The Wakefields haven’t gone down well in history, more notorious
for scandals like Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s abduction of a 15-year-old heiress
than celebrated for any of their achievements. Despite the evidence of Point
Jerningham, I hadn’t even heard of Edward Jerningham Wakefield (apparently the
Wakefield males of Edward’s line all shared the same first name) so I wasn’t
sure what to expect from this book. Drawn in by the striking cover by Rakai
Karaitiana, what I found was a colourful and detailed picture of 1840s
Wellington.
When we read and think about the 1840s, our attention is
often drawn to the north: the signing of Te Tiriti at Waitangi, the rowdy town
of Kororāreka, the fledgling settlement of Auckland. In Jerningham, Sanders presents us
with the shiploads of bewildered new settlers who had left behind everything
they knew and sailed across the world, fooled by the rhetoric of the New Zealand Company’s advertisements into believing that their land purchases were
legal, and expecting a more established community than the cluster of tents and
ramshackle buildings on the windswept beach of Pito-one.
Some of the characters in this book are real: Colonel
William Wakefield, Captain Arthur Wakefield, Charles Heaphy, Ernst Dieffenbach, Te
Puni, Te Rauparaha, Te Rangihaeata – and, of course, Jerningham himself. Others,
including the narrator, Arthur Lugg, are not.
Edward Jerningham Wakefield from the frontispiece of his book Adventure in New Zealand, Christchurch, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1908 (First published in 1845). Artist unknown.
Arthur Lugg arrives on the Aurora, one of the first settler
ships. He is a bookkeeper, the son of a clergyman, and only recently rich,
thanks to an inheritance received by his wife who died soon afterwards. There
is no hint of foul play here – Arthur Lugg is a completely upright Victorian
chap, conservative, a little clumsy but generally well-liked, intensely loyal
to the Queen and the Crown, and a hard worker who terms himself the “invisible
man” as he slogs away on paperwork for the burgeoning Wakefield settlements.
Nevertheless, despite or perhaps because of the difference in their temperaments,
he falls under the spell of the wild and mercurial Jerningham. He also falls in
love on the journey out with a young woman called Ada Malloy, but due to
various machinations – not of his making – ends up married instead to the quiet
and beautiful Dorothy, oblivious to the rumours that swirl around her.
With Jerningham, Arthur Lugg travels to Kāpiti, Wanganui (as
it was then) and up the Wanganui River to the central North Island, as yet hardly
glimpsed by Europeans. After a personal crisis, his travels also take him to
Nelson in time to be embroiled in a crucial point in the history of that new
settlement and of Māori-Pākeha relations.
Wellingtonians (especially) will be fascinated to trace the
early days of today’s city as familiar streets are formed and buildings
erected. Sanders treats her material with confidence, and her sailing experience
on tall ships shows in her descriptions of weather and in the often frightening
and totally believable scenes on board small and large boats. On land, earthquakes add to the general sense of unease. We see the
growing tension and distrust between the New Zealand Company and Governor
Hobson, the constant presence of the surveyors, the pressure on the Company to
prepare for the hundreds of settlers they have already – with whatever motives
and degree of truth - enticed to their unformed towns and the misunderstandings
and illegal land dealings that will lead to the disaster of the Wairau Affray
and later confrontations.
Point Jerningham, at the far end of Oriental Bay, will now serve for me as a reminder
of a young man who was deeply flawed but drew people to him – both Māori and
Pākeha, according to this retelling – with his combination of brilliance, good
humour, impulsiveness, exuberance and daring.
Sanders writes intentionally through the lens of the 1840s
and points out In her author’s note at the end of the book that “the attitudes
to race, culture, gender and class.. are not designed to offend or provoke, but
to illustrate the common perspective among 1840s colonials.” However Arthur
Lugg, her narrator, comes across as perhaps more enlightened than some. He is curious about the Māori whom he meets in Wellington and on his
travels with Jerningham, in awe of the magnificent physique of the men and the beauty of the women. He tries to learn te reo and tell us that his accent
improves over time, and worries that the New Zealand Company’s land purchases
are illegal. He even owes his life to Te Puni, who rescues him from drowning.
This is Cristina Sanders’ debut novel, released by
Wellington publishers The Cuba Press and printed by Wakefield Printers, both of
them – in a nice piece of synchronicity – located on Wakefield St. She is also
the winner of the 2019 Storylines Tessa Duder award for an unpublished
manuscript. That book will be published by Walker Books next year, and I’m sure
there will be more.
To hear Cristina Sanders talking about Jerningham, the Wakefields and the messy, fraught, flawed and often ugly business of colonialism, listen to this interview on Radio NZ, recorded on the day
of her book launch at Unity Books.
Roseneath, Oriental Bay, Point Jerningham (in foreground) and Point Halswell, Wellington New Zealand (russellstreet / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
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