Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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

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After a fortnight spent in this manner, he and the other two
clergymen carried off their Melanesians to Norfolk Island, leaving
the Bishop to be fetched away in a month's time. Here is the letter
written during his solitude:--

'Kohimarama, Mota Island: September 23, 1869.

'My dearest Joan and Fan,--Here I am sitting in a most comfortable
house in our new Kohimarama, for so the Melanesians determine to call
our station in Mota. The house is 48 feet by 18, with a 9-foot
verandah on two sides. It has one large room, a partition at each
end, one of which is subdivided into two small sleeping rooms for
George and his wife, and Charles and his wife. There is no ceiling,
so that we have the full advantage of the height of the house, and
plenty of ventilation, as the space beyond where the roof comes down
upon the wall plates is left open.

'The verandah is a grand lounging place; very commodious for school
also, when other classes fill the large room, and a delightful place
to sit or lie about on in this genial warm climate. These bright
moonlight nights are indeed delicious. The mosquito gives no trouble
here to speak of. The cocoa-nut trees, the bread-fruit trees, yam
gardens, and many kinds of native trees and shrubs, are all around
us; the fine wooded hill of Mota shows well over the house. The
breeze always plays round it; and though it is very hot, it is only
when the wind comes from the north and north-west, as in the
midsummer, that the heat is of an oppressive and sickly nature.

'About twenty lads and young men live here, and about forty attend
daily school; but I think there is every indication of all Mota
sending its young people here as soon as we have our crops of yams,
&c., &c., to provide sufficient food. Improved native huts will, I
think, soon be built over our little estate here.

'Many girls I hope to take to Norfolk Island. They could hardly be
brought together with safety to this place yet. The parents see and
admit this, and consent to my taking them. I tell them that their
sons will not marry ignorant heathen girls (their sons I mean who
have been and are still with us); that all the young fellows growing
up at Kohimarama must have educated wives provided for them, and that
I must therefore take away many young girls with me to Norfolk
Island. The fashion here is to buy at an early age young girls for
their sons, though occasionally a girl may be found not already
betrothed, but almost grown up. I now say, "I want to train up wives
for my sons," and the fashion of the place allows of my buying or
appropriating them. You would be amused to see me engaged in this
match-making. It is all the same a very important matter, for
clearly it is the best way to secure, as I trust, the introduction of
Christian family life among these people.

'George and I are satisfied that things are really very promising
here. Of course, much old heathen ignorance, and much that is very
wrong, will long survive. So you recollect perhaps old Joe (great-
Uncle Edward's coachman) declaring that C. S. as a witch, and there
is little proof of practical Christianity in the morals of our
peasants of the west, and of Wales especially.

'It is not that one should acquiesce in what is wrong here, but one
ought not to be surprised at it. Public opinion, the constraint of
law, hereditary notions, are more effective in preventing the
outbreak of evil passions into criminal acts in very many cases and
districts in England.

'Now these restraints are, indeed, indirect consequences of
Christianity, but do not imply any religion in the individuals who
are influenced by them. These restraints don't exist here. If they
did, I think these Mota people now would live just as orderly decent
lives as average English folk. Christianity would not be a vigorous
power in the one case or in the other. Exceptional cases would occur
here and there.

'If I am asked for proofs of the "conversion" of this people, I
should say, "Conversion from what to what?" and then I should say,
"Ask any close observer in England about the commercial and social
morality existing in not only the most ignorant ranks of society: how
much is merely formal, and therefore, perhaps, actually detrimental
to a true spirit of religion! Here you don't find much that you
associate with religion in England, in the external observances of
it; but there are not a few ignorant people (I am not speaking of our
trained scholars) who are giving up their old habits, adopting new
ways, accepting a stricter mode of life, foregoing advantages of one
kind and another, because they believe that this "Good news," this
Gospel, is true, and because the simple truths of Christianity are,
thank God, finding some entrance into their hearts.

'I dread the imposition from without of some formal compliances with
the externals of religion while I know that the meaning and spirit of
them cannot as yet be understood. Can there be conceived anything
more formal, more mischievous, than inculcating a rigid Sabbatarian
view of the Lord's Day upon a people who don't know anything about
the Cross and the Resurrection? Time enough to talk about the
observance when the people have some knowledge of the vital living
truth of a spiritual religion.

'So about clothing. If I tried to do it, I think I could make the
people here buy, certainly accept, and wear, clothing. With what
result at present? That they would think that wearing a yard of
unbleached calico was a real evidence of the reception of the new
teaching.

'Such things are, in this stage of Mission work, actually hurtful.
The mind naturally takes in and accepts the easy outward form, and by
such treatment you actually encourage it to do so, and to save itself
the trouble of thinking out the real meaning and teaching which must
of course be addressed to the spirit.

'These outward things all follow as a matter of course after a time,
as consequences of the new power and light felt in the soul; but they
may be so spoken of as to become substitutes for the true spiritual
life, and train up a people in hypocrisy.

'I beg your pardon really for parading all these truisms. Throw it
in the fire.

'I don't for a moment mean or think that religion is to be taught by
mere prudence and common sense. But a spiritual religion is
imperilled the moment that you insist upon an unspiritual people
observing outward forms which are to them the essence of the new
teaching. Anything better than turning heathens into Pharisees!
What did our Lord call the proselytes of the Pharisee and the Scribe?

'And while I see and love the beauty of the outward form when it is
known and felt to be no more than the shrine of the inward spiritual
power; while I know that for highly advanced Christians, or for
persons trained in accurate habits of thought, all that beauty of
holiness is needful; yet I think I see that the Divine wisdom of the
Gospel would guard the teacher against presenting the formal side of
religion to the untaught and ignorant convert. "God is a Spirit, and
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth," is
the great lesson for the heathen mind chained down as it is to things
of sense.

'"He that hateth his brother is a murderer: "not the outward act, but
the inward motive justifies or condemns the man. Every day convinces
me more and more of the need of a different mode of teaching than
that usually adopted for imperfectly taught people. How many of your
(ordinary) parishioners even understand the simple meaning of the
Prayer-book, nay, of their well-known (as they think) Gospel miracles
and parables? Who teaches in ordinary parishes the Christian use of
the Psalms? Who puts simply before peasant and stone-cutter the Jew
and his religion, and what he and it were intended to be, and the
real error and sin and failure?--the true nature of prophecy, the
progressive teaching of the Bible, never in any age compromising
truth, but never ignoring the state, so often the unreceptive state,
of those to whom the truth must therefore be presented partially, and
in a manner adapted to rude and unspiritual natures? What an amount
of preparatory teaching is needed! What labour must be spent in
struggling to bring forth things new and old, and present things
simply before the indolent, unthinking, vacant mind! How much need
there is of a more special training of the Clergy even now! Many men
are striving nobly to do all this. But think of the rubbish that
most of us chuck lazily out of our minds twice a week without method
or order. It is such downright hard work to teach well. Oh! how
weary it makes me to try. I feel as if I were at once aware of what
should be attempted, and yet quite unable to do it!

'St. Michael's Day.--[After an affectionate review of most of his
relations at home.]--When the Bishop and Mrs. Selwyn pressed me a
good deal to go with them to England, it obliged me a little to
analyse my feelings. You won't suspect me of any want of longing to
see you, when I say that it never was a doubtful matter to me for
five minutes. I saw nothing to make me wish to go to England in
comparison with the crowd of reasons for not doing so. They, good
people, thought it would be rest and refreshment to me. Little they
know how a man so unlike them takes his rest! I am getting it here,
hundreds of miles out of reach of any white man or woman, free from
what is to me the bother of society. I am not defending myself; but
it is true that to me it is a bore, the very opposite of rest, to be
in society. I like a good talk with Sir William Martin above
anything, but I declare that even that is dearly purchased by the
other accompaniments of society.

'And I could not spend a quiet month with you at Weston. I should
have people calling, the greatest of all nuisances, except that of
having to go out to dinner. I should have to preach, and perhaps to
go to meetings, all in the way of my business, but not tending to
promote rest.

'Seriously, I am very well now; looking, I am sure, and feeling
stronger and stouter than I was in New Zealand in the winter. So
don't fret yourself about me, and don't think that I shouldn't dearly
love to chat awhile with you. What an idle, lazy letter. You see I
am taking my rest with you, writing without effort.'

He was looking well. Kohimarama must be more healthily situated than
the first station, for all his three visits there were beneficial to
him; and there seems to have been none of the tendency to ague and
low fever which had been the trouble of the first abode.

Mr. Codrington and Mr. Bice came back in the schooner early in
October, and were landed at Mota, while the Bishop went for a cruise
in the New Hebrides; but the lateness of the season and the state of
the vessel made it a short one, and he soon came back with thirty-
five boys. Meanwhile, a small harmonium, which was to be left with
the Christian settlement, had caused such an excitement that Mr.
Bice was nearly squeezed to death by the crowds that came to hear it.
He played nearly all day to successive throngs of men, but when the
women arrived, they made such a clatter that he was fain to close the
instrument. Unbleached calico clothing had been made for such of the
young ladies as were to be taken on board for Norfolk Island, cut out
by the Bishop and made up by Robert, William, and Benjamin, his
scholars; and Mr. Codrington says, 'It was an odd sight to see the
Bishop on the beach with the group of girls round him, and a number
of garments over his arm. As each bride was brought by her friends,
she was clothed and added to the group.

'Esthetically, clothes were no improvement. "A Melanesian clothed,"
the Bishop observes, "never looks well; there is almost always a
stiff, shabby-genteel look. A good specimen, not disfigured by sores
and ulcers, the well-shaped form, the rich warm colour of the skin,
and the easy, graceful play of every limb, unhurt by shoe or tight-
fitting dress, the flower stuck naturally into the hair, &c., make
them look pleasant enough to my eye. You see in Picture Bibles
figures draped as I could wish the Melanesians to be clothed."'

To continue Mr. Codrington's recollections of this stay in Mota:--

'I remember noticing how different his manner was from what was
common at home. His eyes were cast all about him, keeping a sharp
look-out, and all his movements and tones were quick and decisive.
In that steaming climate, and those narrow paths, he walked faster
than was at all agreeable to his companions, and was dressed moreover
in a woollen coat and waistcoat all the time. In fact, he thoroughly
enjoyed the heat, though no doubt it was weakening him; he liked the
food, which gave him no trouble at all to eat, and he liked the
natives.

'He felt, of course, that he was doing his work all the while; but
the expression of his countenance was very different while sitting
with a party of men over their food at Mota, and when sitting with a
party in Norfolk Island.

'The contrast struck me very much between his recluse studious life
there, and his very active one at Mota, with almost no leisure to
read, and very little to write, and with an abundance of society
which was a pleasure instead of a burthen.

'I think that the alert and decisive tone and habit which was so
conspicuous in the islands, and came out whenever he was roused, was
not natural to his disposition, but had been acquired in early years
in a public school, and faded down in the quiet routine of St.
Barnabas, and was recalled as occasion required with more effort as
time went on. No doubt, his habitual gentleness made his occasional
severity more felt, but at Mota his capacity for scolding was held in
respect. I was told when I was last there, that I was no good, for I
did not know how to scold, but that the Bishop perfectly well
understood how to do it. Words certainly would never fail him in
twenty languages to express his indignation, but how seldom among his
own scholars had he to do it in one!'

This voyage is best summed up in the ensuing letter to one of the
Norfolk relations:--

'"Southern Cross" Schooner, 20 miles East of Star Island.

'My dear Cousin,--We are drawing near the end of a rather long
cruise, as I trust, in safety. We left Norfolk Island on the 24th
June, and we hope to reach it in about ten days. We should have
moved about in less time, but for the crippled state of the schooner.
She fell in with a heavy gale off Norfolk Island about June 20th-
23rd; and we have been obliged to be very careful of our spars, which
were much strained. Indeed, we still need a new mainmast, main boom,
and gaff, a main topmast, foretopmast, and probably new wire rigging,
besides repairs of other kinds, and possibly new coppering. Thank
God, the voyage has been so far safe, and, on the whole, prosperous.
We sailed first of all to the Banks Islands, only dropping two lads
at Ambrym Island on our way. We spent a week or more at Mota, while
the vessel was being overhauled at the harbour in Vanua Lava Island,
seven miles from Mota. It was a great relief to us to get the house
for the station at Mota out of the vessel, the weight of timber, &c.,
was too much for a vessel not built for carrying freight. After a
few days we left Mr. Palmer, George Sarawia, and others at Mota,
busily engaged in putting up the house, a very serious matter for us,
as you may suppose.

'Our party was made up of Mr. Atkin, Mr. Brooke, and two Mota
volunteers for boat work, and divers Solomon Islanders. We were
absent from Mota about seven years, during which time we visited
Santa Cruz, and many of the Solomon Isles. Mr. Atkin spent three
weeks in one of the isles, and Mr. Brooke in another, and we had more
than thirty natives of the Solomon Islands on board, including old
scholars, when we left Ulava, the last island of the Solomon group at
which we called.

'Mr. Palmer, Mr. Atkin, and Mr. Brooke went on to Norfolk Island, the
whole number of Melanesians on board being sixty-two. I had spent a
very happy month at Mota when the vessel returned from Norfolk Island
both with Mr. Codrington and Mr. Bice on board, bringing those of the
Melanesians (nearly thirty in all) who chose to stay on Norfolk
Island. Then followed a fortnight's cruise in the New Hebrides, and
now with exactly fifty Melanesians on board from divers islands, we
are on our way to Norfolk Island. We have fourteen girls, two
married, on board, and there are ten already at Norfolk Island. This
is an unusual number; but the people understand that the young men
and lads who have been with us for some time, who are baptized and
accustomed to decent orderly ways, are not going to marry heathen
wild girls, so they give up these young ones to be taught and qualify
to become fit wives for our rapidly increasing party of young men.

'It is quite clear that we must aim at exhibiting, by God's blessing,
Christian family life in the islands, and this can only be done by
training up young men and women.

'Three married couples, all Communicants, live now at Kohimarama, the
station at Mota. George has two children, Benjamin one. It is
already a small specimen of a little Christian community, and it must
be reinforced, year by year, by accessions of new couples of
Christian men and women.

'About twenty lads live at the station, and about forty more come
daily to school. It may grow soon into a real working school, from
which the most intelligent and best conducted boys may be taken to
Norfolk Island for a more complete education. I am hopeful about a
real improvement in Mota and elsewhere.

'But a new difficulty has lately been caused by the traders from
Sydney and elsewhere, who have taken many people to work in the
plantations at Brisbane, Mimea, (New Caledonia), and the Fiji
Islands, actual kidnapping, and this is a sad hindrance to us. I
know of no case of actual violence in the Banks Islands; but in every
case, they took people away under false pretences, asserting that
"the Bishop is ill and can't come; he has sent us to bring you to
him." "The Bishop is in Sydney, he broke his leg getting into his
boat, and has sent us to take you to him," &c., &c. In many of these
places some of our old scholars are found who speak a little English,
and the traders communicated with them.

'In most places where any of our young people happened to be on
shore, they warned their companions against these men, but not always
with success. Hindrances there must be always in the way of all
attempts to do some good. But this is a sad business, and very
discreditable to the persons employed in it and the Government which
sanctions it, for they must know that they cannot control the masters
of the vessels engaged in the trade; they may pass laws as to the
treatment the natives are to receive on the plantations, as to food,
pay, &c., the time of service, the date of their being taken home,
but they know that the whole thing is dishonest. The natives don't
intend or know anything about any service or labour; they don't know
that they will have to work hard, and any regular steady work is hard
work to South Sea Islanders. They are brought away under false
pretences, else why tell lies to induce them to go on board?

'I dare say that many young fellows go on board without much
persuasion. Many causes may be at work to induce them to do so,
e.g., sickness in the island, quarrels, love of excitement, spirit of
enterprise, &c., but if they knew what they were taken for, I don't
think they would go.

'November 2nd.--In sight of Norfolk Island. All well on board.

'November 6th.--Yesterday we all landed safely, and found our whole
party quite well. Our new hall is finished, and in good time to
receive 134 Melanesians.'

Before the full accumulation of letters arrived from Auckland, a
report by a passing ship from Sydney stirred the hermit Bishop
deeply, and elicited the following warm congratulation:--

'Norfolk Island: November 17, 1869.

'My dear Dr. Moberly,--Since my return--a fortnight since--from the
islands a rumour has reached us, brought hither in a small trader,
that the Bishop of Winchester has resigned his see, and that you are
his successor. It is almost too good to be true. I am waiting with
great anxiety for a vessel expected soon; I have had no English news
since letters of April. But in all seriousness, private news is of
small moment compared with the news of what is to become of that
great Diocese. And especially now, when almost all the south of
England is so sadly in want of officers to command the Church's army.
Exeter, Bath and Wells, Salisbury, Chichester (very old), and till
now (if this rumour be true) Winchester, from old age or sickness
almost, if not quite, unfit for work. If indeed I hear that God's
Providence has placed you in charge of that great see, it will give a
different hue to the prospect, dreary enough, I confess, to me;
though I hope I am mistaken in my gloomy forebodings of the results
of all those many Dioceses being so long without active Bishops.
Salisbury of course I except, and Chichester is a small Diocese
comparatively, and the good Bishop, I know, works up to the maximum
of his age and strength. But if this be a true rumour, and I do
sincerely trust and pray that it may be so, indeed it will give hope
and courage and fresh life and power to many and many a fainting
soul. If I may presume to say so, it is (as Mrs. Selwyn wrote to me
when he was appointed to Lichfield) "a solemn and anxious thing to
undertake a great charge on the top of such great expectations." But
already there is one out here anyhow who feels cheered and
strengthened by the mere hope that this story is true; and everywhere
many anxious men and women will lift up their hearts to God in
thankfulness, and in earnest prayers that you may indeed do a great
work to His glory and to the good of His Church in a new and even
greater sphere of usefulness. No doubt much of my thoughts and
apprehensions about the religious and social state of England is very
erroneous. I have but little time for reading about what is going
on, and though I have the blessing of Codrington's good sense and
ability, yet I should like to have more persons to learn from on such
matters. I am willing and anxious to believe that I am not cheerful
and faithful enough to see the bright side as clearly as I ought.
Your letters have always been a very great help to me; not only a
great pleasure, much more than a pleasure. I felt that I accepted,
occasionally even that I had anticipated, your remarks on the
questions of the day, the conduct of parties and public men, books,
&c. It has been a great thing for me to have my thoughts guided or
corrected in this way.

'Your last present to me was your volume of "Bampton Lectures," of
which I need not say how both the subject and the mode of treating it
make them especially valuable just now. And there is a strong
personal feeling about the work and writings of one where the public
man is also the private friend, which gives a special zest to the
enjoyment of reading a work of this kind.

'Certainly it is one of the many blessings of my life that I should
somehow have been allowed to grow into this degree of intimacy with
you, whom I have always known by name, though I don't remember ever
to have seen you. I think I first as a child became familiar with
your name through good Miss Rennell, whom I dare say you remember:
the old Dean's daughter. What a joy this would have been to dear Mr.
and Mrs. Keble; what a joy it is to Charlotte Yonge; and there may be
others close to Winchester whose lives have been closely bound tip
with yours.

'But, humanly speaking, the thing is to have Bishops who can command
the respect and love and dutiful obedience of their clergy and laity
alike.

'One wants men who, by solid learning, and by acquaintance too with
modern modes of criticism and speculation, by scholarship, force of
character, largeness of mind, as well as by their goodness, can
secure respect and exercise authority. It is the lawlessness of men
that one deplores; the presumption of individual priests striking out
for themselves unauthorised ways of managing their parishes and
officiating in their churches. And, if I may dare to touch on such a
subject, is there not a mode of speaking and writing on the Holy
Eucharist prevalent among some men now, which has no parallel in the
Church of England, except, it may be, in some of the non-jurors, and
which does not express the Church of England's mind; which is not the
language of Pearson, and Jackson, and Waterland, and Hooker, no, nor
of Bull, and Andrewes, and Taylor, &c.? I know very little of such
things--very little indeed. But it is oftentimes a sad grief to me
that I cannot accept some of the reasonings and opinions of dear Mr.
Keble in his book on "Eucharistic Adoration." I know that I have no
right to expect to see things as such a man saw them: that most
probably the instinctive power of discerning truth--the reward of a
holy life from early childhood--guided him where men without such
power feel all astray. But yet, there is something about the book
which may be quite right and true, but does not to me quite savour of
the healthy sound theology of the Church of England; the fragrance is
rather that of an exotic plant; here and there I mean--though I feel
angry with myself for daring to think this, and to say it to you, who
can understand him.