro was not unappreciative. The original of the quaint and eloquent document in which he breaks the news of Our Charles to his Hokianga friends still survives.

The words of Tiro to his friends, tribes and visitors at Hokianga.

Listen attentively to my words, O Rewa, Kaweaka, Pura, Tau, Nue and Nene.

I am on my return to my country in the Nimrod, one month will scarcely elapse before I arrive at Hokianga.

O my friends, let your hearts rejoice for the coming of the great Chief, of the Baron de Thierry, who will teach our children and people, who will make our country reputable, and protect it.

Hearken not, I beseech you, to the words of the English, who state that the Baron de Thierry intends the enslavement of the country. On the contrary, his intention is to legislate for, protect, and enrich us. The Baron has explained his intentions to me. I am satisfied. I have been an inmate of his house and have eaten at his table ever since my arrival, my heart cleaves to him.

Fathers! Sons! Prepare a great feast for the reception of our illustrious guest. Evince the greatest respect for the Person who comes to rule and enrich you.

These are my words, and they are true. I have seen the Baron de Thierry, he is the original owner of Te Papa, Mata Kura, Wai Hou, Te one, paid for by Mr. Kendall in axes a long time since. He holds documents from Mudi Wai, Patu One, and Nene. Friends, do justice to your high chief, listen to his commands! Friends, farewell! In a short time I shall be with you, and my tongue shall relate the words of our Chief, which, when you have heard, your hearts will cleave to him, as mine does at this moment.

Farewell!
Tiro, Chief of Munga-Muka.

The truth is, one couldn't help liking Our Charles. He had, of course, no sense of proportion. This made him, in a way, immoral. He would have thought nothing of putting Greenland's icy mountains in the pocket of his pantaloons, or the Crown of Arabia, in an absent-minded moment, on his head; all for the good of the natives. His commercial morality was terrible. If he hit on a scheme with profits in it, he was certain to twine it round and round with idealism, until a business man, touching the thing, would feel like a kitten tied up in pink wool. But, in nine instances out of ten, he meant well; and in the tenth, he could argue so reasonably, so page 94 exhaustively.… People from a distance denounced him with true passion. They met him and conversed with him, or, to be more exact, they were conversed at by him. The glare of suspicion faded from their eyes, to be replaced by that slightly dazed look. One finds it throughout his history. If he could have got them into one bunch together, and kept them there, they could never have held out against him. Imagine what Charles could have done, equipped with radio and television! It won't bear thinking about, when we see the dimensions of the mess we are in today. Charles would have stood the world on its head. What a good thing!

Do you know that in Sydney he persuaded His Majesty's Customs Office to accept both the flag and seals of his Independent State?

“Colonel Gibbs, the Collector of Customs at Sydney, was very civil to me, and it was arranged that vessels from New Zealand carrying my flag should be treated as ships belonging to the Colony. I was furnished with all the different printed customshouse forms which are used in Sydney, from register of vessels to clearances. More could not be asked, unless it were official recognition in the Gazette, and that would have been for the Sydney authorities to concede much more than was prudent.”

See, then, the west, clear and tranquilly green in dusk, and clouds like ships passing through those strange lakes, where instantly their wake is obliterated. There is the creak of Emily's American rocking-chair, from which she will not be parted by any deceit or stratagem. Each shadow wavering in the dusty garden seems to have a human face.… Francis de Thierry, Salomon, Feraud in his brown brick house, Captain d'Orsay waving a scarf from the Momus. The dead men, the dead women, in Dominica. Vigneti, pale-faced, ardent, serious. Fergus, his long legs sprawling, and his terrible tobacco smoke wreathing into the fragrance of the vanillascented Tahitian evening.…

Emily is privileged to hear all the most important documents, exhortations, Addresses-in-Reply. “The Address of the Baron de Thierry to the White Residents of Hokianga.” Its ink is still wet from the press of the Sydney Morning Herald, whose office stands in Lower George Street. The Herald staff are not the scurrilous crowd, the more than yellow, the absolutely bright orange rag who have dared to christen Charles “the Baron de Theory”.

Little stitches slip in and out of snowy cambric as Emily listens.

“I interfere with no part, save my own territories. As yet, no nation can enter into treaty with you. Your possessions and property are exposed to every vicissitude, you are bound by no common sympathies, you have no certain protection against page 95 danger, because your very pursuits divide your interests. You have no strength to oppose foreign and domestic invasion, no power to prevent and punish crime. You are oppressed by monopolies, little better than outcasts, where you have the power to be happy, secure and prosperous.… I take with me a Surgeon, whose duty it will be to give gratuitous attention to the poor of either colour. I bring experienced agriculturists, who will foster the planting of cotton and tobacco. A gentleman of high classical attainments has been engaged as tutor to my sons, and will be given permission to take the sons of respectable settlers under his care. The lady who will instruct my daughter may make similar arrangements as regards the daughters of New Zealand families. My Keeper of the Stores will purchase goods from all traders at a fair colonial price, deducting profit, freight and assurance.…”

The first suggestion of assurance on cargoes shipped from New Zealand. Surely an appealing point. Charles wrinkles his nose anxiously, looking at Emily to see what impression his Address has made.

He is forty now. The mould has set; the last mould but one. Nature, you know, experiments on our features with a number of moulds. First there is that button-nosed, hairless, toothless effect, not much to brag about. Then suddenly there is individuality; a face has taken shape. The child may be quite ridiculously like its father or mother, and yet, in its own right, the little face is so clear, so unspoiled by wrinkles and sly disguises, so clean, with its soft, downy skin, that it exists in a world apart. We understand, looking at it, why poor Ponce de Leon dragged himself about looking for a Fountain of Youth.

Then that perfection is marred. The legs are too long, there are hairs on the boyish chin; or the little girl's flat chest – to her tearful embarrassment – produces overnight the elements of a bosom. What a pity! We avert our eyes. Behold, when we look back, the shining new mould, perfect again, so bright that it hurts our tired eyes. Youth stands before us, swaggering a little, kicking up the winged sandals. “Oh, God… Oh, God,” cries that unreasoning, thwarted voice in our heart, “I was like that, too.… It isn't fair.”

A peal of thunder, and the beautiful silver-gilt mould, which looked as though it would last for ever, has fallen in pieces to the ground. Now the face emerges as it is going to look for a long time… for Nature, growing impatient, has constructed the mask to last. It still retains a little of youth, even a little of childhood. But, with deft, sardonic touch, the fine details have been added, wrinkle, spot and scar.

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Portrait of a gentleman in broadcloth. His face is long, shieldshaped, his fringes of chestnut whiskers are turning iron-grey. Otherwise, he is clean-shaven, revealing the fact that his mouth is long, sensitive, obstinate as a mule's. He has a long nose with a bump at the end. His eyebrows are bushy, and beneath them the hazel eyes look out with a glance at once fierce and appealing. He is not – for which one may be grateful – in the least bald. His hands are beautiful… long-fingered, slender, determined.

Yes, it is a scarred face. That twitch of the mouth, that rather too arrogant stare of the eyes, followed by the humble, appealing glance. The face of a sensitive man who has quarrelled frequently with his inferiors, and thought too much, in the subsequent hours, of what he has said, and what an immortal, ineffaceable fool he was to say anything at all.

He will stay like this for a long while, until there is that strange little chiming stroke of the gong, not hard at all, this time, merely as if the gilt clock had sounded the hour. Then the mould will split in halves, and out of it will emerge the incredibly fragile figure of old age.

“I'll be glad when this waiting is over. Ah, listen!” From the hot little room across the passage, children's voices lifted in singing… a boy's treble, a girl's sweet, clear soprano, the last a voice which could sometimes bring tears to the eyes. He crosses the passage, stands behind them listening.

The Princess, lifting her face, quite misunderstands.

“I'm sorry, Papa. The old keys are all muffled; I have to loudpedal.”

“What are you singing, children?”

“It's ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, Papa. The words are so pretty. Willy and I made a tune for them ourselves.”

“Isabel did,” says round-faced Will, stoutly surrendering all the glory.

“Sing it again, children. ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’.”