PIONEERS! OH PIONEERS!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 110, 1 August 1941, Page 14

PIONEERS! OH PIONEERS!

NEW ZEALAND NOTABLES: Henry Williams, Te Whiti, Johnny Jones: By R. M. Burdon. (The Caxton Press: 6/6, boards 7/6).

(Reviewed by

D. O. W.

HALL

HE year 1940, a surprising enough Centennial under the shadow of war, brought to birth, with other prodigies, a remarkably good Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. It had all the qualities that such a work should have-dignity, responsibility, accuracy, and a full bibliography of sources. Anyone who has worked in the same field will realise its value and marvel that it is due, unlike similar works in other countries, to the industry, almost wholly, of one man, Dr. G. H. Scholefield. There was only one thing such an official work could not undertake -the critical evaluation of character. Now the year 1941 sees the birth of another prodigy-though it is a horse of quite a different colour — the first biography of New Zealanders by a New Zealander, a biography, that is, in the larger sense, an assessment not only of deeds and dates, but of the soul within, an account that can exploit the dramatic possibilities of a career and a man. Here I hand it to Mr. Burdon: he delivers the goods. He has the historic sense-the ability to grasp imaginatively the same facts that confronted his sub-

jects. R. M. Burdon "ft audience found, though few" for his first book, High Country: the only regret of his readers was that it was so short. That account of backcountry sheep farming contained more first-hand material than New Zealand Notables, his first essays in biography, but the new book marks a very considerable advance in literary power, and derives its value as much from the author’s skill as from the great interest of the lives of three astonishing men. A Lytton Strachey, or still more probably one of his imitators, might have guyed Henry Williams. Mr. Burdon has resisted this temptation. The cynic would say that Williams did not need

| guying, and certainly his life contains all the fascination of strongly marked, selfcontradictory traits. Williams had character; his intellect did not always quite catch up with it. The Maori phrase tangata riri (the angry man) summed up one side of his nature; but we have to set beside that the cause in whose name he showed his teeth and the courage and toughness needed to live among warring savages at the uttermost end of the earth. One can only concur in Burdon’s judgment that he was essentially a man of action; by good fortune he was placed in circumstances that called for action, heroic action, and showed himself of a stature to grapple with a gigantic task. I think that Burdon has taken a little too much on trust the Protestant account of inter-denominational rivalry among the early missionaries. The contemporary evidence brings out very forcibly the intellectual vigour of Bishop Pompallier, and the accounts of controversy | given in Carleton’s straightforward, but ‘partisan Life of Henry Williams make exceedingly uncomfortable reading. There can be no doubt, however, of the justice | of his view of Williams’s part in Heke’s

War, and he does justice too, to Williams in the land claims dispute-one of the few contexts, incidentally, which make missionary celibacy seem a desirable thing. Te Whiti’s Passive Resistance Burdon is nothing if not versatile, and Te Whiti was a very good pick for an outstanding Maori worthy in those depressing years when Maori culture was under the fire of the white man’s civilisation. Te Whiti was an extraordinary blend of mysticism and practical sagacity. He recognised that the settlers would always be too strong for his people; he countered their encroachment by passive means-an amazing achievement when we remember the warlike traditions of the Maori people. There can be no doubt of the moral victory won at Parihaka by the non-belligerent tribesmen over the armed forces that came to take their land and leader from them. "Uncut Diamond "" Johnny Jones, one of the most enterprising commercial minds that have ever adorned New Zealand, was a far larger (Continued on next page)

NEW ZEALAND NOTABLES (Continued from previous page) person than a mere accumulator of this world’s goods. He did his best to make sure of a claim on those of the next by being kind to persons; he is said to have let them travel free on his ships. But all his designs had a touch of imagination; some had a thought too much, and Jones was more than once within a stone’s throw of bankruptcy. He deserved well of his fellow countrymen, and his land claims were among the few one would cheerfully have seen granted in full. Burdon gives a balanced account of an extraordinary man, truly a tangata riri, but a man too of his word, without pettiness or that sneaking, safety first temper of mind so often associated with a commercial fortune. Perhaps the humbleness of his origins saved him from this. Nothing that Mr. Burdon affectionately recalls about him need diminish the genuine esteem of Dunedin people for a virile and public spirited uncut diamond.

R. M. Burdon has by no means skimmed the cream of the unusual and strongly individual personalities who have made their home and their mark in New Zealand. There are plenty more. One hopes that his rumoured biography of Vogel will soon see the light of day. He occasionally shows symptoms of see-

ing his subjects a little too much from the outside. If he wrote at greater length this impression would not perhaps be created. Meanwhile he deserves credit for the type of literary enterprise that is new to New Zealand and is a sign of maturity both in the author and the society which recognises his worth.