Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles)
brides was a lorgnette; and “spy-glasses,” as they were called, sold for an exorbitant price until the demand exhausted the supply. Again, a rat plague raised the price of cats to 30s.; and boots sold for several guineas a pair, until a storekeeper imported a whole ship-load from England when the price dropped suddenly to 7s.
Stores were usually paid for over the counter with gold, a nugget greater in value than the goods, being “changed” into fine gold. The salesman, if he was canny, allowed his customers 55s. an ounce, and exchanged the gold at the Melbourne bank for 65.
Yet there were times when the auctioneering business was so crowded that turnover came only by “cutting trade” (selling at cost, or below); moreover, there was always danger from bushrangers; and purchased goods were not always paid for. Rarer and rarer became the trustful store-keeper who would “keep a bunch of mates going” till they “struck it.” If a man was lucky, he usually paid, but if ill-luck dogged him, it cast its shadow on the store-keeper. It took a fearless and resourceful man to collect his debts.
The Beauchamps’ fourth son, Arthur de Charmes, was born in St. Kilda in September, 1860. In the harbour was a fleet of anchored ships, whose crews had all deserted for the “diggings”; yet housing was insufficient for those left, and the city and suburbs were fearfully overcrowded; and “no man having even the appearance of respectability,” a contemporary wrote “can go abroad in the unlighted, unswept and filthy streets without the danger of being ‘bailed up’ by marauders.”
In 1861, announcing that “the climate of Melbourne was fatal to his very young children,” Arthur Beauchamp with his family, his brother Cradock, his fellow-prospector and friend, Mr. Hornby, and all their goods and chattels, embarked for Picton, New Zealand, on the brig Lalla Rookh, and left Australia for ever.
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Heralded by the Marlborough Press when he reached the Sounds, he already had sufficient merchandise to start a store, which Mr. Hornby had built for him on Wellington Street, near the quay. A “General Merchant” he called himself — a grocer, really, and an auctioneer.
Again, as at the goldfields, he chose a place which almost made his fortune. Picton, on the shores of a sheltered and beautiful harbour like a quiet lake, was tucked into the valley surrounded by protective hills climbing to the south, making a barrier pierced only by the high and narrow pass to the Wairau Plains. From these hills, two jagged promontories inclined northward into the sea, forming the Queen Charlotte Sounds. Picton, facing north, enclosed by those steep and heavily bush-clad mountains, had one of the most easily defensible harbours in New Zealand. That, and its central position, nearly made it the seat of government.
In 1860, gold was discovered to the southward, at Wakamarina. When the rush came, four years later, the population doubled and the town had a tremendous boom; but though this was one of the richest fields ever discovered in New Zealand, prospectors were soon lured to the west coast. Wakamarina was “poor man’s diggings” — most of the gold being picked up out of crevices.
Coal was discovered by prospecting diggers during the Wakamarina rush, but the deposit was so rich that they believed it had been left by a passing steamer, and nothing was done about it until its rediscovery, some years later. Then the Picton Coal Company was formed, but the mining was found too expensive, and it was abandoned. Yet no harbour in New Zealand was so well adapted for a coal port.
Neither Government, nor gold, nor coal brought wealth to Picton, nor to Arthur Beauchamp. As it was, he found wealth of a different sort. Something held him for ever to New Zealand, bound him especially to the Marlborough Sounds, rover though he might be. It was said of him that he moved so often, his poultry went to sleep on their backs with their feet up, ready to be tied; yet he spent more than thirty years of his rover’s life on these Sounds. It was his one constancy.
In his early years at Picton, he threw himself vigorously into the struggle that was then waging for the life of the town. Picton, despite its early settlement, had no real importance until 1861, when it became the seat of the Provincial Government. The rich Wairau and Awatere valleys to the south had originally been taken by a class of cultured and educated men bred to the belief that land-holding was the inherited privilege of the few. Among these was the Hon. Algernon Tollemache. These land-owners (“squatters”), endeavouring to retain the lands and protect the sacred rights of property, had contrived separation from the neighbouring Nelson, and — under the federal form of government then obtaining in New Zealand — had formed a separate, self-governing province which they named Marlborough. The port Waitoh they renamed Picton after Wellington’s chief lieutenant at Waterloo; and here they established the seat of government, shifting it from Blenheim, a larger inland town, the home of the Opposition, which was chiefly composed of townsmen and small farmers. The Blenheim party, led by a Mr. Eyes,”considered any legislation legitimate which might dissolve the old Council and turn the scales against Picton”; in consequence, the issue of “Picton v. Blenheim” dominated Marlborough politics.
Arthur Beauchamp naturally took sides with the squatters. Here his early English associations provided his necessary support. He could take his place among these men without seeming to be a “climber.” He adapted himself readily to politics; his political attitude coincided with his interests and inclinations, and he quickly held a prominent position in the Council, and was regarded as Picton’s ablest champion— “a sound man.”
To the Picton representatives it was a matter of life and death that the seat of government should be retained. If the government were moved, Picton would forfeit her glory, which depended entirely on pride of place. Still more important, she would lose “the opulence derived from a liberal expenditure of Government money.”
Until the gold rush to Wakamarina, the squatters succeeded in holding their own; but the influx of population gave Blenheim more electoral votes, added to which land questions arose causing so much friction among the Picton members of the Council that some members threatened to go over to the Opposition unless matters mended. The Blenheim party seized the opportunity of this division, and on the second day of the 1864 session, Mr. Godfrey of Blenheim moved:”That the Council do now adjourn until Thursday, 29th instant, at three o’clock p.m., and hold its next and subsequent meetings at the courthouse, Blenheim.”
Upon this motion, followed the most heroic debate in the politics of New Zealand. To Blenheim it was the culmination of years of discontent; to Picton it was a fight against extinction. For days the battle waged, both parties being heart and soul in an issue which concerned their interests so closely. This was the occasion which gave Arthur Beauchamp his fame in the early politics of New Zealand. Led by him, Picton made one last despairing stand. He himself took the floor. He was a young man — still in his thirties. Behind his endurance was experience in luring and holding the restless, lawless Melbourne diggers. Behind that training there were the Byron competitions with his father in Hornsey Lane.
“He brought to the assistance of his party” (says New Zealand history)”a verbosity worthy of the occasion. Hour after hour he held the fort with a dogged devotion that would have done honour to Sir Thomas Picton himself.” Finally,”after speaking for the best part of a day, he struck terror into the hearts of those weary ones anxiously waiting the division, by explaining that ‘with these few preliminary remarks, he would now proceed to speak on the subject under discussion.’” But human endurance has its limits, and after ten and a half hours “of single-handed combat,” he collapsed. The substance of his speech is nowhere preserved, but the Opposition Marlborough Press, naturally vituperative to a rival, described it as “ten and a half hours of rubbish, ribaldry and Billingsgate.”
Since the fatal division could no longer be delayed the Resolution was passed and forwarded to Superintendent Seymour, who replied that “the course pursued by the Council was contrary to the Constitution, which fixed the session at Picton.”
Motions calling for the resignation of the Superintendent were only defeated by his friends leaving the room and depriving the Council of a quorum. But his Superintendency ended with that session, and the great battle of Blenheim. Picton was virtually over. The population of the province had increased