Reihana was not so overawed that he could not argue with Jenkins.
‘Why have we come to this place?’ he demanded. ‘What was wrong with our old place, which cost eight shillings? This must cost many more shillings, perhaps even a guinea. It’s too grand. We will be brought to ruin.’
I was surprised to hear Reihana say this. He’d complained that the Strangers’ Home was beneath us, and now he was complaining that the Grosvenor Hotel was too far above us. It was true, however, that we’d heard much from Mr Lightband about needing to make money, so I too was wondering how Jenkins and his associates could afford this place.
‘Tell that old man to be quiet,’ Ngahuia whispered to me. She was wearing her fine dress, of green silk, and she fancied herself quite a lady in an establishment such as this.
‘How is this your concern?’ Jenkins demanded of Reihana. ‘What is it to you if this place is grand? You’re not paying for this. We are paying.’
‘I’m telling you to be cautious,’ said Reihana, standing with his hands on his hips, looking up at Jenkins, who was much taller than he was. ‘We’re worried that too much money is being spent, and by and by we’ll all be brought to ruin.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Ngahuia said. She glared at Reihana, but he ignored her.
‘You don’t have to worry about any such things,’ Jenkins said, his face red with anger. He hadn’t learned to ignore Reihana, the way the rest of us did. ‘We have money for your food and your rooms here. Let us worry about how our money is spent.’
‘I don’t like to see money thrown away,’ Reihana told him. Mr Brent, who had flopped into an armchair, nodded, but I don’t think Jenkins noticed. Reihana turned to the rest of us, his back to Jenkins, and spoke in a very mocking tone. ‘My friends, great must be the riches of our Pakeha! They have such riches they can keep eighteen of us in London, all living in a grand style, without any fear of running out of money!’
Jenkins started talking before Reihana could say another word, his voice echoing through the hotel lobby.
‘If you are to meet the Queen, which I believe you all desire, then first you must be raised to a great height. Do you understand? She will not see you if you are low, like the Lascar sailors wandering the streets of Limehouse. She must see that you’re rangatira. After you meet the Queen, we can come down from this great height, and spend less money.’
‘Better not climb to such a great height,’ Reihana mumbled. He always wished to have the last word. ‘Better to keep only a little high, and then we will not waste money, and have to fall very low.’
Young Mr Lightband walked up, jingling numerous keys, and Wharepapa took Reihana by the arm, walking away to another part of the lobby. We were all tired of his warnings. Now I must admit that he was right about many matters, but at the time it seemed as though he lived only to vex and goad Jenkins, and to make us anxious when we wanted to enjoy ourselves.
There was much pleasure to be had in this neighbourhood, which was not so crowded and dark as Limehouse. On many days we went out walking in one of the parks. On fine days, so many gentlemen and ladies were out on their horses, riding nowhere in particular, that the ground looked as gritty and brown as a beach. The ladies wore shiny black hats and their skirts billowed to one side when they cantered. I thought I had seen some ladies ride this way in New Zealand, but I wasn’t sure. In London, when you see so much of a thing, it begins to be the natural thing, the right thing. The way this business should be done, rather than the way it is somewhere else.
This hotel was very close to Victoria train station, so we had the great excitement of seeing a train for the first time, and climbing aboard it. Such a racket, and such steam, like a volcano erupting! It rushed towards us, smoking and hissing, and Hariata Pomare had to be pushed trembling up its steps, because she thought it was a demon. When the train took off, rattling along its tracks, we all clung to our seats, for fear of being thrown off. Often in the clipper I thought we were moving fast through the water, but that was nothing like a train.
That must have been the day we went to see the Crystal Palace, which was high on a hill to the south of London. This house of glass made St Paul’s look small, and we spent many hours there looking at its fountains and statues, and observing noisy machines that could spin cotton.
‘Such wonders!’ Tere Pakia kept saying, though she told Jenkins that she found the naked statues shockingly indecent. Hapimana and Takarei agreed with her, though I observed they could not remove their eyes from a marble trio of women called the Three Graces. These Maori had short memories, I thought, but then I wondered if they were simply too young to remember our own ways, before the missionaries made us cover ourselves with cloth.
We met no princes or dukes at the Crystal Palace, which seemed to disappoint Jenkins, but we did hear one young lady sing the song of the Queen of the Night. Her name was Carlotta Patti, a name and a voice that I remember all these years later as though we heard her song yesterday in one of the theatres of Auckland. Her skin was as creamy as those of the Three Graces, and her bosom, if I may be a little vulgar, was like the prow of a ship. Sadly, she walked with a pronounced limp, and Wiremu Pou, that chancer, asked Jenkins if he should carry her from the stage. Jenkins told him that this would alarm the lady, and he would be sure to be arrested.
None of us, I can truly say, had heard anything like this lady’s voice, unless it was in the trees of New Zealand, in the early morning when the birds awaken. When she finished singing, we clapped and shouted, and Wiremu Pou thumped his taiaha on the ground to make even more noise. He carried it with him everywhere in the streets of London, to draw attention to himself and, perhaps, to spite Reihana.
Wharepapa could not contain himself.
‘Come back!’ he shouted to the lady, forgetting that she was Italian and could not understand any Maori. ‘Come back, lady! Yours is no human voice! You have the voice of a bird!’
Perhaps someone explained Wharepapa’s words to her, because this Carlotta Patti limped back onto stage, smiling and bowing, and sang something called the Laughing Song. This we all liked very much as well. Wharepapa was so smitten with her, I wondered if he intended to make her his next wife. On the ship, he had talked a great deal about his loneliness. Indeed.
It’s late now, and I’m getting tired. There is so much to tell of London, which is like many cities stitched together, containing great multitudes, like Babylon. Perhaps there is just one more day I should mention now, for it was a remarkable day for all of us – especially, I think, for Jenkins.
A statue had been erected in honour of the late Prince Consort, and this was to be unveiled at the Royal Horticultural Gardens in South Kensington. We could walk there from our hotel, and so we did, all sweltering in our cloaks, for the day was warm. Tere Pakia, who could be very simple, was very anxious that the statue not resemble any that we saw at the Crystal Palace. Wiremu Pou and his brother, Horomona Te Atua, couldn’t resist teasing her.
‘The Queen herself wished him to be carved in stone, entirely naked,’ Wiremu told her. ‘He had a moko on his buttocks, just like Paratene.’
‘No!’ Tere’s eyes were wide as saucers.
‘She would like her subjects to see him as she alone did when he was alive,’ said Horomona, ‘without a stitch of clothing.’
‘It’s indecent!’ squeaked Tere, who looked as though she were about to cry. ‘I won’t look on it! I’ll cover my eyes!’
Then both brothers fell about laughing, so their game was up, and Tere smacked at them with her bag.
Of any day we spent in London, this day witnessed the greatest crush of people. London Bridge would have collapsed under the weight of everyone there to see this monument unveiled.
‘There must be thousands of people here,’ Jenkins told us, leading us with some difficulty towards a place arranged in advance with the Duke of Newcastle. As usual, it was hard to move at all for all the people gathering to stare at us.
After this day was over, I hear
d Jenkins gushing to Mrs Colenso that all eyes had been on us, and that everyone was delighted with our presence.
‘The best people in London were there,’ he said. They spoke in Maori, for she always insisted on it if any of us were in the same room. ‘We were singled out for attention, all most flattering. Everyone wished to meet us. We are important people here in London now.’
I said nothing, for the day had turned out well. But when we first arrived, I did not see many smiles. Many of the fine ladies and gentlemen looked at us with cool eyes, turning away lest we thought they stared. No one wished to meet us. One lady snapped open her fan, as though to hide her own face. Some gentlemen, I thought, looked quite hostile, especially when we reached a seated area near the platform, and I wondered if they would push us away. We were not important people. We were strangers with green lips.
All this changed after the procession of great people had passed by, and the Duke of Newcastle stepped forward to bid us all good day. He murmured some words to Jenkins, who then rounded on us, spitting with amazement. The Prince of Wales had expressed a desire to speak to us. The Prince of Wales! The Duke would lead us forward, and we were to bow and say how do you do.
This moment of bowing before the young Prince and Princess passed very quickly, and I was conscious only of the sun beating down upon us, and the surging chatter of voices. The Prince was shorter than I thought he would be, and his skin was quite brown, though his hair looked almost golden in the sunshine. He said a few things in English, and then the audience was over. Jenkins was almost jumping out of his shoes with pride and excitement.
‘You must come to Marlborough House,’ he said. ‘This is what the Prince of Wales just said! We must all go to visit him at Marlborough House. Happy, happy day!’
After the Prince of Wales and his party moved on, everyone – even the finest of people – wanted to shake our hands. Everyone wanted to be seen with us, and they clustered around Jenkins issuing invitations to this and that. The Prince of Wales had shown an interest in us, so we were no longer strangers in this great city. The ladies and gentlemen of London were ready to turn their faces our way.
The Bohemian tells me he is from a town called Pilsen, and that this was the only place he knew as a boy. His uncle was a bishop in the south of Bohemia, but until the Bohemian was a grown man, he never travelled to see this place. Pilsen was everything the Bohemian knew of the world until the day he set out to walk to Vienna.
I can’t imagine such a life. I was born on the island of Aotea, and have always spent part of the year there. The only exception to this is 1863, the year I’m writing about, when I was only in Tutukaka, Auckland, and England.
The chief home of my parents was on Hauturu, and it was to this island that we always returned. When I was young, the karaka grew in a great shiny grove all the way to the water’s edge, and our whare stood hidden in the trees – karaka, ti tree, puriri, pohutukawa, all alive with the chatter of tui and korimako. I remember the trench between the boulders for our waka. We covered them with nikau fronds, so they too were hidden from sight. In those days there were always plenty of kumara and fernroot, as well as fish. We used the bay on the north-west side to keep our pigs, in a pen formed by the cliffs and the sea.
But all the while we had fires burning in other places: Tutukaka, Ngunguru, Whangaruru. We moved with the seasons, or when we needed to trade, or when a hui was required of us by tikanga, custom. This is something the judges in the Native Land Court often find difficult to understand. They would like us all to stay put, and to have one piece of land, with written-down deeds. They want to look at our tatai, our genealogy, in one dimension only. We must account for ourselves like the sons and grandsons of Jacob going into Egypt, in one straight line of names.
The Bohemian’s father worked in the orchards of a great man’s palace, and when he was a boy the Bohemian was his father’s apprentice. When he arrived in New Zealand, he told people that he was a gardener.
‘But when I worked with my father I was drawing, not digging,’ he says, his eyes moving back and forth from the canvas to my face. ‘My first paintings were of flowers and plants.’
‘You must see Hauturu,’ I tell him. Perhaps when he returns from England he can pay us a visit. I’ll show him the best place to catch fish, off the south-eastern bluff. ‘You can paint the trees and the birds.’
The Bohemian smiles.
‘I must paint people, not trees,’ he says. ‘There is no money in this country for pictures of flowers. In New Zealand people want to see their own faces, or the faces of men like you, rangatira.’
Almost all of the paintings the Bohemian has sent to Mr Buller in London are of Maori. It’s more than twenty years since I was there, and still the English want to look upon Maori faces. They can’t read our moko, just as they can’t read our Maori books. What do they see when they look at us Maori? What will happen to us when they grow tired of gazing upon us, and look away?
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
ISAIAH 40:15
I’m not very good at remembering dates. In the land court they want to know the dates of things from many years, when this is not how we thought of them at the time. When they asked me to speak of Mauparaoa’s attack on Aotea, I couldn’t remember the month and the year. All I knew was that I think it happened at some point between the death of Arama Karaka Pi and the arrival of Hobson in the Bay of Islands.
But there is one date I do remember from the English trip, and that is Saturday the thirteenth of June, 1863. This is the day we were taken to Marlborough House, to be presented to the Prince and Princess of Wales.
This house was tall, much larger than the Strangers’ Home, and built of brick. It was surrounded by high walls so no one could look in from the street or shoot at the Prince and Princess. We couldn’t travel there in cabs, Jenkins told us, for only private carriages would be suitable arriving at such an address.
We drew up on the gravel, where many young men in scarlet coats were waiting to open our doors and help the ladies down. An old General with a forehead like the moon greeted us, and led us into a narrow hallway, where we could swathe ourselves in our Maori cloaks. Not even Reihana complained that day, so overawed was he by the place and the occasion. Beyond the heavy doors lay our audience room, which was called the Saloon. The General told Jenkins that this was the finest room in London, and Jenkins whispered this information to us, as though it were a secret.
Double doors opened, as if by magic, to the Saloon, and we were ushered in to wait. Truly, this was no ordinary room. We we all stood, mouths agape, turning and pointing, for there was so much to see and admire. Up and up the room went, with paintings high on the ceiling, just as we’d seen in St Paul’s. The walls were hung with tapestries framed in gold, though at first I thought these were paintings as well, so rich and vivid were their colours. I could see Ngahuia struggling to resist stroking their surfaces, her fingers twitching, the way the fingers of English people twitched when they wanted to touch our moko.
The floor stretched before us, black and white tiles, as polished as river stones, and a carpet of many colours that Jenkins told us was Turkish and therefore very fine and costly. Chairs with velvet seats were set against the wall, but of course we didn’t sit down. We stood scattered about the carpet and gazed around us, in awe of the wonders of this room. Even the fireplace had pillars of marble.
At one end of the room, above our heads, hung some kind of verandah – I had never seen one inside a house before – though this room contained no stairs. Painted all around the room, so high that gazing up at it for too long would make my neck stiff, were scenes from a great battle. In breathless murmurs Jenkins, quite cowed by the place as well, said this battle was in France, and it had been fought and won by the Duke of Marlborough. This, I suppose, is why the house was named in his honour.
I didn’t even hear t
he click of the doors that admitted the Prince and Princess to this room. One moment we were looking up at a picture of the Duke in his red coat riding a black horse, and the next we were looking straight into the face of the Prince of Wales. He was smiling and easy with us, and I recall that his eyes were blue as the sky, and bulged. I would say they bulged like a lizard’s, but I would never compare a great man to such a vile and malevolent creature.
The Princess of Wales was very thin and very young, close in age, I would guess, to Hariata Pomare. Her skin was an unearthly white. She had a shy, sweet smile, and seemed lost in that grand gilt-edged room. Later someone told me that she did not speak English very well, for she was just a new bride and had not lived long in England, but we had no idea of this at the time, of course. When it came to English we were quite hopeless ourselves.
The Prince had a number of questions for us, conveyed to us through Jenkins. What was our opinion of London? What were our feelings about the war in New Zealand? Were the Maori people of the North more disposed to like the English compared with the Maori of the Taranaki? Had we visited the Arsenal yet, or seen the Crown Jewels? Had we visited the Zoological Gardens, quite his favourite place in the city? What were the strangest sights we had come upon so far?
These are some of the questions, the ones I can remember. The Princess did not ask questions, but she smiled at us most angelically, and afterwards Wiremu Pou said she would be the most beautiful woman in the world if she were not so very skinny.
Many voices answered the Prince’s questions, everyone taking care not to speak for too long. I took my turn. The Prince had discovered from Jenkins that I was the oldest member of the group.