WILSON OF BULLS
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SIR JAMES WILSON, by L. J. Wild; Whitcombe and Tombs, 21/-.
(Reviewed by
R. M.
Burdon
ORN in 1849, the son of a Scottish woollen manufacturer, James Glenny Wilson emigrated as a young man to Victoria, where he stayed only a short time before coming on to New Zealand in 1873 and buying the Ngaio estate at Bulls, beside the Rangitikei River. There he spent the rest of his life, converting his property "from a state of nature to a state of grace," continually harassed and frustrated by financial difficulties created by the long drawn-out slump, and periodically chidden for alleged mismanagement by a censorious father who, though resident in Scotland, appears to have believed himself capable of directing the affairs of a farm in New Zealand-a country he had never even visited. Wilson was in every respect an exemplary citizen. He was a useful though by no means a talkative member of Parliament for fifteen years, always showing special interest in the advancement of education. First President of the Farmers’ Union, and later first President of the Board of Agriculture, his activities also embraced ajmost every form of local politics. But a man’s life may be as useful and meritorious as that of Sir James Wilson without necessarily forming a suitable subject for a full-length biography, and I cannot but think that this book might with advantage have been shorter. Many of’ the letters included, which fill more than one hundred pages, are extremely well writtén and delightful to read; it is perhaps inevitable that the collection should contain a fair number that are merely comments on the routine of farm management. The purely biographical section shows signs of rather superfluous building up, and two long chapters headed, respectively, "The Board of Agriculture" ‘and "Rural Education," though in themselves scholarly essays on the subjects in question, contain very little about Wilson, while both, being
crammed with facts and thickly sown with little known names, are a heavy load for any biography to carry.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540205.2.22.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 12
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342WILSON OF BULLS New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 12
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