I CAME AND I STAYED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 456, 19 March 1948, Page 11

I CAME AND I STAYED

By Archdeacon

L. G.

WHITEHEAD

CAME to live in Dunedin as Warden of Selwyn College in June, 1919, at the invitation of Bishop Nevill. I accepted the Bishop’s appointment at the suggestion of my friend, the late Rev. J. &L. Mortimer, who prophesied that between us we would "rock Dunedin into the sea," whatever that may have meant.

Alas! I had not been here two years before my friend was carried off by death, and Dunedin is no nearer the sea than when I came, My first impression of Dunedin was the wretched state of the street surfaces, My second was the immediate kindness and helpfulness of Professor Hewitson, Master of Knox College. Other impressions came later, that the City takes more interest in its university than other New Zealand cities do in theirs; that Dunedin business men have built substantially and have a fine and generous public spirit. They have shown this even to a small institution like Selwyn, which has received thousands of pounds from the public during my years there. One of the greatest privileges I enjoyed by living in Dunedin was my friendship with the late Dr. Dickie, one time Professor of Systematic Theology in Knox College. I sometimes doubt whether his own Church, the other Churches, or the New Zealand public generally appreciated how great q man he was. He was certainly the, most learned theologian in Australasia. He Was more than this-he was a "character," and his conversation was a egal Above all, he was a well of wisdom, and his balanced judgment was a court of appeal of which we have not had the like in this country since his death, Most of my life in Dunedin has been spent, not in a strictly ecclesiastical or theological atmosphere, but in the company of medical and, to a lesser extent, dental students. These are supposed to be the wickedest of all university men. I have not found them so. A discerning visitor once remarked to me that the Warden of a College like this would learn to understand these young men better than they understood themselves. And this is true, and the understanding is, I may record, on the whole more pleasing than not, : me a "«

__ JDUNEDIN more than the other three centres is a city of books. Besides the popular: libraries and the Public

and University libraries, there is the Athenaeum, a private venture of the nineteenth century. It contains many thousands _of books, of which a large number are early publications of the last century and are probably without duplicates in New Zealand, Selwyn College has a unique library presented to Bishop Nevill by the widow of the late Dr. Wm. Shoults, of London. A "lady of title" gave the Bishop the money to bring the books to this country. The library contains some twelve thousand volumes of which twenty-two were printed before 1500. The rest consist largely of books of the sixteenth, _ seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ‘There are three copies of every classical author, though mostly they are old-fashioned texts. The late A. S. Paterson founded a library at Knox, and, in the later years of his life when he heard that we were

Otago Centennial

ART AND INDUSTRY

(continued from previous page) ‘short of modern books, as long as he was able to attend to the matter, he ‘sent a duplicate to Selwyn of every book he sent to Knox, A short sketch like this must omit much, But I must say a few words about the man who was my nearest neighbour for many years. I refer to the late Dean Fitchett, whom I rank with Bishops Selwyn and Sprott as the greatest ecclesiastical figures in the Church of the Province of New Zealand, commonly called the Church of England, I never knew any other man intimately with such a powerful personality and so keen an intellect as the Dean. When he and Dr. Dickie were together the audience to their conversation had a most entertaining time. It was Dean Fitchett who persuaded Sir James Allen to start a fund in 1928 to rebuild Selwyn. Sir James did this with his characteristic generosity and energy, and we owe the continued existence of the College to him. Lastly let me say a word about the climate of Dunedin. No other city in New Zealand has a climate to surpass it. It is bracing and healthy, a place for hard workers. Our skies are duller, because we are further south, but we do not have more rain than, let us say, Auckland.