The removal of his much-loved correspondent did not long withhold the
outpouring of Bishop Patteson's heart to his family; while his work was
going on at the College, according to his own definition of education
which was given about this time in a speech at St. John's: 'Education
consists in teaching people to bear responsibilities, and laying the
responsibilities on them as they are able to bear them.'
Meanwhile, he wrote as follows to Miss Mackenzie, on receiving the book
she had promised to send him as a relic of her brother:--
'January 1, 1866.
'My dear Miss Mackenzie,--I have this evening received your brother's
Thomas a Kempis, and your letter. I valued the letter much, as a true
faithful record of one whom may God grant that I may know hereafter, if,
indeed, I may be enabled to follow him as he followed Christ. And as
for the former, what can I say but I hope that the thought of your dear
brother may help me to read that holy book in something of the spirit in
which he read and meditated on it.
'It seems to bring me very near to him in thought. Send me one of his
autographs to paste into it. I don't like to cut out the one I have in
the long letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church, which you kindly sent
me.
'I found, too, in one of Mr. Codrington's boxes, a small sextant for me,
which, being packed with the Thomas a Kempis, I think may have been your
brother's. Do you really mean this for me too? If so, I shall value it
scarcely less than the book. Indeed, I think that, divided as I am from
all relations and home influences and affections, I cling all the more
to such means as I may still enjoy of keeping up associations. I like
to have my father's watch-chain in use, and to write on his old desk.
I remember my inkstand in our drawing-room in London. So I value much
these memorials of the first Missionary Bishop of the Church of England,
in modern days at all events, and night by night as I read a few lines
in his book, and think of him, it brings me, I hope, nearer in spirit to
him and to others, who, like him, have done their duty well and now rest
in Christ.
'We are pretty well now (Jan. 20), but one very promising lad sank last
week in low fever; a good truthful lad he was, and as I baptized him at
midnight shortly before he died, I felt the great blessing of being able
with a very clear conscience to minister to him that holy sacrament; and
so he passed away, to dwell, I trust, with his Lord.
'What a revelation to that spirit in its escape from the body! But I
must not write on. With many thanks once again for these highly-valued
memorials of your brother,
'I remain, my dear Miss Mackenzie,
'Very truly yours,
'J. C. PATTESON.'
The sandal-wood referred to in the following letter was the brother's
gift to a church, All Saints, Babbicombe, in which his sisters were
deeply interested, and of which their little nephew laid the first
stone:--
'St. Matthias' Day.
'My dearest Sisters,--You are thinking of me to-day, I know, but you
hardly know that in an hour or two I hope the Primate will ride down and
baptize nine of our Melanesian scholars.
'The last few weeks have been a happy, though of course an anxious time,
and now to-day the great event of their lives is to take place. May God
grant that the rest of their lives may be like this beginning!
'We avoid all fuss. I don't like anyone being here but the Primate and
Mrs. Selwyn, yet I think some dozen more may come, though I don't like
it. I need not say that making a scene on such occasions is to my
mind very objectionable. I could much prefer being quite alone. I have
translated some appropriate Psalms, but the 2nd and 57th they hardly
know as yet quite well; so our service will be Psalms 96, 97, 114; 1st
lesson 2 Kings, v. 9--15, Magnificat; 2nd lesson Acts viii. 5-12,
and the Baptismal Service. Henry Tagalana reads the first, and George
Sarawia the second lesson. Then will come my quiet evening, as, I trust,
a close of an eventful day. I have your English letters of December,
with the news of Johnny laying the stone. I am thankful that that good
work is begun. Sir John Young writes to me that I can have a gift of 100
acres at Norfolk Island, with permission to buy more. I think that, all
being well, I shall certainly try it with a small party next summer, the
main body of scholars being still brought to Kohimarama.
'The sandal-wood is not yet gone! But, my dear Joan, the altar of
sandal-wood! If it is to be solid and not veneered, why, £50 would not
buy it at Erromango. It sells in Sydney for about £70 a ton, and it is
very heavy wood. However, I will send some of the largest planks I ever
saw of the wood, and it is now well seasoned. It cost me £14 merely to
work it into a very simple lectern, so hard is the grain.
'What has become of the old Eton stamp of men? Have you any in
England? I must not run the risk of the Mission being swamped, by
well-intentioned, but untaught men. We must have gentlemen of white
colour, or else I must rely wholly, as I always meant to do chiefly, on
my black gentlemen; and many of them are thorough gentlemen in feeling
and conduct, albeit they don't wear shoes.
'It was a most impressive service. The dear Primate looking worn and
somewhat aged, very full of feeling; the two most advanced, George and
Henry, in their surplices, reading the Lessons; the nine candidates
looking so reverent and grave, yet not without self-possession.
'As he signed each one with the sign of the Cross, his left hand resting
on the head of each, the history of the Mission rushed into my mind, the
fruit of the little seed be sowed when, eight years ago, he thought it
wisest not to go ashore at Mota, and now more than twenty Christians of
the Banks Islands serve God with prayers night and day.
'What would you have thought, if you could have been there? Our little
chapel looked nice with the red hangings and sandal-wood lectern.
'Then we had a quiet cup of tea, and the old and new baptized party had
a quiet talk with me till 8.30, when I sent them away.
'And then after an hour I was alone. That I should have been already
five years a Bishop, and how much to think of and grieve over, something
too to be thankful for. Perhaps after all, dear Edwin and Fisher stand
out most clearly from all the many scenes and circumstances.
'And now what is to come? This move to Norfolk Island? Or what?
"Something," you say; "perhaps in time showing the Governor that the
Melanesians are not so very wild." But it is another Governor; and so
far from the Melanesians being wild, it is expressly on the ground that
the example of the school will be beneficial that I am asked to go!
'Tell all who may care to know it about our St. Matthias' Day, I must
give myself the pleasure of writing one line to Mr. Keble. I won't write
many lest I weary him, dear good man. I like to look at his picture, and
have stuck the photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Keble which Charlotte Yonge
sent me into the side of it. How I value his prayers and thoughts for us
all!
'Your loving brother,
'J. C. P.
'P.S.--No terms of full communion between the Home and the Colonial
Church can be matter of Parliamentary legislation. It is the "One Faith,
One Lord," that binds us together; and as for regulating the question
of colonially ordained clergy ministering in English dioceses, you had
better equalise your own Church law first for dealing with an Incumbent
and a Curate.'
'Auckland: Tuesday in Holy Week.
'My dear Uncle,--I have long owed you a letter, but I have not written
because I have had an unusual time of distraction. Now, all my things
being on board the "Southern Cross," I am detained by a foul wind. We
can do nothing till it changes; and I am not sorry to have a few quiet
hours, though the thought of a more than usually serious separation from
the dear Primate and Mrs. Selwyn, Sir William and Lady Martin, hangs
over my head rather gloomily. Still I am convinced, as far as I can
be of such matters, that this move to Norfolk Island is good for the
Mission on the whole. It has its drawbacks, as all plans have, but the
balance is decidedly in favour of Norfolk Island as against New Zealand.
I have given reasons at length for this opinion in letters to Joan and
Fan, and also, I think, to Charlotte Yonge, who certainly deserves to
know all my thoughts about it.
'But I may shortly state some of them, in case you may not have heard
them, because I should like this step to approve itself to your mind:--
'1. Norfolk Island is 600 miles hearer to Melanesian islands than
Auckland, and not only nearer in actual distance, but the 600 miles from
Norfolk Island to Auckland are the cold and boisterous miles that must
be passed at the extremities of the voyages with no intervening lands to
call at and obtain a change for our large party on board.
'2. The difficulty usually is to get westward when sailing from New
Zealand, by the North Cape of New Zealand, because the prevalent winds
are from the west. So that usually the passage to Norfolk Island is a
long-one.
'3. New Zealand is much to the east of Norfolk Island, and to go from
the Loyalty, New Hebrides, Banks, and Santa Cruz groups to New Zealand,
it is necessary to make a long stretch out to the N.E. (the trades
blowing from about S.E. by E.), standing down to S. on the other tack.
But Norfolk Island is almost due S. of other those groups.
'4. I cannot come back from the islands during my winter voyage to New
Zealand, it is too distant; the coast is dangerous in the winter season
and the cold too great for a party of scholars first coming from the
tropics. But I can go backwards and forwards through the islands and
Norfolk Island during the five winter months. It is not wise to sail
about in the summer, hurricanes being prevalent then.
'5. As I can only make one return from the islands to New Zealand in
the year, I can only have a school consisting of (say) sixty Melanesians
brought in the very crowded vessel + (say) thirty left in New Zealand
for the winter; and I dare not attempt to leave many, for so much care
is needed in the cold season. But in Norfolk Island I can have a school
of any number, because I can make separate voyages thither from the
Banks and Solomon Islands, &c., each time bringing a party of sixty, if
I think fit.
'6. The productions of Norfolk Island include the yam, taro (Caladium
esculentum), sweet potato, sugar-cane, banana, almond, orange,
pine-apple, coffee, maize. Only cocoa-nut and bread-fruit are wanting,
that natives of Melanesia care much about.
'7. There is no necessity for so violent a contrast as there must be in
New Zealand between the life with us and in their homes in respect of
dress, food, and houses.
'Light clothing and an improved style of native house and more cleanly
way of eating their food--not of cooking it, for they are cleanly
already in that--may be adopted, and more easily perpetuated in their
own homes than the heavy clothing necessary here, and the different
style of houses and more English food.
'This is very important, because with any abrupt change of the outer
man, there is sometimes a more, very more natural abandonment of the
inner thoughts and disposition and character. Just as men so often lose
self-respect when they take to the bush life; or children who pray by
their own little bedside alone, leave off praying in "long chamber," the
outward circumstances being altered.
'I have for years thought that we seek in our Missions a great deal
too much to make English Christians of our converts. We consciously and
unanimously assume English Christianity (as something distinct I mean
from the doctrines of the Church of England), to be necessary; much as
so many people assume the relation of Church and State in England to
be the typical and normal condition of the Church, which should be
everywhere reproduced. Evidently the heathen man is not treated fairly
if we encumber our message with unnecessary requirements.
'The ancient Church had its "selection of fundamentals"--a kind of
simple and limited expansion of the Apostles' Creed for doctrine and
Apostolic practice for discipline.
'Notoriously the Eastern and Western mind misunderstood one another. The
speculative East and the practical West could not be made to think after
the same fashion. The Church of Christ has room for both.
'Now any one can see what mistakes we have made in India. Few men think
themselves into the state of the Eastern mind, feel the difficulties
of the Asiatic, and divine the way in which Christianity should be
presented to him.
'We seek to denationalise these races, as far as I can see; whereas
we ought surely to change as little as possible--only what is clearly
incompatible with the simplest form of Christian teaching and practice.
'I don't mean that we are to compromise truth, but to study the native
character, and not present the truth in an unnecessarily unattractive
form.
'Don't we overlay it a good deal with human traditions, and still more
often take it for granted that what suits us must be necessary for them,
and vice versa.
'So many of our missionaries are not accustomed, not taught to think
of these things. They grow up with certain modes of thought, hereditary
notions, and they seek to reproduce these, no respect being had to the
utterly dissimilar character and circumstances of the heathen.
'I think much about all this. Sir William Martin and I have much talk
about it; and the strong practical mind of the Primate, I hope, would
keep me straight if I was disposed to theorise, which I don't think is
the case.
'But Christianity is the religion for humanity at large. It takes in all
shades and diversities of character, race, &c.
'The substratum of it is, so to say, inordinate and coextensive with the
substratum of humanity--all men must receive that. Each set of men must
also receive many thing of secondary, yet of very great importance
for them; but in this class there will be differences according to the
characteristic differences of men throughout the world.
'I can't explain myself fully; but, dear Uncle, I think there is
something in what I am trying to say.
'I want to see more discrimination, more sense of the due proportion,
the relative importance of the various parts which make up the sum of
extra teaching.
'There is so great want of order in the methods so often adopted,
want of arrangement, and proper sequence, and subordination of one to
another.
'The heathen man will assume some arbitrary dictate of a missionary to
be of equal authority and importance with a moral command of God, unless
you take care. Of course the missionary ought not to attempt to impose
any arbitrary rule at all; but many missionaries do, and usually justify
such conduct on the ground of their "exceptional position."
'But one must go much further. If I tell a man just beginning to
listen, two or three points of Christian faith, or two or three rules of
Christian life, without any orderly connection, I shall but puzzle him.
'Take, e.g., our English Sunday, I am far from wishing to change the
greater part of the method of observing it in England.
'I hope the Melanesian Christians may learn to keep holy the Lord's Day.
But am I to begin my teaching of a wild Solomon Islander at that end;
when he has not learned the evil of breaking habitually the sixth,
seventh, and eighth Commandments?
'I notice continually the tendency of the teaching of the very men who
denounce "forms" to produce formation.
'It is nearest to the native mind; it generates hypocrisy and mere
outward observance of certain rules, which, during the few years that
the people remain docile on their first acceptance of the new teaching,
they are content to submit to.
'I see the great difficulty of making out all this. It necessitates
the leaving so very much to the discretion of the pioneer. Ergo the
missionary must not be the man who is not good enough for ordinary work
in England, but the men whom England even does not produce in large
numbers with some power of dealing with these questions.
'It is much better and safer to have a regular well-known rule to act
by; but I don't see how you can give me, e.g., precise directions. It
seems to me that you must use great care in selecting your man, and then
trust him fully.
'I hope it is not an excess of self-conceit and self-reliance which
makes me pass by, rather lightly, I confess, some of the advice that
very well-intentioned people occasionally volunteer to missionaries. I
have had (D. Gr.) the Primate and Sir William Martin's men, who know what
heathenism is, and the latter of whom has deeply studied the character
of the various races of the world.
'I mean that when some one said, "Do you really mean to place those
savage Melanesians among the immaculate Pitcairners?" the natural
answer seemed to me to be, "I am not aware that you ever saw either a
Pitcairner or a Melanesian." I thought it rather impertinent. The truth
is, that the great proportion of our Melanesian scholars in our school,
i.e., not standing alone, but helped by the discipline of the school,
are quite competent to set an example to the average Pitcairners. But
this I mark only as an illustration of my meaning. Occasionally I hear
of some book or sermon or speech in which sound views (as I venture to
call them) are propounded on these points.
'Always your loving and grateful Nephew,
'J. C. PATTESON.'
The next letter was called forth by my sorrowful communication of the
shattered state of both my dear friends; of whom, one, at the very
time that my Cousin wrote, was already gone to his rest, having been
mercifully spared the loneliness and grief we had feared for him.
'St. Andrew's: April 24, 1866.
'My dear Cousin,--I write a line at once in reply to a letter of January
29, for I see that a great sorrow is hanging over you, is perhaps
already fallen on you, and I would fain say my word of sympathy,
possibly of comfort.
'One, perhaps, of the great blessings that a person in my position
enjoys is that he must perforce see through the present gloom occasioned
by loss of present companionship on to the joy beyond. I hear of the
death of dear Uncle, and friends, and even of that loving and holy
Father of mine, and somehow it seems all peace, and calmness, and joy.
It would not be so were I in England, to actually experience the sense
of loss, to see the vacant seat, and miss the well-known voice; but it
is (as I see) a great and most blessed alleviation to the loss of their
society here below. You feel that when those loving hearts at Hursley
can no longer be a stay and comfort to you here, you will have a sense
almost of desolation pressing on you. You must, we all have, many trials
and some sorrows, and I suppose Hursley has always been to you a city of
refuge and house of rest.
'But I think the anticipation is harder than the reality. For him, but
how can I speak of such as he is? Why should we feel anxiety? Surely he
is just the man upon whom we should expect some special suffering, which
is but some special mark of love and (may we not say in such a case?) of
approbation. Some special aid to a very close conformity to the mind and
character of Christ, to be sent in special love and mercy.
'I always seem to think that in the case of good men the suffering is
the sure earnest of special nearness to God. It surely--if one may dare
so to speak, and the case of Job warrants it, and the great passage
"Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you" (all)--is true that
God is glorified in the endurance of sufferings which He lays upon the
saints. And if dear Mr. Keble must suffer this last blow, as all through
his life he has felt the care of the Churches pressing sorely on him,
and has even had to comfort the weary, and guide the wayward, and to
endure disappointment, and to restrain the over zealotish, and
reprove the thoughtless, and bear in his bosom the infirmities of many
people--why must we be unhappy about him, and why mourn for ourselves?
God forbid! It is only one mark of the cross stamped upon him, only one
more draught of the cup of the lacking measures of the afflictions of
Christ. But you must, more than I, know and feel all this; and it is
only in attempting to put before your eyes your own thoughts, that I
have written this. For, indeed, I do sympathise with you, and I think
how to me, who knew him so little yet yield to no one in deep reverence
and love for him, his departure would be almost what the passing away of
one of those who had seen the Lord must have been to those of old time;
yet our time is not so very long now, and may be short, and we have had
this blessed example for a long time, and there is on all accounts far
more cause for joy than for sorrow.
'You must not think me unkind to Miss Mackenzie, because I have written
to Fan to say that my letters and anecdotes are not to be fishes to swim
in her "Net." It may be unwise in me to write all that kind of thing,
but it does such an infinity of harm by its reflex action upon us who
are engaged in this work. And I can write brotherly letters, if they are
to be treated as public property. I could not trust my own brother to
make extracts from my letters. No one in England can be a judge of
the mischief that the letters occasion printed contrary to my wish by
friends. We in the Mission think them so infinitely absurd, one-sided,
exaggerated, &c., though we don't mean to make them so when we write
them.
'We are all well, thank God, except a good fellow called Walter
Hotaswol, from Matlavo (Saddle Island), who is in a decline. He has had
two bad haemorrhages; but he is patient, simple-minded, quite content
to die, and not doubting at all his Father's love, and his Saviour's
merits, so I cannot grieve for him, though he was the one, humanly
speaking, to have led the way in his home.
'You know that I sympathise with all your anxieties about Church
matters. Parliamentary legislation would be the greatest evil of all.
All your troubles only show that synodical action, and I believe with
the laity in the Synod, is the only cure for these troubles.
'God bless you, my dear Cousin,
'Your affectionate Cousin,
'J. C. PATTESON.'
To the sisters he wrote at the same time:--
'I hear from Miss Yonge that Mrs. Keble is very ill--dying. But, as I
wrote to her, why should such things grieve us? He will soon rejoin her,
and so it is all peace and comfort. He was seventy-five, I think, last
St. Mark's Day, and I began a letter to him, but it was not fair to
him to give him the trouble of reading it, and I tore it up. He knows
without it how I do love and revere him, and I cannot pluck up courage
to ask for some little book which he has used, that there may be a
sort of odour of sanctity about it, just as Bishop Mackenzie's Thomas a
Kempis, with him on the Zambesi, is on my table now.'
Before going forth with this 'lonely watcher' upon his voyage, the
description of this season's work with his scholars must be given from a
Report which he brought himself to write for the Eton Association. After
saying how his efforts were directed to the forming a number of native
clergy in time to work among their own people, he continues:--'When
uncivilised races come into contact with civilised men, they must either
be condemned to a hopeless position of inferiority, or they must be
raised out of their state of ignorance and vice by appealing to those
powers within them which God intended them to use, and the use of which
will place them by His blessing in the possession of whatever good
things may be denoted by the words Religion and Civilisation.
'Either we may say to our Melanesian scholars, "You can't expect to be
like us: you must not suppose that you can ever cease to be dependent on
us, you must be content always to do as you are told by us, to be like
children, as in malice so in knowledge; you can never be missionaries,
you may become assistant teachers to English missionaries whom you must
implicitly obey, you must do work which it would not be our place to do,
you must occupy all the lower and meaner offices of our society;"--or,
if we do not say this (and, indeed, no one would be likely to say it),
yet we may show by our treatment of our scholars that we think and mean
it.
'Or we may say what was, e.g., said to a class of nineteen scholars who
were reading Acts ix.
'"Did our Lord tell Saul all that he was to do?"
'"No."
'"What! not even when He appeared to him in that wonderful way from
Heaven?"
'"No."
'"What did the Lord say to him?"
'"That he was to go into Damascus, and there it would be told him what
he was to do."
'"What means did the Lord use to tell Saul what he was to do?"
'"He sent a man to tell him."
'"Who was he?"
'"Ananias."
'"Do we know much about him?"
'"No, only that he was sent with a message to Saul to tell him the
Lord's will concerning him and to baptize him."
'"What means did the Lord employ to make His will known to Saul?"
'"He sent a disciple to tell him." '"Did He tell him Himself
immediately?"
'"No, He sent a man to tell him."
'"Mention another instance of God's working in the same way, recorded in
the Acts."
'"The case of Cornelius, who was told by the angel to send for Peter."
'"The angel then was not sent to tell Cornelius the way of salvation?"
'"No, God sent Peter to do that."
'"Jesus Christ began to do the same thing when He was on earth, did He
not, even while He was Himself teaching and working miracles?"
'"Yes; He sent the twelve Apostles and the seventy disciples."
'"But what is the greatest instance of all, the greatest proof to us
that God chooses to declare His will through man to man?"
'"God sent His own Son to become man."
'"Could He not have converted the whole world in a moment to the
obedience of faith by some other way?"
'"Yes."
'"But what did He in His wisdom choose to do?"
'"He sent His Son to be born of the Virgin Mary, to become man, and to
walk on this earth as a real man, and to teach men, and to die for men."
'"What does Jesus Christ call us men?"
'"His brethren." '"Who is our Mediator?"
'"The Man Christ Jesus."
'"What means does God employ to make His will known to us?"
'"He uses men to teach men."
'"Can they do this by themselves?"
'"No, but God makes them able."
'"How have you heard the Gospel?"
'"Because God sent you to us."
'"And now, listen. How are all your people still in ignorance to hear
it? What have I often told you about that?"
'Whereupon the scholars looked shy, and some said softly, "We must teach
them."
'"Yes, indeed you must!"
'And so the lesson ended with questioning them on the great duty and
privilege of prayer for God's Holy Spirit to give them both the will and
the power to do the work to which God is calling them.
'So we constantly tell them "God has already been very merciful to you,
in that He has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. He
has enabled you to receive the knowledge of His will, and to understand
your relations to Him. He has taught you to believe in Him, to pray to
Him, to hope for salvation through the merits of His Son's death and
resurrection. He has made you feel something of the power of His love,
and has taught you the duty of loving Him and serving your brother. He
calls upon you now to rouse yourself to a sense of your true position,
to use the gifts which He has given you to His glory and the good of
your brethren. Don't suppose that you are unable to do this. You
are unable to do it, as you were unable to believe and love Him by
yourselves, but He gives you strength for this very purpose that you may
be able to do it. You can do it through Christ, who strengtheneth you.
Our fathers were not more able to teach their people once than you to
teach your people now!"
'We make no distinction whatever between English and Melanesian members
of the Mission as such. No Melanesian is excluded from any office of
trust. No classification is made of higher and lower kinds of work, of
work befitting a white man and work befitting a black man. English
and Melanesian scholars or teachers work together in the school,
printing-office, dairy, kitchen, farm. The senior clergyman of the
Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which
is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the
fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the
idea of white man the right to fag a black boy.
'Young men and lads come to us and say, "Let me do that. I can't write
the languages, or do many things you or Mr. Pritt or Mr. Palmer do, so
let me scrub your floor, or brush your shoes, or fetch some water."
And of course we let them do so, for the doing it is accompanied by no
feeling of degradation in their minds; they have seen us always doing
these things, and not requiring them to do them as if it were the
natural work for them, because they are black, and not proper for us,
because we are white.
'Last night, a young man, sitting by the fire, said to the Bishop, "They
want you to stop with them in my land."
'"I wish with all my heart I could."
'"Yes, I know, you must go to so many places."
'"But they are different in your land now."
'"Oh! yes, they don't fight now as they used to do; they don't go about
armed now."
'"Well, that is a thing to be thankful for. What is the reason of it, do
you think? "
"Why they know about you, and see you now and then, and Henry Tagalana
talked to them, and I talked a little to them, and they asked me about
our ways here, and they want to learn."
'"Well, there are now five of you from your island, and you must try
hard to learn, that you may teach them, for remember you must do it, if
God spares your life."'
'During the year 1865 a great advance was made in the industrial
department of our work. About seventeen acres of land were taken in hand
and worked by Mr. Pritt, with the Melanesian lads. We have our own
dairy of thirteen cows, and, besides supplying the whole Mission party,
numbering in all seventy-seven persons, with abundance of milk, we sell
considerable quantities of butter. We grow, of course, our own potatoes
and vegetables, and maize, &c., for our cows. The farm and dairy work
affords another opportunity for teaching our young people to acquire
habits of industry.'
Cooking, farm, gardening, dairy-work, setting out the table, &c.,
were all honourable occupations, and of great importance in teaching
punctuality and regularity, and the various arts and decencies of life
to the youths, who were in time to implant good habits in their native
homes. Their natural docility made them peculiarly easy to manage and
train while in hand; the real difficulty was that their life was so
entirely different from their home, that there was no guessing how deep
the training went, and, on every voyage, some fishes slipped through the
meshes of the net, though some returned again, and others never dropped
from their Bishop's hands. But he was becoming anxious to spare some of
his scholars the trial of a return to native life; and, as the season
had been healthy, he ventured on leaving twenty-seven pupils at St.
Andrew's with Mr. and Mrs. Pritt, among them George and Sarah Sarawia.
After Trinity Sunday, May 27, the 'Southern Cross' sailed, and the
outward voyage gave leisure for the following letter to Prof. Max
Muller, explaining why he could not make his knowledge of languages of
more benefit to philology while thus absorbed in practical work:--
'"Southern Cross," off Norfolk Ireland: June 6, 1866.
'My dear Friend,--I am about to tire your patience heavily. For I
must find you some reasons for doing so little in making known these
Melanesian dialects, and that will be wearisome for you to read; and,
secondly, I cannot put down clearly and consecutively what I want to
say. I have so very little time for thinking out, and working at any
one subject continuously, that my whole habit of mind becomes, I fear,
inaccurate and desultory. I have so very many and so very different
occupations, and so much anxiety and so many interruptions, as the
"friction" that attends the working, of a new and somewhat untried
machine.'
'You know that we are few in number; indeed (Codrington being absent)
I have but two clergymen with me, and two young men who may be ordained
by-and-by. Besides, had I the twenty troublesome men, whom you wish to
banish into these regions, what use would they or any men be until they
had learnt their work? And it must fall to me to teach them, and that
takes again much of my time; so that, as a matter of fact, there are
many things that I must do, even when all is going on smoothly; and
should sickness come, then, of course, my days and nights are spent
in nursing poor lads, to whom no one else can talk, cheering up poor
fellows seized with sudden nervous terror, giving food to those who will
take it from no one else, &c.
'Then the whole management of the Mission must fall upon me; though I am
most thankful to say that for some time Mr. Pritt has relieved me from
the charge of all domestic and industrial works. He does everything of
that kind, and does it admirably, so that our institution really is a
well-ordered industrial school, in which kitchen work, dairy work, farm
work, printing, clothes making and mending, &c., are all carried on,
without the necessity of having any foreign importation of servants,
who would be sure to do harm, both by their ideas as to perquisites (=
stealing in the minds of our Melanesians), and by introducing the idea
of paid labour; whereas now we all work together, and no one counts any
work degrading, and still less does any one qua white consider himself
entitled to fag a Melanesian.
'Mr. Tilly, R.N., has also quite relieved me from my duties as skipper,
and I have no trouble about marine stores, shipping seamen, navigating
the vessel now. I cannot be too thankful for this; it, saves me time,
anxiety, and worry; yet much remains that I must do, which is not
connected with peculiar work directly.
'I can't refuse the Bishop of New Zealand when he presses me (for want
of a better man) to be trustee of properties, and to engage in managing
the few educational institutions we have. I can't refuse to take some
share in English clerical work while on shore; indeed, in 1865, my good
friend Archdeacon Lloyd being ill, I took his parish (one and a half
hour distant from Kohimarama), the most important parish in Auckland,
for some three months; not slacking my Melanesian work, though I could
only avoid going back by hard application, and could make no progress.
Then I must attend our General Synod; and all these questions concerning
the colonial churches take some time to master, and yet I must know what
is going on.
'Then I must carry on all the correspondence of the Mission. I am always
writing letters. Every £5 from any part of New Zealand or Australia I
must acknowledge; and everyone wants information, anecdotes, &c., which
it vexes my soul to have to supply, but who else can do it? Then I keep
all the accounts, very complicated, as you would say if you saw my big
ledger. And I don't like to be altogether behindhand in the knowledge
of theological questions, and people sometimes write to me, and their
letters need to be answered carefully. Besides, take my actual time
spent in teaching. Shall I give you a day at Kohimarama?
'I get in the full summer months an hour for reading by being dressed
at 5.30 A.M. At 5.30 I see the lads washing, &c., 7 A.M. breakfast all
together, in hall, 7.30 chapel, 8-9.30 school, 9.30-12.30 industrial
work. During this time I have generally half an hour with Mr. Pritt
about business matters, and proof sheets are brought me, yet I get a
little time for preparing lessons. 12.45 short service in chapel, 1
dinner, 2-3 Greek Testament with English young men, 3-4 classics with
ditto, 5 tea, 6.30 evening chapel, 7-8.30 evening school with divers
classes in rotation or with candidates for Baptism or Confirmation,
8.30-9 special instruction to more advanced scholars, only a few. 9-10
school with two other English lay assistants. Add to all this, visitors
interrupting me from 4-5, correspondence, accounts, trustee business,
sermons, nursing sick boys, and all the many daily unexpected little
troubles that must be smoothed down, and questions inquired into, and
boys' conduct investigated, and what becomes of linguistics? So much
for my excuse for my small progress in languages! Don't think all this
egotistical; it is necessary to make you understand my position.
'If I had spare time, leisure for working at any special work, perhaps
eleven years of this kind of life have unfitted me for steady sustained
thought. And you know well I bring but slender natural qualifications
to the task. A tolerably true ear and good memory for words, and now
something of the instinctive insight into new tongues, but that is
chiefly from continual practice.
'But when I attempt to systematise, I find endless ramifications of
cognate dialects rushing through my brain, by their very multitude
overwhelming me, and though I see the affinities and can make practical
use of them, I don't know how to state them on paper, where to begin,
how to put another person in my position.
'Again, for observation of the rapid changes in these dialects, I have
not much opportunity. For no one in Melanesia can be my informant. It
is not easy where so many dialects must be known for practical purposes,
for the introductory part of Mission work, to talk to some wild naked
old fellow, and to make him understand what I am anxious to ascertain.
It is a matter that has no interest for him, he never thought of it,
he doesn't know my meaning, what have we in common? How can I rouse him
from his utter indifference, even if I know his language so well as to
talk easily, not to a scholar of my own, but to an elderly man, with
none but native ideas in his head?
'All that I can do is to learn many dialects of a given archipelago,
present their existing varieties, and so work back to the original
language. This, to some extent, has been done in the Banks group, and
in the eastern part of the Solomon Isles. But directly I get so far as
this, I am recalled to the practical necessity of using the knowledge
of the several dialects rather to make known God's truth to the heathen
than to inform literati of the process of dialectic variation. Don't
mistake me, my dear friend, or suspect me of silly sentimentalism. But
you can easily understand what it is to feel "God has given to me only
of all Christian men the power of speaking to this or that nation, and,
moreover, that is the work He has sent me to do." Often, I don't deny,
I should like the other better. It is very pleasant to shirk my evening
class, e.g. and spend the time with Sir William Martin, discussing some
point of Melanesian philosophy. But then my dear lads have lost two
hours of Christian instruction, and that won't do.
'I don't need to be urged to do more in working out their languages. I
am quite aware of the duty of doing all that I can in that way, and I
wish to do it; but there are only twenty-four hours in the day and night
together! I feel that it is a part of my special work, for each grammar
and dictionary that I can write opens out the language to some other
than myself. But I am now apologising rather for my fragmentary way of
writing what I do write by saying that what I find enough, with my
help given in school to enable one of my party to learn a dialect, I am
almost obliged to regard as a measure of the time that I ought to spend
on it.
'Another thing, I have no outline provided for me, which I can fill up.
My own clear impression is that to attempt to follow the analogy of
our complicated Greek and Latin grammars would not only involve certain
failure, but would mislead people altogether. I don't want to be hunting
after a Melanesian paulo-post-futurum. I had rather say, "All men qua
men think, and have a power of expressing their thoughts. They have
wants and express them. They use many different forms of speech in
making that statement, if we look superficially at the matter, not so if
we look into it," and so on. Then, discarding the ordinary arrangement
of grammars, explain the mode of thought, the peculiar method of
thinking upon matters of common interest, in the mind of the Melanesian,
as exhibited in his language. An Englishman says, "When I get there, it
will be night." But a Pacific Islander says, "I am there, it is night."
The one says, "Go on, it will soon be dark." The other, "Go on, it has
become already night." Anyone sees that the one possesses the power of
realising the future as present, or past; the other now whatever it may
have been once, does not exercise such power. A companion calls me at
5.30 A.M., with the words, "Eke! me gong veto," (Hullo! it is night
already). He means, "Why, we ought to be off, we shall never reach
the end of our journey before dark." But how neatly and prettily he
expresses his thought! I assure you, civilised languages, for
common conversational purposes needed by travellers, &c., are clumsy
contrivances! Of course you know all this a hundred times better than I
do. I only illustrate my idea of a grammar as a means of teaching others
the form of the mould in which the Melanesian's mind is cast. I think
I ought to go farther, and seek for certain categories, under which
thought may be classified (so to say), and beginning with the very
simplest work on to the more complicated powers.
'But I haven't the head to do this; and suppose that I did make such a
framework, how am I to fill it in so as to be intelligible to outsiders?
For practical purposes, I give numerals, personal, possessive, and
demonstrative pronouns, the mode of qualifying nouns, e.g., some
languages interpose a monosyllable between the substantive and
adjective, others do not. The words used (as it is called) as
prepositions and adverbs, the mode of changing a neuter verb into a
transitive or causative verb, usually by a word prefixed, which means do
or make, e.g., die, do-die, do-to-the-death, him.
'Then I teach orally how the intonation, accentuation, pause in
the utterance, gesticulation, supply the place of stops, marks of
interrogation, &c.
'Then giving certain nouns, verbs, &c., make my English pupils construct
sentences; then give them a vocabulary and genuine native stories, not
translations at all, least of all of religious books, which contain very
few native ideas, but stories of sharks, cocoa-nuts, canoes, fights,
&c. This is the apparatus. This gives but little idea of a Melanesian
dialect to you. I know it, and am anxious to do more.
'This last season I have had some three or four months, during which I
determined that I must refuse to take so much English work, &c. I sat
and growled in my den, and of course rather vexed people, and perhaps,
for which I should be most heartily grieved, my dear friend and leader,
the Bishop of New Zealand. But I stuck to my work. I wrote about a dozen
papers of phrases in as many dialects, to show the mode of expressing in
those dialects what we express by adverbs and prepositions, &c. This is,
of course, the difficult part of a language for a stranger to find
out. I also printed three, and have three more nearly finished in MS.,
vocabularies of about 600 words with a true native sehdia on each word.
The mere writing (for much was written twice over) took a long time. And
there is this gained by these vocabularies for practical purposes: these
are (with more exceptions, it is true, than I intended) the words which
crop up most readily in a Melanesian mind. Much time I have wasted, and
would fain save others from wasting, in trying to form a Melanesian
mind into a given direction into which it ought, as I supposed, to have
travelled, but which nevertheless it refused to follow. Just ten years'
experience has, of course, taught me a good deal of the minds of these
races; and when I catch a new fellow, as wild as a hawk, and set to work
at a new language, it is a great gain to have even partially worked out
the problem, "What words shall I try to get from this fellow?" Now I go
straight to my mark, or rather I am enabling, I hope, my young friends
with me to do so, for of course, I have learnt to do so myself, more
or less, for some time past. Many words may surprise you, and many
alterations I should make in any revision. I know a vast number of words
not used in these vocabularies, in some languages I daresay five times
the number, but I had a special reason for writing only these. The rest
must come, if I live, by-and-by.
'Of course these languages are very poor in respect of words belonging
to civilised and literary and religious life, but exceedingly rich in
all that pertains to the needs and habits of men circumstanced as
they are. I draw naturally this inference, "Don't be in any hurry to
translate, and don't attempt to use words as (assumed) equivalents of
abstract ideas. Don't devise modes of expression unknown to the language
as at present in use. They can't understand, and therefore don't use
words to express definitions."
But, as everywhere, our Lord gives us the model. A certain lawyer asked
Him for a definition of his neighbour, but He gave no definition, only
He spoke a simple and touching parable. So teach, not a technical word,
but an actual thing.
'Why do I write all this to you? It is wasting your time. But I prose
on.--(A sheet follows on the structure of the languages.)
'Well, I have inflicted a volume on you. We are almost becalmed after a
weary fortnight of heavy weather, in which we have been knocked about
in every direction in our tight little 90-ton schooner. And my head is
hardly steady yet, so excuse a long letter, or rather long chatty set of
desultory remarks, from
'Your old affectionate Friend,
'J. C. PATTESON.'
A little scene from Mr. Atkin's journal shows how he had learnt to talk
to natives. He went ashore with the Bishop and some others at Sesaki for
yams:--
'It has been by far the pleasantest day of the kind that I have seen
here. The people are beginning to understand that they can do no better
than trade fairly with us, and to-day they on the whole behaved very
well. A very big fellow had been ringing all the changes between
commanding and entreating me to give him a hatchet (I was holding the
trade bag). When he found it was no use, he said, "I was a bad man, and
never gave anything." I said "Yes, I was." He said the Bishops were very
good men, they gave liberally. He had better go and ask the Bishop for
something, for he was a good man, though I was not.'
After landing Mr. Palmer at Mota, the vessel went onto the Solomon
Isles, reaching Bauro on the 27th:--
'About 8.30 in the evening the boat was lowered, and the party pulled
towards the village, which was the home of Taroniara, in a fine clear
moonlit night, by the fires which people had lit for the people on
shore, and directed by Taroniara himself to the opening in the reef.
They landed in the midst of a group of dark figures, some standing in a
brook, some by the side under a large spreading tree, round a fire fed
by dry cocoa-nut leaves; and in the background were tall cocoa-nuts with
their gracefully drooping plumes, and the moon behind shining through
them made the shade seem darker and deeper as the flashing crests of the
surf, breaking on the reef, made the heaving sea beyond look murkier. It
was a sight worth going a long way to see,' so says Mr. Atkin's journal.
The next sight was, however, still more curious. The Bishop relented so
far towards 'the Net,' as to write an account of it on purpose for it.
Ysabel Island is, like almost all the rest, divided among many small
communities of warlike habits. And some years previously the people of
Mahaga, the place with which he was best acquainted, had laid an ambush
for those of Hogirano, killed a good many, and, cutting off their
heads, had placed them in a row upon stones, and danced round them in a
victorious suit of white-coral lime. However, a more powerful tribe, not
long after, came down upon Mahaga and fearfully avenged the massacre of
Hogirano. All were slain who could not escape into the bush; and when
the few survivors, after days and nights of hunger, ventured back, they
found the dwellings burnt, the fruit trees cut down, the yam and taro
grounds devastated, and more than a hundred headless bodies of their
kindred lying scattered about.
This outrage had led to the erection of places of refuge in the tops of
trees; and Bishop Patteson, who had three Mahagan scholars, went ashore,
with the hope of passing the night in one of these wonderful places,
where the people always slept, though by day they lived in the ordinary
open bamboo huts.
After landing in a mangrove swamp, and wading through deep mud, he found
that the Mahaga people had removed from their old site, and had built a
strong fortification near the sea; and close above, so as to be reached
by ladders resting on the wall, were six large tree-houses.
It had been raining heavily for a day or two, and the paths were so deep
in mud that the bed of a water-course was found preferable to them. The
bush had been cleared for some distance before the steep rocky mound
where the village stood, surrounded by a high wall of stones, in which
one narrow entrance was left, approached by a fallen trunk of a tree
lying over a hollow. The huts were made of bamboo canes, and the floors,
raised above the ground, were nearly covered with mats and a kind of
basket work.
The tree-houses, six in number, were upon the tops of trees of great
height, 50 feet round at the base, and all branches cleared off till
near the summit, where two or three grew out at right angles, something
after the manner of an Italian stone pine:--
'From the top of the wall the ladder that led to one of these houses was
60 feet long, but it was not quite upright, and the tree was growing at
some little distance from the bottom of the rock, and the distance by
a plumb line from the floor of the verandah to the ground on the lower
side of the tree was 94 feet. The floor of the house, which is made
first, was 23 feet long and about 11 broad; a narrow verandah is left at
each end, and the inside length of the house is 18 feet, the breadth
10 feet, the height to the ridge pole 6 feet. The floor was of bamboo
matted, the roof and sides of palm-leaf thatch. The ladders were
remarkable contrivances: a pole in the centre, from 4 to 6 inches in
diameter, to which were lashed by vines cross pieces of wood, about
two feet long. To steady these and hold on by were double shrouds of
supple-jacks. The rungs of the ladder were at unequal distances, 42 upon
the 50 feet ladder.'
The Bishop and Pasvorang, who had gone ashore together, beheld men,
women, and children running up and down these ladders, and walking about
the bare branches, trusting entirely to their feet and not touching with
their hands. The Bishop, in his wet slippery shoes, did not think it
right to run the risk of an accident: and though Pasvorang, who was as
much at home as a sailor among the ropes of the 'Southern Cross,' made
the ascent, he came down saying, 'I was so afraid, my legs shook.
Don't you go, going aloft is nothing to it;' but the people could not
understand any dread; and when the Bishop said, 'I can't go up there.
I am neither bird nor bat, and I have no wings if I fall,' they thought
him joking. At the same time he saw a woman with a load on her back,
quietly walking up a ladder to another tree, not indeed so lofty as that
Pasvorang had tried, but as if it were the most natural thing in the
world, and without attempting to catch hold with her hands.
'At night,' says the Bishop, 'as I lay ignominiously on the ground in
a hut, I heard the songs of the women aloft as voices from the clouds,
while the loud croaking of the frogs, the shrill noise of countless
cicadas, the scream of cockatoos and parrots, the cries of birds of many
kinds, and the not unreasonable fear of scorpions, all combined to keep
me awake. Solemn thoughts pass through the mind at such times, and from
time to time I spoke to the people who were sleeping in the hut with me.
It rained heavily in the night, and I was not sorry to find myself at 7
A.M. on board the schooner.'
The next day was spent in doing the honours of the ship, a crowd on
board all day; and on July 2 the Bishop landed again with Mr. Atkin,
and mounted up to this wonderful nest, where all these measurements
were made. It proved much more agreeable to look at from below than
to inhabit 'the low steaming bamboo huts--the crowds, the dirt, the
squalling of babies--you can't sit or stand, or touch anything that is
not grimy and sooty and muddy. It is silly to let these things really
affect one, only that it now seems rather to knock me up. After such
a day and night I am very tired, come back to our little ship as to a
palace, wash, and sit down on a clean, if not a soft stool, and am free
for a little while from continual noise and the necessity of making talk
in an imperfectly known language.
'It is really curious to see how in some way our civilised mode of life
unfits one for living among these races. It is not to be denied that the
want of such occupations as we are employed in is a large cause of their
troubles. What are they to do during the long hours of night, and on
wet, pouring days? They can't read, they can't see in their huts to do
any work, making baskets, &c. They must lie about, talking scandal and
acquiring listless indolent habits. Then comes a wild reaction. The
younger people like excitement as much as our young men like hunting,
fishing, shooting, &c. How can they get this? Why, they must quarrel and
fight, and so they pass their time. It does seem almost impossible to do
much for people so circumstanced; yet it was much the same in Mota and
elsewhere, where things are altered for the better.'
It was bad and trying weather, and it was well to have only two old
Banks Islanders on board, besides three Ysabel lads. The Bishop
had plenty of time for writing; and for the first time in his life
'pronounced himself forward with that Report which was always on his
mind.' He goes on: 'I read a good deal, but I don't say that my mind is
very active all the time, and I have some schooling. Yet it is not easy
to do very much mental work. I think that I feel the heat more than I
used to do, but that may be only my fancy.
'You meantime are, I hope, enjoying fine summer weather. Certainly it
must be a charming place that you have, close to that grand Church
and grand scenery. I think my idea of a cosy home is rather that of
a cottage in the Isle of Wight, or, better still, a house near such a
Cathedral as Wells, in one of the cottages close to the clear streams
that wind through and about the Cathedral precincts. But I can form
no real notions about such things. Only I am pretty sure that there
is little happiness without real hard work. I do long sometimes for
a glorious Cathedral service, for the old chants, anthems, not for
"functions" and "processions," &c. I have read Freeman's pamphlet on
"Ritual" with interest; he really knows what he writes about, and has
one great object and a worthy one, the restoration of the universal
practice of weekly communion as the special Sunday service. That all
our preachifying is a wide departure from the very idea of worship
is self-evident, when it is made more than a necessary part of the
religious observance of the Lord's Day, and catechising is worth far
more than preaching (in the technical sense of the word).'
A first visit was paid to Savo; where numerous canoes came out to meet
them, one a kind of state galley, with the stem and stern twelve feet
high, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and ornamented with white shells
(most likely the ovum or poached egg), and containing the chief men of
the island. The people spoke the Ysabel language, and the place seemed
promising.
Some little time was spent in beating up to Bauro; where the Bishop
again landed at Taroniara's village, and slept in his hut, which was as
disagreeable as all such places were:--'Such a night always disturbs
me for a time, throws everything out of regular working order; but it
always pays, the people like it, and it shows a confidence in them which
helps us on.
'I was disappointed though in the morning, when Taroniara declined to
come with me to this place.
'My people say, "Why do you go away?"--the old stupid way of getting out
of an engagement.' However, two others came to 'this place,' which was a
hut in the village of Wango, which the Bishop had hired for ten days for
the rent of a hatchet.
'A very sufficient rent too, you would say, if you could see the place.
I can only stand upright under the ridge pole, the whole of the oblong
is made of bamboo, with a good roof that kept out a heavy shower last
night. There is a fresh stream of water within fifteen yards, where I
bathed at 9 P.M. yesterday; and as I managed to get rid of strangers
by 8.30, it was not so difficult to manage a shift into a clean and dry
sleeping shirt, and then, lying down on Aunt William's cork-bed (my old
travelling companion), I slept very fairly.
'People about the hut at earliest dawn; and the day seems long, the
sustained effort of talking, the heat, the crowd, and the many little
things that should not but do operate as an annoyance, all tire one
very much. But I hope that by degrees I may get opportunities of talking
about the matter that I come to talk about. Just now the trading with
the vessel, which is detained here by the weather, and surprise at my
half-dozen books, &c., prevent any attention being paid to anything
else.
'7 P.M.--The vessel went off at 10.30 A.M. I felt for a little while
rather forlorn, and a little sinking at the heart. You see I confess it
all, how silly! Can't I after so many years bear to be left in one sense
alone? I read a little of you know what Book, and then found the feeling
pass entirely away.
'But, more than that, the extreme friendliness of the people, the real
kindness was pleasant to me. One man brought his child, "The child of us
two, Bishop." Another man, "These cocoa-nut trees are the property of us
two, remember." A third, "When you want yams, don't you buy them, tell
me."
'But far better still. Many times already to-day have I spoken to the
people; they have so far listened that they say, "Take this boy, and
this boy, and this boy. We see now why you don't want big men, we see
now that you can't stop here long, what for you wish for lads whom you
may teach, we see that you want them for a long time. Keep these lads
two years."
'"Yes, two or three or four. By-and-by you will understand more and more
my reason."
'Then came the talks that you too may experience when dealing with some
neglected child in London, or it may be in the country; but which, under
the cocoa-nut tree, with dark naked men, have a special impressiveness.
It was the old lesson, of the Eternal and Universal Father, who has not
left Himself without witness in that He gives us all rain from Heaven,
&c., and of our ingratitude, and His love; of His coming down to point
out the way of life, and of His Death and Rising again; of another
world, Resurrection, and Judgment. All interrupted, now and then, by
exclamations of surprise, laughter, or by some one beginning to talk
about something that jarred sadly on one's ear, and yet was but natural.
But I do hope that a week may pass not unprofitably. In one sense, I
shall no doubt be glad when it is over; but I think that it may, by
God's great goodness, be a preparation for something more to come.
'Last night, my little hired hut being crowded as usual, they all cried
out at once "Numu" (earthquake). I should not the least have known that
anything had occurred. I said I thought it was a pig pushing against the
bamboo wall of the hut. They say that they have no serious shocks, but
very many slight ones. Crocodiles they have too, but, they say, none in
this stream.
'July 22nd.--It is 9 P.M., the pleasantest time, in one sense, of my
twenty-four hours, for there are only two people with me in the hut.
'My arrangements are somewhat simple; but I am very comfortable.
Delicious bathes I have in the stream: yams and fish are no bad fare;
and I have some biscuit and essence of coffee, and a few books, and am
perfectly well. The mode of life has become almost natural to me. I
am on capital terms with the people, and even the babies are no longer
afraid of me. Old and young, men and women, boys and girls about me of
course all day; and small presents of yams, fish, bananas, almonds, show
the friendliness of the people when properly treated. But the bunches of
skulls remain slung up in the large canoe houses, and they can be wild
enough when they are excited.'
[The home diary continues, on the 26th]:--'I am expecting the schooner,
and shall be glad to get off if it arrives to-day, for it is very fine.
I don't think I could do any good by staying a few days more, so I might
as well be on my way to Santa Cruz. If I were here for good, of course
I should be busy about many things that it would be useless to attempt
now, e.g., what good would it be to induce half-a-dozen boys to learn
"a," when I should be gone before they could learn "b"? So I content
myself with making friends with the people, observing their ways, and
talking to them as I can. It is hot, now at 8.30 A.M. What will it be at
2 P.M.? But I may perhaps be able to say something to cheer me up.
One of the trials of this kind of thing is that one seems to be doing
nothing. Simply I am here! Hardly in one hour out of the twenty-four am
I sure to be speaking of religion. Yet the being here is something,
the gaining the confidence and goodwill of the people. Then comes the
thought, who is to carry this on? And yet I dare not ask men to come,
for I am certain they would after all my pains find something different
from what they expect.
My death would very likely bring out some better men for the work, with
energy and constructive power and executive genius, all of which, guided
by Divine Wisdom, seem to be so much wanted! But just now, I don't see
what would become of a large part of the work if I died. I am leaving
books somewhat more in order; but it is one thing to have a book to help
one in acquiring a language, quite another to speak it freely, and to be
personally known to the people who speak it.
'11th Sunday after Trinity.--Off Anudha Island, 4 P.M. Thermometer 88°
in the empty cabin, everyone being on deck. Well, dear old Joan and
Fan, refreshed by--what do you think? O feast of Guildhall and Bristol
mayors! Who would dream of turtle soup on board the "Southern Cross" in
these unknown seas? Tell it not to Missionary Societies! Let no platform
orator divulge the great secret of the luxurious self-indulgent life of
the Missionary Bishop! What nuts for the "Pall Mall Gazette"! How would
all subscriptions cease, and denunciations be launched upon my devoted
head, because good Mr. Tilly bought, at San Cristoval, for the price of
one tenpenny hatchet, a little turtle, a veritable turtle, with green
fat and all the rest of it, upon which we have made to-day a most regal
feast indeed.
'But seriously. There has been much to make me hopeful, and something to
disappoint me, since I last wrote.'
The two days at Santa Cruz were hopeful--[Mr. Atkin says that the
natives came on board with readiness and stole with equal readiness; but
this was all in a friendly way]--and a small island, named Piteni, was
visited, and judged likely to prove a means of reaching the larger isle.
The disappointment is not here mentioned, unless it was the missing some
of the Ysabel scholars, and bringing away only three; but this mattered
the less, as the Banks Island party, which, as forming a nucleus, was
far more important, was now considerable. Sixty-two scholars were the
present freight, including nine little girls, between eight and twelve,
mostly betrothed to old pupils.
At Malanta, a new village called Saa was visited. The 'harbour' was a
wall of coral, with the surf breaking upon it, but a large canoe showed
the only accessible place, and this was exposed to the whole swell of
the Pacific.
'The natives,' writes Mr. Atkin, 'held the boat in water up to their
knees, but the seas that broke thirty yards outside washed over their
shoulders and sometimes their heads. We might have taken away half the
people of the village, and had no trouble in getting two nice-looking
little boys. About 320 miles from Norfolk Island, one of these little
boys, Wate, playing, fell overboard: we were going ten knots at the
time, right before the wind; it was a quarter of an hour before we
picked him up, as it took five minutes to stop the vessel and ten to get
to him. Wate seemed all the better for his ducking.' This little Wate
became Mr. Atkin's especial child, his godson and devoted follower.
On October 2, Norfolk Island was reached, and there, a wooden house
having been conveyed thither by H.M.S. 'Falcon,' Mr. Palmer and fifteen
scholars were placed to spend the winter. The Pitcairners welcomed
the Mission, but were displeased at the Government assuming a right to
dispose of the land which they had fancied entirely their own.
One of the letters written separate from the journal during this voyage
gives a commission for photographs from the best devotional prints, for
the benefit chiefly of his young colonial staff:--'I have not the
heart to send for my Lionardo da Vinci,' (he says), that much valued
engraving, purchased at Florence, and he wishes for no modern ones, save
Ary Scheffer's 'Christis Consolator,' mentioning a few of his special
favourites to be procured if possible. For the Melanesians, pictures of
ships, fishes, and if possible tropical vegetation, was all the art yet
needed, and beads, red and blue, but dull ones; none not exactly like
the samples would be of any use. 'It is no good sending out any "fancy"
articles such as you would give English children. "Toys for savages" are
all the fancies of those who manufacture such toys for sale. Of course,
any manufacturer who wishes to give presents of knives, tools, hatchets,
&c., would do a great benefit, but then the knives must be really strong
and sharp.'
I have concluded the letters of the island voyage, before giving
those written on the homeward transit from Norfolk Island, whither the
'Falcon' had conveyed the letters telling of the departure of both Mr.
and Mrs. Keble. The first written under this impulse was of course to
Sir John Coleridge, the oldest friend:--
'At Sea, near Norfolk Island: October 3, 1866.
'My dear, dear Uncle,--How can I thank you enough for telling me so much
of dear saintly Mr. Keble and his wife? He has been, for my dear father
and mother's sakes, very loving to me, and actually wrote me two short
letters, one after his seizure, which I treasure. How I had grown
to reverence and love him more and more you can easily believe; and
yesterday at Norfolk Island, whither some letters had been sent, I read
with a very full heart of the peaceful close of such a holy life. And
I do love to think too of you and him, if I may speak freely of such as
you; and the weight attached to all you say and do (you two I mean) in
your several occupations seems at all events one hopeful sign among
not a few gloomy ones. I suppose you and Mr. Keble little estimated the
influence which even a casual word or sentence of yours exercises upon
a man of my age, predisposed (it is true) to hearken with attention and
reverence....
'Is it possible that fifty years hence any similar event, should there
be such, which should so "stir the heart of the country" (as you say
about Mr. Keble's death), might stimulate people to raise large sums
for the endowment of a Church about to be, or already separated from the
State? I can't avoid feeling as if God may be permitting the extension
of the Colonial Churches, partly and in a secondary sense that so the
ground may be travelled over on a small scale before the Church at home
may be thrown in like manner upon its own resources. The alliance is a
very precarious one surely, and depends upon the solemn adherence to a
fiction. It is extraordinary that some Colonial Bishops should seek to
reproduce the state of things which is of course peculiar to England,
the produce of certain historical events, and which can have no
resemblance whatever to the circumstances of our Colonies.
'The mail closes just after our arrival; and I am very busy at first
coming on shore with such a party. Goodbye for the present, my dear dear
Uncle,
'Your loving and grateful Nephew, 'J. C. P.'
To me the condolence was:--
'October 6, 1866.
'And so, my dear Cousin, the blow has fallen upon you, and dear Mr. and
Mrs. Keble have passed away to their eternal rest. I found letters at
Norfolk Island on October 2, not my April letters, which will tell me
most about him, but my May budget.
'How very touching the account is which my Uncle John sends me of dear
Mrs. Keble, so thankful that he was taken first, so desirous to go, yet
so content to stay! And how merciful it has all been. Such a calm holy
close to the saintly life. May God bless and support all you who feel
the bereavement! Even I feel that I would fain look for one more letter
from him, but we have his "Christian Year," and other books. Is it not
wonderful that all the wisdom and love and beauty of the "Christian
Year," to say nothing of the exquisite and matured poetry, should have
been given to him so early in life? Why, as I gather, the book was
finished in the year 1825, though not published till 1827. He wrote it
when he was only 33 years old, and for 45 years he lived after he was
capable of such a work. Surely such a union of extreme learning, wisdom,
and scholarship, with humility and purity of heart and life has very
seldom been found. Everyone wishes to say something to everyone else of
one so dear to all, and no one can say what each and all feel. We ought
indeed to be thankful, who not only have in common with all men his
books, but the memory of what he was personally to us.
'The change must needs be a great one to you. I do feel much for you
indeed. But you will bear it bravely; and many duties and the will and
power to discharge them occupy the mind, and the elasticity comes back
again after a time. I know nothing of the Keble family, not even how
they were related to him, so that my interest in Hursley is connected
with him only. Yet it will always be a hallowed spot in the memory of
English Churchmen. You will hear the various rumours as to who is to
write his life, &c. Let me know what is worth knowing about it.
'Kohimarama. Anchored on October 8, after an absence of exactly six
weeks; all well on board and ashore.
'Thanks be to God for so many mercies. The mail is gone, and alas! all
my letters and newspapers were sent off a few days since in the "Brisk"
to Norfolk Island. We passed each other. They did not expect me back so
soon, so I have no late news, and have no time to read newspapers.
'May God bless you, my dear Cousin,
'Your affectionate Cousin, 'J. C. PATTESON.'
In spite of this deep veneration for Mr. Keble and for his teachings,
Bishop Patteson did not embrace to the full the doctrine which had been
maintained in 'Eucharistic Adoration,' and which he rightly perceived to
lie at the root of the whole Ritualistic question. His conclusions had
been formed upon the teachings of the elder Anglican divines, and his
predilections for the externals of worship upon the most reverent and
beautiful forms to which he had been accustomed before he left home.
After an All Saints' Communion, the following letter was written:--
'All Saints' Day, 1866.
'My dear Cousin,--You know why I write to you on this day. The Communion
of Saints becomes ever a more and more real thing to us as holy and
saintly servants of God pass beyond the veil, as also we learn to know
and love more and more our dear fellow-labourers and fellow-pilgrims
still among us in the flesh.
'Such a day as this brings, thanks be to God, many calm, peaceful
memories with it. Of how many we may both think humbly and thankfully
whose trials and sorrows are over for ever, whose earthly work is done,
who dwell now in Paradise and see His Face, and calmly wait for the
great consummation. To you the sense of personal loss must be now--it
will always be--mixed up with the true spirit of thankfulness and
joy; but remember that as they greatly helped you, so you in no slight
measure have received from God power to help others, a trust which I
verily believe you are faithfully discharging, and that the brightness
of the Christian life must be not lost sight of in our dealings
with others, would we really seek to set forth the attractiveness of
religion.
'I don't mean that I miss this element in any of your writings; rather
I am thankful to you because you teach so well how happiness and joy
are the portion of the Christian in the midst of so much that the world
counts sorrow and loss. But I think that depression of mind rapidly
communicates itself, and you must be aware that you are through your
books stamping your mind on many people.
'Do you mind my saying all this to you? only I would fain say anything
that at such a time may, if only for a minute, help to keep the bright
side before you. The spirit of patience did seem so to rest upon him
and his dear saintly wife. The motto of the Christian Year seemed to
be inwoven into his life and character. I suppose he so well knew the
insignificance of what to us mortals in our own generation seems so
great, that he had learned to view eternal truths in the light of Him
who is eternal. He fought manfully for the true eternal issues, and
everything else fell into its subordinate place. Is not one continually
struck with his keen sense of the proportion of things? He wastes no
time nor strength in the accidents of religion; much that he liked and
valued he never taught as essential, or even mentioned, lest it might
interfere with essentials.
'Oh! that his calm wise judgment, his spiritual discernment, may be
poured out on many earnest men who I can't help thinking lack that
instinct which divinely guided the early Church in the "selection of
fundamentals." We must all grieve to see earnest, zealous men almost
injuring the good cause, and placing its best and wisest champions in an
unnecessarily difficult position, because they do not see what I suppose
Mr. Keble did see so very clearly.
'I know that these questions present themselves somewhat differently
to those situated severally as you and we are. But it is, I suppose, by
freely interchanging amongst ourselves thoughts that the general balance
is best preserved. Pray, when you have time, write freely to me on such
matters if you think it may be of use to do so. The Church everywhere
ought to guard, and teach, and practise what is essential. In
non-essentials I suppose the rule is clear. I will eat no meat, &c.
'And now good-bye, my dear Cousin; and may God ever bless and comfort
you.
'Your affectionate Cousin,
'J. C. PATTESON.'
Sir William and Lady Martin had just paid their last visit to
Kohimarama, and here is the final record by Lady Martin's hand of the
pleasant days there spent:--
'One more visit we paid to our dear friend in November 1866, a few
months before he left Kohimarama for Norfolk Island. He invited my dear
husband specially for the purpose of working together at Hebrew,
with the aid of the lights they thought our languages throw on its
grammatical structure.
'The Bishop was very happy and bright. He was in his new house, a great
improvement upon the stuffy quarters in the quad. His sitting-room
was large and lofty, and had French windows which opened on a little
verandah facing the sea.
'The Mission party were most co-operative, and would not let the Bishop
come into school during the three weeks of our stay, so he had a working
holiday which he thoroughly enjoyed. The weather was lovely, the boys
were all well, and there was no drawback to the happiness of that time.
At seven the chapel bell rang and we walked across with him to the
pretty little chapel. The prayers and hymn were in Mota, the latter a
translation by the Bishop of the hymn "Now that the daylight fills the
sky." The boys all responded heartily and were reverent in demeanour.
After breakfast the two wise men worked steadily till nearly one. We
were not allowed to dine in Hall as the weather was very warm, and we
inveigled the Bishop to stay out and be our host.
'A quaint little procession of demure-looking little maidens brought our
dinner over. They were grave and full of responsibility till some word
from 'Bisop' would light up their faces with shy smiles.
'What pleasant walks we had together before evening chapel under the
wooded cliffs or through the green fields. Mr. Pritt had by this time
brought the Mission farm into excellent working order by the aid of the
elder lads alone. Abundance of good milk and butter (the latter getting
ready sale in town) and of vegetables. His gifts too in school-keeping
were invaluable.
'I wish I could recall some of the conversations with our dear friend. A
favourite topic was concerning the best modes of bringing the doctrines
of the Christian religion clearly and fully within the comprehension
of the converts. Some of their papers written after being taught by him
showed that they did apprehend them in a thoughtful intelligent way.
'At half-past six we had a short service, again in Mota, in chapel, and
then we rarely saw our dear friend till nine. He would not neglect any
of his night classes. At half-past nine the English workers gathered
together in the Bishop's room for prayers and for a little friendly
chat. Curiously enough, the conversation I most distinctly remember was
one with him as we rode up one Saturday from Kohimarama to St. John's
College. I got him to describe the game of tennis, and he warmed up and
told me of games he had played at.
'How that cheery talk came to mind as I drove down the same road last
year just after fine weather had come! It was the same season, and the
hedges on each side of the narrow lane were fragrant as then with may
and sweet briar.'