Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles). Katherine Mansfield
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the Council met in October, 1865,”there was an assured majority to carry out the resolutions of the previous Council.”
The last episode in this struggle was “the handing in by Mr. Beauchamp of a protest against the Council proceeding to elect a Superintendent.” Mr. Eyes, the main supporter of the Opposition, was proposed and elected, though “the Picton representatives showed their contempt for the proceedings by leaving in a body.”
Within the next three weeks the seat of government was transferred from Picton, and “that little town suffered a relapse from which it has never recovered.” Its total population in 1886 was hardly more than 700; and when in the 1890’s, Katherine Mansfield paid the visit to The True Original Pa Man, her grandfather, which is so beautifully remembered in The Voyage, Picton had gone to sleep for ever.
For a few more years Arthur Beauchamp continued in political life, being a member of the Marlborough Provincial Council from September 17th, 1864, to September 8th, 1865; and from October 8th, 1865 to October 9th, 1866. In 1866 he was elected to represent Picton in the New Zealand House of Representatives, taking his seat in the Fourth Parliament in April. But as a member of this Parliament, he was not very happy, and gave up his seat within six months, before making any definite mark. Apparently he did not even offer the customary reason for withdrawal, for the space after his name in the Parliamentary Records remained a blank.
Some of his comments during debate have been preserved in the New Zealand Parliamentary Records. They faintly recall the fantastic humour of a figure who became a legend in his life-time, and fascinated the imagination of Katherine Mansfield.
“Mr. Beauchamp said he had been listening to this debate with much pleasure, whether awake or asleep. Before going into the difficulties of Auckland, he would allude to the scientific discovery of the honourable member for Wellington City (Mr. Fitzherbert) that the shadow precede the substance. He had not thought it a just remark as applied to the honourable member for Avon. This debate was assuming now a theatrical form: there had been tragedy, melodrama, high comedy, and low comedy: but the exhibition that displeased him most was that of the honourable member for the Otago Goldfields (Mr. Vogel). He considered that the honourable member for Wellington City (Mr. Fitzherbert) made a very good speech though his arguments were hardly so weighty as they might have been. With regard to Auckland, it had once been in a very flourishing state; but during the war, though he could not state exactly the origin of it, there had been a kind of artificial prosperity, which had raised the expectations of the people. Auckland had a grievance, but it had not been stated: that was the removal of the seat of Government, although the Auckland members might not admit it. The removal of the seat of Government might have been expedient and politically necessary, but it was not the least unjust. Then a kind of collapse occurred in Auckland, which had prostrated the energies of the people. This debate evidently showed that something should be done for that province, with which he sympathized, for he had suffered in his own province by the removal of the seat of Government; but he had not caved in, and he would not advise the people of Auckland to do so. Their sufferings were, however, only temporary, and might be alleviated, but not by Separation. It would not do to tinker with the Native difficulty, for that would only disturb the Natives. With regard to Otago, its case was not half so good a one as that of Auckland. That province, at one extremity of the Islands, had joined with a province at the other extremity to tear out the vitals of the colony — a most injudicious proceeding. The honourable member for Raglan appeared to him to have set up a golden calf, which he wished the colony to worship; but he hoped it would do no such thing. He was to some extent a goldfields member: he meant to say that he was a member for a collapsed goldfield — Wakamarina. He was sorry, therefore, to see the conduct of some of the goldfields members, and believed it was not approved of by the miners generally. For his part, he wished to see a strong central Government. He had gone through poetries Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4; he would now go to poetry No. 5, the age of boyhood. Honourable members would recollect seeing a picture of a boy scratching his head, being puzzled over a sum. He thought it a world of art, in which fresh beauties could easily be discovered — he did not mean in the boy scratching his head. (The honourable member closed his speech with the following words:
“ ‘Separation is a vexation:
Division is as bad:
The rule-of-three, it puzzles me,
And factions drive me mad.’)
“In another speech Mr. Beauchamp said he had intended to make a suggestion as to the form in which additional taxes, if necessary, should be raised, for he thought the Government had pursued a wrong course in saying that they would only have stamp duties, as it had placed many members in an embarrassment — among others the honourable member for Westland, who, after creating the Government, as it were, like Warwick the King-maker, found that, like Frankenstein, he had created a monster, which was going to stamp at him and master him. Noses had, he believed, been counted, so that perhaps it was not of much use continuing this discussion longer: but he thought the Government was like a spoilt child crying for stamps, and expecting the House to say, ‘There, then! it shall have stamps.’ (The honourable member then illustrated some remarks by telling an episode in the life of Jack the Giant-killer, and compared the similes of the Colonial Treasurer to soap-bubbles, and concluded after some further remarks of a humorous nature.)”
If Arthur Beauchamp ever had much money, he probably lost it in Picton. Few men made much there; many lost fortunes. The final blow came in 1879, when New Zealand was involved in the great world depression. Not only were the majority of Marlborough landholders ruined, but many business men also; and Picton finally relapsed into the inertia of a little out-of-the-way seaside town, where time ceases to be very important — the future too monotonous to bear contemplation: where life is “like living at the bottom of a well,” as a Picton spinster said.
Arthur Beauchamp carried on his “General Merchant Store,” and his auctioneering, for ten years there, paying his £50 per annum licence fee, a very substantial part of the town’s total annual revenue of £600. He added greatly to his auctioneer’s repertoire, during that time, and some of his mysterious jingles (“Dolly of milk no resembles”), and his verses of Maori place names have become New Zealand folk-lore: —
“Ohau can I cross the river Ohau,
O Waikanae not reach the shore?
Otaki a boat and row me across
In the Manawatu did before.”
He died in 1910 at the age of eighty-three. There is a picture of him in one of Katherine’s letters:
“My grandpa said a man could travel all over the world with a clean pair of socks and a rook rifle. At the age of 70 he started for England thus equipped, but Mother took fright and added a handkerchief or two. When he returned he was shorn of everything but a large watering can which he had bought in London for his young marrows. I don’t suggest him as a Man to be Followed, however.”
No doubt this was the large red watering can which stood on one side of the door, with the pair of old bluchers on the other, when after The Voyage Fenella went up the dewy garden at Picton. While she stroked the white cat in the dusky sitting-room, she listened to grandma’s gentle voice and the rolling tones of grandpa. Then she went in.
“There, lying to one side of an immense bed, lay grandpa. Just his head with a white tuft, and his rosy face and long silver beard showed over the quilt. He was like a very old wide-awake bird.”
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Harold Beauchamp (who was to be the father of Katherine Mansfield) thus belonged to the first generation of New Zealand-born pioneers. It was the generation which still spoke of England as “home” (in the manner of its fathers), yet preserved a silence, very eloquent, concerning personal relation to the colony. If at heart the men still were Englishmen, they were in soul New Zealanders.
The energy of the new generation was needed in the colony now. The tireless struggle of the older pioneers at the bottom of the world, remote from any real aid (since they would not and could not look to Australia, but only to England), brought the primitive stage