Vaucluse House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 466, 22 September 1928, Page 26

Vaucluse House

ONCE HOME OF MAN WHO WANTED TO BE N.Z.’S GREATEST LANDED PROPRIETOR

(Written for THE SUN by ERIC RAMSDEX.)

HOSE New Zealanders who have not visited A’aucluse .House, the home of AVilliam Charles Wentworth, the great Australian states-

man and patriot, at wistaria time, know not their Sydney.

It is a part of Sydney, yet set apart—the old Sydney, the Sydney that we shall never again know. Such mansions are not built nowadays for many good reasons. In another week the wistaria vines will attract all good Sydney-siders, who once a year pay tribute to their greatest Australian leader. Even now they are a sight for the gods, their masses of heliotrope blossom almost concealing the front of the old home in which the Constitution of a Commonwealth was dreamed and planned and eventually evolved. William Charles Wentworth, a man

undoubtedly in advance of his time, has a peculiar interest for New Zealanders. Had not Governor Gipps refused to sanction a little deal that he had made in New Zealand, he would have been the greatest landed proprietor on earth. In IS4O AVentworth purchased over 20,000,000 acres of Maoriiand from seven Maori chiefs at a price, according to the Governor, equivalent to “one hundred acres for a farthing.” As one writer has remarked, this land-hunger proposal seems preposterous, yet, as Judge Therry points out, the purchase was on principle more “defensible than that effected at Port Phillip by Batman and his friends, who was ultimately compensated by the Government.” Wentworth’s purchase was not the only one of its kind in New Zealand, as every New Zealander well knows. Neither was he the only prospective purchaser to be disappointed. The Baron de Thierry, to the end of his days, was a disappointed man concerning the land deal that he endeavoured to confirm ill the Hokianga district. On the floor of this beautiful old home, destined to be the Mecca of the

Australians of the future, one treads tiles from ancient Pompeii. Wentworth. when visiting Italy during the struggle for freedom, formed a friendship with both Garibaldi and Cavour. So grateful was the statesman for the Australian’s liberal assistance to the Italian cause, that he permitted him to purchase the Pompeian tiles that now decorate Vaucluse House. The property came into the possession of AVentworth in the late ’2o’s. It was at one time owned by Sir Henry Brown Hayes, who named it A’aucluse. A romance has gathered around the name. While resident in Ireland, it is w'hispered, Sir Henry abducted a beautiful and high-spirited Quakeress named Mary Pike. Forced to flee from the wrath of the law, he went to the Continent, to Vaucluse. or A’allis Clausa, a closed-in valley in the South of France.

Yet it is considered more historic-

ally correct that Vaucluse was none other than the family name attached to the family residence of the Hayes family in Cork. The tradition that Sir Henry encircled his new Australian home with soil from Ireland to repel unholy serpents has received partial confirmation in the alleged existence of a certain bill of lading. AVentworth lived at Vaucluse, originally a property of 500 acres, until 18S3. He died in England in 1892 in his 79th year. As death approached he yearned to be buried beneath the rock upon which he was wont to sit and gaze upon the beauties of Sydney harbour, and there, in a secluded nook of Vaucluse, he was laid to rest. Modern bungalows, however, have since intruded upon the eternal silence that once surrounded his mortal remains. The efforts of the double-tailed dragon, which guards the entrance to Went worth's mauso leum, credited with the power of warding off evil spirits, have been powerless against them.

AVhat Kawau is to New Zealanders, and Aucklanders in particular, Vaucluse is to Sydney-siders and to Australians in general.