Sir Frederick Weld: pastoralist, politician, painter

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIII, Issue 2, 1 October 1980, Page 69

Sir Frederick Weld: pastoralist, politician, painter

JEANINE GRAHAM

The next morning we had with much sorrow to say goodbye to Mr Weld, whose course no longer lay with ours, as he was going to walk up the coast to his station, Flaxbourne, nearly opposite to Wellington. It was a great undertaking, about 150 miles, that had scarcely been walked before, several rivers to cross, and 19 miles running by the beach, along the rocks where you must hang on by your hands to the rocks above, and so on; but he wanted to see the country and to get back to his station. . . . We like Mr Weld so much . . . and he is so good-natured that at last I asked him to call on you and tell you all about us . . . and if he does come, pray seem as if you expected him, for he is very shy, and it is an exertion to him to go to new people, though I am quite certain you would all like him. 1

So Charlotte Godley's pen recorded the end of an important period of contact between the gentle and impressionable young pastoralist and the more sophisticated and influential Godleys. They had first met in July 1850 during the Godleys' eight-month stay in Wellington. A mutual interest in Tennyson and Ruskin was only one feature which they found they had in common. A concern for colonial self-government was another. In the ensuing months, whenever the opportunity presented itself, Weld had clarified many of his own ideas in the lively political discussions that were prompted by John Robert Godley's presence in the settlement. When they returned to Lyttelton to meet the first four emigrant ships due to arrive in December, Weld accompanied the Canterbury Association's chief agent and his family to Port Cooper. Then it became clear that in pioneering circumstances, the skills of the practical colonist were of far more immediate value than any knowledge of politics and responsible government. As he helped them cook potatoes and rice for their first dinner (13 December) and 'did all kinds of things . . . better than anyone else', Weld could well have reflected on his own initiation into the art of camping out. Then very much a new chum, for he had only been in the colony a few weeks, Weld had celebrated his coming of age in May 1844 by the side of Lake Wairarapa, under a makeshift shelter of blanket, sticks and flaxleaves, surrounded by sheep. It was a stormy night. A sudden gust of wind accompanied by a storm of rain tore off the blanket and wet Weld to the skin. The two dogs tethered to the supports reacted. 'Each dog thinking the other had

attacked him and was the cause of all the pother flew at the other’s throat, and in an instant we were all rolling on the ground together. ’ Camping out with the Godleys was a much more civilised affair.

Moreover, it was sufficiently leisured for Weld to depict it in two watercolours. 'Canterbury Plains, Waimakariri [lßso]', one of the Scrope/Weld collection donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, shows the camp site on the near side of the river with Maori huts and food storage platforms on the far side. The very similar 'Camp, banks of Courtenay (Waimakariri) Canterbury Plains, Dec. 5 1850', held in the Canterbury Museum collection, actually depicts some of the party, the most obvious being Charlotte and her small son Arthur, walking from the tent down to the river itself.

These unassuming sketches have a considerable significance for the biographer. The paintings are additional evidence of an association which was influential in the development of Weld's political ideas. Discussions with such pastoralists as Weld and his senior partner, Charles Clifford, doubtless made Godley more aware of the vital role which sheep-farming could play in the successful foundation of the new settlement. Moreover, the sketches mark the beginning of an important new phase in Weld's pastoral activities. The expedition for which the Godleys farewelled him had its practical consequences in the founding of a major sheep station still in existence today and still in Clifford family ownership.

Stonyhurst, on the banks of the Hurunui, was the second South Island sheep station to be established by the successful pioneer pastoralists Clifford and Weld. As he walked northwards, capturing his route in journal entries, sketches and later such paintings as 'Near Amuri Dec. 13 1850' (Canterbury Museum) and 'Amuri Bluff 1850' (Turnbull Library), Weld was heading for the partners' first and largest South Island station situated in Marlborough. Now only a fraction of its former size, Flaxbourne was the station which Weld always preferred and it seems fitting that a family association with the area has persisted.

Present day stations and their ownership may seem a long way from a group of watercolours painted by an amateur artist in 1850. Yet the apparent digression is typical of the response which the historian can have to the Scrope/Weld collection now housed in the Alexander Turnbull Library. For these paintings are more thanjust a record of leisure time activity by a well-educated, cultured, quiet Catholic Englishman. The sketches, intended for family and friends, not for posterity, are also an insight into the varied activities and interests of an unobtrusive yet quite remarkable pioneer. The station paintings are a record of a changing landscape, and of a pastoral invasion moving inexorably over the Marlborough hills and the Canterbury Plains. Weld's enthusiasm for exploration and his determination to find new overland routes suitable for stock droving are depicted in the Upper Wairau sequence. Political involvement also had its artistic consequences. It was a very thankful Weld who escaped from the chicanery and entanglement of the first parliamentary session in Auckland in 1854 and made his way south via Tauranga and Maketu, then inland to Rotorua, Lake

Rotomahana and Lake Taupo. Of the five known paintings from this expedition, four are in the Scrope/Weld collection ('Lake Rotomahana', 'Roto Kanapanapa', 'Lake Taupo', 'Tongariro & Ruapehu from Rua O Tane 1854'). The fifth, a more detailed study of the famous Pink and White terraces, is reproduced in Lady Alice Lovat's biography of her uncle. 2 Apart from the brief extracts from Weld's journal cited by Lovat, this set of paintings is the only surviving record of a journey which took the young politician-cum-adventurer through the central North Island and on to Wanganui before his return to Wellington and on to his Wairau electorate. Political involvement was also responsible for the one Taranaki painting in the Scrope/Weld collection. As short-lived (from November 1860 to June 1861) Minister for Native Affairs in the Stafford ministry, Weld accompanied Governor Gore Browne, Frederick Whitaker and Donald McLean to Taranaki in March. It is not surprising that he found time to paint 'Mt Egmont ("Taranaki") from near one of the blockhouses to the right of Marsland Hill behind the town of New Ply [mouth] 1861'. The mountain's majesty had long impressed him. Egmont's 'glorious outline' against the morning sky had been one of his first views of New Zealand as the 750 ton Theresa neared the end of its four-month voyage in March 1844.

In showing something of the range of Weld’s interests and activities, the paintings also reveal the extent to which an early colonist could defy the difficulties of transport and communications

to move quite extensively and regularly around parts of the colony. The paintings relating to Queen Charlotte Sound (1858) and Pelorus Sound (1861) were probably done as a consequence of a visit on a government brig or the steamer service, though Weld regularly sailed between Cloudy Bay and Port Nicholson in the firm's own ketch. Missing from the Scrope/Weld collection is an indication of the frequency with which Weld visited Christchurch and Lyttelton in the 1850 s. The Weld collection in the Canterbury Museum contains twelve paintings of Lyttelton and of Ham farm, Riccarton Bush. The number reflects Weld's friendships with Canterbury Association settlers, of whom Charles Christopher Bowen was probably the closest. Apart from the artistic merits of the collections therefore, they form a most valuable adjunct to written records as a tool for the biographer.

Many younger sons found improved circumstances by emigrating to the colonies but Weld's success story is still a fairly remarkable one. Reared in a large and closely knit Catholic family in Dorsetshire, he was educated at the Catholic schools of Hodder and Stonyhurst before attending the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Weld's decision to come to New Zealand was the consequence of limited alternatives. He could not afford a life in the army and he did not wish to seek employment beyond the shadow of the British flag. He decided to follow the example of cousins who had already emigrated under New Zealand Company auspices. Relatives were a little sceptical but their doubts concerning his suitability for colonial life were to prove unfounded.

Weld quickly demonstrated that he had the successful colonist's capacity and readiness to adapt. Within weeks of his arrival in the colony, he had volunteered to assist his cousins, Charles Clifford and William Vavasour, with the establishment of a sheep station in the Wairarapa. That he knew nothing of sheep husbandry did not deter him. That ignorance he had in common with those financing the venture. The beginnings of Wharekaka, a 30,000 acre station near present-day Martinborough, were inauspicious. Food supplies "were short, living quarters primitive, the mosquitoes damnable. The sheep were in a pitiful condition after their voyage across the Tasman and the whole enterprise in imminent danger of collapse during its first six months. Only the timely employment of Tom Caverhill, a Cheviot shepherd with New South Wales experience, ensured Wharekaka's survival. It also paved the way for Weld's instruction as a sheep farmer. The one painting extant from this phase of Weld's career is in a private collection. It depicts the 30 X 12 feet bark and reed whare built by the local Ngati Kahungungu Maoris for the squatters. The thatched roof looks secure; the Ruamahanga is well within its banks. Journal entries tell a different

story. The roof leaked like a sieve in wet weather and flooding was by no means infrequent.

Flaxbourne was established during 1847, the move being prompted by the success of Wharekaka, the expansion of pastoralism in the Wairarapa Valley, and the increasingly precarious nature of the informal leasehold tenure. After an exploratory expedition in 1846, the partners laid claim to some 200,000 acres stretching from Kekerengu in the south to the Blind River in the north. When applications for a depasturing licence were granted by the New Zealand Company agent in Nelson in 1849, the station was cut to a more realistic 78,000 acres. There are two paintings of Flaxbourne in public collections. That in the Canterbury Museum shows the small homestead from the back. "The white rocks" & Waipapa point from Flaxbourne anchorage' (Turnbull Library) gives some idea of the coastal situation of the station, a vital feature when sea communications were so important for supplies, access and the despatch of the wool clip. A Flaxbourne-related painting in private hands depicts the homestead from the front. The latter is the only known painting to show the gardens that Weld developed with such care. His journals and correspondence relate the process by which the wooden house was built in Wellington, dismantled, shipped across the Strait and then reassembled on the site. They tell, too, of his plans for a vineyard in the valley behind the house; of extensive daffodil, orchard and oak tree planting; of the frequent visitors, including Thomas Arnold, who enjoyed Flaxbourne hospitality. Officers and crew of HMS Acheron survey ship made a timely visit in 1849. The sailors assisted in the yards and were rewarded with tobacco, fresh meat and potatoes. As surveying commitments permitted, the officers went shooting on the nearby lagoon. The ship returned to Wellington laden with a Flaxbourne bounty of ducks, woodhen and rabbits, the latter something of a rarity on the station until the 1880 s.

Weld was always to feel much more at home on Flaxbourne than at Stonyhurst. This was partly the consequence of his partner's actions. Charles Clifford took a much more active part in the founding and actual running of the Canterbury station than had been the case with the two earlier ventures. Moreover, during the 1850 s, Weld was more often out of the colony than in it. He went home in 1851, returning in time to be elected Member for Wairau for the first parliamentary session of 1854. With James Edward Fitzgerald and Henry Sewell, he was involved with the shortlived mixed ministry of 1854, an experience which disinclined him to be over-active in politics during the rest of the decade. On his third trip within seven years he achieved an unspoken ambition and returned to New Zealand a married man. His desire to provide a suitable

home for Mena de Lisle Phillipps prompted Weld to begin purchasing land some thirty miles north of Christchurch, near present-day Amberley. Appropriately, the one painting of Brackenfield in the Scrope/Weld collection is of the grounds of this 550 acre estate. For although the 16-roomed kauri mansion was a charming and comfortable residence for the Welds, their many visitors and their rapidly expanding family, it was the gardens which were their pride and joy. Trees, shrubs and flower gardens were planted in park-like proportions, English deer and game birds imported and liberated by this first President of the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society. Nor was such activity merely a passing phase. As Governor of Western Australia 1869-74, Weld made Government House grounds into an acclimatisation nursery. With an eye to the future, he set aside reserves for public recreation grounds. Now a much appreciated sanctuary in the heart of urban Perth, King's Park stands as a fitting tribute to that foresight.

Although there are no watercolours extant from the mid-1860s, Weld did a great deal of painting at Brackenfield in 1866, as he recovered his health following his resignation from the premiership in October 1865. His eleven months in office had not been easy. His policy of self-reliance in defence, quixotic in the extreme as far as Aucklanders were concerned, had been jeopardised by financial problems and by the clashes between Governor Grey and General Duncan Cameron. Some colleagues had proved fractious; opponents were too powerful; home authorities would make no more concessions about the deployment or payment of the imperial troops. Weld's resignation marked the end of a political involvement which had begun with his membership of the Wellington Settlers Constitutional Association in 1848. Yet he had never really enjoyed political life. Only a strong sense of duty and a desire to ensure that there was no discrimination against Catholics had kept him involved. Now, forbidden by his doctor even to attend political meetings addressed by others, Weld found much solace and pleasure in sketching and reading. He had not lost his political awareness though. As his long-time friend Charles Christopher Bowen noted after one visit: 'He is like the old wk-horse, & (contrary to orders) pricks up his ears at the sound of the trumpet'. 3 Weld himself was relatively philosophical about his departure from office: 'lf God wanted my services, he would not have turned me out to grass, I suppose'.

With the advance of planned colonisation into Canterbury in the early 1850 s, colonists in the Nelson-Marlborough region had made considerable efforts to find suitable routes by which stock could be overlanded from their pastoral regions south to the Plains. Weld was actively involved in this search; his expedition of 1855 was

commissioned by the Nelson Provincial Government, probably at the instigation of Weld's friend and fellow exploration enthusiast, Superintendent Edward Stafford. It took Weld less than a week to find a short and reasonably level connection between Tophouse at the head of the Wairau Valley and the Acheron track to Canterbury. This route to Christchurch by way of the Wairau and Tarndale reduced travelling time between Nelson and the southern settlement to a comfortable six days. Not all of Weld's explorations were quite as successful. A mistake concerning the Guide and Dillon rivers in 1850 led to the loss of some 730 sheep when Charles Clifford's younger brother, Alfonso, endeavoured to overland stock from Flaxbourne to Stonyhurst with the aid of Weld's directions. The sheep were abandoned within what was only a few miles of the new station but they were never retrieved. Charles was left to bemoan the stupidity of all those involved —and the inaccuracy of his partner's maps. The 1855 expedition redeemed Weld's reputation. In the process of that exploration he also discovered and named Lake Tennyson after his favourite poet. Weld's journals of his various explorations, especially those of 1850, are now in National Archives. 4 They are full of pen and pencil sketches, some of which were later realised as finished watercolours: 'Pass, Upper Wairau', 'Head of Valley, Upper Wairau', 'Clarence River', all in the Scrope/Weld collection. The sketches give a useful insight into Weld's most common method of painting. Working sketches drawn en route would contain detailed information concerning colours and particular features of the

landscape. The subsequent watercolours were normally completed only at the journey's end. Not all of Weld's adventures were restricted to New Zealand. On his voyage home in 1855, he adjusted his route in order to observe the volcano of Mauna Loa in active eruption. Not content to view it from a distance, he climbed the mountain, an ascent which he felt obliged to complete because he had promised nearby villagers that he would report on the rate of the lava flow. His minutely detailed yet graphic account was later published by the Royal Geological Society in London. Again the sketchbook accompanied the adventure. Another of the paintings reproduced in Lovat's biography is that of the 'Great Eruption of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, 16th November 1855'. 5

After some twenty years in New Zealand, during which time he knew something of life in Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, Taranaki and Auckland, Weld left the colony with his wife and four of the twelve children who would eventually comprise their family. Yet going home to England in 1866 did not spell retirement; at forty-three, he was far too active for that. Nor could he afford to do so. Instead he sought and obtained appointment to Her Majesty's imperial service as a colonial governor. Sent first to Western Australia (1869-74), he was promoted to Tasmania (1875-80) before being posted to the Straits Settlements and Protected Malay States, from which position he retired reluctantly in 1887. In all three areas his governorship was an active one but in the Scrope/Weld collection there are only two paintings from this phase of his career. Both are Tasmanian subjects: 'Lake Echo' and 'Reach of the Derwent River'. Lovat reproduces two Western Australian scenes and one Tasmanian 6 but

there are no known paintings extant from the Straits Settlements period —which is a pity, since Weld's governorship there involved travelling through much of the interior of the peninsula. As with so many of his cultured contemporaries, paintings were for Weld an additional means of conveying to those at home something of the environment that the distant colonist was experiencing. Weld was no creative artist; for him it was an enjoyable form of relaxation. Yet he also regarded it as an important accomplishment. As he had written in his influential Hints to Intending Sheep Farmers in New Zealand, music and painting were vital resources when one lived an isolated existence. In moments of 'gloom and despondency, of vain regrets for the past, or useless longings after the future', these interests could provide a cheerful and soothing influence on the mind. 7 Weld's artistic approach was therefore that of a competent amateur seeking to convey impressions of the landscape as accurately as possible. He painted in watercolours and on a small scale, the average size of his paintings being that of a standard A 4 sheet of paper. He had no formal artistic training; his upbringing had been in a family where the arts were appreciated but not actively pursued. His older brother, Charles, to whom Weld was most attached, gradually amassed a collection of art books and this library Weld inherited along with the Chideock estate in 1885. Whether a study of such resources influenced Weld's approach is not known since there are no paintings available from the 1880 s and early 1890 s.

In the broad field of cultural pursuits, Weld enjoyed handling both pen and paintbrush. His paintings were far more successful than his mawkish verse. Fortunately his habit of writing nostalgic poetry did not last much beyond the 1840 s. An interest in the arts generally was the hallmark of a well-educated English gentleman, as was an involvement in the natural sciences, geology in particular. Weld, however, translated his considerable scientific curiosity into practical terms when he established the Geological Survey for New Zealand in 1864 with James Hector as Director. He also encouraged the foundation of the Colonial Museum in Wellington in 1865. Yet Weld's interest in these fields was more than just a typically Victorian trait widely shared with colonists of comparable education. Inextricably interwoven with his appreciation of the landscape and the features within it was his faith. To Weld the landscape was God's handiwork. It was man's duty to notice and to record it as faithfully as possible, hence the extremely detailed nature of his expedition reports in New Zealand. Even his tours of inspection in the colonial territories under his jurisdiction led to painstakingly compiled accounts being sent home for Colonial Office edification. Weld did not make these efforts for his personal

benefit. He regarded his skills of observation and recording as God-given gifts. In applying those abilities he hoped that he might arouse in others a much greater appreciation of the environment which he believed God had created. Weld would not have expected to be rated as an artist of major significance. Yet historically his paintings, and many other works by lesser-known artists in New Zealand, do not deserve to be so completely neglected. The Lyttelton sequence in the Canterbury Museum enables a local historian to trace a pattern of early buildings and communications, including the erection of the first Catholic church, the nature of the port and the development of the road to Sumner. Any student of New Zealand's early tourist industry would find 'Lake Rotomahana' (Turnbull Library) and 'Te Terata, Lake Rotomahana' (Lovat) to be amongst the earliest European paintings of the famous Pink and White Terraces destroyed in the Tarawera eruption of 1888. For the historical geographer too such works can have considerable value. For the biographer and social historian, the Scrope/Weld collection is an excellent example of how the works of such minor artists can prove to be a mine of normally little-used source material.

REFERENCES 1 C. Godley, Letters from Early New Zealand, 1850-1853, edited byj. R. Godley (Christchurch, 1951) p. 79 (27 July 1850) and p. 82 (31 July 1850) for first impressions of Weld in Wellington; pp. 137, 145 (13 December 1850)or details of the camping expedition. 2 Lady Alice Lovat, The Life of Sir Frederick Weld, G.C.M.G., a Pioneer of Empire (London, 1914) facing p. 98, with title ' "Te Terata," Lake Rotomahana. Bth October 1854'. 3 C. Bowen to H. Selfe, 18 June 1866, Selfe MSS, Vol. II No. 177, Canterbury Museum. 4 Weld Papers, Box IV No. 3. An account of the 1855 expedition was published in the Nelson Examiner, 2 June 1855, p. 3. 5 Lovat, op.cit., facing p. 102.

6 Ibid., facing pp. 204, 212, 242. The titles are ‘West Australian Vegetation. 1869’, ‘Rottnest Island’, ‘The Derwent River, Tasmania. 1878.’

7 Sir F. A. Weld, Hints to Intending Sheep Farmers in New Zealand (London, 1851) p. 12.