DISCOVERERS OF NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 25

DISCOVERERS OF NEW ZEALAND

CURIOUS business altogether, the diseovety of New Zealand. For instance, I have just been looking at that little book 6f fefererice, "Datus." Its first chapter-heading is The Coming of the Maori. "The Coming," notice. No mention of discovery. The author probably regarded the Maoris as professionals, atid didn’t allow their effort to score any points. Nor does he look upon the arrival of Captain Abel Tasman in 1642 as an occasion for letting off crackers." The chapter is headed simply Tasman’s Visit. It isn’t until Captain James Cook, a genuine Englishman, turns up in 1769 that we find the word "discovery" coming in with a loud flourish: The Discovery of New Zealand by Captain Cook-just like that. The word is not flatly misused there. We all "discover" things for ourselves; and, in a subjective sense, at any rate, that great man James Cook certainly did discover this territory. We may forgive Maoris and Netherlanders for thinking the use of the term "discovery" just a shade invidious, if not actually perfidious. But that is not a matter of any great consequenceé. What is of much greater interest, although it is not often mentioned, is that the process has never stopped. It still goes on today. Not a yeat passes without the sensational discovery of New Zealand by some outstanding Englishtnan who has come here in order to make his quite exceptional talents available to the backward race inhabiting these remote islands. In order to give you some bearings on the situation, let me proceed to concoct a couple of pieces of dialogue. The first demonstrates what I might call the W.M.B. approach: "I've put my application in for that New Zealarid job." "But, darling-" "What is it, my dear?" "But-the cannibals!" "We'll manage to cope. In any Case, we have a duty. It’s a new world in the making, and strong men aré needed to take the helm. I don’t think this martmalade is quite as good as that other brand we had .. .," ete. And this, illustrating the Export Surplus angle: : "Toadharrow asked me for a testimonial today. He’s applying for a job in New Zealand, of all places." "What a lucky break for you, dear. What did you say?"

"Gave a simply glowing account of him, of G¢oufse. Best man in his field for years, and so forth. They won’t be able to resist it." "But, George, dear, what about the New Zealanders?" "Yes, indeed." (Deep-throated chuckle, with sinister overtones.) Ridiculous to suggest, of course, that these cover all the case-histories of Englishmen coming to New Zealand. Evety one.of us (or our forebears) came here some time or other; and motives, talents, ambitions and economic citcum: stances were in each casé good, bad or indifferent. You'll have noticed that we have a tendency to discuss the ethics of migration from time to time, Did our forebears leave England (a) because they wished to escape from a feudal system that had beén cotrupted by com-métce-to take the nobler elements of English tradition and re-plant them in soil whete they might grow more freely, ot (b) because they lacked the courage and fortitude to stay and help in the fight for social reform? There’s a lot to be said each way. Often enough there’s a good case for escaping from a wild bull, or a bad smell, But there may be an obligation to cage the bull, or deal with the cause of the smell. Take it whichever way suits you. Whatever happens, we need not be detained by tricky questions of this sort. I am not really attempting to -discuss such matters. I am speaking of a special class of Englishmen-the Discoverers, Take a Discoverer and put him down in New Zealand, and he begins to expand like one of those Japanese paper flowers you drop it water. A mefe pellet of a man may turn into something very showy indeed. The floral metaphor is quite apt in a number of cases, but for the rest we need a more dynatnic image. Think of an inflated rubber bladder that is taken up into the stratosphere, With the drop in atmospheric pressure it becomes about seven times its original size-provided its skin is sufficiently tough and elastic. So may an ego, compressed in the tightly-packed mass of English society, expand suddenly when removed to a place that is not so overcrowded or so fiercely competitive. A Discoverer may be idetitified as such soon after you meet him by his ineradicable belief, expressed in every utterance, every gesture afd inflection, that in all matters the English scale and the New Zealand scale are continuous, the bottom of the former running into the top of the latter. Although this may be true enough, in a number of contexts, to provide a good working hypothesis, it is not an easy belief to live with when raised to the level of an axiom, The Discoverer is often led into the illusion of quick success through having some of the local inhabitants rally to his side and hail him as a saviour. In time he discovers something else-that these people, like the collaborators in Occupied Europe, are usually impelled by quite special motives that make them extremely unreliable. They have tivals whom they wish to destroy by a sudden diplomatic coup. Or they ate merely soured, feeling that they are not appreciated at their true worth by their own community, and see a way of getting a bit of their own back.

Where does the Discoverer finish up? This is a matter the social anthropologists might profitably look into. In a general way, it can be said that one of three things happens to him. Either (1) he moves on, carrying with him a repertoire of spine-chilling anecdotes about the barbarous ¢listoms of the New Zealanders; or (2) he settles back, defeated, into a pefmanent niche as club bore and sentimental /audator temporic acti, the hero of a hundred battles, the intimate of every distinguished Englishman of his genération; or (3) in a few cases, where the delusions of grandeur are temporary, and merely part of a process of readjustment or growing up, he becomes in due course a New Zealander, as ifisular as any born Pig Islander, and fiercely resentful of any Discoverer who looms up on his horizon.

A. R. D.

Fairburn