Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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The first week in July, with Wadrokala, Mark, and two Malanta men,
Mr. Patteson set forth in the boat that had been left with him, for
an expedition among the other islands, beginning with Saddle Island,
or Valua, which was the proper name.

The day after leaving Eowa, the weather changed; and as on these
perilous coasts there was no possibility of landing, two days and the
intervening night had to be spent in the open four-oared boat, riding
to a grapnel!

Very glad they were to get into Port Patteson, and to land in the
wet, 'as it can rain in the tropics.' The nearest village, however,
was empty, everybody being gone to the burial wake of the wife of a
chief, and there was no fire to cook the yams, everything dreary and
deserted, but a short walk brought the wet and tired party to the
next village, where they were made welcome to the common house; and
after, supping on yams and chocolate, spent a good night, and found
the sea smooth the next day for a return to head-quarters.

These first weeks at Mota were very happy, but after that the strain
began to tell. Mr. Patteson had been worn with anxiety for his
father, and no doubt with awe in the contemplation of his coming
Episcopate, and was not in a strong state of health when he left
Kohimarama, and the lack of animal food, the too sparing supply of
wine, and the bare board bed told upon him. On the 24th of July he
wrote in a letter to his Uncle Edward:--

'I have lost six days: a small tumour formed inside the ear about two
inches from the outer ear, and the pain has been very considerable,
and the annoyance great. Last night I slept for the first time for
five nights, and I have been so weary with sleeplessness that I have
been quite idle. The mischief is passing away now. That ear is
quite deaf; it made me think so of dear Father and Joan with their
constant trial. I don't see any results from our residence here; and
why should I look for them? It is enough that the people are
hearing, some of them talking, and a few thinking about what they
hear. All in God's own time!'

Mr. Dudley adds: 'His chief trouble at this time was with one of his
ears. The swelling far in not only made him deaf while it lasted,
but gave him intense and protracted agony. More than once he had to
spend the whole night in walking up and down the room. But only on
one occasion during the whole time do I remember his losing his
patience, and that was when we had been subjected to an unusually
protracted visitation from the "loafers" of the village, who would
stretch themselves at full length on the floor and table, if we would
let them, and altogether conduct themselves in such a manner as to
call for summary treatment, very different from the more promising
section. The half jocular but very decided manner in which he
cleared the house on this occasion, and made them understand that
they were to respect our privacy sometimes, and not make the Mission
station an idling place, was very satisfactory. It was no small
aggravation of the pain to feel that this might be the beginning of
permanent deafness, such as would be fatal to his usefulness in a
work in which accuracy of ear was essential.'

However, this gradually improved; and another boat voyage was made,
but again was frustrated by the torrents of rain. In fact, it was an
unusually wet and unwholesome season, which told upon everyone. Mark
Chakham, the Nengonese, was brought very near the grave by a severe
attack of dysentery. All the stores of coffee, chocolate, wine and
biscuit were used up. The 'Southern Cross' had been due full a
month, and nothing was heard of her through the whole of September.

Teaching and conversation went on all this time, trying as it was;
and the people still came to hear, though no one actually undertook
to forsake his idols.

'I am still hopeful about these people,' is the entry on September
18, 'though all their old customs and superstitions go on just as
before. But (1) they know that a better teaching has been presented
to them. (2) They do not pursue their old habits with the same
unthinking-security. (3) There are signs of a certain uneasiness of
mind, as if a struggle was beginning in them. (4) They have a vague
consciousness, some of them, that the power is passing away from
their witchcrafts, sorceries, &c., by which unquestionably they did
and still do work strange effects on the credulous people, like
'Pharaoh's magicians of old.'

This was ground gained; and one or two voyages to Vanua Lava and the
other isles were preparatory steps, and much experience had been
acquired, and resulted in this:--

'The feasibility of the Bishop's old scheme is more and more apparent
to me. Only I think that in taking away natives to the summer
school, it must be understood that some (and they few) are taken from
new islands merely to teach us some of their languages and to frank
us, so that we may have access in safety to their islands. Should
any of them turn out well, so much the better; but it will not be
well to take them with the expectation of their becoming teachers to
their people. But the other section of the school will consist of
young men whose behaviour we have watched during the winter in their
own homes, whose professions we have had an opportunity of testing--
they may be treated as young men on the way to become teachers
eventually to their countrymen. One learns much from living among a
heathen people, and only by living in our pupils' homes shall we ever
know their real characters. Poor fellows! they are adepts in all
kinds of deceitfulness at a very early age, and so completely in our
power on board the schooner and at Kohimarama, that we know nothing
of them as they are.'

The very paper this is copied from shows how the stores were failing,
for the full quarto sheets have all failed, and the journal is
continued on note paper.

Not till October 1 was Mr. Patteson's watch by a poor dying woman
interrupted by tidings that a ship was in sight. And soon it was too
plain that she was not the 'Southern Cross,' though, happily, neither
trader nor French Mission ship. In a short time there came ashore
satisfactory letters from home, but with them the tidings that the
little 'Southern Cross' lay in many fathoms water on the New Zealand
coast!

On her return, on the night of the 17th of June, just as New Zealand
itself was reached, there was a heavy gale from the north-east. A
dangerous shoal of rocks, called the Hen and Chickens, stands out
from the head of Ngunguru Bay; and, in the darkness and mist, it was
supposed that these were safely passed, when the ship struck on the
eastern Chicken, happily on a spot somewhat sheltered from the
violence of the breakers. The two passengers and the crew took
refuge in the rigging all night; and in the morning contrived to get
a line to land, on which all were safely drawn through the surf, and
were kindly received by the nearest English settlers.

So, after five years' good service, ended the career of the good
'Southern Cross' the first. She had gone down upon sand, and much of
the wreck might have been recovered and made useful again had labour
not been scarce at that time in New Zealand that the Bishop could
find no one to undertake the work, and all he could do was to charter
another vessel to be despatched to bring home the party from Mota.
Nor were vessels fit for the purpose easy to find, and the schooner
'Zillah'--welcome as was the sight of her--proved a miserable
substitute even in mere nautical capabilities, and her internal
arrangements were of course entirely inappropriate to the peculiar
wants of the Mission.

This was the more unfortunate because the very day after her arrival
Mr. Dudley was prostrated by something of a sunstroke. Martin Tehele
was ill already, and rapidly became worse; and Wadrokala and Harper
Malo sickened immediately, nor was the former patient recovered. Mr.
Dudley, Wadrokala and Harper were for many days in imminent danger,
and were scarcely dragged through by the help of six bottles of wine,
providentially sent by the Bishop. Mr. Dudley says:--

'During the voyage Mr. Patteson's powers of nursing were severely
tried. Poor Martin passed away before we arrived at Nengone, and was
committed to the deep. Before he died he was completely softened by
Mr. Patteson's loving care, and asked pardon for all the trouble he
had given and the fretfulness he had shown. Poor fellow! I well
remember how he gasped out the Lord's Prayer after Mr. Patteson a few
minutes before he died. We all who had crawled up round his bed
joining in with them.

'Oh, what a long dreary time that was! Light baffling winds
continually, and we in a vessel as different from the "Southern
Cross" as possible, absolutely guiltless, I should think, of having
ever made two miles an hour to windward "in a wind." The one thing
that stands out as having relieved its dreariness is the presence of
Mr. Patteson, the visits he used to pay to us, and the exquisite
pathos of his voice as, from the corner of the hold where we lay, we
could hear him reading the Morning and Evening Prayers of the Church
and leading the hymn. These prevented these long weary wakeful days
and nights from being absolutely insupportable.'

At last Nengone was reached, and Wadrokala and Harper were there set
ashore, better, but very weak. Here the tidings were known that in
Lifu John Cho had lost his wife Margaret, and had married the widow
of a Karotongan teacher, a very suitable match, but too speedy to be
according to European ideas; and on November 26 the 'Zillah' was off
the Three Kings, New Zealand.

'Monday: Nov. 26, 1860. '"Zillah" Schooner, off the Three Kings, N.
of New Zealand.

'You know pretty well that Kohimarama is a small bay, about one-third
of a mile along the sea frontage, two-and-a-half miles due east of
Auckland, and just opposite the entrance into the harbour, between
the North Head and Eangitoto. The beach is composed entirely of the
shells of "pipi" (small cockles); always, therefore, dry and pleasant
to walk upon. A fence runs along the whole length of it. At the
eastern end of it, a short distance inside this N. (= sea) fence, are
the three cottages of the master and mate and Fletcher. Sam Fletcher
is a man-of-war's man, age about thirty-eight, who has been with us
some four years and a half. He has all the habits of order and
cleanliness that his life as coxswain of the captain's gig taught
him; he is a very valuable fellow. He is our extra man at sea.

'Each of these cottages has its garden, and all three men are
married, but only the master (Grange) has any family, one married
daughter.

'Then going westward comes a nine-acre paddock, and then a dividing
fence, inside (i.e. to W.) of which stand our buildings.

'Now our life here is hard to represent. It is not like the life of
an ordinary schoolmaster, still less like that of an ordinary
clergyman. Much of the domestic and cooking department I may manage,
of course, to superintend. I would much rather do this than have the
nuisance of a paid servant.

'So at 5 A.M., say, I turn out; I at once go to the kitchen, and set
the two cooks of the week to work, light fire, put on yams or
potatoes, then back to dress, read, &c.; in and out all the time, of
the kitchen till breakfast time: say 8 or 8.30. You would be
surprised to see how very soon the lads will do it all by themselves,
and leave me or Mr. Kerr to give all our attention to school and
other matters.

'So you can fancy, Joan, now, the manner of life. My little room
with my books is my snuggery during the middle of the day, and at
night I have also a large working table at one end of the big school-
room, covered with books, papers, &c., and here I sit a good deal, my
room being too small to hold the number of books that I require to
have open for comparison of languages, and for working out
grammatical puzzles. Then I am in and out of the kitchen and store-
room, and boys' rooms, seeing that all things, clothes, blankets,
floors, &c., are washed and kept clean, and doing much what is done
in every house.'

Snuggery no doubt it looked compared with the 'Zillah;' but what
would the 'Eton fellow' of fifteen years back have thought of the
bare, scantily furnished room, with nothing but the books, prints,
and photographs around to recall the tastes of old, and generally a
sick Melanesian on the floor? However, he was glad enough to return
thither, though with only sixteen scholars from ten places. Among
them was Taroniara from Bauro, who was to be his follower, faithful
to death. The following addition was made to the letter to Mr.
Edward Coleridge, begun in Banks Islands:--

'Kohimarama: Dec. 1, 1860.

'One line, my dear tutor, before I finish off my pile of hastily
written letters for this mail.

'Alas! alas! for the little schooner, that dear little vessel, our
home for so many months of each year, so admirably qualified for her
work. Whether she may be got off her sandy bed, no one can say.
Great expense would certainly be incurred, and the risk of success
great also.

'I have not yet had time to talk to the Bishop, I only reached New
Zealand on November 28. We cannot, however, well do our work in
chartered vessels [then follows a full detail of the imperfections of
the 'Zillah' and all other Australian merchant craft; then-- But,
dear old tutor, even the "Southern Cross" (though what would I give
to see her now at her usual anchorage from the window at which I am
now sitting!) for a time retires into the distance, as I think of
what is to take place (D.V.) in January next.

'I hoped that I had persuaded the Bishop that the meeting of the
General Synod in February 1862 would be a fit time. I do not see
that the Duke's despatch makes any difference in the choice of the
time. But all was settled in my absence; and now at the Feast of the
Epiphany or of the Conversion of St. Paul (as suits the convenience
of the Southern Bishops) the Consecration is to take place. I am
heartily glad that the principle of consecrating Missionary Bishops
will be thus affirmed and acted upon; but oh! if some one else was to
be the Bishop!

'And yet I must not distrust God's grace, and the gift of the Holy
Spirit to enable me for this work. I try and pray to be calm and
resigned, and I am happy and cheerful.

'And it is a blessed thing that now three of your old dear friends,
once called Selwyn, Abraham, Hobhouse should be consecrating your own
nephew and pupil, gathered by God's providence into the same part of
God's field at the ends of the earth.'

Still with his heart full of the never-forgotten influence of his
mother, he thus begins his home letter of the same date:--

'Kohimarama: Dec. 1.

'My dearest Father,--I could not write on November 28, but the memory
of that day in 1842 was with me from morning to night. We anchored
on that day at 1 A.M., and I was very busy till late at night. I had
no idea till I came back from the Islands that there was any change
in the arrangements for the consecration in February 1862. But now
the Bishops of Wellington and Nelson have been summoned for the Feast
of the Epiphany, or of the conversion of St. Paul, and all was done
in my absence. I see, too, that you in England have assumed that the
consecration will take place soon after the reception of the Duke's
despatch.

'I must not now shrink from it, I know. I have full confidence in
your judgment, and in that of the Bishop; and I suppose that if I was
speaking of another, I should say that I saw reasons for it. But
depend upon it, my dear Father, that a man cannot communicate to
another the whole of the grounds upon which he feels reluctant to
accept an office. I believe that I ought to accept this in deference
to you all, and I do so cheerfully, but I don't, say that my judgment
agrees wholly with you all.

'And yet there is no one else; and if the separation of New Zealand
and Melanesia is necessary, I see that this must be the consequence.
So I regard it now as a certainty. I pray God to strengthen and
enable me: I look forward, thanks to Him, hopefully and cheerfully.
I have the love and the prayers of many, many friends, and soon the
whole Church of England will recognise me as one who stands in
special need of grace and strength from above.

'Oh! the awful power of heathenism! the antagonism, not of evil only,
but of the Evil One, rather, I mean the reality felt of all evil
emanating from a person, as St. Paul writes, and as our Lord spoke of
him. I do indeed at times feel overwhelmed, as if I was in a dream.
Then comes some blessed word or thought of comfort, and promised
strength and grace.

'But enough of this.

'The "Southern Cross" cannot, I think, be got off without great
certain expense and probable risk. I think we shall have to buy
another vessel, and I dare say she may be built at home, but I don't
know what is the Bishop's mind about it....

'I shall write to Merton, I don't know why I should needs vacate my
fellowship. I have no change of outward circumstances brought upon
me by my change presently from the name of Presbyter to Bishop, and
we want all the money.

'What you say about a Missionary Bishop being for five months of the
year within the diocese of another Bishop, I will talk over with the
Bishop of New Zealand. I think our Synodical system will make that
all right; and as for my work, it will be precisely the same in all
respects, my external life altered only to the extent of my wearing a
broader brimmed and lower crowned hat. Dear Joan is investing moneys
in cutaway coats, buckles without end, and no doubt knee-breeches and
what she calls "gambroons" (whereof I have no cognizance), none of
which will be worn more than (say) four or five times in the year.
Gambroons and aprons and lawn sleeves won't go a-voyaging, depend
upon it. Just when I preach in some Auckland church I shall appear
in full costume; but the buckles will grow very rusty indeed!

'How kind and good of her to take all the trouble, I don't laugh at
that, and at her dear love for me and anxiety that I should have
everything; but I could not help having a joke about gambroons,
whatever they are....

'Good-bye once more, my dearest Father. You will, I trust, receive
this budget about the time of your birthday. How I think of you day
and night, and how I thank you for all your love, and perhaps most of
all, not only letting me come to Melanesia, but for your great love
in never calling me away from my work even to see your face once more
on earth.

'Your loving and dutiful son,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

Remark upon a high-minded letter is generally an impertinence both to
the writer and the reader, but I cannot help pausing upon the
foregoing, to note the force of the expression that thanks the father
for the love that did not recall the son. What a different notion
these two men had of love from that which merely seeks self-
gratification! Observe, too, how the old self-contemplative, self-
tormenting spirit, that was unhappiness in those days of growth and
heart-searching at the first entrance into the ministry, had passed
into humble obedience and trust. Looking back to the correspondence
of ten years ago, volumes of progress are implied in the quiet
'Enough of this.'

There were, however, some delays in bringing the three together, and
on the New Year's Day of 1861, the designate writes to Bishop
Abraham: 'I dare say the want of any positive certainty as to the
time of the Consecration is a good discipline for me. I think I feel
calm now; but I know I must not trust feelings, and when I think of
those islands and the practical difficulty of getting at them, and
the need of so many of those qualities which are so wonderfully
united in our dear Primate, I need strength from above indeed to keep
my heart from sinking. But I think that I do long and desire to work
on by God's grace, and not to look to results at all.'

A 'supplementary mail' made possible a birthday letter (the last)
written at 6 A.M. on the 11th of February: 'I wanted of course to
write to you to-day. Many happy returns of it I wish you indeed, for
it may yet please God to prolong your life; but in any case you know
well how I am thinking and praying for you that every blessing and
comfort may be given you. Oh I how I do think of you night and day.
When Mrs. Selwyn said "Good-bye," and spoke of you, I could not stand
it. I feel that anything else (as I fancy) I can speak of with
composure; but the verses in the Bible, such as the passage which I
read yesterday in St. Mark x., almost unnerve me, and I can't wish it
to be otherwise. But I feel that my place is here, and that I must
look to the blessed hope of meeting again hereafter....

'Of course no treat is so great to me as the occasional talks with
the Bishop. Oh! the memory of those days and evenings on board the
"Southern Cross." Well, it was so happy a life that it was not good
for me, I suppose, that it should last. But I feel it now that the
sense of responsibility is deepening on me, and I must go out to work
without him; and very, very anxious I am sometimes, and almost
oppressed by it.

'But strength will come; and it is not one's own work, which is the
comfort, and if I fail (which is very likely) God will place some
other man in my position, and the work will go on, whether in my
hands or not, and that is the real point.

'Some talk I find there has been about my going home. I did not hear
of it until after Mrs. Selwyn had sailed. It was thought of, but it
was felt, as I certainly feel, that it ought not to be.... My work
lies out here clearly; and it is true that any intermission of
voyages or residences in the islands is to be avoided.'

Mrs. Selwyn had gone home for a year, and had so arranged as to see
the Patteson family almost immediately on her return. Meantime the
day drew on. The Consecration was not by Royal mandate, as in the
case of Bishops of sees under British jurisdiction; but the Duke of
Newcastle, then Colonial Secretary, wrote:--'That the Bishops of New
Zealand are at liberty, without invasion of the Royal prerogative or
infringement of the law of England, to exercise what Bishop Selwyn
describes as their inherent power of consecrating Mr. Patteson or any
other person to take charge of the Melanesian Islands, provided that
the consecration should take place beyond British territory.'

In consequence it was proposed that the three consecrating Bishops
should take ship and perform the holy rite in one of the isles
beneath the open sky; but as Bishop Mackenzie had been legally
consecrated in Cape Town Cathedral, the Attorney-General of New
Zealand gave it as his opinion that there was no reason that the
consecration should not take place in Auckland.

'Kohimarama: Feb. 15, 1861.

'My dearest Father,--Mr. Kerr, who has just returned from Auckland,
where he spent yesterday, brings me the news that the question of the
Consecration has been settled, and that it will take place (D.V.) on
Sunday week, St. Matthias Day, February 24.

'I ought not to shrink back now. The thought has become familiar to
me, and I have the greatest confidence in the judgment of the Bishop
of New Zealand; and I need not say how your words and letters and
prayers too are helping me now.

'Indeed, though at any great crisis of our lives no doubt we are
intended to use more than ordinary strictness in examining our
motives and in seeking for greater grace, deeper repentance, more
earnest and entire devotion to God, and amendment of life, yet I know
that any strong-emotion, if it existed now, would pass away soon, and
that I must be the same man as Bishop as I am now, in this sense,
viz., that I shall have just the same faults, unless I pray for
strength to destroy them, which I can do equally well now, and that
all my characteristic and peculiar habits of mind will remain
unchanged by what will only change my office and not myself. So that
where I am indolent now I shall be indolent henceforth, unless I seek
to get rid of indolence; and I shall not be at all better, wiser, or
more consistent as Bishop than I am now by reason simply of being a
Bishop.

'You know my meaning. Now I apply what I write to prove that any
strong excitement now would be no evidence of a healthy state of
mind. I feel now like myself, and that is not at all like what I
wish to be. And so I thank God that as before any solemn season
special inducements to earnest repentance are put into our minds, so
I now feel a special call upon me to seek by His grace to make a more
faithful use of the means of usefulness which He gives me, that I may
be wholly and entirely turned to Him, and so be enabled to do His
will in Melanesia. You know, my dearest Father, that I do not indeed
undervalue the grace of Ordination; only I mean that the right use of
any great event in one's life, as I take it, is not to concentrate
feeling so much on it as earnestness of purpose, prayer for grace,
and for increase of simplicity and honesty and purity of heart.
Perhaps other matters affect me more than my supposed state of
feeling, so that my present calmness may be attributed to
circumstances of which I am partially ignorant; and, indeed, I do
wonder that I am calm when one moment's look at the map, or thought
of the countless islands, almost overwhelms me. How to get at them?
Where to begin? How to find men and means? How to decide upon the
best method of teaching, &c.? But I must try to be patient, and to
be content with very small beginnings--and endings, too, perhaps.