6

Heralded by the Marlborough Press when he reached the Sounds, he already had sufficient merchandise to start a store, which Mr. Hornby had built for him on Wellington Street, near the quay. A “General Merchant” he called himself—a grocer, really, and an auctioneer.

Again, as at the goldfields, he chose a place which almost made his fortune. Picton, on the shores of a sheltered and beautiful harbour like a quiet lake, was tucked into the valley surrounded by protective hills climbing to the south, making a barrier pierced only by the high and narrow pass to the Wairau Plains. From these hills, two jagged promontories inclined northward into the sea, forming the Queen Charlotte Sounds. Picton, facing north, enclosed by those steep and heavily bush-clad mountains, had one of the most easily defensible harbours in New Zealand. That, and its central position, nearly made it the seat of government.

In 1860, gold was discovered to the southward, at Wakamarina. When the rush came, four years later, the population doubled and the town had a tremendous boom; but though this was one of the richest fields ever discovered in New Zealand, prospectors were soon lured to the west coast. Wakamarina was “poor man's diggings” —most of the gold being picked up out of crevices.

page 46

Coal was discovered by prospecting diggers during the Wakamarina rush, but the deposit was so rich that they believed it had been left by a passing steamer, and nothing was done about it until its rediscovery, some years later. Then the Picton Coal Company was formed, but the mining was found too expensive, and it was abandoned. Yet no harbour in New Zealand was so well adapted for a coal port.

Neither Government, nor gold, nor coal brought wealth to Picton, nor to Arthur Beauchamp. As it was, he found wealth of a different sort. Something held him for ever to New Zealand, bound him especially to the Marlborough Sounds, rover though he might be. It was said of him that he moved so often, his poultry went to sleep on their backs with their feet up, ready to be tied; yet he spent more than thirty years of his rover's life on these Sounds. It was his one constancy.

In his early years at Picton, he threw himself vigorously into the struggle that was then waging for the life of the town. Picton, despite its early settlement, had no real importance until 1861, when it became the seat of the Provincial Government. The rich Wairau and Awatere valleys to the south had originally been taken by a class of cultured and educated men bred to the belief that land-holding was the inherited privilege of the few. Among these was the Hon. Algernon Tollemache. These land-owners (“squatters”), endeavouring to retain the lands and protect the sacred rights of property, had contrived separation from the neighbouring Nelson, and—under the federal form of page 47 government then obtaining in New Zealand—had formed a separate, self-governing province which they named Marlborough. The port Waitoh they renamed Picton after Wellington's chief lieutenant at Waterloo; and here they established the seat of government, shifting it from Blenheim, a larger inland town, the home of the Opposition, which was chiefly composed of townsmen and small farmers. The Blenheim party, led by a Mr. Eyes,“considered any legislation legitimate which might dissolve the old Council and turn the scales against Picton”; in consequence, the issue of “Picton v. Blenheim” dominated Marlborough politics.

Arthur Beauchamp naturally took sides with the squatters. Here his early English associations provided his necessary support. He could take his place among these men without seeming to be a “climber.” He adapted himself readily to politics; his political attitude coincided with his interests and inclinations, and he quickly held a prominent position in the Council, and was regarded as Picton's ablest champion—“a sound man.”

To the Picton representatives it was a matter of life and death that the seat of government should be retained. If the government were moved, Picton would forfeit her glory, which depended entirely on pride of place. Still more important, she would lose “the opulence derived from a liberal expenditure of Government money.”

Until the gold rush to Wakamarina, the squatters succeeded in holding their own; but the influx of population gave Blenheim more electoral votes, added to which land questions arose causing so much page 48 friction among the Picton members of the Council that some members threatened to go over to the Opposition unless matters mended. The Blenheim party seized the opportunity of this division, and on the second day of the 1864 session, Mr. Godfrey of Blenheim moved:“That the Council do now adjourn until Thursday, 29th instant, at three o'clock p.m., and hold its next and subsequent meetings at the courthouse, Blenheim.”

Upon this motion, followed the most heroic debate in the politics of New Zealand. To Blenheim it was the culmination of years of discontent; to Picton it was a fight against extinction. For days the battle waged, both parties being heart and soul in an issue which concerned their interests so closely. This was the occasion which gave Arthur Beauchamp his fame in the early politics of New Zealand. Led by him, Picton made one last despairing stand. He himself took the floor. He was a young man—still in his thirties. Behind his endurance was experience in luring and holding the restless, lawless Melbourne diggers. Behind that training there were the Byron competitions with his father in Hornsey Lane.

“He brought to the assistance of his party” (says New Zealand history)“a verbosity worthy of the occasion. Hour after hour he held the fort with a dogged devotion that would have done honour to Sir Thomas Picton himself.” Finally,“after speaking for the best part of a day, he struck terror into the hearts of those weary ones anxiously waiting the division, by explaining that ‘with these few preliminary remarks, he would now proceed to speak on the subject under discussion.’” But page 49 human endurance has its limits, and after ten and a half hours “of single-handed combat,” he collapsed. The substance of his speech is nowhere preserved, but the Opposition Marlborough Press, naturally vituperative to a rival, described it as “ten and a half hours of rubbish, ribaldry and Billingsgate.”

Since the fatal division could no longer be delayed the Resolution was passed and forwarded to Superintendent Seymour, who replied that “the course pursued by the Council was contrary to the Constitution, which fixed the session at Picton.”

Motions calling for the resignation of the Superintendent were only defeated by his friends leaving the room and depriving the Council of a quorum. But his Superintendency ended with that session, and the great battle of Blenheim. Picton was virtually over. The population of the province had increased in the sheep districts near Blenheim, giving it additional electoral power, and when the Council met in October, 1865,“there was an assured majority to carry out the resolutions of the previous Council.”

The last episode in this struggle was “the handing in by Mr. Beauchamp of a protest against the Council proceeding to elect a Superintendent.” Mr. Eyes, the main supporter of the Opposition, was proposed and elected, though “the Picton representatives showed their contempt for the proceedings by leaving in a body.”

Within the next three weeks the seat of government was transferred from Picton, and “that little town suffered a relapse from which it has never recovered.” Its total population in 1886 was hardly more than 700; and when in the 1890's, Katherine Mansfield paid the visit to The True Original Pa Man, her page 50 grandfather, which is so beautifully remembered in The Voyage, Picton had gone to sleep for ever.

For a few more years Arthur Beauchamp continued in political life, being a member of the Marlborough Provincial Council from September 17th, 1864, to September 8th, 1865; and from October 8th, 1865 to October 9th, 1866. In 1866 he was elected to represent Picton in the New Zealand House of Representatives, taking his seat in the Fourth Parliament in April. But as a member of this Parliament, he was not very happy, and gave up his seat within six months, before making any definite mark. Apparently he did not even offer the customary reason for withdrawal, for the space after his name in the Parliamentary Records remained a blank.

Some of his comments during debate have been preserved in the New Zealand Parliamentary Records. They faintly recall the fantastic humour of a figure who became a legend in his life-time, and fascinated the imagination of Katherine Mansfield.

“Mr. Beauchamp said he had been listening to this debate with much pleasure, whether awake or asleep. Before going into the difficulties of Auckland, he would allude to the scientific discovery of the honourable member for Wellington City (Mr. Fitzherbert) that the shadow precede the substance. He had not thought it a just remark as applied to the honourable member for Avon. This debate was assuming now a theatrical form: there had been tragedy, melodrama, high comedy, and low comedy: but the exhibition that displeased him most was that of the honourable member for the Otago Goldfields (Mr. Vogel). He page 51 considered that the honourable member for Wellington City (Mr. Fitzherbert) made a very good speech though his arguments were hardly so weighty as they might have been. With regard to Auckland, it had once been in a very flourishing state; but during the war, though he could not state exactly the origin of it, there had been a kind of artificial prosperity, which had raised the expectations of the people. Auckland had a grievance, but it had not been stated: that was the removal of the seat of Government, although the Auckland members might not admit it. The removal of the seat of Government might have been expedient and politically necessary, but it was not the least unjust. Then a kind of collapse occurred in Auckland, which had prostrated the energies of the people. This debate evidently showed that something should be done for that province, with which he sympathized, for he had suffered in his own province by the removal of the seat of Government; but he had not caved in, and he would not advise the people of Auckland to do so. Their sufferings were, however, only temporary, and might be alleviated, but not by Separation. It would not do to tinker with the Native difficulty, for that would only disturb the Natives. With regard to Otago, its case was not half so good a one as that of Auckland. That province, at one extremity of the Islands, had joined with a province at the other extremity to tear out the vitals of the colony—a most injudicious proceeding. The honourable member for Raglan appeared to him to have set up a golden calf, which he wished the colony to worship; but he hoped it would do no such thing. He was to some extent a goldfields member: he meant to say that he was a member for a collapsed goldfield—Wakamarina. He was sorry, therefore, to see the conduct of some of the goldfields members, and believed it was not approved of by the miners generally. For his part, he wished to see a strong central Government. He had gone through poetries Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4; he would now go to poetry No. 5, page 52 the age of boyhood. Honourable members would recollect seeing a picture of a boy scratching his head, being puzzled over a sum. He thought it a world of art, in which fresh beauties could easily be discovered —he did not mean in the boy scratching his head. (The honourable member closed his speech with the following words:

” ‘Separation is a vexation:
Division is as bad:
The rule-of-three, it puzzles me,
And factions drive me mad.’)

“In another speech Mr. Beauchamp said he had intended to make a suggestion as to the form in which additional taxes, if necessary, should be raised, for he thought the Government had pursued a wrong course in saying that they would only have stamp duties, as it had placed many members in an embarrassment—among others the honourable member for Westland, who, after creating the Government, as it were, like Warwick the King-maker, found that, like Frankenstein, he had created a monster, which was going to stamp at him and master him. Noses had, he believed, been counted, so that perhaps it was not of much use continuing this discussion longer: but he thought the Government was like a spoilt child crying for stamps, and expecting the House to say, ‘There, then! it shall have stamps.’ (The honourable member then illustrated some remarks by telling an episode in the life of Jack the Giant-killer, and compared the similes of the Colonial Treasurer to soap-bubbles, and concluded after some further remarks of a humorous nature.)”

If Arthur Beauchamp ever had much money, he probably lost it in Picton. Few men made much there; many lost fortunes. The final blow came in 1879, when New Zealand was involved in the great world depression. Not only were the majority page 53 of Marlborough landholders ruined, but many business men also; and Picton finally relapsed into the inertia of a little out-of-the-way seaside town, where time ceases to be very important—the future too monotonous to bear contemplation: where life is “like living at the bottom of a well,” as a Picton spinster said.

Arthur Beauchamp carried on his “General Merchant Store,” and his auctioneering, for ten years there, paying his £50 per annum licence fee, a very substantial part of the town's total annual revenue of £600. He added greatly to his auctioneer's repertoire, during that time, and some of his mysterious jingles (“Dolly of milk no resembles”), and his verses of Maori place names have become New Zealand folk-lore:—

“Ohau can I cross the river Ohau,
O Waikanae not reach the shore?
Otaki a boat and row me across
In the Manawatu did before.”

He died in 1910 at the age of eighty-three. There is a picture of him in one of Katherine's letters:

“My grandpa said a man could travel all over the world with a clean pair of socks and a rook rifle. At the age of 70 he started for England thus equipped, but Mother took fright and added a handkerchief or two. When he returned he was shorn of everything but a large watering can which he had bought in London for his young marrows. I don't suggest him as a Man to be Followed, however.”

No doubt this was the large red watering can which stood on one side of the door, with the pair of old bluchers on the other, when after The Voyage page 54 Fenella went up the dewy garden at Picton. While she stroked the white cat in the dusky sitting-room, she listened to grandma's gentle voice and the rolling tones of grandpa. Then she went in.

“There, lying to one side of an immense bed, lay grandpa. Just his head with a white tuft, and his rosy face and long silver beard showed over the quilt. He was like a very old wide-awake bird.”