Victorian Worthies

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External circumstances also had little power to alter the even tenor of
his way. Late in life, at the age of 69, he married Miss Fraser Tytler,
a friend of some fifteen years' standing, who was herself an artist, and
who shared all his tastes. After the marriage he and his wife spent a
long winter in the East, sailing up the Nile in leisurely fashion,
enjoying the monuments of ancient Egypt and the colours of the desert.
It was a time of great happiness, and was followed by seventeen years
of a serene old age, divided between his London house in Melbury Road
and his new home in Surrey. Staying with friends in Surrey, Watts had
made acquaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's
Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build
a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the
generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his
choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to
which lovers of his work resort.[36]

[Note 36: His allegorical subjects are in the Tate Gallery; his
portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.]

But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at
large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours
from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked
him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865
his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards,
who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his
admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year
to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years
later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which
did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his
own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the
Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to
hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full
effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to
a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual
exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits.
The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to
the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200
of his pictures did justice to his sixty years of unwearied effort.
This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one
of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to
be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with
his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The
_elite_ of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other
departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he
could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was
everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few
banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to enjoy
his work, his leisure, and the society of his intimate friends.

His interest in the progress of his age was profound, though it did not
often take shape in visible form. He believed that the world might be
better, and was not minded to acquiesce in the established order of
things. He sympathized with the Salvation Army; he was a strong
supporter of women's education; he was ardent for redressing the balance
of riches and poverty, and for recognizing the heroism of those who,
labouring under such grim disadvantages, yet played a heroic part in
life. The latter he showed in practical form. In 1887 he had wished to
celebrate the Queen's Jubilee by erecting a shrine in which to preserve
the records of acts of self-sacrifice performed by the humblest members
of the community. The scheme failed at the time to win support; but in
1899, largely through his help, a memorial building arose in the
churchyard of St. Botolph, near Aldersgate, better known as the
'Postmen's Park'.

In private life his kindliness and courtesy won the hearts of all who
came near him, young and old, rich and poor. He was tolerant towards
those who differed from him in opinion: he steadily believed the best of
other men in passing judgement on them. No mean thought, no malicious
word, no petty quarrel marred the purity of his life. He had lost his
best friends: Leighton in 1896, Burne-Jones three years later; but he
enjoyed the devotion of his wife and the tranquillity of his home. Twice
he refused the offer of a Baronetcy. The only honour which he accepted
was the Order of Merit, which carried no title in society and was
reserved for intellectual eminence and public service. At the age of 80
he presented to Eton College his picture of Sir Galahad, a fit emblem of
his own lifelong quest. His last days of active work were spent on the
second version of the great statue of 'Physical Energy', which had
occupied him so long, and in which he ever found something new to
express as he dreamed of the days to come and the future conquests of
mankind. In 1904 his strength gradually failed him, and on July 1 he
died in his Surrey home. Like his great exemplar Titian, whom he
resembled in outward appearance and in much of the quality of his
painting, he outlived his own generation and was yet learning, as one of
the young, when death took him in the 88th year of his life.

JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON

1827-71

1827. Born in London, April 1.
1838-45. At school at Eton.
1841. Selwyn goes out to New Zealand as Bishop.
1845-9. Undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford.
1850-1. Visits Germany.
1852-3. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
1853. Curate at Alphington, near Ottery.
1854. Accepted by Bishop Selwyn for mission work.
1855. Sails for New Zealand, March. Head-quarters at Auckland.
1856. First cruise to Melanesia.
1860. First prolonged stay (3 months) in Mota.
1861. Consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia, February.
1864. Visit to Australia to win support for Mission (repeated 1855).
Serious attack on his party by natives of Sta. Cruz.
1867. Removal of head-quarters to Norfolk Island.
1868. Selwyn goes home to become Bishop of Lichfield.
1869. Exploitation of native labour becomes acute.
1870. Severe illness: convalescence at Auckland.
1871. Last stay at Mota. Cruise to Sta. Cruz. Death at Nukapu,
September 20.

JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON

MISSIONARY

New Zealand, discovered by Captain Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a
century, and like others of our Colonies it came very near to passing
under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the
foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our
reluctant Government; and its steady progress was secured by the
sagacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in
Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Thanks to them and to others,
there has arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any
other, seems to resemble the mother country with its sea-girt islands,
its temperate climate, its mountains and its plains. A population almost
entirely British, living in these conditions, might be expected to
repeat the history of their ancestors. In politics and social questions
its sons show the same independence of spirit and even greater
enterprise.

[Illustration: JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON

From a drawing by William Richmond]

The names of two other men deserve recognition here for the part they
played in the history of these islands. In 1814, before they became a
British possession, Samuel Marsden came from Australia to carry the
Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern
districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril
from the Maoris. But nothing could daunt his courage; and whenever they
came into personal contact with him, these childlike savages felt his
power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good
foundation. In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn
as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province
and no less wide discretion. He was the pioneer who, from his base in
New Zealand, was to spread Christian and British influences even farther
afield in the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean.

Selwyn was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and these
famous foundations have never sent forth a man better fitted to render
services to his country. In a small sphere, as curate of Windsor, he had
already, by his energy, patience, and practical sagacity, achieved
remarkable results; and it was providential that, in the strength of
early manhood, he was selected for a responsible post which afforded
scope for the exercise of his powers. In the old country he might have
been hampered by routine and tradition; in a new land he could mark out
his own path. The constitution of the New Zealand Church became a model
for other dioceses and other lands, and his wisdom has stood the test of
time.

What sort of man he was can best be shown by quoting a story from his
biography.[37] When the Maori War broke out he joined the troops as
chaplain and shared their perils in the field. Against the enterprising
native fighters these were not slight, especially as the British troops
were few and badly led. He was travelling without escort over routes
infested by Maoris, refusing to have any special care taken of his own
person, and his chief security lay in rapid motion. Yet twice he
dismounted on the way, at peril of his life, once under an impulse of
humanity, once from sheer public spirit. The first time it was to pull
into the shade a drunken soldier asleep on duty and in danger of
sunstroke; the second to fill up the ruts in a sandy road, where it
seemed possible that the transport wagons which were following might be
upset. Many other incidents could be quoted which show his
unconventional ways and his habitual disregard for his own comfort,
dignity, or safety. In New Zealand he found plenty of people to
appreciate these qualities in a bishop.

[Note 37: _Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn_, by H. W. Tucker, 2
vols. (Wells Gardner, 1879).]

Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar
fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the
sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the
consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he
was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links.
His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived
close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary; and his father, an able
lawyer who was raised to the Bench in 1830, bought an estate at Feniton
and came to live in the same district before the boy was fifteen years
old. It was at Ottery, where the name of Coleridge was so familiar,
that the earliest school-days of 'Coley' Patteson were passed; but
before he was eleven years old he was sent to the boarding-house of
another Coleridge, his uncle, who was a master at Eton. Here he spent
seven happy years working in rather desultory fashion, so that he had
his share of success and failure. His chief distinctions were won at
cricket, where he rose to be captain of the XI; but with all whose good
opinion was worth having he won favour by his cheerful, frank,
independent spirit. If he was idle at one time, at another he could
develop plenty of energy; if he was one of the most popular boys in the
school, he was not afraid to risk his popularity by protesting strongly
against moral laxity or abuses which others tolerated. It is well to
remember this, which is attested by his school-fellows, when reading his
letters, in which at times he blames himself for caring too much for the
good opinion of others.

His interest in the distant seas where he was to win fame was first
aroused in 1841. Bishop Selwyn was a friend of his family, and coming to
say good-bye to the Pattesons before sailing for New Zealand, he said,
half sportively, to the boy's mother, 'Will you give me "Coley"?' This
idea was not pursued at the time; but the name of Selwyn was kept before
him in his school-days, as the Bishop had left many friends at Eton and
Windsor, and Edward Coleridge employed his nephew to copy out Selwyn's
letters from his diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider
audience. But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and
seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where
he spent four years at Balliol. He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and
this fact caused him some disquietude. He felt that he ought to have won
a scholarship, and, conscious of his failure, he took to more steady
reading. He was also practising self-discipline, giving up his cricket
to secure more hours for study. He did not scorn the game. He was as
fond as ever of Eton, and of his school memories. But his life was
shaping in another direction, and the new interests, deepening in
strength, inevitably crowded out the old.

After taking his degree he made a tour of the great cities of Italy and
wrote enthusiastically of the famous pictures in her galleries. He also
paid more than one visit to Germany, and when he had gained a fair
knowledge of the German language, he went on to the more difficult task
of learning Hebrew and Arabic. This pursuit was due partly to his
growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his
own linguistic powers. He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up
sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the impression.
Later he applied the reasoning of the philologist, classified and
tabulated his results, and thus was able, when drawn into fields
unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of
great value to other students. But he was not the man to make a display
of his power; in fact he apologizes, when writing to his father from
Dresden, for making a secret of his pursuit, regarding it rather as a
matter of self-indulgence which needed excuse. Bishop Selwyn could have
told him that he need have no such fears, and that in developing his
linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself for
service in Melanesia.

Patteson's appointment to a fellowship at Merton College, which involved
residence in Oxford for a year, brought no great change into his life.
Rather he used what leisure he had for strengthening his knowledge of
the subjects which seemed to him to matter, especially the
interpretation of the Bible. He returned to Greek and Latin, which he
had neglected at school, and found a new interest in them. History and
geography filled up what time he could spare from his chief studies.
Resuming his cricket for a while, he mixed in the life of the
undergraduates and made friends among them. At College meetings, for all
his innate conservatism, he found himself on the side of the reformers
in questions affecting the University; but he had not time to make his
influence felt. At the end of the year he was ordained and took a curacy
at Alphington, a hamlet between Feniton and Ottery. His mother had died
in 1842, and his object was to be near his father, who was growing
infirm and found his chief pleasure in 'Coley's' presence and talk. His
interest in foreign missions was alive again, but at this time his first
duty seemed to be to his family; and in a parish endeared to him by old
associations he quickly won the affection of his flock. He was happy in
the work and his parishioners hoped to keep him for many years; but this
was not to be. In 1854 Bishop Selwyn and his wife were in England
pleading for support for their Church, and their visit to Feniton
brought matters to a crisis. Patteson was thrilled at the idea of seeing
his hero again, and he at once seized the opportunity for serving under
him. There was no need for the Bishop to urge him; rather he had to
assure himself that he could fairly accept the offer. To the young man
there was no thought of sacrifice; that fell to the father's lot, and he
bore it nobly. His first words to the Bishop were, 'I can't let him go';
but a moment later he repented and cried, 'God forbid that I should stop
him'; and at parting he faced the consequences unflinchingly. 'Mind!' he
said, 'I give him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him again.'

In the following March, the young curate, leaving his home and his
parish where he was almost idolized, where he was never to be seen
again, set his face towards the South Seas. Once the offer had been made
and accepted, he felt no more excitement. It was not the spiritual
exaltation of a moment, but a deliberate applying of the lessons which
he had been learning year by year. He had put his hand to the plough and
would not look back.

The first things which he set himself to learn, on board ship, were the
Maori language and the art of navigation. The first he studied with a
native teacher, the second he learnt from the Bishop, and he proved an
apt pupil in both. In a few months he became qualified to act as master
of the Mission ship, and the speaking of a new language was to him only
a matter of weeks. His earliest letters show how quickly he came to
understand the natives. He was ready to meet any and every demand made
upon him, and to fulfil duties as different from one another as those of
teacher, skipper, and storekeeper. His head-quarters, during his early
months in New Zealand, were either on board ship or else at St. John's
College, five miles from Auckland. But, before he had completed a year,
he was called to accompany the Bishop on his tour to the Islands and to
make acquaintance with the scene of his future labours.

Bishop Selwyn had wisely limited his mission to those islands which the
Gospel had not reached. The counsels of St. Paul and his own sagacity
warned him against exposing his Church to the danger of jealous rivalry.
So long as Christ was preached in an island or group of islands, he was
content; he would leave them to the ministry of those who were first in
the field. Many of the Polynesian groups had been visited by French and
English missionaries and stations had been established in Samoa, Tahiti,
and elsewhere; but north of New Zealand there was a large tract of the
Pacific, including the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands, where the
natives had never heard the Gospel message. These groups were known
collectively as Melanesia, a name hardly justified by facts,[38] as the
inhabitants were by no means uniform in colour. If the Solomon
Islanders had almost black skins, those who lived in the Banks Islands,
which Patteson came to know so well, were of a warm brown hue such as
may be seen in India or even in the south of Europe. Writing in the very
last month of his life, Patteson tells his sisters how the colour of the
people in Mota 'is just what Titian and the Venetian painters delighted
in, the colour of their own weather-beaten boatmen'.

[Note 38: Melanesia, from Greek [Greek: melas]=black, [Greek:
nesos]=island.]

Selwyn had visited these islands intermittently since 1849, and had
thought out a plan for spreading Christianity among them. With only a
small staff of helpers and many other demands on his time, he could not
hope to get into direct contact with a large population, so widely
scattered. His work must be done through natives selected by himself,
and these must be trained while they were young and open to impressions,
while their character was still in the making. So every year he brought
back with him from his cruise a certain number of Melanesian boys to
spend the warmer months of the New Zealand year under the charge of the
missionaries, and restored them to their homes at the beginning of the
next cruise. At Auckland, with its soldiers, sailors, and merchants, the
boys became familiar with other sides of European life beyond the walls
of the Mission School; and their interest was stimulated by a close view
of the strength to be drawn from European civilization. By this system
Selwyn hoped that they on their return would spread among the islanders
a certain knowledge of European ways, and that their relatives, seeing
how the boys had been kindly treated, would feel confidence in the
missionaries and would give them a hearing. This policy commended itself
to Patteson by its practical efficacy; and though he modified it in
details, he remained all his life a convinced adherent of the principle.
Slow progress through a few pupils, selected when young, and carefully
taught, was worth more than mere numbers, though too often in
Missionary reports success is gauged by figures and statistics.

These cruises furnished the adventurous part of the life. Readers of
Stevenson and Conrad can picture to themselves to-day the colour, the
mystery, and the magic of the South Seas. Patteson, with his reserved
nature and his dread of seeming to throw a false glamour over his
practical duties, wrote but sparingly of such sights; but he was by no
means insensitive to natural beauty and his letters give glimpses of
coral reefs and lagoons, of palms and coco-nut trees, of creepers 100
feet long trailing over lofty crags to the clear water below.

He enjoyed being on board ship, with his books at hand and some leisure
to read them, with the Bishop at his side to counsel him, and generally
some of his pupils to need his help. They had many delightful days when
they received friendly greeting on the islands and found that they were
making real progress among the natives. But the elements of discomfort,
disappointment, and danger were rarely absent for long. For a large part
of each voyage they had some forty or fifty Melanesian boys on board, on
their way to school or returning to their homes. The schooner built for
the purpose was as airy and convenient as it could be made; yet there
was little space for privacy. The natives were constitutionally weak;
and when illness broke out, no trained nurses were at hand and Patteson
would give up his own quarters to the sick and spend hours at their
bedsides. Sometimes they found, on revisiting an island, that their old
scholars had fallen away and that they had to begin again from the
start. Sometimes they had to abstain from landing at all, because the
behaviour of the natives was menacing, or because news had reached the
Mission of some recent quarrel which had roused bitter feeling. The
traditions of the Melanesians inclined them to go on the war-path only
too readily, and both Selwyn and Patteson had an instinctive perception
of the native temperament and its danger.

However lightly Patteson might treat these perils in his letters home,
there was never complete security. To reassure his sisters he tells them
of 81 landings and only two arrows fired at them in one cruise; and yet
one poisoned arrow might be the cause of death accompanied by
indescribable agony. Even when a landing had been effected and friendly
trading and talk had given confidence to the visitors, it might be that
an arrow was discharged at them by some irresponsible native as they
made for their boats.

These voyages needed unconventional qualities in the missioner; few of
the subscribers in quiet English parishes had an idea how the Melanesian
islanders made their first acquaintance with their Bishop. When the boat
came near the shore, the Bishop, arrayed in some of his oldest clothes,
would jump into the sea and swim to land, sometimes being roughly
handled by the breakers which guarded the coral bank. It was desirable
not to expose their precious boat to the cupidity of the natives or to
the risk of it being dashed to pieces in the surf, so the Bishop risked
his own person instead. He would then with all possible coolness walk
into a gathering of savages, catch up any familiar words which seemed to
occur in the new dialect, or, failing any linguistic help, try to convey
his peaceful intentions by gesture or facial expression. When an island
had been visited before, there was less reason to be on guard; but
sometimes the Bishop had to break to relatives the sad news that one of
the boys committed to his care had fallen a victim to the more rigorous
climate of New Zealand or to one of the diseases to which these tribes
were so liable. Then it was only the personal ascendancy won by previous
visits that could secure him against a violent impulse to revenge.

All practical measures were tried to establish friendly relations with
the islanders; and when people at home might fancy the Bishop preaching
impressively to a decorous circle of listeners, he was really engaged in
lively talk and barter, receiving yams and other articles of food in
return for the produce of Birmingham and Sheffield, axe-heads which he
presented to the old, and fish-hooks with which he won the favour of the
young. But such brief visits as could be made at a score of islands in a
busy tour did not carry matters far, and the memory of a visit would be
growing dim before another chance came of renewing intercourse with the
same tribe. Selwyn felt it was most desirable that he should have
sufficient staff to leave a missionary here and there to spend unbroken
winter months in a single station, where he could reach more of the
people and exercise a more continuous influence upon them. Patteson's
first experience of this was in 1858, when he spent three months at Lifu
in the Loyalty Islands, a group which was later to be annexed by the
French.

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