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.

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.

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’.

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.

A sojourn which was to bear more permanent fruit was that which he made at Mota in 1860. This was one of the Banks Islands lying north of the New Hebrides, in 14° South Latitude. The inhabitants of this group showed unusual capacity for learning from the missionaries, and sufficient stability of character to promise lasting success for the work carried on among them. Mota, owing to the line of cliffs which formed its coast, was a difficult place for landing; so it escaped the visits of white traders who could not emulate the swimming feats of Selwyn and Patteson, and was free from many of the troubles which such visitors brought with them. Once the island was reached, it proved to be one of the most attractive, with rich soil, plenty of water, and a kindly docile population. Here, on a site duly purchased for the mission, under the shade of a gigantic banyan tree, on a slope where bread-fruit and coco-nuts (and, later, pine-apples and other importations) flourished, the first habitation was built, with a boarded floor, walls of bamboo canes, and a roof of coco-nut leaves woven together after the native fashion so as to be waterproof. Here, in the next ten years, Patteson was to spend many happy weeks, taking school, reading and writing when the curiosity of the natives left him any peace, but in general patiently conversing with all and sundry who came up, with the twofold object of gathering knowledge of their dialect and making friends with individuals. While he showed instinctive tact in knowing how far it was wise to go in opposing the native way of life, he was willing to face risks whenever real progress could be made. After he had been some days in Mota a special initiation in a degrading rite was held outside the village. Patteson exercised all his influence to prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside the Mission hut, Patteson argued with him at length and persuaded him to withdraw his threatening symbol. But apart from idolatry, from internecine warfare, and from such horrors as cannibalism, prevalent in many islands, he was studious not to attack old traditions. He wanted a good Melanesian standard of conduct, not a feeble imitation of European culture. He was prepared to build upon the foundation which time had already prepared and not to invert the order of nature.

In writing home of his life in the island Patteson regularly depreciates his own hardships, saying how unworthy he feels himself to be ranked with the pioneers in African work. But the discomforts must often have been considerable to a man naturally fastidious and brought up as he had been.

Food was most monotonous. Meat was out of the question except where the missioners themselves imported live stock and kept a farm of their own; variety of fruit depended also on their own exertions. The staple diet was the yam, a tuber reaching at times in good soil a weight far in excess of the potato. This was supplied readily by the natives in return for European goods, and could be cooked in different ways; but after many weeks’ sojourn it was apt to pall. Also the climate was relaxing, and apt sooner or lat............