NEW ZEALAND'S GREATEST BOOK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 56, 19 July 1940, Page 22

NEW ZEALAND'S GREATEST BOOK

A Tribute To Guthrie-Smith

(Abridged from a talk by

J. W.

HEENAN

The last literary task carried out by W. H. Guthrie-Smith before his death, only a few days ago, was the writing of the text of "The Changing Land," one of the pictorial surveys now being issued by the Department of Internal Affairs. That survey will be available to the public about the end of this year. A month or two earlier he also completed the Third Edition of "Tutira," and the MS is now with his publishers

HARLES LAMB, in his "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," airily lumped together Court Calendars, Directories, Draught Boards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large, and the works of sundry Eighteenth Century worthies, including no less than Gibbon himself, as items from the catalogue of books which are no books. But literature, after all, is written language. Language exists for the expression of thought, and it is the quality of that expression which constitutes literature. "Tutira," by W. H. Guthrie-Smith, which I regard as New Zealand’s greatest contribution to literature, was first published by Blackwoods in 1921 in an edition of 1,000 copies at two guineas each, the exhausting of which led to a second edition in 1926 of the same number of copies at the same price. That edition, too, has long since been exhausted, and it is significant of the regard held for "Tutira" by purchasers

that second-hand copies are very rarely available. Even the libraries seem jealous in their possession of it, since every library copy I have seen is labelled, so to speak, "Noli me tangere,’ in other words, "reference only." ‘"Tutira," so far as its contents are generally available, is probably known mostly through citation as an authority in scientific papers on a variety of subjects. For the rest, it is one of those books that are known rather by repute than by readA Story, Not a Treatise Though I have claimed that treatment, and not subject matter, constitutes the art of literature, subject is of importance, It is time I told those of you who do not know "Tutira" that, in the words of its sub-title, it is "The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station." How has Guthrie-Smith told that story? Rather than in any feeble summary of mine, let it be told in the author’s own serene style in the preface to the first edition:

So vast and so rapid have been the alterations which have occurred in New Zealand during the past forty years; that even those who, like myself, have noted them day by day, find it difficult . to connect past and present-the pleasant past so completely

obliterated, the changeful present so full of possibility. These alterations are not traceable merely in the fauna, avifauna, and flora of the Dominion, nor are they only to be noted on the physical surface of the countryside: more profound, they permeate the whole outlook in regard to agriculture, stock-raising, and land tenure, The story of Tutira is the record of such change noted on one sheepstation in one province: Should its pages be found to contain matter of any permanent interest, it will be owing to the fact that the life portrayed has for ever vanished, the conditions sketched passed away beyond recall. A virgin countryside cannot be restocked; the vicissitudes of its pioneers cannot be re-enacted; its invasion by alien plants, animals, and birds, cannot be repeated; its ancient vegetation cannot be resuscitated — the words "terra incognita" have been expunged from the map of little New Zealand. This preface gives the clue to the greatness of "Tutira." It is a story, not a dry-as-dust compilation of fact. The very conception of it is a stroke of genius. As you read, the illusion of something living grows until you be- come possessed with the feeling that you are having the very soul of a being bared to your understanding. Tutira, the station, is no longer a mere patch of land, a stage on which sundry humans and other animete things strut their little hour. It is itself a person, a person of strength, nobility, and fine feeling. Everything of Tutira, the station, that the record and system of science can unfold for us of its geological and botanical history, and of its bird and animal life; everything of the period of its native occupation that one steeped in Maori lore and history and understanding of the Maori people can expound for us; everything that a miraculous observation has noted of its growth since European settlement; everything that a fine mind and sympathetic soul can realise for us of the struggles of pioneer man in the wilderness-all that and much more is told in the book "Tutira."

Magic in the Telling The telling is everything in any story, "Tutira" could have been a scientific treatise, a text-book, a succession of learned papers to be read before a Philosophical Society bored to the bone, a Departmental report, the findings of a Royal Commission, the record of a geological, botanic, ornithological, ethnological, or sociological survey. According to your taste, or your intellectual or scientific or official interest, it is all these and, as such, would have a permanent value. But it is miraculously something more, something different, not in degree but in kind. "Children of the Church" It is a glory, for instance, of this great book, that the most humdrum matters of fact are put to the reader in such a way that he sees not a bare record of this or that but a vision conjured up for him by a magician of words. Open it at random and you may light on the chapter "Children of the Church," Is this some fairy tale of choir boys-Sunday-schools? No, but listen to Guthrie-Smith opening this explanation of certain aspects of the alien vegetation of Tutira: Another lot of Tutira aliens has carried a message which assuredly no other group of plants has anywhere been privileged to bear. They have reached the station as heralds preparing the way, forerunners making the path straight for the coming of a King. I can never view a row of thyme or clump of mint on the long-deserted site of a far inland pa-gifts brought from afar of frankincense and myrrh — -without seeming to hear their native carrier tell his tale of the mission garden whence the plant had sprung, of the white men from across the sea, of their strange new gospel of peace and goodwill, Assuredly not one of these mission garden aliens, these children» of the church, has been handled, tasted, or smelled, without discussion of the donor, the austere example of his life, his beliefs, ... As in Antioch, the followers of the new faith were earliest known by the name of its founder, so during discus‘(Continued on next page) ©

(Continued from previous page) sion of missionary plants were Christian precepts first ventilated on the wilds of Tutira. Hard upon the heels of Children of the Church come Burdens of Sin — "plants or seeds dropped on Tutira by many Pilgrims, some of them living animals, some larger members of the vegetable kingdom itself, and some of them not living at all, insensate, inanimate, though endowed with motion." Then again, in another fescinating chapter, Guthrie-Smith describes the Pedestrians. Once more let him speak: About forty plants have attained their goal by pedestrianism — not, of course, by unbroken continuity of root-stretch from beginning to end of the journey, but by repeated portages over short distances, . . . Neither do I mean to affirm that these wayfarers have been too proud to have accepted from time to time a short lift on a roadman’s shovel, the warm shelter of a stomach, the grip of a mane or pastern, a brief trundle on the eet of a dray or buggy, the hospitality of a friendly hoof or woolly shank, the assistance down-hill of a brimming water-table. They have, nevertheless, to all intents and purposes reached Tutira on their feet. And so with birds and animals. The book is not just a bald record of that so and so is now an inhabitant of Tutira, that such a native has disappeared beneath an alien onslaught. The how, when, and why of every individual is vividly pictured. Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity Wordsworth it was, I think, who described poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquillity." That is an apt description of the spirit in which GuthrieSmith approached his task. Youthful enthusiasms are remembered, not in the light of disillusion, but humorously and lovingly. There is no bitterness in remembrance of disasters. In his own words, "None, moreover, but pleasant memories remain-even the disasters of the past retain not their sting, but the remembrance of the antidote applied." The trials of native leasehold tenure, the exasperation growing into desperation over delayed renewals of leases; even the final break-up of Tutira (except for a block surrounding the homestead), for closer settlement, leaves no trace of bitterness. The story is told with all the blandness of large tolerance, and in the ripeness of its author’s rich wisdom. Without haste it unfolds itself with a wealth of fascinating detail that is both

illuminating in its information and delightful in its entertainment. Here and there is a halt by the wayside while the author digresses into a footnote which is here, as in his account of the placer sheep on page 383, a marvel of condensed information, and there, as on page 384, a philosophically humorous revelation of how the love of a piece of land can become a Frankenstein threatening to enslave one’s very soul. The temptation to quote again from "Tutira" is almost, but not quite, irresistible. It is not my object to lay its treasures bare to you, but to whet your appetite for your own discovery of them. To me "Tutira" is the greatest book in

every sense, including that of literary art, yet written in New Zealand, the greater because it is of New Zealand. Whether you agree with my judgment or scorn it is of little moment. What does matter to me is the hope that anything I have been able to say so haltingly, so unworthily of the book itself, may lead at least a few to read it for the first time, a few others to re-read it, not as mere documentary history of a few thousand acres of New Zealand soil, but as an epic of a phase of our life, and of a small corner of our land, that has been told with that feeling and expression which sets its author among the elect, the artists of this world.