Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands Part 22

'J. C. PATTESON.'

Next follows a retrospective letter:--

'April 1, 1859: St. John's College.

'My dearest Father,--Thirty-two years old to-day! Well, it is a solemn thing to think that one has so many days and months and years to account for. Looking back, I see how fearfully I wasted opportunities which I enjoyed, of which, I fancy, I should now avail myself gladly; but I don't know that I fancy what is true, for my work now, though there is plenty of it, is desultory, and I dare say hard application, continuously kept up, would be as irksome to me as ever.

'It seems very strange to me that I never found any pleasure in cla.s.sical studies formerly. Now, the study of the languages for its own sake even is so attractive to rue that I should enjoy working out the exact and delicate powers of Greek particles, &c.; but I never cared for it till it was too late, and the whole thing was drudgery to me. I had no appreciation, again, of Historians, or historians; only thought Thucydides difficult and Herodotus prosy(!!), and Tacitus dull, and Livy apparently easy and really very hard. So, again, with the poets; and most of all I found no interest (fancy!) in Plato and Aristotle. They were presented to me as merely school books; not as the great effort of the cultivated heathen mind to solve the riddle of man's being; and I, in those days, never thought of comparing the heathen and Christian ethics, and the great writers had no charm for me.

'Then my French. If I had really taken any pains with old Tarver in old days--and it was your special wish that I should do so--how useful it would be to me now; whereas, though I get on after a sort, I don't speak at all as I ought to do, and might have learnt to do. It is sad to look back upon all the neglected opportunities; and it is not only that I have not got nearly (so to speak) a quant.i.ty of useful materials for one's work in the present time, but that I find it very hard to shake off desultory habits. I suppose all persons have to make reflections of this kind, more or less sad; but, somehow, I feel it very keenly now: for certainly I did waste time sadly; and it so happens that I have just had "Tom Brown's Schooldays" lent me, and that I spent some time in reading it on this particular day, and, of course, my Eton life rose up before me. What a useful book that is! A real gain for a young person to have such a book. That is very much the kind of thing that would really help a boy--manly, true, and plain.

'I hear from Sydney by last mail that the Bishop is really desirous to revive the long dormant Board of Missions. He means to propose to send a priest and a deacon to every island ready for them, and to provide for them--if they are forthcoming, and funds. Of this latter I have not much doubt....

'April 24--I have to get ready for three English full services to-morrow, besides Melanesian ditto.--So goodbye, my dearest Father,

'Your loving and dutiful Son,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

Sir John Patteson might well say, in a letter of this summer, to Bishop Selwyn:--

'As to my dear boy Coley, I am more and more thankful every day that I agreed to his wishes; and in whatever situation he may be placed, feel confident that his heart will be in his work, and that he will do G.o.d service. He will be contented to work under any one who may be appointed Bishop of Melanesia (or any other t.i.tle), or to be the Bishop himself.

If I judge truly, he has no ambitious views, and only desires that he may be made as useful as his powers enable him to be, whether in a high or subordinate situation.'

Nothing could be more true than this. There was a general sense of the probability that Mr. Patteson must be the first Missionary Bishop; but he continued to work on at the immediate business, always keeping the schemes and designs which necessarily rose in his mind ready to be subjected to the control of whomsoever might be set over him. The cold had set in severely enough to make it needful to carry off his 'party of coughing, s.h.i.+vering Melanesians' before Easter, and the 'Southern Cross'

sailed on the 18th. Patteson took with him a good store of coffee, sugar, and biscuits, being uncertain whether he should or should not again remain at Lifu.

In the outward voyage he only landed his pupils there, and then went on to the Banks Islands, where Sarawia was returned at Vanua Lava, and after Mr. Patteson had spent a pleasant day among the natives, Mota was visited next after.

'May 24.--On Monday, at 3 P.M., we sailed from Port Patteson across to Mota. Here I landed among 750 people and the boat returned to the vessel. She was to keep up to windward during the night and call for me the next morning. I walked with my large following, from the teach, up a short steep path, to the village, near to which, indeed only 200 yards off, is another considerable village. The soil is excellent; the houses good--built round the open s.p.a.ce which answers to the green in our villages, and mighty banyan trees spreading their lofty and wide-branching arms above and around them. The side walls of these houses are not more than two feet high, made only of bamboos lashed by cocoa-nut fibre, or wattled together, and the long sloping roofs nearly touch ground but within they are tolerably clean and quite dry. The moon was in the first quarter, and the scene was striking as I sat out in the open s.p.a.ce with some 200 people crowding round me--men, women and children; fires in front where yams were roasting; the dark brown forms glancing to and fro in the flickering light; the moon's rays quivering down through the vast trees, and the native hollow drum beating at intervals to summon the people to the monthly feast on the morrow. I slept comfortably on a mat in a cottage with many other persons in it. Much talk I had with a large concourse outside, and again in this cottage, on Christianity; and all were quiet when I knelt down as usual and said my evening prayers. Up at 5.30 A.M., and walked up a part of the Sugar Loaf peak, from which the island derives its English name, and found a small clear stream, flowing, through a rocky bed, back to the village, where were some 300 people a.s.sembled; sat some time with them, then went to the beach, where the boat soon came for me.

'After this there was a good deal of bad weather; but all the lads were restored to their islands, including Aroana, the young Malanta chief, who had begun by a fit of frenzy, but had since behaved well; and who left his English friends with a promise to do all in his power to tame his people and cure them of cannibalism.'

Then came some foul winds and hot exhausting weather.

'I have done little more than read Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," and Helps's "Spanish America," two excellent books and most delightful to me. The characters in the Spanish conquest of Mexico and America generally; the whole question of the treatment of natives; and that n.o.bleman, Las Casas--are more intelligible to me than to most persons probably. The circ.u.mstances of my present life enable me to realise it to a greater extent.

'Then I have been dipping into a little ethnology; yesterday a little Plato; but it is almost too hot for anything that requires a working head-piece. You know I take holiday time this voyage when we are in open water and no land near, and it is great relaxation to me.'

A pretty severe gale of wind followed, a sharp test of Patteson's seamans.h.i.+p.

'Then came one day of calm, when we all got our clothes dry, and the deck and rigging looked like an old clothes' shop. Then we got a fairish breeze; but we can get nothing in moderation. Very soon it blew up into a strong breeze, and here we are lying to with a very heavy sea.

Landsmen would call it mountainous, I suppose. I am tired, for I have had an anxious time; and we have had but one quiet night for an age, and then I slept from 9.30 P.M. to 7.30 A.M. continuously. 'It may be that this is very good training for me. Indeed it must give me more coolness and confidence. I felt pleased as well as thankful when we made the exact point of Nengone that I had calculated upon, and at the exact time.'

On the 20th of June, Auckland harbour was safely attained; but the coming back without scholars did not make much of holiday time for their master, who was ready to give help to other clergymen whenever it might be needed, though, in fact, this desultory occupation always tried him most.

On the 25th of July he says:--

'I have had a sixty miles' walk since I wrote last; some part of it over wild country. I lost my way once or twice and got into some swamps, but I had my little pocket-compa.s.s.

'My first day was eighteen miles in pouring rain; no road, in your sense of the word; but a good warm room and tea at the end. Next day on the move all day, by land and water, seeing settlers scattered about. Third day, Sunday, services at two different places. Fourth day, walk of some twenty-seven miles through unknown regions baptizing children at different places; and reaching, after divers adventures, a very hospitable resting-place at 8 p.m. in the dark. Next day an easy walk into Auckland and Taurarua. Yesterday, Sunday, very wet day. Man-of-war gig came down for me at 9.15 A.M., took the service on board; 11 A.M.

St. Paul's service; afternoon, hospital, a mile or so off; 6 P.M., St.

Paul's evening service; 8.30, arrived at Taurarua dripping.'

The same letter replies to one from home:--

'I thank you, my dear father, for writing so fully about yourself, and especially, for seeing and stating so plainly your full conviction that I ought not to think of returning to England. It would, as you say, humanly speaking, interfere most seriously with the prospects of the Mission. Some dear friends write to me differently, but they don't quite understand, as you have taken pains to do, what our position is out here; and they don't see that my absence would involve great probable injury to the whole work.

'It is curious how few there are who know anything of New Zealand and Melanesia!

'Of course it is useless to speculate on the future, but I see nothing at all to make it likely that I shall ever revisit England. I can't very well conceive any such state of things as would make it a duty to gratify my constant inclination. And, my dear father, I don't scruple to say (for you will understand me) that I am happier here than I should be in England, where, even though I were absent only a few months, I should bear about with me the constant weight of knowing that Melanesia was not provided for. And, strange as it may seem, this has quite ceased to be a trial to me. The effort of subduing the longing desire to see you is no longer a great one: I feel that I am cheerful and bright, and light-hearted, and that I have really everything to make a man thankful and contented.

'And if you could see the thankful look of the Bishop, when he is again a.s.sured that there is no item of regret or desire to call me home on your part, you would feel, I know, that colonial work does require, especially, an unconditional unreserved surrender of a man to whatever he may find to do.'

But while admiring the n.o.ble spirit in which the son held fast his post, and the father forebore to unsettle him there, let not their example he used in the unkind and ignorant popular cry against the occasional return of colonial Bishops. For, be it remembered, that dire necessity was not drawing Coleridge Patteson to demand pecuniary a.s.sistance round all the platforms of English towns. The Eton, and the Australian and New Zealand a.s.sociations, supplemented by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and his own family, relieved him from the need of having to maintain his Mission by such means. All these letters are occupied with the arrangements for raising means for removing the Melanesian College to a less bleak situation, and it is impossible to read them without feeling what a difference it made to have a father who did not view giving to G.o.d's work as robbing his family.

On the 13th of August, Patteson was on board, preparing for the voyage; very cold, and eager for the tropics. The parting voice in his farewell letter is: 'I think I see more fully that work, by the power of G.o.d's Spirit, is the condition of us all in this world; tiny and insignificant as the greatest work of the greatest men is, in itself, yet the one talent is to be used.'

It was meant to be a farewell letter, but another followed in the leisure, while waiting for the Bishop to embark, with some strong (not to say fiery) opinions on the stern side of duty:--

'I feel anxious to try to make some of the motives intelligible, upon which we colonial folk act sometimes. First. I think that we get a stronger sense of the necessity for dispensing with that kind of courtesy and good nature which sometimes interferes with duty than people do in England.

'So a man placed as I am (for example) really cannot oftentimes avoid letting it be seen that work must come first; and, by degrees, one sympathises less than one possibly should do with drones and idlers in the hive, and feels it wrong to a.s.sent to a scheme which lets a real work suffer for the sake of acquiescing in a conventional recognition of comfort, claims of society, &c.

'Would the general of an army say to his officers, "Pray, gentlemen, don't dirty your boots or fatigue your horses to succour the inhabitants of a distant village"? Or a captain to his mates and middies: "Don't turn out, don't go aloft. It is a thing hard, and you might get wet"?

'And the difference between us and people at home sometimes is, that we don't see why a clergyman is not as much bound as an officer in the army or navy to do what he is pledged of his own act to do; and that at home the 'parsonage and pony-carriage' delusion practically makes men forget this. I forget it as much as any man, and should very likely never have seen the mistake but for my coming to New Zealand; and it is one of the great blessings we enjoy.

'There is a mighty work to be done. G.o.d employs human agents, and the Bible tells us what are the rules and conditions of their efficiency.

'"Oh! but, poor man, he has a sickly wife!" Yes, but, "it remaineth that those who have wives be as they that have none."

'True, but the case of a large family? "Whosoever loveth child more than me," &c.

'Second. The fact that we live almost without servants makes us more independent, and also makes us acquainted with the secrets of each other's housekeeping, &c. All that artificial intercourse which depends a good deal upon a well-fitted servants' hall does not find place here.

More simple and more plain and homely in speech and act is our life in the colonies--e.g., you meet me carrying six or seven loaves from town to the college. "Oh, I knew that the Bishop had to meet some persons there to-day, and I felt nearly sure there would be no breakfast then."

Of course an English person thinks, "Why didn't he send the bread?" To which I answer, "Who was there to send?"

'I don't mean that I particularly like turning myself into a miller one day and a butcher the next; but that doing it as a matter of course, where there is no one else to do it, one does sometimes think it unreasonable to say, as has been said to the Bishop:--"Two thousand pounds a year you want for your Mission work!" "Yes," said the Bishop, "and not too much for sailing over ten thousand miles, and for educating, clothing, and feeding some forty young men!"

'I mean that conventional notions in England are preventing people from really doing half what they might do for the good of the needy.

'I don't know how this might be said to be a theory tending to revolutionise society; but I think I do know that there is a kind of religious common sense which comes in to guide people in such matters.

Only, I do not think it right to admit that plea for not doing more in the way of almsgiving which is founded upon the a.s.sumption that first of all a certain position in society must be kept up, which involves certain expenditure.

'A barrister is living comfortably on 800 a year, or a clergyman in his living of 400. The professional income of the one increases, and a fatter living is given to the other, or some money is left them. What do they do? Instantly start a carriage, another servant, put the jack-of-all-trades into a livery, turn the b.u.t.tons into a flunkey, and the village girl into a ladies' maid! Is this really right? They were well enough before. Why not use the surplus for some better purpose?