It’s late in the day now, and both the Bohemian and I have grown tired. I still haven’t answered his question about my moko. I still haven’t told him that despite the karaka whati ceremony, and the years of instruction, I was not a warrior until my first taua. I was not a warrior until I showed I had the strength and skill to kill a man, and the courage to do it.
Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
AMOS 3:3
I don’t remember the order of all these things because, as I said, once the Prince received us Jenkins was sent many, many invitations and he wanted us to see and do as much as possible. Now I began to understand why post boxes must be emptied in London eight times a day, and why the rich employed so many footmen in bright coats, for on some days invitations were delivered to our house every hour.
Our presence was requested in a private box to hear the opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre. We attended a military review, and numerous receptions and parties, sometimes several in the course of a day. One day we were at a party at Stafford House, hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Something or Other, and another day we were taken to the City Road Chapel to view the much simpler home of the late John Wesley, venerated above all men by Jenkins. All these things we did without complaint, for they were very interesting, even if dashing about here and there in London could take up hours of each day, and sometimes we all longed just to sit about the house and read, or write letters.
We had an especially good time at the invitation of Lord Ranelagh. This gentleman was holding, in the gardens of Beaufort House, something the English call a fête. Again, this is a French word, and it meant that this was a pastime of the most fashionable kind. A fête, we were told, was an outdoors party with games and tests of strength. We do this kind of thing in New Zealand as well, of course, but it is not that special or unusual a day, so it doesn’t need a French name.
The lawn of Beaufort House was speckled with small tables, all crowded with tea things. Ladies in pale dresses twirled their parasols and twittered around us, especially when Wiremu Pou and his brother Horomona Te Atua demonstrated great prowess knocking coconuts off their stands. They were also very impressed, and perhaps a little shocked, when Ngahuia and Tere Pakia demonstrated prowess of their own at a game called Aunt Sally. This game required them to throw a ball at a doll’s head, and to smash the clay pipe from its mouth. Ngahuia was particularly good at this. She was Old Hooknose’s granddaughter, after all. Perhaps she was imagining that one doll was Mr Lloyd, and another was Mr Brent, telling her to ask her friend Mr Ridgway if she wanted more money for clothes.
‘Lord Ranelagh compliments you on your vigour,’ Jenkins told her in a mocking tone, but for a change Ngahuia did not take offence and stomp off with her nose in the air. She would not take tea until she had smashed every clay pipe and triumphantly carried away some kind of trifle as a prize.
I must record, however, that the afternoon didn’t begin at all auspiciously. Lord Ranelagh had paid some fellows to stand under the trees and serenade everyone. These singers had painted their faces black. We had never seen such a thing, and didn’t like it at all. When we complained to Jenkins, he said it was an English custom, and done only to amuse.
‘An English custom?’ demanded Wharepapa. ‘To disguise your face in this way, and pretend to be someone else?’
‘The English should not pretend to be Negroes,’ Reihana said. ‘This is not an amusing thing.’
We couldn’t understand this behaviour at all. I still don’t understand it. Eventually we agreed that it was just an English joke, and we soon forgot about it, I must say, setting off to smash coconuts and drink tea instead. But it made me think of the Negro boy I saw painted on the wall at Marlborough House. I still think of this sometimes today, wondering if the young man was really black-skinned, or if he was just an Englishman in disguise.
Amidst all this whirl of activity, we were told we must move again, this time to a large furnished house on Weymouth Street, paid for by the company purse. Reihana objected to this, and Jenkins objected to this objection. Reihana brought up the story of his dream on the ship again, and Jenkins insulted him again about the beliefs of our ancestors. And on it went.
Jenkins did not listen much to Reihana, for he had met with another great man, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and like Mr Ridgway the Earl was insistent that we should be treated as honoured guests.
‘The Earl suggests that your expenses should be covered by the Colonial Office, shipping agents and the New Zealand Emigration Society,’ Mr Lightband told us, and Mr Brent’s face was rosy with pleasure. He and Mr Lloyd always liked to hear that someone else would be paying for us.
Apart from Reihana, none of us questioned the wisdom or expense of moving into the house on Weymouth Street. We were too busy seeing the sights of London. As the Prince of Wales had suggested, we visited the Woolwich Arsenal, and the guards of the Household Cavalry, and the Queen’s Chapel at Whitehall. At a great printing house we observed the progress of a two-volume Bible in Maori, and learned that our own Mrs Colenso was hard at work checking the translation. At the Bank of England, Wharepapa was asked to sign a note, which made him big-headed for the rest of the day.
The Prince of Wales had excellent taste, I think, for when we visited the Zoological Gardens I agreed at once with his verdict: this was the best place in all of London. Many other people must have agreed with him as well. Thousands were there the day we visited, from all classes of society. At times the crowd was so thick, I feared we would see no animals at all. It was easier to smell the foul odour of the monkey house than to spy any of its inhabitants, so dense and immoveable was the audience pressed up to its bars.
Many people sat sprawled in low chairs around the bandstand, and others followed an elephant being led through the grounds, children swaying high on its back. But all the distractions of the gardens did not deter a crowd gathering around us Maori, as usual, staring and pointing at us as though we too were on display.
Still, we were able to glimpse all manner of wild animals, most never seen in New Zealand: the towering giraffe, bloodthirsty wolves and tigers, the fat taniwha known as a hippopotamus, which swallows cabbages whole and lies beneath the water with only its bulbous eyes and twitching ears visible above! We would have great sport with such a beast if he lurked in the river at Ngunguru.
More elephants would soon arrive from the Zambesi, Jenkins told us, thanks to the aid of Dr Livingstone. Kiwi had been brought here on ships from New Zealand, and could be found at the Ostrich House. I don’t remember us visiting them, though I would much rather have visited the Ostrich House than the Reptile House. I have no wish to look upon pythons and lizards, for they endanger the soul as well as the body. Really, I would advise the gentlemen in charge of the Zoological Gardens to spend their money on more of the great white bears, or on more of the leaping kangaroos of Australia, than on a single twisting snake.
A deaf fellow might not realise he was in a Zoological Gardens, because sometimes the only indication was the distant roar of an angry carnivore, or the screeching of monkeys. Much of the gardens were simply that, gardens, where people promenaded under a canopy of colourful parasols, looking at the flowers and other plants. Near the canal, suspended between trees, were perches for parrots of every conceivable colour, a splendid sight. The parrots squawked, dangling from their perches or biting at them with their sharp beaks, though none flew away. Some of the denizens of Parrot Walk could speak all manner of words, we were told. However, many of the words were not suitable for the ears of ladies, as the parrots had been taught by sailors and Arabians, and other unsavoury characters.
Greatest of all the beasts was the lion, and along the Carnivore Terrace we saw cage after cage of them, with nothing between their mighty jaws and our hands but a row of bars. They were enormous creatures, some with feathered beards and all with giant golden paws. One of them was locked alone in a cage, too fearsome to be at large among his family. He shouted at us, making the most ferocio
us face, his mouth open wide enough to consume a man’s head. The young men among us responded with pukana and whetero, showing the lion their tongues and the whites of their eyes, and this seemed to enrage him further.
‘Let the lions be brought out,’ I suggested, ‘so we may fight them!’
Of course this was not an entirely serious request, for we had no weapons with us, and the angry lion might run off with a lady clamped in his jaws, rather than stand and fight. Lions may be like Pakeha, with no notion of our rules of combat. But fighting a lion would have made quite a show for the English people – much better than a band with tootling trumpets, or singers with black paint on their faces. Jenkins shook his head.
‘The Queen will be most displeased,’ he said, ‘if you kill her lions.’
‘They would all be killed,’ boasted Wiremu Pou. He had never killed anything larger than a sandfly, I’m certain, in all his life, but I said nothing to cut him down to size. Perhaps I should have said something. There were many occasions during this time in England when I could have stepped forward and had my say. Too often, I think, I was neglecting my duties as kaumatua, as rangatira. For if no one leads rash young men, they decide to lead themselves.
On this day, however, we were still one group, and our only leader was Wharepapa, appointed by himself. I remember these weeks in London, when all but Haumu lived together in one house, as a time of few disputes. We didn’t like wearing cloaks when we walked the streets of London, but this was the only complaint from most of us. With all these excursions going on we had little time for public meetings, and this pleased Reihana, in particular. Even our Pakeha did not seem too disappointed, for although we were not making money at meetings, we received invitations for almost every meal, and some of these meals were very sumptuous indeed.
This happy time did not last. Trouble began the day we learned that the men with black faces at the fête were not the only dark-skinned performers entertaining the people of London with their singing and dancing.
Mr Lightband opened the newspaper one morning and cried out in horror, thrusting the paper at Jenkins so he could share in the dismay.
The object of their unhappiness was an advertisement for the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square, very near the offices of Mr Ridgway. Coming to this theatre in the month of July was a group managed by a Mr Hegarty, lately of Sydney, Australia. This theatrical troupe was known as the Maori Warrior Chiefs.
Jenkins and his associates were most disheartened, fearing confusion between our two parties.
‘If only we could set out now on our tour of the provinces,’ Jenkins said on more than one occasion. He was always writing letters and making plans for this tour, talking about us visiting all the great cities of England. ‘But we must wait for the word from the Duke of Newcastle.’
No word came. Days passed, and still the letters of introduction were not delivered to us, and when Jenkins visited the Colonial Office, he returned empty-handed. He and our other Pakeha were constantly coming and going, off to make arrangements or seek support for our tour of the provinces. They wanted to get us as far away as possible from these so-called Warrior Chiefs.
It was on a morning when they were all out that Mr Ridgway visited, bringing more troubling news with him. Some of our party had gone with Jenkins that morning, and the rest were busy writing letters that Mr Lightband promised he would take to a ship’s captain the next day. Wharepapa and I set ours aside to sit with Mr Ridgway for a while in the front parlour.
‘What do you know of Jenkins’ scheme?’ he asked us, his voice low.
‘His scheme?’
‘This plan of his, to take you here and there, and have you perform on a stage.’
‘Oh!’ said Wharepapa. ‘These are our meetings. The English fill a church, and Jenkins speaks to them about New Zealand, and we make speeches and sing a farewell waiata.’
‘How many of these meetings has he asked you to attend?’
We told him that we had gone to many parties so far, but not so many meetings. Often we were asked to sing or speak at these parties, we said.
‘Some grumble about this, especially as Jenkins insists we wear cloaks when everyone else wears their evening clothes,’ Wharepapa told Mr Ridgway. ‘When we went to a theatre to see an opera, he told us that the manager would not give us tickets for the box unless we wore cloaks.’
‘We had to wear them to the Zoological Gardens,’ I reminded him. That day was hot, and none of us wished to drape ourselves in cloaks. Wiremu Pou kept tugging at his rain cape, and asked why he should wear such a garment when the sun shone and the sky was blue. Those in our party without a moko felt the intrusion more keenly, I think, for if it were not for their cloaks, they might slip through the crowd without attracting so many stares and remarks.
‘No wonder Jenkins wants this,’ Mr Ridgway said, his voice thick with contempt. ‘Have you seen the handbill he has produced for your tour of the provinces?’
He pulled a copy of this handbill from inside his coat, and told us what it said. We were described as ‘Warrior Chieftains’ who would perform native war dances.
‘This is the group of Mr Hegarty, no?’
‘It is your group, I am sorry to say. This is beneath your dignity, sir,’ he said, nodding at me, and Wharepapa and I agreed at once. At one time in my life I was a warrior, but those days were long ago. Wharepapa was very annoyed.
‘When we sing to the English, it’s because we wish to pay tribute, or farewell them. We’re not the blind man who plays his fiddle in the street, begging for coins.’
‘Or the puppets in Punch and Judy,’ said Mr Ridgway, his nods so vehement he himself resembled a puppet. I was thinking that we must do all in our power to prevent Reihana from learning of this handbill, for his anger would be great, and then we would all suffer his rage and lamentations. ‘The Duke of Newcastle will be most unhappy when he sees this.’
Wiremu Pou wandered into the room at this moment, yawning and stretching, for he had little taste for quiet mornings spent writing letters. He sat down just in time to hear Mr Ridgway’s question about the contracts we’d signed.
‘Contracts?’ he asked, confused. I wasn’t sure of Mr Ridgway’s meaning either.
‘Jenkins says you all signed an agreement with him,’ he said. ‘Back in Auckland, you signed papers, saying you would take part in his lectures.’
‘Our lectures,’ nodded Wharepapa. ‘These are our meetings. We tell the English people about New Zealand, and make our observations about England.’
‘No, no,’ said Ridgway, frowning. ‘You see, Jenkins is the one giving the lectures. Illustrated lectures, he calls them. You’re just illustrations, there to be dressed up and shown off, and to make faces and dance. He vows that you all agreed to this. You’re the entertainment, you see. A spectacle. You stand on the stage or platform in your cloaks and feathers, brandishing your weapons, and everyone looks at you.’
‘But we speak,’ Wharepapa insisted. He glanced at me and then at Wiremu Pou for confirmation.
‘We each have our say,’ added Wiremu Pou, plucking at the threads of a cushion. He was always as restless as a child, and could never sit still.
‘Like the lions in the Carnivore Terrace have their say,’ said Mr Ridgway, his face grim. ‘Who can understand the words you speak?’
‘Jenkins tells them.’
‘You can trust him?’
Wharepapa and I looked at each other.
‘Gentlemen, I am very unhappy to tell you this,’ Mr Ridgway said, ‘but you are presented to the British public not as people but as exhibits. Like the machines you saw at the Crystal Palace. Like the statues and fountains! Jenkins and his friends are counting on people paying to see you, for without this money their whole scheme is bankrupt. He may talk of education and enlightenment, and of the great benefit to you of this trip, but his real aim is making money. You’re to be exhibited so they can make money.’
‘If they make money by showing us off, then t
hey must give us money,’ said Wiremu Pou, looking aggrieved. ‘I hear the Maori group at the Alhambra are given three pounds a week. Three pounds each!’
‘Have you received money from Jenkins or Lightband yet?’
‘Not since we left Auckland.’
‘All we agreed there,’ said Wharepapa, now in great agitation, ‘was that we would be taken to England to see the country, and to learn of the deeds and works of the English. Jenkins said they might come to hear us while we talked of matters concerning New Zealand. That was all.’
‘Did they say they would give you money?’
‘We talked of money, yes. Jenkins told me our passage would be paid, and here in England all our board and lodgings, and all our travelling expenses. When the English assembled to hear us, they would each pay one shilling, perhaps two. These monies would be placed in a bank and when our travels were at an end, they would be divided up.’
‘How would it be divided?’
‘The Pakeha would take most of this money, to repay them for the amounts they subscribed back in Nelson. They would take five parts, and we would take one.’
I was very surprised to hear Wharepapa say all this. I didn’t remember any talk of five parts this, and one part that. From the look on the face of Wiremu Pou, he knew nothing of it either.
‘I heard no talk of placing money in a bank!’ he cried. By this time he was no longer yawning or lolling in his seat. ‘No talk of them taking most of the money, or of us waiting months to be given our share. And how can we be sure they tell the truth about how many shillings are earned or spent? What if they tell us that once our passage is paid for, there is no money left for us? They may go back to Nelson rich men, and we will return home in shabby clothes, with nothing to show for this trip but stories no one will believe.’
For once I found myself agreeing with Wiremu Pou. How could we truly know how much money was taken at these meetings? All we ever heard the Pakeha say was how little we had. Yet one week we were staying at a fine hotel, and the next we moved to this house on Weymouth Street. We should have stayed at the Strangers’ Home, just as Reihana had said, rather than spend all the money living like dukes and duchesses. If Wharepapa was right, and we were to add up all the shillings spent at the end of our trip, there would be little left for us.