Whales

I’m getting to the end of Sarah’s alphabet. When I started thinking about the letter W, the idea of whales kept surfacing. I knew that New Zealand’s whaling industry was vigorous in the 1840s, but with no whaling stations in Wellington harbour, would Sarah have known anything of it? The nearest whaling stations were on the Kapiti coast, and across Cook Strait at Te Awaiti and Port Underwood. The Cook Strait whalers came to Wellington frequently – the ships, and the men would have been common sites around town. But would Sarah have ever seen a whale, except perhaps in the distance while on the voyage to New Zealand? I started digging around, and got quite a surprise. While the people who live and work around Wellington today know that dolphins and pods of orca frequently come into the harbour – that’s a real traffic and work-stopper when it happens – I didn’t know that the southern right whale had been a frequent visitor in the 1840s, choosing the harbour as a breeding ground. I was enchanted to discover that they had made so much noise that people even complained about them.

W is for whale. If she was going to lie waiting for sleep like this every night until the baby came, she would be soon be exhausted. The baby was wide awake and cavorting around inside her like the playing dolphins they often saw in the harbour. The idea made her smile. If this baby was a dolphin, then she must be a whale, the great size of her. There were whales in Lambton Harbour at the moment – they often came right in during the winter, to the consternation of the ferry-men. She and Ovid had watched them from the hill yesterday, waiting for the sudden explosions of air and water as each giant creature surfaced, then slid slowly back under the grey water, broad tail rising in a farewell wave. She could hear them now through the thin walls of the house, blowing and whooshing, seeming as close as the garden in the still night air. Some people complained that the whales kept them awake at night, but she was uncomfortably awake anyway, and they kept her company, all whales together, wallowing through the dark night.

The following “memory” Sarah has of learning to sew is actually mine. It might have been a small table-cloth, I think, but I remember the large red-and-white checks, and the challenge of positioning the needle so it would go through the corners exactly, drawing the white embroidery cotton in a neat line behind it. To envisage Sarah’s tiny, neat stitches, I only have to turn my head to see my mother’s needlework, artistry that is exquisitely detailed and perfect. Sarah would have been proud to see her great-grand-daughter’s skill and talent.

X is for cross-stitch, the tiny little stitches she was working across the hem of her new table-cloth. The first stitch her mother had taught her, sewing on fabric with large red and white checks to help her get the stitches even, going from corner to corner one way along the row, and back again on the opposite corners. Now she made the tiniest stitches, evenly spaced, without even thinking about it. In a few years, she would be looking for checked fabric to teach a daughter the same way her mother had taught her. Would it be this baby, or would she have to wait a little longer for a girl?

The model for this “snapshot” of Catullus is my own Avro, a savage and enthusiastic hunter who can be quite charming and affectionate when the mood takes him. I don’t know what the Norgrove family cats were named – later generations had prosaic names, like my grandmother’s Ginger and Nugget – no prizes for guessing the colours of those two! But when it came to the Norgrove’s first cat in New Zealand, I was stumped – until it dawned on me, looking at the children’s names, that Sarah and William had obviously made an agreement early on – he would choose the names for the boys, she would choose the names of the girls. This would explain the Latin poets (Ovid and Horace), the admired writer Walter (for Walter Scott), and just barely, the obscure Oscar, from the even more obscure Poems of Ossian – William chose to show off his education in the naming of his sons. Sarah, on the other hand, opted for the more traditional girls’ names of the time – Kate and Emma. Gertrude, of course, was for the good ship which brought them to New Zealand. So if William named the boys, and the first cat was male, then he would have chosen its name as well. Naturally, he would have chosen another poet from his Latin education – Catullus, of course.

Y is for yawn. What was it about cats that they could yawn so unabashedly and look so pleased with themselves? Catullus was yawning, a great gaping stretch of the mouth that displayed his pink gums and his sharp little white teeth, his pink tongue curling with pleasure. He ended his yawn with a little squeak, and shut his mouth, his eyes closed to little slits while he decided whether to sleep or take another look for the mouse that had been trying to get into the food-safe. He stretched and yawned again – it was catching. She felt it building up in the back of her throat, forcing her mouth open and her eyes closed, a great sucking in of air. When she looked up again, eyes watering, Catullus was watching with an air of satisfaction, as if he had made her yawn on purpose.

The last letter of the alphabet was obvious – at least to any New Zealander (and anyone whose name starts with Z).

Z is for New Zealand. Funny how Z was a letter that she hadn’t needed to use much before, hadn’t noticed in words before, and now it seemed to be the most important letter in the alphabet. Reading the news from home reprinted in the Spectator, she found herself constantly seeking out the Z’s, thinking every Z would mean New Zealand, and being surprised and oddly disappointed to encounter it in Zoological Society and Zambia.

Te Rauparaha and Queen Victoria

Still sharing Sarah’s alphabet – S through to V today.

S is for ship. She had never seen a ship before they arrived at the Gravesend docks, and now, after five months spent in one reaching New Zealand, ships were such a big part of her life, as they were to all of the immigrants. What ships had arrived was the big news of any day; which ships were leaving, and where they were bound was the subject of many a conversation, not to mention letters hastily scrawled in hopes of catching the mail. Which ships were long expected and still not heard of, what fate might have befallen them and their hopeful passengers were frequently discussed, and all the useful and important things in their holds, like letters from home, and marmalade and linen were the cause of much speculation. Where once she had looked out the window of her house onto the bricks of an Ilford street, she now looked out on a vast harbour forested with masts. The flags and sailors’ washing fluttering from the rigging gave the town a festive look, as if every day was market day. The comings and goings of the ships’ boats and the native canoes provided endless entertainment for her and for Ovid, who liked to call himself a sailor-man and pretend to be rowing in his bath.

I’m sure that if Sarah really did have a close encounter of the Te Rauparaha kind, we’d know all about it. But it’s certainly likely that in the early 1840s, prior to the Wairau incident, the Norgroves did seem him in street, especially since they lived just below the pub which was reputedly the old chief’s favourite watering hole. He would have been in his 70s by this time, and although his reputation makes him seem 8 foot tall, it was a great surprise to me to find out that he was actually less than 5 feet in height. So this little piece is pure fiction from Sarah’s point of view.

T is for Te Rauparaha. The old chief was a fearsome sight with his heavily tattooed face and body. Everyone knew when he had come to Wellington because his canoe would be drawn up on the beach just below the corner of Lambton Quay and Mulgrave St – Te Rauparaha liked to do his drinking at the Thistle Inn, the pub just behind and above their house. She had managed to avoid encountering him until this afternoon, when she and Ovid were walking back up the beach from visiting Eliza Plimmer. Ovid took one look at the terrifying old man and his entourage, shrieked and buried himself in her skirts. Te Rauparaha had laughed, and walked over to her. She pushed Ovid behind her, and raised her parasol defensively, wishing with all her hammering heart that she had someone’s skirts to hide in herself. Te Rauparaha pushed her parasol gently aside with his carved wooden staff. “I don’t eat little English boys,” he said, baring surprisingly white teeth at her. “Or their mothers.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just stomped on down the beach to his canoe. She stood still with complete shock, not just because he had spoken to her, or even because of what he had said, but because he had stood eye to eye with her. From all the stories about the mighty warrior, she had assumed he would be a giant of a man, but the truth was, he was no taller than her.

Everywhere in Wellington seems to be uphill from where you are, and when you occasionally go downhill, it’s often just as hard as going up, especially in the wind. The extreme hilliness of the town came as a bit of a shock to the early settlers, but they adapted, figured out construction techniques to make houses cling to the hillsides, and got around as nimbly as mountain goats.

U is for uphill. The whole town was surrounded by hills, and everywhere she walked, she always seemed to be going uphill. At first she had to keep stopping to catch her breath; now she must be more used to it, because she could get all the way up Wellington Terrace without stopping to lean and gasp on someone’s fence. If only their fortunes would strengthen in the same way, so that they didn’t always seem to be struggling uphill, and gasping, when it came to money.

I was quite struck to find that Sarah and Victoria were fairly close in age. Funny thing, because it runs in the family – Mum and her sister are of similar ages to the present Queen; Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose were a kind of gold standard for them when they were young. And the late Diana, Princess of Wales was only a month or two older than me – and our lives couldn’t have been more different. So I wondered if Sarah followed the news about Victoria in the same way as we did about our respective royals…

V is for Victoria. Queen Victoria was born just one day short of a year after her own birth. The closeness in age meant that Sarah had always felt a connection to her, a sisterly concern, despite the vast difference in their social circumstances. The parallels were heightened when Victoria married Prince Albert not long after Sarah married William. Ovid was born, and then a few months later, Princess Victoria. Fond mother though she was, Sarah had no great hopes of a match between the two. And there was little point wondering if the Queen ever thought of her like she often thought about the Queen – Victoria had no idea of her existence. But did the Queen ever think about New Zealand, and her subjects trying to make their fortunes, or at least a competence, in this far away country?

O is for Ovid

You can’t help but think that Ovid held a special place in his parents’ hearts, not just because he was the first-born, but because he was the only child to go on the Great Adventure with them. He alone among the children was born in England, shared their shipboard life and the privations of the early days, even if he probably didn’t remember most of it. It makes it all the more sad for us to know that he would also be the first of their children to die in New Zealand; to judge by the appearance of the name Ovid as the middle name of many of his nephews suggests that he was not only a dear son, but a much-loved brother as well.

O is for Ovid, whose small freckled nose was soon to be put out of joint by the arrival of a brother or sister. Maybe it wouldn’t bother him, no longer being the centre of her attention. He was becoming quite fiercely independent, eager to do things for himself and inclined to become irritated by parental assistance. She didn’t want him running quite as wild as the Maori children from the pa, but if he was happy looking after himself it would be much easier for her when the baby came. She needn’t feel guilty that he was going to be pushed to one side, displaced by the new arrival. Her father had told her many times
how special she was to him, as his first-born child, so she supposed that however many more babies there were, Ovid would always hold a special place in her heart.

The residents of Pipitea Pa were Te Matehou, a hapu (sub-tribe) of Te Ātiawa. They had been part of a group of around 2000 who had migrated south from Taranaki to escape from Waikato raids into their area. They went at first to relatives at Waikanae, encouraged by Te Rauparaha, but by 1836 they had taken over Ngati Mutunga’s pa and cultivation sites when that hapu migrated to the Chatham Islands. By 1840, there were about 150 Te Matehou living at and around Pipitea pa. Although their land was part of the sale of the Wellington area to the New Zealand company, which they later disputed, they were fortunate that the pa site itself was on land which the New Zealand Company held as a reserve for Maori. They were less fortunate with much of their garden and cultivation sites, which were quickly surveyed by the Company as blocks for sale. After a period of resistance, which included the removal of the surveyors’ pegs under cover of darkness, Te Matehou adjusted to the new arrangements and by 1850 were flourishing with the profits of doing business with the settlers. Eventually however, they became disillusioned with the pakeha incomers, and by 1881 most of them had decamped to relatives at Waiwhetu in the Hutt Valley, leaving only nine residents of the pa itself.

One of the biggest challenges for me in writing about the settlers’ relationships with the Maori is to strike a balance – to convey the many and often negative feelings that the pakeha settlers had about their new neighbours without offending modern sensibilities. I lean heavily on writings of the time, including one of William’s own letters, to understand the settlers’ viewpoints; I’m equally indebted to the work of the Maori land claimants and the Waitangi Tribunal for their extensive and detailed research into the history of the Wellington area as part of the current Maori land claims process. My attempt at balance informs Sarah’s thoughts in this next section of her alphabet.

P is for Pa. There were several of them within the town, but the nearest, their neighbour almost, was Pipitea pa. The first time she saw it, on their first day in New Zealand, she had been horrified by its meanness. The low scrubby huts clustered miserably within its tall pickets. The carvings at the gate were ugly and not a little bit frightening with the great poking tongues on the faces. And the people had scared her as well, half-naked, with their painted faces and proud flashing eyes. She had got more used to them now, even knew a few of them, the women who came by selling fish and vegetables, and the young men who passed by on their way to hunt birds in the forest. She couldn’t see herself asking any of them in for tea, and she didn’t want Ovid playing with any of the dirty naked children who swarmed in and out all day long. However, she couldn’t look down on them as some did – how could she when the only real difference between her house and those in the pa was that she could stand upright in hers? She cooked outside in all weathers, just as the Maori women did, although even when it was raining, there were several of them hunkered down talking companionably, while she was usually alone in her misery. The Maori women might be scandalously under-dressed to English eyes, but at least that meant they didn’t have her worries about trying to keep skirts out of both the mud and the fire. She could hardly think herself much better than them, given her situation.

Many of Wellington’s streets are called quays, but all of them except Lambton Quay were originally wharves which were later absorbed by land reclamation into part of the town. Lambton Quay alone was called a quay from the very beginning, although most of the early residents just called it The Beach.

Q is for Quay. They called this rutted track above the beach Lambton Quay. Lambton for the Earl of Durham – it was his family name. But Quay? For all the world as though it was some great dock for shipping. The big ships had to anchor further out in the harbour. There were a couple of little jetties where their boats could pull up, but most passengers and goods were landed directly on the beach. In a spring tide, the water covered the track in places, and even if the sea left it alone, the rain left it muddy and perilous. Quagmire would be a better name than Quay, but presumably Lambton Quagmire would be far less flattering to the Earl. But then, if he ever saw it in all its muddy glory, he would hardly be flattered at all.

Sarah doesn’t tell us exactly when, or why, the family moved to Lambton Quay, although she does indicate that it was before Oscar’s birth on the first of November 1842. Writing for her children around forty years later, she is pretty upfront about the deficiencies of the Thorndon Flat house, and it’s not hard to understand why she would have been pleased to leave it. An improvement in the family’s circumstances, coupled with a desire to be better housed before the arrival of the second child seem logical drivers; however the timing of the Raupo House Ordinance in the same period means it may also have been a factor.

R is for Raupo. She would never have imagined that she would be grateful to be evicted, but the Raupo House Ordinance turned out to be a blessing in disguise. After so many disastrous house fires, fortunately with no loss of life, the Ordinance was a means to rid the town of the Maori-built thatched cottages. Faced with the prospect of a twenty pound tax, their landlord had given them notice to quit so he could pull the house down. She wouldn’t miss it – it was bitterly cold, the southerly wind driving through the gaps in the thatched walls, and the roof leaked constantly, regardless of William’s attempts to patch it. By some miraculous chance, the house on Lambton Quay became available on the same day that the landlord advised them of his plans, and William took the lease before anyone else could get a look in. It was a real house, wooden instead of raupo thatch, and it had proper windows with glass in them, and the cooking fire was in the kitchen with a real chimney and fireplace to keep the whole house warm.

She was so relieved to be there, and to know that she wasn’t going to deliver this baby on a mud floor, that she almost missed William’s musings about using the attached shop-front as an actual shop. She was bracing herself to become the town’s most heavily-pregnant shopkeeper when William came to the conclusion, almost all by himself, that he should stick with plumbing and painting, so he used the shelves in the shop to store his white-lead and turpentine out of Ovid’s reach. She and Ovid used the shop-front’s bay window to take their morning tea (or milk, in Ovid’s case), fascinated by the street and harbour activities in front of them.

Most days, the glass was coated in a sticky layer of sea-salt, removing a lot of detail from their view. This was not always such a bad thing, given some of the goings-on out there. However, it meant that sometimes passersby came and peered in the window to see what the shop might be selling. Ovid would tap on the window and squeal and giggle with delight to see them jump back, surprised to see him there. She should stop him, tell him it was rude to startle people like that, but it amused her and the little boy’s laughter was an addictive pleasure.

L to N

In William and Sarah’s social class, there wasn’t much need for letter-writing, especially within the family. People weren’t particularly mobile – they generally were born, lived and died within the same small area. Emigration meant getting the hang of writing letters, of figuring out what to say and what not to say, all compressed into a small piece of expensive paper.

L is for letters. This business of writing letters was very strange. There was never any need for letters before, with all the family close at hand. Father and Mother must be finding it strange as well – their letters begin formally, as if a school exercise they expect to be judged by a schoolmaster. But sometimes they would write just as they spoke, and it was almost like they were standing in the same room talking. They must find her letters much the same. It was hard to find the words to describe all the new and strange things. And how did you put in a
letter something that you barely mentioned to your own family even when you were face to face? She had puzzled over the words for weeks, finally deciding she would write, “By the time you receive this, our family will number four. The happy event is expected in November.” When she told William, he said that by the time they read it, the event would have taken place, happy or not, but they would still worry until they received confirmation that all was well. So in the end, she hadn’t mentioned it at all.

William wasn’t registered to vote for the 1842 borough elections, and the only thing I can see that would have stopped him was lack of money. The same problem seemed to have affected most of the Gertrude passengers – only 6 of them registered to vote. In fact, from a potential electorate of around 2000, only 352 registered. William was one of only 150 who did register the following year – at a cost of a mere 2/6 – but the election didn’t happen. A clash between national politics and local body politics saw the fledgling municipality founder, and it wasn’t until 1863 that there was an election for a Town Board.

M is for Municipal Corporations Ordinance. The big excitement in the town was the passage of the Municipal Corporations Ordinance and the proclamation of Wellington as a borough. The franchise was 20 shillings, a large sum on William’s income. He was bitterly disappointed that he hadn’t been able to put together this sum in the bare month between the proclamation and the closing of registrations to vote. After all, part of the reason for coming to New Zealand was the hope of a fairer society, although they hadn’t expected that he would get an opportunity to vote quite so quickly. He had buried his disappointment in furious activity, attending all of the town meetings and speaking at many of them. It was an important opportunity, he said, to ensure that the best candidates were chosen to represent the working men. And anyway, getting his name out there and getting to meet almost everyone in the town would undoubtedly lead to opportunities for work. No doubt this was true, but William’s enthusiasms could be exhausting – he would come home from meetings all fired up, words spilling out of him as soon as he came in the door. He positively encouraged her to have opinions of her own, and to debate them with him. Sometimes she thought it was almost a pity that she couldn’t vote herself, but in the end, that was something best left to the men.

I’ve don’t know whether Sarah thought women should have the vote; in the 1840s, perhaps not – for William to be able to vote was new and exciting enough. Maybe later in life she thought, like her daughters did, that women should also have the vote. She died in 1891, before the successful women’s suffrage petition of 1893.

Naturally, N is for Norgrove. I’m not sure where the rest of this came from; it just came out of my fingertips onto the keyboard without any conscious thought. It hadn’t occurred to me until someone pointed it out, but this encapsulates the huge changes Sarah experienced in the space of about two years – new wife, new mother, new country.

N is for Norgrove. She was still getting used to being Mrs Norgrove. It seemed that no-one called her Sarah any more. William called her “dear” and “dearest”. Ovid called her Mama. Sophia, when she was still in Wellington, had called her Sarah, or just as often, she would call her “my dear Mrs Norgrove”, gently mocking the refined tones of the ladies who formed the town’s better society. Only her family still called her Sarah, and now that was just in letters which were few and far between. Sometimes, she just has to say her own name out loud, to hear it, to keep herself from disappearing altogether. Sarah my girl, she says to herself, Sarah, you had better buck up and get on with those potatoes, for they won’t peel themselves.