He stood up and paced the platform. We were happy to hear, he said, that Her Majesty the Queen did not wish to oppress the Maori people, and instead wished for them to be equal to her British subjects. But the laws in New Zealand were not truly uniting the English and Maori people.
‘I think,’ he said, pausing so that Jenkins could catch up with his words, ‘that to unite our countries, our two races should marry together.’
There was much laughter from the audience at this, and some applause.
‘You may laugh at this suggestion,’ said Horomona, pleased at the reaction. ‘But these are my thoughts. Marriage between the English and the Maori would improve both peoples.’
Everyone in the big room seemed to like this, once Jenkins had explained the words, and some gentlemen shouted out ‘hear, hear!’
‘Some of our Maori women have married English men,’ Horomona continued. ‘But as yet English ladies have not married our Maori men. Surely the Bible teaches us that we must do unto others as we would be done by? Surely it teaches we must love one another? We could not do either of these things in a better manner.’
There was much applause now, and cheering.
‘Ladies, you must follow the example of Maori ladies,’ he said. Even Jenkins was smiling now, and Mr Lightband and the Mayor were laughing most heartily. ‘This is all I have to say on the matter.’
I looked over at Wharepapa, who wasn’t smiling at all.
These were good places, Bristol and Bath. In October, not long before we were due to travel north, Jenkins went away to London for a few days and returned with much good news. He’d visited Hare and Hariata Pomare at Mrs Colenso’s house, and found them in good health and spirits. He’d also visited poor Haumu at the Grove Hall Asylum in Bow and discovered that she was much improved, her disposition quite restored.
She had not been trapped inside all these months, as we feared. Haumu had been taken on a picnic in Epping Forest, and on an outing for private patients to Southend, and she had behaved impeccably on both occasions, according to her nurses. Now she wanted to join our party again, and Jenkins had agreed to this at once. I think this was at Mr Lightband’s urging, for he said the asylum was a costly place, and it would have been cheaper to keep Haumu all this time at the Grosvenor Hotel.
Jenkins’ third visit in London had been more dramatic, for it involved much arguing with people he referred to as the henchmen of Mr Ridgway, a harridan of a landlady in Limehouse, and a vulgar seafaring man displaying the most base of intentions. But this visit too had been successful in the end, for at last Ngahuia had been persuaded to rejoin our party.
In many ways Ngahuia was a foolish woman, more foolish than she should have been at her age – around thirty, I think, at the time. But it was not right for her to be living in London without any protection, especially as she spoke only a little English. Her place was with us. As for Haumu, she should not have come on this trip to England at all, but she could not be abandoned to the company of the disturbed inhabitants of the Grove Hall Asylum. She and Ngahuia would be companions for each other, as they were on board the Ida Zeigler, except this time, we hoped, there would be no cries in the night and no broken doors.
So this was our happy ending in Bristol. Our farewell gathering was in the Broadmead Rooms, and this too ended with much laughter and applause. Crowds of people crammed in, cheering at the end of every speech. The plaintive voices of the women helped our waiata soar to the rooftops, moving some in the crowd to tears. Then the Mayor said he had heard of the strange Maori custom of rubbing noses, and declared himself anxious to see it. Wharepapa said he would be happy to hongi the Mayor, and so he did. I thought the room would explode, so loud were the cheers and drumming feet of the crowd!
One more thing I must write about from those months. One afternoon when we had arrived in Bath for a meeting and various other appointments, Jenkins took Reihana and me on a special visit to Kingswood School. This school was situated high on a hill above the town, and accessible only by a muddy track that looked like a road in New Zealand. But this was a place Jenkins had always wanted to see, he said, for it was founded more than a hundred years earlier by John Wesley himself.
Reihana – only accompanying us, I think, because everyone else was going to a tea with an excess of ladies – preferred churches to schools. He often spoke of his plans to build churches all over Northland when he returned home. But I never saw any church in England that I liked more than Kingswood School. Its golden stones glowed in the afternoon sun, and I thought for a moment that Jenkins had brought us instead to a castle, or some great man’s house. The gravel drive swooped across a lawn so green, I imagined I was home again. I had never seen so large or handsome a school.
We were met by the governor, a Reverend West, and the headmaster, who was so short that, were it not for his substantial whiskers, he might be mistaken for a pupil. The boys themselves we met in the great Schoolroom, a long panelled room with many windows, set with dozens of tables. The boys all leapt to their feet when we entered the room, so we walked past row after row of dark suits and white collars, each boy standing perfectly still. Such discipline and respect! Such a large airy room! Every school should look this way. How much would other children learn if they could study their lessons in such a room? ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’
As usual, Jenkins spoke for too long, and Reihana spoke for even longer, though I cannot imagine the boys of Kingswood were interested in listening at such length to his account of a visit to Bath Abbey. Wesleyans do not go to such churches, for they prefer the plainness of their chapels, and if they did wish to visit Bath Abbey, the boys could simply scamper down the hill and see it for themselves. I tried to keep my remarks short, for Jenkins was already muttering that we must return to the city soon, to prepare for that night’s meeting. I stood before the boys and reminded them of the Bible’s exhortation to apply their hearts unto instruction, and their ears unto the words of knowledge.
When we went to leave, the boys gave us the most resounding cheer. Jenkins and the Headmaster conferred, and agreed that the boys might come close to bid us farewell, and then several hundred seemed to rush forward at once. We could not leave until we had shaken every hand. Some of the boys were smiling, some were solemn. But none wished for us to go without bowing to us, and shaking hands. Truly, this was one of the happiest afternoons I spent in England, with these fine boys, in this great place.
That was the day I understood why I had come to that country – besides meeting the Queen, of course. To receive new shoes, a copper kettle and the like was all very agreeable, but these things wear out in time. A school goes on, and is of use to generation after generation of mokopuna. John Wesley founded Kingswood more than a hundred years before our visit, and every year the school had grown bigger.
Let Reihana build his churches. I was determined that when I returned to New Zealand, I would build a school. It would not be a castle, and it would not be filled with the sons of Wesleyan ministers, for we have neither the materials for castles nor an abundance of Wesleyans in Tutukaka and Ngunguru. My school would be open to Maori and Pakeha children, and within its walls they would learn all they must know to make our country as great as England. This plan was ambitious, I know, but why should we expect anything less than greatness? When our ancestors sailed across the ocean into the unknown, were they not dreaming of paradise?
The Bohemian wants to know why I’m staying in Auckland this week. I tell him I thought I was going to the Native Land Court, to talk about Hauturu and who can sell it.
‘Do you want to sell it?’ He sounds surprised.
The Crown want to buy it, I say, because it’s a good island for prisoners. It’s hard for boats to land, and for prisoners to escape. Most islands are hopeless. They make it too easy for prisoners to swim or sail away.
The British know all about this, because when they put Napoleon on an island, he escaped. They
had to find another island for him, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These fighting men are too wily and dangerous. Look at Te Kooti Arikirangi. When he was imprisoned on that cold place, Wharekauri, he stole a bugle and lots of guns, took over a schooner, and sailed back to the East Coast with several hundred of his followers. He’s still running around the country now, almost twenty years later. They’ve given up trying to imprison him. He’s not starting any more wars these days, you see. He’s too busy with his foolish religion.
While Hongi was sailing back from England in 1821, crossing the Atlantic as we would many years later, Napoleon died. Some people said that Hongi’s ship passed the island just as Napoleon’s spirit left it, and that the spirits of the two men were fused there in the middle of the ocean. This is why Hongi was such a great tactician, and so tenacious and aggressive in battle. He’d always admired Napoleon, and spent much of his time in Cambridge examining the maps from Napoleon’s campaigns.
I don’t know about any of that. I don’t think Hongi needed the mana of Napoleon to become a great leader.
‘When the Crown buys the island, I will still live there,’ I explain to the Bohemian. ‘They won’t need the whole island.’
‘Britain is an island,’ he says. I wait for him to go on, but he says nothing else. Britain is too full an island: that is the problem. There are too many people in it, which is why they all dream of coming here. Over there, cities are like monsters, devouring the land, filling the sky with smoke. We’ll never see such places here.
The Bohemian will understand this when he arrives in England. So many people, and the skies so grey. For all its wonders and greatness, England can be a dark place. When the winter sets in, the darkness lasts all day long.
For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:
But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
JAMES 3:7–8
I have left something out of my account of our time in Bristol and Bath, because it’s an unpleasant thing, and I was not sure if I wanted to write it down.
At a museum or some such place, when we were being shown around, I saw a creature they called a crocodile. This was a scaly lizard with a long jaw, and it once lived in water, like a taniwha. The others in my group looked at it without fear, for it was no longer living, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near it. These creatures bring illness. They can destroy us. They can climb inside us while we sleep, and eat away at us from within.
I’m not saying that this crocodile could do this, or that it had been sent by the ancestors to punish us in some way. It was already dead, not crawling across our path. But if I were an English person, I would not keep such a creature in my museum. I would burn it, or have it cut into pieces. I wouldn’t touch it, as some of the others in our party did. I would not take it in my hands, as Hapimana did, just to show off in front of women. What happened to Hapimana – did it begin on this day?
Certainly, it was not a good omen, seeing this crocodile. When Jenkins told us that Kihirini was too sick to travel to Birmingham, but was going to stay on in Bath to take the waters, I wasn’t surprised. Kihirini stood too close to that crocodile lizard. He could not have been ignorant, as the younger ones were, of its dark power.
Those of us left of the original Maori party – six men and two women – travelled on to Birmingham. This was another great city of many thousands of people, all employed in the making of things to be sold around the Empire, and we were told there would be much here for us to see and learn. We would observe the making of guns and brass, and pins and buttons, and perhaps even drinking chocolate. We would stay there for a while, touring the district, and then move on to Manchester and Bradford.
But in Birmingham we were to be stuck fast for some months. The days already seemed dark when we arrived, though it wasn’t yet winter. Many mornings we awoke to rain, and even when there was no rain, we couldn’t see the sun. Birmingham was a city of thousands of tall chimneys, all bellowing black smoke into the sky. The cobbles in the road were dark and greasy with dirt.
By the end of October, almost all of us were sick. Ngahuia now complained that she wished she had stayed in London, for she did not care for this dark place where everyone was at work all the time and there were no parties. Why was Hariata Pomare permitted to live with Mrs Colenso, near all the shops and theatres, when she and Haumu must sit all day in this smoke-filled city? When we received word from London that Hariata Pomare had a baby boy, Ngahuia insisted she be sent there to help care for the mother and child.
‘She has Mrs Colenso and her daughter,’ Mr Lloyd told her. He was no friend to Ngahuia, not since the scene at the Strangers’ Home when he was obliged to leave her in Limehouse. ‘You would be of no use to them.’
I felt of no use to anyone at all. Whenever I stepped outside the house of Mrs Johnson, my landlady, the dirty air would sting my eyes. Even inside the house, the damp made my bones ache. The gloom of the weather settled around me, like a heavy cloak, and I felt too tired to walk. I didn’t want to end up like Kihirini, wheezing and exhausted, but now we were facing many months of winter, and I wasn’t sure when our spirits would lift. None of us had much energy for meetings, though Hapimana seemed much cheered when he discovered many beer shops and public houses in almost every neighbourhood, and learned that unless it was Sunday these places were open every hour of the day and night.
There was much talk among us now about returning to New Zealand. We were all comfortably lodged in a row of terraced houses on Bath Row, which was a respectable place near the big hospital and the church of St Thomas. Mrs Johnson’s house had its own narrow back yard, not a court where dozens of people hung their washing and shared the privy.
But after a month in Birmingham we had not visited a single manufactory or workshop. All we did was go to meeting after meeting, where most of the talk was in English. Sometimes Jenkins talked for an hour before we were invited to stand and address the assembly, and I remember finding it hard to stay awake, especially in our second or third meeting of the day. Mr Brent had gone home: why couldn’t we go home as well? Mrs Johnson told Wharepapa that this was just the autumn, and the days would grow much, much colder in the winter. At the time I couldn’t fathom such a thing. I’d never been so cold in all my life.
Jenkins would not listen to any talk of returning to New Zealand yet. He seemed much at home in this city, for he’d lived here as a young man, and when we first arrived, he was happy to renew the acquaintance of many of his Wesleyan friends. All the meetings he arranged for us took place in their homes and chapels. We had no big civic reception, as we had in Bristol and Bath, but we didn’t mind this much. We were kept occupied visiting Walsall, Kidderminster, Worcester and many other towns whose names I’ve forgotten. Now all I remember of many of these visits is the bright, curious faces of children, and ladies with lace collars peering at us over their teacups. We became quite accustomed to taking omnibuses and trains. On many nights we arrived back at our lodgings very late, Mrs Johnson, a candle held aloft, running up and down the stairs in her nightgown and shawl, her hair twisted with papers.
It was in Birmingham that Reihana finally stamped his foot and refused to wear a cloak at all. Jenkins had called at Mrs Johnson’s to collect us, carrying three cloaks – one for me and one for Wharepapa, for we had none left of our own, and one for Reihana, who had not brought any in the first place. Jenkins laid them on the table while he talked to Mrs Johnson in English.
‘I never wore a cloak in New Zealand,’ Reihana told Wharepapa, his face grim. ‘And I’m not wearing one now.’
He gathered them up in his arms – quite a feat, for he was a short man and they were long and voluminous – and threw them into the hallway. Jenkins and Mrs Johnson stopped talking at once. Our dear landlady didn’t understand what was taking place. She stood with her mouth half-open, petrified, like Lot’s wife.
‘If you make us wear
these cloaks, we will go home,’ Reihana said. He had always quarrelled with Jenkins, but in Birmingham he seemed to look for ways to defy him. ‘None of us want to wear them.’
Really, I didn’t mind wearing a cloak, especially now the weather was so cold. But we had to agree with Reihana, for our loyalty had to lie with each other, and none of us felt much pity for Jenkins. This was unkind of us, I think, but at the time our minds were full of suspicions. We hadn’t received any of the promised weekly money since we arrived in Birmingham. Jenkins told us that there was none, even though we appeared at meeting after meeting, and saw Mr Lightband taking a collection.
‘Let you, Mr Jenkins, also wear a kaitaka,’ I suggested. This was a good resolution, I thought. ‘We will all wear them together.’
I don’t remember what we agreed that day. There was no time for Jenkins to return to his lodgings, so he couldn’t wear a cloak, even if he were willing. If this took place before our first meeting at the Birmingham Town Hall, which I think it did, then Reihana was certainly wearing a cloak by the time he stood on the platform. But this was the last time he wore one. Jenkins didn’t argue with him again on this subject. They had other things to argue about.
This Town Hall in Birmingham was a splendid place. It rose high above the street like an ancient temple, making the dark rows of houses and lanes surrounding it look even more mean and airless. It was so large that Jenkins was quite hoarse at the end of the meeting. Dr Miller, the Rector of Birmingham, had arranged the meeting, and it was the afternoon, so most of the audience were children marched in from their schools.
Two thousand people were present that day, the Rector told us. But none of them were the great men of the city, and we received no invitations to any of Birmingham’s grand houses. Wharepapa had become an adept spy, and he listened carefully when Jenkins talked with Mr Lightband, or with some of his Birmingham friends. There was talk, he said, of the Mayor receiving letters from London, perhaps sent by Mr Ridgway, which contained many slanderous statements about Jenkins’ character. These letters said that Jenkins was only interested in fame and glory for himself. He was only interested in money. He forced us to dress up, like tame monkeys, and paraded us from place to place. Jenkins was very unhappy about these letters.