JOHN PEARSE AND HIS SCRAPBOOK, 1851-56

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1 May 1972, Page 10

JOHN PEARSE AND HIS SCRAPBOOK, 1851-56

Margery Walton and Janet Paul

A visitor to the Library may now see an album of brown paper bound in a flimsy light brown cloth showing signs of wear at the spine. On its 93 mounted pages, each 22 x 15 inches, are pasted 357 individual items: 127 watercolours and wash drawings which vary from the size of a postage stamp to 11 x 17 inches. No more than a dozen depict buildings or scenes of which we have any other contemporary visual record. There are also three annotated maps; three manuscript and 75 miscellaneous items: documents of travel, newspaper clippings, accounts of the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855, Mr Hart’s Address to the Electors of Wellington, house plans, drawings of the vegetable caterpillar and the seahorse, albatross feathers, pressed ferns and invitations to balls. This miscellany makes up one of the most moving and informative social documents to return to New Zealand. This is a visual record of colonial life from June 1851 to July 1856: a period, until now, much less welldocumented than had been the immediately preceding decade.

Not only is the scrapbook itself an event, but file letters leading to its acquisition also document one of the happy pursuits and processes of the Turnbull Library. The chase begins with the transmission of hearsay —the adumbration of a clue—in a letter to the New Zealand Embassy, Paris, 23 March 1967, in which Mr A. G. Bagnall mentions verbal information from Mrs Shirley Leach ‘that a Miss B. Pearce [sic] of given address owned a scrapbook containing original watercolours of early Wellington interest.’

It was possible a little later to correspond directly with Miss Pearse who gave further information about her great grandfather, John Pearse, a virtually unknown but most perceptive resident of Wellington in the 1850 s. Miss Pearse also explained that the album was a valued possession of her sister and herself and that while she hoped it would eventually return to New Zealand, there were in the meantime some difficulties. A member of the New Zealand Embassy staff, Mr H. V. Roberts, was kindly shown the album by Miss Pearse and stressed in general terms its value and importance.

Nothing further, in the short term, seemed practicable and there the matter rested for two years until Miss Walton was able to visit Paris in August 1969 at the conclusion of a private visit to the United Kingdom. Miss Walton, through the good offices of Mr O. P. Gabites, the New Zealand Ambassador, saw the album with Miss Pearse in a crowded and dazzling hour. This display of active interest convinced its owners that it should come to New Zealand on loan for close study. Early in 1970, the scrapbook was taken to London for colour and black and white

copying, chiefly as a security measure. Eventually, on an afternoon in February 1970, the transparencies arrived and were the subject of exciting examination for the rest of the available time that day. The following morning the album itself was eagerly unpacked, which gave rise to some, fortunately unnecessary, doubts about our security provision as both album and copies appeared to have come out on the same flight.

The scrapbook was on display at a function in the Library in April 1970 and the Trustees formally made an offer to Miss Pearse and her sister for its purchase. Mrs Margaret Scott, while in France as a WinnManson Fellow, visited Miss Pearse and was able to tell her at first hand of the tremendous importance of the scrapbook to New Zealand and of our wish to retain it here. A little later, Miss Pearse was able to confirm that it had been decided to accept the Trustees’ offer. Miss Pearse had also kindly permitted the Library to purchase three most interesting Barraud paintings taken back to England by John Pearse, one being an important early portrait of the Chief Rangihaeata.

Before and, more intensively, since the album arrived in Wellington the first-named author, Margery Walton, has gathered information about its maker. John Pearse was born in 1808 and baptised at Bedford St. Mary, Dunstable, England. 1 His father was Theed Pearse (died 1847). He came of a family which produced ‘many lawyers in Bedfordshire in the 18th and 19th centuries’. 2 When he was seventeen he commenced his law studies ‘in an office of high standing’. 3 We learn from his great-grand-daughter, Miss Beatrice Pearse, that John Pearse was articled to the firm of Theed Pearse. He was admitted as Attorney in the Courts of Westminster in 1832. 4 About 1839 he married Cassandra Jennings Vipan. 5 The couple may have continued to live in Bedford as John Pearse, when he ceased to practise in England, was described as ‘Steward of the Manor Royal of Dunstable’. 6 Births of four children are recorded: John Walter 24 October 1842; Laura Mary 21 June 1847; Charles 7 (about 1849) and Clara Alice Pearse 7 (about 1851). It was the weight of this ‘increasing family’ which made their no-longer young father think

of emigration. 8 He must have discussed the idea of coming to New Zealand with the Russell family who ‘kindly took an interest in my coming out’ and provided Pearse with a letter of introduction to Sir George Grey from whom he expected to receive an offer of government employment. In a letter of slightly querulous reminder John Pearse spells out his reasons: ‘Having an increasing family, and an insufficiency of income to live comfortably [author’s underlining] in England, and thinking that the chances of advancement of children were in favour of New Zealand, I determined (after mature deliberation and with the full approval of my wife) to proceed there; to explore, and judge as to the expediency of my wife and children following . . . though I am happy

to add that my family are left in comfortable circumstances in England.’ 9 From the English address given of Pearse’s wife in the death notices of his two youngest children it would appear that the family had been left, not in Bedford, but in Hemel Hempstead, Herts. 10 (Although the children could have contracted scarlet fever on a holiday visit.)

The story of John Pearse is continued in the scrapbook itself. John Pearse leaves England and leaves his wife, either pregnant, or with a very young baby. One senses a cautiously adventurous man wanting to inform, amuse, and reassure his wife and children with drawings of a life which may soon be theirs also. From the arrangement of the book and its occasional inclusion of a notice printed later than 1856 —or a travel document relating to his return amongst those of the outward voyage —it is possible to deduce that the scrapbook was compiled by Pearse, after his return, 11 from drawings which he had made on, or sent with, letters to his wife. Here is a man not setting out to make pretty pictures but to answer in detail the questions ‘What would we children do on board a ship? Is the place like England? What are the houses like? What sort of people are the Maoris? Where will we live?’. In fact, the drawings in his scrapbook answer just these questions for the great grandchildren of John Pearse’s contemporaries. And we are delighted and grateful for his kind of looking. He was a lawyer and, as such, was trained to be interested in people, their predicaments and their characters. He did not have the technical facilities of the trained artist but he had an eye for stance, expression, colour; and the ability to make real the people and places and situations he observed. His small portraits of fellow passengers and, later, of Maoris, have a wry appreciation of character. These latter, in particular, show John Pearse’s human sympathy, his capacity to see without prejudice, his alert appreciation of the telling detail. ‘lt will always be, so far as I can see, the most complete pictorial record of the district, for its decade, that we are now ever likely to find.’ 12

John Pearse starts with the World in Mercator’s Projection and marks the map 13 with black for his outward journey and red for his return. The black line tracks down to Cape Verde, sweeps across the South Atlantic Ocean well south of Cape of Good Hope, goes south again of Kerguelen’s Land, continues almost directly east to Enderby’s Island, and turns north to Canterbury. In the centre of page three is a card printed in red and black which advertises the ‘Duke of Portland, A.l.’ ‘Chartered by the Canterbury Association, and approved to sail from the Port of London on Tuesday, the 10th June, 185 T. The rates of passage are given for ‘Each Person, 4 years old and upwards—Chief Cabin £42. Second cabin £22. Steerage £l6.’ The added note must have reassured the prospective parent:

‘Children under 14 one-half.—This ship has superior Accommodation, and will take out a Clergyman, an Elementary School Master, and an experienced Surgeon.’ On pages 3 and 4 John Pearse has pasted papers relating to the Duke of Portland; 533 tons, commander William T. Cubitt. Underneath is Pearse’s first spindly ink sketch: ‘the Duke of Portland with sails furled, pennants and flags flying from every mast’. This drawing is flanked by a plan of the top and lower decks with the dimensions of the cabins shown. From luxury in the Poop (IT 10" x 9'9") with three windows and a sofa, to a more usual 7' 7" x 7' 4" on the upper deck and 6' 2" square on the lower. At the bottom left of the page is a certificate for eighteen packages ‘Baggage Effects’ stamped and signed by an Insurance Broker under seal of the N.Z. Agency Office. It provided for the goods to be delivered at Auckland. A further certificate dated 24 October 1851 permitted ‘Twenty Five Packages Baggage’ to be landed at Commercial Bay by J. Logan Campbell.

The final document on this page tells us in the flourishy typography of Her Majety’s [sic] Consul at Alexandra that John Pearse aged 48 years passed that way, 22 July 1856, on his return to England. Page 6 is headed ‘Sketches of ships seen from the Duke of Portland’. One faint penline and sepia wash sketch shows the last of England: a distant tree-covered slope, a castle and three windmills on a coast labelled in Pearse’s even-sloping small script ‘Sussex coast—believed to be Sandgate.’ Another, dated 17 June 1851, shows a concourse of 16 sailing ships and one primitive steam boat ‘anchored off Dungeness’. This the scene an emigrant left in the 1850’s.

The following nine pages give life on board a sailing ship. The children play chess or draughts or learn to read around ‘Mrs Marks volunteer schoolmistress’. Pearse draws their hatted and bonnetted heads as they bob for raisins, sit with their fathers on top of the cow box or, in elaborately documented jest, tease the unpopular schoolmaster by puttying up his cabin door or stealing his cap and nailing it on the mast. Then Pearse draws the crew, bearded and side-whiskered characters who look, in 1972, nearly contemporary: Merris, the second mate, Harry, the Irish steward, Mr Jackson ‘a Russian merchant off for the Canterbury plains’, Bill, Leslie, Dan, Sam and Sir Mich 1 Le Fleming P (a Jamaican). The Captain’s back and his lady’s flounced broad beam are recorded as they lean on a rail; sailors balance dangerously—also drawn backview —when reefing. The carpenter tries to stop a leak, the butcher catches pigs blood in a wooden pail. The schoolmaster pares his nails or sits, one foot on another chair, rod in hand, ‘inclined for a bully’. Pearse turns an observant, amused, delighted eye on his fellow passengers and their activities. They sew, sleep, gossip, ‘dance a Russian two-

step’, shoot ‘Albatross, Mollymawks and Cape Pigeons— rayther shy!’ or shave while sitting in a chair.

We see inside the cabins—the arrangement of bunks, useful objects on nails above; the hanging bookshelf and folding chair on ‘the dry or comfortable side of the cabin’; the ingeniously swung basin to catch leaks; the small tank of [drinking] water with a tap; the improvised candle-holder.

The first group of watercolours of New Zealand [pp. 17-19] are of Nelson. But we know that the Duke of Portland arrived in Canterbury on 24 September ‘with 151 emigrants’, 14 that John Pearse’s baggage had been consigned to the care of Logan Campbell in Auckland where the Duke of Portland arrived 25 October 1851, 15 and that on 19 November John Pearse is listed among passengers in the Cashmere to Wellington via New Plymouth. 16 So we must conclude that Pearse’s arrangement of his scrapbook is not chronological. Shipping notices fix the date of these Nelson sketches. A Pearce [sic] is listed among passengers on the ‘schooner Champion, 57, Wood from Wellington’ 17 and again mentioned amongst passengers returning in the ‘schooner Henrietta, 60, Cole for Wellington’ 18 and the New Zealand Spectator lists Mr Pearse amongst those arriving on 5 June. We might be justified in considering this our man in spite of variant spellings: the deduction is confirmed by a sketch on p. 85 of the scrapbook: two rows of recumbent unsleeping figures in dense proximity captioned ‘Midnight scene on board the ‘Champion’ timber boat for Nelson from Wellington in 1852. The only kind of craft plying between these ports in those days and shame to the skipper for the accommodation. However in the next run from Sydney to New Zealand the ‘Champion’ went down with all hands—the skipper and crew were never heard of again.’ From which lengthy comment we might also deduce that John Pearse had not enjoyed the journey.

The Nelson sketches then were made between 15 May and 5 June 1852. John Pearse must have arrived in Wellington 19 November 1851 and almost immediately have set himself to see the country —in the* following three months—while waiting for some response 19 to his letter of introduction to Sir George Grey. In his reminder—previously quoted —Pearse writes, ‘I have seen much of New Zealand in visiting Port Cooper, Akaroa, Auckland, Taranaki [spbk p. 78-82], Wellington [spbk p. 23-30], the Waidrop [Wairarapa p. 67, 72-3, 77], and Wanganui [spbk p. 22]; and I am hoping shortly to have an opportunity of going to Nelson. John Pearse must have visited Hawkes Bay [spbk p. 41] later.

The bulk of the sketches detail the Wellington of the early 1850 s. There are two detailed views (numbered and with an explanatory key) of Wellington ‘taken from John Pearse’s land on Wellington Terrace’. He also draws Wellington Harbour from the road leading to the Bar-

racks, ‘from the Hutt Road beyond Kaiwarra’, from the ‘cemetery back of Government domain’ and in fine detail ‘Thorndon Flat and Pepitea [sic] Point taken from Wellington Terrace’. Pearse paints Mrs Simmonds’ house near Wellington and Mrs Jackson’s house Lowry Bay, Noah’s Ark, ‘the residence of the Chief E’tako, Nga Hauranga’, the ‘late residence of Mr Justice Chapman’ and the ‘Residence of Lieut. Gov. Eyre (afterwards of E. G. Wakefield Esq.) Wellington Karori Road’.

John Pearse was admitted to the Supreme Court, December 1853. 20 Further research may show how he occupied his time in the previous eighteen months. It is likely that he would have had some part in legal practice before his admission. He may have decided to settle in Wellington soon after his return as he bought and fenced land in Tinakori Road. 21 His Wellington sketches show the first cottage he stayed in, his friend Richard ‘Dicky’ Deighton who was to become his next door neighbour when he later built at the foot of Wellington Terrace and a great many other friends he made among the Maoris of the area. In this he must have differed from most of his fellow settlers and in particular from two contemporaries who also drew from their experience—Henry Gabriel Swainson 22 and Robert Anderson 23 but whose observations were totally European. John Pearse did not draw the picturesque Maori: he drew people he knew. ‘Polly’ and ‘Ko Rukanga (alias candle)’, ‘Piata asleep after his English studies’ [was John Pearse teaching him, we wonder?] ‘E Tami Ahauriri’ in her pink dress and a perceptive portrait of ‘a Native Assessor, or kind of Magistrate in native cases’ whom he knew by his full name Wiremu E. Taka Kaua Haranga. There are two consistent attitudes which Pearse brings out in his Maori men and women. They are externally Europeanised and they are sad. They all look down, the spirit is subdued. Drawing is a way of seeing and drawings as simple and as honest as these tell more than prose.

John Pearse the responsive artist was also an observant man of action and involved himself with the settlers’ life in Wellington. We find his name in newspaper lists protesting against the actions of the British Government; 24 in a letter to George Moore asking him to allow himself to be nominated as a Candidate for the Provincial Council; 25 amongst the lists of managers of the Wellington Savings Bank. 26 He is elected Secretary (1 May 1855) 27 of the Wellington Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute and advertises for them their evening classes in Algebra, Arithmetic, English Grammar and composition, Vocal music and Drawing 28 and protects their copies of the Illustrated News in a toughly worded notice. 29 In October 1855 he is still the secretary but by then family circumstances had altered his plans. Manuscript items in the scrapbook contain detailed plans for a house on the Terrace at a price of £l4O sterling: 30 a fair sized kitchen and drawing room, a main bedroom 12 x

12 with walk-in wardrobe and dressing rooms downstairs and for the children ‘three sleeping apartments to be formed in the gables’. Pearse had thought of special earthquake provisions but like the men of his time had built with little thought of sunshine (his back door and drawing room fireplace faced north: the verandah east and south).

Another item, a letter 31 in Maori with a phrase by phrase translation also shows John Pearse was laying a different foundation—that of friendship between his son Walter (aged twelve) and a Maori boy, Clement. The letter runs in translation: ‘Well boy, there you are. Good the discourse; the letter you sing to the Father. I have got one dog, two cats — one very big —one young cat the name is ‘nudge’. The nasty dog is full of fleas. I make a shave (which he did today) and all the fleas fly away. And I’ve got a nice pony. When you come you have ride my pony. Friend Walter Pearse greet your mother, your sister Rore (Laura) your sister Karera (Clara) your brother Mr Taure (Mr Charlie). Thats all friend, love by Clement.’

But the two-year old Charlie and four-year old Clara contracted scarlet fever and died. 32 And Walter, Laura and their mother did not come out to New Zealand. John Pearse advertised his Town Section ‘469’ Wellington Terrace North between Aurora Terrace and Bolton Street for sale by auction. It is described in detail but one paragraph is sufficient to show how John Pearse had spent his spare time in Wellington: ‘The whole of the land is enclosed with a substantial Fence, and a live fence; —is, throughout, at great expense drained and under cultivation and growing crops, and stocked with choice fruit trees, Blue gums and shrubs. There is a Barn or Stable on the Ground. Gravel walks are laid out, ornamentally, and footsteps are run up on the hillsides secure with tree fern and manuka piles. A stream of water runs through the ground throughout the whole year. A site for a house is cut a considerable depth in the hill facing the Harbor [sic], presenting a first rate rock foundation for building. . . ,’ 33

The N.Z. Spectator 34 carried another advertisement to sell without reserve the ‘Excellent library and effects of John Pearse, Esq.’.

John Pearse is listed 35 among the passengers on the ‘Schooner William Alfred, 118 tons, Finley, for Sydney’, which left Wellington on the first of March 1856. He returned to England and in 1862 was living in Alcombe Cottage, Dunster, Somerset. 36 We know from his great granddaughter that he and his family travelled together in Europe, that he made other scrapbooks, and that he lived for some time in Naples before his death in Tunbridge Wells on 25 October 1882. 37

His legacy in the pages of the scrapbook is one which will widen the historical knowledge and perspectives of all interested New Zealanders.

The Trustees are considering an appropriate form of publication which will do justice to John Pearse and his New Zealand.

NOTES 1 County Archivist, Bedford. 2 Letter from County Archivist, Bedford, to Miss Walton, 6 May 1971. 3 PRO document reference in letter from Miss B. Pearse to M.W., 6 July 1971. 4 Wellington Independent, 3 December 1853, 3c, Saturday. 5 County Archivist, Bedford, Essex, letter, 6 May 1971. 6 Law Soc. Services Ltd., 113 Chancery Lane, London, WC2. Letter. Postcard addressed to John Pearse. Esq./Undersheriff Dunstable. 7 N.Z. Spectator, death notices, 30 June 1855. 8 Letter, J. Pearse to Sir Geo. Grey, 7 April 1852. New Munster in-letters 52/835; letter-book vol. 8. 9 Ibid. 10 N.Z. Spectator, 30 June 1855. 11 See note in Pearse’s hand on p. 31 under lithograph ‘laying the foundation stone of the odd Fellow’s Hall’ which reads: ‘on land recovered from harbour since 1856’. Also an engraving from Illustrated London News dated 9 April 1859. 12 A. G. Bagnall to Miss B. Pearse, 23 September 1970. 13 Sketchbook, p. 1-2; hereafter referred to as Spbk. 14 New Zealander, 25 September 1851. 15 New Zealander, 25 October 1851, 2c. 16 New Zealander, 19 November 1851. 17 Nelson Examiner, 15 May 1852. 18 N.Z. Spectator, 5 June 1852. 19 Letter ‘requesting employment in the service of government’, John Pearse to Sir Geo. Grey, 7 April 1852. National Archives. 20 Wellington Independent, 3 December 1853, 3c, “On Thursday last Mr John Pearce [sic], of this city, was duly admitted a solicitor of the Supreme Court. Mr Pearce had been admitted an Attorney in the Courts of Westminster in the year 1832. Mr Justice Stephen said it gave him great pleasure to admit a gentlemen [sic] of such experience and qualifications as Mr Pearce possessed, as the profession would have a valuable accession in his person.’ 21 Memorandum of Agreement between John McLaggan, builder, and John Pearse with specification of material and labour required in building a house on Wellington Terrace, 1854 [inserted in Scrapbook, p. 47], which discounts £6O for land and £4.16.1 Id. as ‘a moiety of sum incurred by John Pearse for fences on the north and east sides’ of land on Tinakori Road which he was selling to the builder. 22 Journal, H. G. Swainson, 1850-51. 23 TTie Turnbull Library Record, Vol. 1 (ns) no. 4 (November 1968). 24 N.Z. Spectator, 3 April 1852, p. [4].

25 Wellington Independent, 29 June 1853, 3d. 26 Wellington Independent, 8 March 1854, 3b. 27 N.Z. Spectator, 12 May 1855, report of annual meeting of Wellington Athenaeum. 28 N.Z. Spectator, 16 May 1855, 2a. 29 N.Z. Spectator, 26 May 1855. 30 John McLaggan to John Pearse, Esq., 21 November 1854. 31 Clement to Walter Pearse, 26 Tihema 1854, in Pearse scrapbook. 32 Notice in New Zealand Spectator, 30 June 1855, of death of ‘the youngest daughter and second son of John Pearse Esq. Solicitor, Wellington, New Zealand’. 33 N.Z. Spectator, 17 October 1855, 2d. 34 N.Z. Spectator, 13 February 1856 [2]d. 35 N.Z. Spectator, 5 March 1856, 2c. 36 Information supplied by County Archivist, Bedford, 6 May 1971. 37 Letter from Beatrice Pearse to A. G. Bagnall, 4 May 1970.