The Luminaries (62 page)

Dunedin. January 1853

Sir how ought I read this silence that is the question on my mind. I believe you are in receipt of my correspondence but for some reason of principle you decline to answer or to extend a scrap of charity to your father’s bastard child. These letters did not take dictation. This is mine own hand sir & I can read as well & though I flatter myself I shall tell you that my parish priest Father Wells remarked more than once that I was an uncommonly bright boy. I state all this to make it clear I am no scoundrel though my station is a low one. Perhaps you wish for proof of my bastardy. Perhaps you think this an attempted swindle. I say on my honour it is not. Since I wrote to you last my needs and wishes are unchanged. I do not want to be in this country sir I never sought this life. For £20 I would return to England and never speak your name again.

Yours truly,

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. May 1853

Sir I know from the provincial papers that you have taken up the post of Superintendent of the proud province of Canterbury. You took the post & offered up your honorarium for charity a noble gesture sir but one I observed with sadness. I wondered if you thought of me as you gave that £100 away. I have not the means to travel to Lyttelton where you are much less back home. I have never felt more alone than I do in this forsaken land surely you will understand this as a British man yourself. We have creeping damp and frost in-doors I wake most mornings with a rime of ice across my legs. I am not suited to the hard frontier & mourn my circumstances daily. Sir in this year past I have saved only £2 10s. 4d & I have now spent 4d upon these pages and postage. I beg of you to help

A man in need

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. October 1853

Sir I write in great dejection. I am certain now that you will never write back to me & even I a whoreson am too proud to beg again. I am a sinner like our father the apple falling never far as the common saying goes. But in my youth I was taught that charity is a primary virtue & one to be practised most especially when that virtue is not due. You sir are not behaving as a Christian man. I do believe that if our respective circumstances were reversed I would not maintain the cruel silence that you keep with me. Rest assured I will not beg your charity again but I wish to make my dejection known to you. I have been following your career in the pages of the ‘Otago Witness’ & I know you are a man of no small means & much opinion. I have neither privilege but notwithstanding my abject position I am proud to call myself a Christian man & if you were in need sir I should turn my pockets out to help you as your brother. I do not expect that you will reply and perhaps I will die soon and you will never hear from me again. Even in the likelihood of that event I am proud to remain

Yours very sincerely

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. January 1854

Sir I must apologise for the letter I wrote you last as it was written bitterly & with the purpose of insulting you. My mother warned me never to touch a pen when in a temper & now I see the wisdom in her words. My mother you have never known of course but she was quite a beauty in her time. SUE BUTCHER was her name in life God rest her soul though she also went by other names better suited to her line of work & liked to invent new ones at her pleasure. She was our father’s particular favourite a preference that was formed she said upon the handsome colour of her eyes. I do not resemble her except in pieces. She always said that I bore my father’s likeness though my father never returned to the whorehouse after I was born & as you know I never met him. I have been told that prostitution is a social ill composed of male licentiousness on the one hand & female depravity on the other & although I know this to be the opinion of wiser men than I nevertheless it does not make sense of how I remember my mother in my mind. She had ‘fine pipes’ & loved to sing all manner of
hymns
in the morning a practice that I also loved. I believe she was kind & hardworking & although she was known to be a flirt she was a very good one. How strange that we have separate mothers but share a father. I suppose it means that we are only half alike. But forgive these idle meditations & please accept my apologies & my assurance that I remain

Yours

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. June 1854

Sir perhaps it is right you do not reply. You are acting only as a man of your high station can & you have a reputation to consider. I think I have become contented with your silence strange though that might sound. I have secured a modest wage & decent lodgings & I am ‘settling down’ as they term it here. I find Dunedin much changed in the summer months. The sun is bright on the hills & on the water & I can bear the briskness very well. How odd it is that I should find myself on the contrary face of the world. I believe that I am as far from England as any man could be. You will be surprised to learn that I am not to return home after all. I have resolved to make New Zealand the land in which I will be buried. Perhaps you wonder what spurred this change of heart & so I shall tell you. You see in New Zealand every man has left his former life behind & every man is equal in his way. Of course the flockmasters of Otago are barons here just as they were barons in the Scottish Highlands but for men like me there is a chance to rise. I find this very cheering. It is not uncommon for men to tip their hats to one another in the street regardless of their station. For you perhaps this is not a strange occurrence but for me it is a wondrous one. The frontier I think makes brothers of us all & in making this remark I shall remain

Yours very truly

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. August 1854

Sir you will I hope forgive these letters I have no other correspondents & thoughts of you consume my days. I have been waxing philosophical
myself
in thinking what might have happened if you knew me sooner or if I knew you. I do not know your age so I do not know if you are the elder or if I am the elder. In my mind the difference signifies & because I am the bastard I imagine myself younger but of course that might not be the case. There were other children in the whorehouse several girls who grew up whoring & one boy who died of smallpox when I was very young but I was the eldest always & I should have liked a brother to admire. I have been thinking with much sadness upon the fact that I do not know whether you have sisters & brothers or if there are other bastards or if your father ever spoke of me to you. If I were in London I would be taking every chance to walk to Glen House & look in through the railings & spy my father whom you remember I have never seen. I have his letter still it says he knew of me & watched me and I wonder what he thought of me & what he might think about the life I lead here. But perhaps he is no longer living. You wish not to be my brother you have made that clear but perhaps you are as my priest with our correspondence as confession. I am heartened by this notion for I say with pride that I was properly confirmed. But I expect you are a Church of England man.

Yours,

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. November 1854

Sir do you feel as if you know me or could pick me from a crowd? It struck me lately that I know your likeness though you do not know mine. We are not so dissimilar in our physique though I am slighter I think & my hair is darker than yours & folk would likely say that yours is the kinder face because my expression is too often sullen. I wonder if you walk about & think of me & if you search for fragments of my features in other people’s faces or their bodies when they pass you by. That is what I did every day while I was young & dreaming always of my father & trying to piece him from all the faces I had known. How comforting to think of all that unites us as brothers living at the end of the world. You are the subject of my repeating thoughts today.

Sincerely,

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunedin. June 1862

Sir I will renew my correspondence to inform you very proudly that I write this as a married man. The courtship was a very short one though I believe the script followed conventional themes. In recent months I have been digging the gullies at Lawrence & though I have amassed a ‘competence’ I am yet to truly strike. Mrs. Wells as I must call her now is a fine specimen of the female sex & one I shall be very proud to carry on my arm. I suppose she is your sister now. I should like to know if you have a sister already or if Mrs. Wells is your very first. You shall not hear from me for some time after this for I must return to Dunstan in order to provide for my wife. What are your thoughts on the gold rush I wonder. Recently I heard a politician speak who called the gold a moral scourge. It is true that on the diggings I have seen much degradation but there was degradation prior to the strike as well. I fancy that it is the thought of men like me becoming rich that has most politicos afraid.

Cordially,

CROSBIE WELLS

Kawarau. November 1862

Sir I read in the papers that you are recently married for which I offer my heartiest congratulations. I have not seen a picture of your wife CAROLINE née GOUGH but she is reported to be a very fine match. I am happy when I think that we will both spend our Christmases as married men. I will journey back from Lawrence to spend the season with my wife who keeps her lodging in Dunedin & does not come to the diggings as she cannot bear the mud. I have never become used to Christmas in the summertime & feel the tradition as a whole is suited best to the colder months. Perhaps I blaspheme to talk of Christmas so but I esteem that there is much that does not retain its meaning here in New Zealand seeming instead like a faded relic from another time. I think of you receiving this letter & sitting down beside the fire perhaps or leaning
close
into the lamplight to make out the words. Permit me to invent these details it is a great pleasure always for me to think of you I assure you that I remain, from afar,

Yours very truly,

CROSBIE WELLS

Dunstan. April 1863

Sir I have passed this week in a melancholy humour wondering if Alistair Lauderback our father is yet deceased as I expect he is. London seems but a dream to me now. I recall the smoke & fog & cannot trust my own memory at all. As an experiment last week I sat down & tried to draw a map of Southwark in the dirt. I hardly could remember the shape of the Thames & no street names returned to me. Is it the same for you I wonder? I read in the ‘Otago Witness’ with some astonishment that you now style yourself a proud Cantabrian. I feel English through and through.

Yours,

CROSBIE WELLS

Kawarau. November 1863

Sir I like to think that you receive my words with pleasure but am content with the more probable event that you do not read them at all. In either case writing is a comfort to me and gives shape to my days. I read with interest that you have resigned the Superintendency. The word upon the diggings here is that Canterbury is soon to have her rush in gold following Otago’s fade & I rather wonder whether such a discovery would make you regret your decision to step down from that eminent position. The reward offered for a payable goldfield has excited more than one man upon the fields here at Kawarau. The land is steep & the sky very blinding here. I have been sun-burned so often that the shape of my collar has been branded into my neck & though this is painful I do not look forward to the winter months which in this high country will be bitter indeed. If gold is discovered in Canterbury will you run for the Super again? I do not mean that as an interrogative in the proper sense just as an expression of
my
curiosity in the course of your days. It is in this spirit that I sign myself

Sincerely,

CROSBIE WELLS

Kawarau. March 1864

Sir I write with most important and indeed astonishing news. I have been in Dunstan where I hit upon some extraordinary luck a claim veritably shining with the colour! I am now a wealthy man though I have not spent a penny of it having seen too many fellows spend their dust on hats & coats only to return those items to the pawnbroker’s when their fortunes change again. I will not tell you the amount for fear this message is intercepted but I will say that even by your handsome salary it is an enormous sum & I fancy that now I am the richer brother of us two at least in terms of ready money. What a lark that is. With this fortune I could return to London & set up a shop but I will continue to prospect as I believe my luck has not yet run dry. I have not yet declared the ore and have chosen to export it from the goldfields via a private escort which I am told is the safest route. Notwithstanding the alteration of my fortune I am, as ever,

Yours,

CROSBIE WELLS

West Canterbury. June 1865

Sir you will notice from my postmark that I am no longer a resident of the province of Otago but have ‘upped my sticks’ as the saying goes. You most likely have had little cause to venture west of the mountains so I shall tell you that West Canterbury is a world apart from the grasses of the South. The sunrise over the coastline is a scarlet marvel & the snowy peaks hold the colour of the sky. The bush is wet & tangled & the water very white. It is a lonely place though not quiet for the birdsong is constant & very pleasant for its constancy. As you may have guessed already I have put my former life behind me. I am estranged from my wife. I ought to tell you that I concealed much in my correspondence with you fearing that if you
knew
the bitter truth about my marriage you might think less of me. I shall not trouble you with the details of my escape to this place for it is a sorry tale & one that saddens me to recall. I am twice bitten three times shy which is a less admirable ratio than other men can boast but suffice to say that I have learned my lesson. Enough upon that subject instead I shall speak about the present & the future. I mean to dig for gold no longer though West Canterbury is flush with colour & men are making fortunes every day. No I will not prospect & have my fortune stolen once again. Instead I shall try my hand at the timber trade. I have made a fine acquaintance of a Maori man Terou Tow-Faray. This name in his native tongue means ‘The Hundred House of Years’. What poor names we British fellows have compared to these! I fancy it might be a line from a poem. Tow-Faray is a noble savage of the first degree & we are fast becoming friends. I confess it lifts my spirits to be in the companionship of men again.

Yours &c,

CROSBIE WELLS