Visiting Another Country by John Ewen

The author L.P.Hartley begins the Prologue to his novel The Go Between, with the now widely quoted first line, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ If the quotation is over-used to the point of being a cliché, it is because like so many clichés it also very apt. The line makes me think of life in the Lyttelton of the late 1800’s and succeeding decades.

 In 1966 as young parents, my wife Laura and I moved to Lyttelton, knowing no one there and little about the place, other than it was the port for Christchurch, and at that time the terminal for the inter-island ferry. I knew also that it was the point of entry to New Zealand for the settlers coming on the First Four Ships from England under the auspices of the Canterbury Association.  It was clear to me that jammed in between high, towering hills and the waters of the harbour, Lyttelton could never have developed into a place of any size. It was always destined to be in thrall to the younger, but rapidly growing settlement of Christchurch that had the room to expand, and the productive flat land beyond.  But otherwise, I knew nothing of the rich history of the town and the prominence it had once enjoyed in Canterbury, and New Zealand.

 The rail tunnel, hewn by Cornish miners brought over for the purpose, put an end to the difficulties of moving people and goods between the port and Christchurch. The steepness and precipitate nature of the tracks and roads limited their use, and the journey by sea around the coast and over the estuary bar was long and at times dangerous. From 1868, residents had a quick rail journey to the centre of the city.

 We, in turn, were benefiting from the opening of the road tunnel four years before. We bought a house on the lower part of the Bridle Path, that same steep track taken by the first settlers with their children, carrying or dragging their chattels over the top of the Port Hills to their promised new settlement. But for us, the Bridle Path now began above the road tunnel portal instead of down near the water, and it had become a sealed road in its lower, settled part but it was still challengingly steep. Directly opposite us was number 10a with a sign Devonia on the gate. There was a tantalising glimpse, at the end of a long, narrow access, of an early house on a rise, almost a promontory, with a commanding view of the harbour and the settlement rising up the hill from it.

 It was exciting getting the house – the first we had owned - and the garden the way we wanted them, while preparing for the imminent arrival of our second child. Consequently, some time elapsed before we met the elderly owner of the house opposite, Miss Margery Kate Hatchwell. Miss Hatchwell (we were never invited to call her anything more familiar even though we got to know her well through the 1960s and 1970s.) She had fine white hair pulled back in a bun, and red cheeks. Her voice was low-pitched and she spoke beautifully with the natural dignity that was very much part of her character. She carried herself very straight and dressed conservatively in subdued colours. When we moved in across the road she had been living on her own for some time: her last immediate family member – her sister, Winifred Mary Hatchwell [2/2/1889 -2 5/8/1963] - had already died and apart from a few close friends of her own vintage, appeared to keep very much to herself. She was pleasant to us in early meetings but took her time before becoming more closely acquainted. If I am sketching a picture of the type of person who used to be called a ‘gentlewoman,’ that is intended.

 It was on the Bridle Path itself that we first met her. We had noticed how accustomed the locals were to walking up the steep streets, and we were open-mouthed when we first saw how some varied their trip by walking up backwards to use other muscles, at the same time looking out to the view. In its still-busy days then, the port always offered something to see.

 On the Bridle Path, the only differentiation between the road and the footpath was a stout, galvanised pipe handrail carried between ancient totara posts, over which hikers would drape themselves to catch their breath, and locals would lean while chatting. We met Miss Hatchwell there, while resting our 3-year old son.  Though in her eighties, she still walked everywhere, even carrying her groceries up the steep incline. The house had been her home all her life and as she said, she had always walked. A woman friend might drive her to Sunday church services, but otherwise she was wary of accepting a lift up the hill and she would bend down to check first who was in the car.

 Initially, to us she was just an old, single lady and it was some time before we knew much about her. Gradually we learnt elsewhere that she was the youngest daughter of deceased master mariner and well-known Lyttelton identity, Captain Robert Hatchwell. Like many of his calling, upon marriage and starting a family he ‘swallowed the anchor’ and found a position ashore. Years later, more information emerged.

 ‘Captain Robert Hatchwell arrived in NZ on Ionic in 1883; he was the local manager of the NZ Shipping Company…The Hatchwells conducted a navigation school for officers and cadets in the Navy over almost 50 years at the family home ‘Devonia’; his daughters taught signalling here where they had panoramic views of Lyttelton’s harbour.’ The City Council notes on the house site say that the Hatchwells ‘named it Devonia after their home county of Devon in England. They altered the house when they bought it in 1889 adding a larger bay window on the front and a bull nosed veranda, the original bay window was moved to the side facing the Bridle Path entrance. An inside bathroom and new north facing bedroom was added to the house in 1918.’[1] 

 As young parents, we marvelled at a house that was not only a family home but also a navigation and signalling school for numbers of cadets, but apparently having an outside toilet and bathroom facilities for 29 years, before they were brought inside.

  Later, after we knew her better, Miss Hatchwell told us that she and her sister used semaphore to communicate with ships as they approached the inner harbour. We had a mental picture of young women outside their house in long drab dresses vigorously waving brightly-coloured flags about to attract the attention of men on sailing ships. It sounded daring for the times and it did not fit our image of Victorian propriety. Yet she was the essence of decorum.

 There was obviously a lot we didn’t know; being young people we didn’t feel able to press an old lady for more information than she volunteered. But she felt able to come over once in a while for a cup of tea, to enjoy our children and hear of the little events that became part of the family lore. Like the time the two M.E.D. men up the power pole at our gate were invited in by our 3-year old to watch the baby being breastfed; thankfully, they declined…

 It seemed clear from my subsequent reading that Captain Hatchwell’s position would have been a demanding one. Lyttelton was a busy, bustling port. Photographs taken in the 1870s and 1880s show a forest of masts and rigging in the harbour such that it is not easy to distinguish one ship from another; it was the time of the graceful clipper ships taking our wool and wheat to Britain. They were fast but the voyage could still take up to 100 days. In time that forest would gradually yield to the no-nonsense metal funnels of steamships. The opening of the graving (dry) dock in 1883 provided the opportunity for more maritime industries and the reclamation area created with the spoil from excavation provided more urgently needed flat land and more jobs.

 The rail tunnel, as well as making the port more accessible, also made the town more a place to pass through. However, it was still prosperous, it had a good number of shops, supplemented by ships’ chandlers, giving a better selection of goods and services than was available in a non-port town of similar size, and almost all the needs of the residents could be met locally.  Always self-contained, the community of those who stayed became ever more tightly knit. But John Johnson, in his The Story of Lyttelton quotes Millicent Kennedy:

‘In her interesting account of early Lyttelton, Miss Kennedy makes the point of showing how all the early colonists had to rough it at the beginning; but before long, differentiation in the work of the several ‘grades of society,’ as they imagined themselves, had begun to make its appearance. “But,” she says, “in Lyttelton there has never been any wide separation between the different classes.” ’ Johnson goes on to say, ‘The population of the Port has been, and still was when she wrote, drawn chiefly from the lower and upper middle classes, as so known in England. In 1876, there were neither any slums, nor any distinguished aristocracy.’[2]

 Nevertheless, humans seem programmed to form groups within the whole, and even in the Lyttelton community of under 4000 people, social groupings established themselves. While those people with aspirations to gentility and higher places socially moved onto Christchurch, Lyttelton had its own social order.  The Mayor and his Councillors, local Members of the Harbour Board and the Harbourmaster, the Bank Managers and Postmaster, the Shipping Company Managers, all were written prefaced in capital letters, and regarded in a similar fashion socially; they with the local lawyers, doctors and more prominent merchants were the leaders of the local society. 

 Captain Hatchwell was a member of this group. He was a man of standing in Lyttelton; as well as his position with the NZ Shipping Company, and his navigation and signalling schools, he was also Commodore of the Canterbury Yacht and Motor Boat Club. He was a Justice of the Peace, and newspapers of the day report his work on the Bench dealing with various miscreants.  He was appointed in 1904 as one of the Trustees of the Lyttelton Public Cemetery where all deceased, other than Anglicans, were buried. He and his schools were certainly well-regarded in the community. The Press in 1912, mentions his writing a

 ‘small volume…that explains in simple form the stereographical projection of the sphere …a most useful nautical projection…by the well-known principal of Devonia Navigation School, Lyttelton.’[3]

 We slipped easily into our new way of life overlooking the harbour. We watched for the arrivals, always prompt, of the inter-island ferries and their departures, sometimes delayed by the late arrival of the express that came all the way up the island from Invercargill right onto the wharf. We noticed other shipping movements; a blast from a ship’s horn would alert us to its departure. Sound carried up to us unhindered. One morning we awoke, unbelieving, to the roaring of lions and the trumpeting of an elephant. A circus had arrived from Australia and they were deck cargo.

 It was a place to expect the unexpected. Chinese crew members celebrated the beginning of their New Year with noisy fireworks and colourful, writhing dragons on the decks of their ships. At midnight our own New Year’s arrival was marked by a loud cacophony of ships’ horns, each trying to be the last to sound; one year it was 2am before the last two stopped. The weather was more dramatic, more demanding of our attention in Lyttelton than we had been used to. At times we cowered as the chilled south-westerly swept down the harbour from Gebbies Pass, without hindrance until it struck our house, shaking it and rattling the windows with volleys of rain and hail. In summer, often we walked down to find the town baking in its sheltered heat, nothing stirring, the sweltering streets and buildings wobbling in hazy mirages. 

 We had grown up with nation-wide radio, and television had arrived in New Zealand just a few years before our move to Lyttelton and was quickly becoming part of our universe. With small children limiting us, these kept us entertained. After listening to Margery Hatchwell’s occasional remarks, we wondered how the local people like her family amused themselves, what recreation and social life they had in the 1800s and early 1900s. From various accounts we learnt about the ‘visiting’ – calling on each other in their homes - and the parties and balls, right from the first months of the settlement. At that early time, for others, it may have been as Geoffrey Rice noted,

 ‘The hotels provided not only refreshment but also what little recreation was available in early Lyttelton: the Robin Hood advertised “a Good Dry Skittle-Ground”.’[4]

Things were better in 1865, when the Colonists’ Hall opened. Rice records that it had ‘committee rooms, library and reading rooms, and a grand concert hall on the top floor. This became Lyttelton’s venue for amateur theatricals, concerts and visiting entertainers…’[5] These events were well supported; for there were few other opportunities for women to socialise that were not in some way linked to their husband’s or father’s interests or work.  Dance halls and billiard rooms were established. By the turn of the century, or shortly after, a band rotunda was constructed, and there were three cricket clubs.

 From the beginning, men associated in their various groupings. There were several Freemasons Lodges, as well as Oddfellows, Foresters, Druids, temperance lodges and friendly societies. For its size, Lyttelton seemed almost oversupplied with such bodies.  But if the men were well catered for, it was not so for the women. Apart from the churches and church-linked organisations, there were various charities to assist with, and a few other bodies such as the Choral Society (which was one of the earliest organisations.)  The Y.W.C.A. started in Lyttelton about 1917 and for thirty years provided its range of activities, but I did not know if the Misses Hatchwell ever took part. Those women who were married attended official functions with their husbands, and these functions were numerous and lavish. But Scotter records that the opening of the dry dock was marked by a magnificent banquet for 700 gentlemen, thirty of whom made speeches. It cost £533, of which £240 alone was for assorted wines.[6] By his mention of ‘gentlemen’ it seems women were not part of that assembly.

 Always, however, the harbour was a popular recreation area for all, not just for the town but for Christchurch and beyond, providing interest and attractions. Early on, the Lyttelton Borough Council provided bathing facilities (including a shark net!) at Sandy Bay which disappeared under the reclamation area near where the oil storage tanks now stand. There were small steamers and other excursion boats and launches providing trips to Diamond Harbour, Purau and Corsair Bay for picnics, and outings around the harbour. Miss Hatchwell spoke of Sunday school picnics and other organised trips on the water to these places. We ourselves walked to Corsair Bay, the baby in his pushchair, for the children to have a paddle, sharing our incredulity at the mental image of large numbers using steam launches to travel there in earlier days and crowd the beach, dressed up to the nines. We had also seen a picture of Evelyn Page’s painting showing the crowds there similarly (by our standards) overdressed. How had they all coped with the heat? we wondered. Appearances and respectability won out over comfort every time, it seemed. Another early photograph showed watersiders about to set off on their picnic on a small steam boat crammed with mostly men, everyone of them wearing a hat and a tie. It was so alien to us, it was like scenes from another country.

 Miss Hatchwell spoke several times of the annual Regatta Day. Held on New Year’s Day, it attracted immense crowds from beyond Lyttelton. For example in 1896, the Railways Department announced it had carried no fewer than 25,000 people to Lyttelton on that one day.[7] Hundreds of people were on the water. A photo of Oxford Street on Regatta Day, 1911 shows the street crowded with people, everyone wearing a hat, even the children; the women are in their long elaborate dresses and their hats are huge. After many boat and yacht races, the day would finish with an underwater explosion – a strange event to people of our generation – and a fireworks display, both of which thrilled the children then. Miss Hatchwell told us that her father had taught his daughters to sail (the photo of her shows a photo of their boat on the wall)  and they had a launch, the Onawe, and they participated in Regatta events. The ‘Onawe’ was well known in the port, and later became one of the Diamond Harbour ferry service vessels. They were wonderful days, she said, competing with other families, the water thick with boats and churned white by the wakes. They gathered afterwards for the races’ ‘post-mortems’ and good-natured ribbing on shore to end the day.

 Visits by important vessels - particularly naval ships – drew huge crowds to Lyttelton as did a succession of Royal visitors who of course came by sea. Like the rest of New Zealand then, Lyttelton felt British and was intensely patriotic. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee brought crowds of people to Lyttelton and they watched processions on land and events on the water. Departures of troops for the Boer and 1914-18 wars were witnessed by equally huge numbers on the wharves. Every event was celebrated with gusto. It became very apparent to us that in those days, perhaps because of a lack of other diversions in their lives, people took every opportunity they could to come together as a community to celebrate or mark an occasion.

 Many people have an immediate image of a port as a rough place with seamen coming ashore after a spell at sea, and getting drunk and disorderly, with or without equally rough women. One of the features of life in Lyttelton was the interaction between people in town and port. Residents told us that just as their parents had done before them, they kept their families, particularly the females, away from the wharves; ‘the only females down there are ‘ship girls’ from Christchurch,’ they said. But on the other hand, particularly in earlier days when machinery was limited, loading and unloading was more leisurely, ships could be in port for up to a month, and locals working on the wharf or for the harbour board, made friendships with seamen and took them home for meals and home comforts.

 In addition to church attendance and official functions, much of the social life of the Hatchwells and similar families consisted of putting on recitals, singing and musical evenings. Visiting ships provided an opportunity to host the officers and quite formal dinners were held in homes. During the lengthy periods - sometimes weeks - it took to unload ships, many deep friendships developed with local families.  Histories of Lyttelton recount stories of ships’ officers joining local families for a singsong around the piano. With limited opportunities, important arrivals and departures generated huge interest. People flocked to Lyttelton for Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s farewell, the crowd estimated at up to 50,000, of whom 6000 went as far as the Heads to see him off. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebrations were also on a large scale.

 As I said, Captain Hatchwell taught his daughters to sail, and I have wondered since, now that I know more about the times and their conventions, whether that was a unconventional thing for young women of the day to do. One of the sights at that time, she told us, was a school of seven whales which regularly came up as far as Quail Island, though by 1930, only three remained. The island, after being a human quarantine station in the beginning of Canterbury and a convalescent station, was used to isolate and treat people with leprosy. She told us of the times they sailed there as a family to visit the lepers, taking food treats, new reading material and other ‘comforts’ as she called them. They stayed for some time talking, for the lepers received few visitors and their days were long and monotonous, but the Hatchwells were always careful to keep a safe distance; there was a fence beyond which visitors did not go. The numbers of afflicted people on the island began with an unfortunate solitary individual and grew during until 1925 ‘when the eight remaining lepers were transferred to Makogai Island, Fiji’.[8]

 Given the universal fear that existed at that time of this disfiguring, disabling disease, one can only admire the moral courage of the family who, with a few others like them visited the lepers regularly. The Hatchwells, like most people of the time, were very committed church goers, and their practical Christianity showed through in this and other activities. The mother, Mrs Ellen Louisa Hatchwell, was a volunteer nurse during the disastrous 1918 flu’ epidemic, believed to have been brought home by returning servicemen. The family were prominent in St John’s Presbyterian Church, and mentioned in its centenary history 1864-1964. Margery’s name appears in the Lyttelton Times as a prize winner in the Sunday School awards. They also gave assistance to the Sailors’ Home, set up originally to provide temporary accommodation and home comforts for seamen, later to become a charitable institution.

 She had told us a little about the family entertaining personnel from visiting ships, but perhaps because of her natural modesty, did not reveal that Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton had been regular visitors at their house. It was only through my later reading that I discovered this. A paper by Jane Ellis records that

‘Shackleton spent about a month at Lyttelton overseeing the restowing of the Discovery, and became known in the community. Hospitality was provided by local citizens such as the daughters of Captain Hatchwell who ran a navigation school with their father, and entertained Shackleton at their home in Lyttelton, Devonia Cottage 10a Bridle Path.’[9]  

 We had learnt elsewhere that Devonia, known as such by everybody, attracted many young men both as students, and visiting ships’ officers. (For example, see Postscript 2.) The house must have been full of many young people, animated and lively. Yet these two daughters, Winifred and Margery, died spinsters. That may have been in part because they were required to keep a formal distance from those they were tutoring, and it would not surprise me if their father had been a dominating, intimidating figure. Victorian men ruled the family roost, and a ship’s captain would be even more autocratic. The social mores of the day were strict, and this persisted at least up to the 1914-18 war and beyond. I was interested in the social life that someone like Miss Hatchwell experienced. The little anecdotes she told us were fascinating but they were only as much as she was prepared to offer. As I said earlier being a young person, and in those times of good manners I didn’t feel able to question her further. Later, we moved away and later still she died.  Over time, I had had to find out what I could for myself.

 Miss Margery Kate Hatchwell had lived through a time of six monarchs from Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth; during a time when the British Empire was still a force to be reckoned with globally; from the heroic polar exploits of Scott and Shackleton to American Deep Freeze vessels calling into Lyttelton and then year-round life at bases on Antarctica; from the invention of the motor-car and the aeroplane to nuclear power and the computer; yes, from the Wright brothers to round- the-world jet travel and men walking on the moon. It is inevitable that we look back on the simple, unsophisticated pastimes of her youth with condescension and superiority; every century does. But if she had been still alive today in the 21^st century, what would she have thought of our equivalent of her time’s mostly communal entertainment and recreation - our almost desperate need for distraction and diversion, our requirement to have amusement provided for us rather than doing it for ourselves?

 We were invited into Devonia on few occasions and I have the recollection of a flagstone entranceway, of dark-timbered walls inside, of sparse and Spartan furniture and furnishings probably unchanged from the time when all the family was alive. I can recall on the wall a large framed photograph full of incredible detail; the picture was clearly taken on a large glass negative. It showed the huge crowds on the wharf for the departure of one of the Polar Exhibitions. There was a young woman in a long dress standing on her own in the foreground: Margery Kate Hatchwell herself.

 I remember ‘Cocky,’ a cockatoo, in its large cage. It had been left with Captain Hatchwell by a seaman who was going off to sign up for service in the 1914-18 war, the ‘Great War’ as it was called, until he came back.  He never did.  No-one knew how old the cockatoo was at the time, but over sixty years on, Cocky was still there, imitating everything and everyone. He was an embarrassment at times to Miss Hatchwell; she couldn’t stop him copying exactly the hacking cough of one of her friends, or taking the end off any finger foolishly poked into his cage, his territory. And I can’t escape the memory of ancient cockatoo and solitary gentlewoman declining together in a large, mouldering house; deathly quiet but still full of the memories of laughter and music and deep, animated conversations and bright repartee.             

Postscript 1. [1]he Christchurch City District Plan Heritage Assessment Statement of Significance  - Heritage Place Item 1131 Report dated 25 February 2015 says:

Devonia has cultural significance as a social and educational hub in Lyttelton and for its ability to demonstrate the way of life of a family much involved with the local community and maritime culture in the late 19^th and early 20^th century…Devonia has architectural significance as a Victorian one and a half storey villa with a high level of integrity…It is on a prominent ridge overlooking the port with views over the harbour.

 After Margery Hatchwell died, Devonia passed down within the family but was unoccupied for many years before being sold. It was empty when completely destroyed in a spectacular fire on 18 December 2022

 Postscript 2: In February 2023, Tim Woolgar, descendant of Captain Hatchwell’s brother and who maintains the family’s connection with Devon – he runs the Hybrid Gallery there - sent me the photo below of the Hatchwell family which he had received from John Munro, then resident in Canterbury, NZ, and grandson of Cicely (referred to in the list of names he provided below as ‘My Nana’).