Henry Lawson's Story by Trish McBride

In Mount Street Cemetery, near Victoria University in Wellington, there lie many of the early sons and daughters of the Catholic Church of New Zealand. There are the well-known and much-loved, such as Father J.J.P. O'Reily who lies on the crest of the hill, and Father Jean Baptiste Petitjean.

Fr O'Reily was the first resident priest of Wellington, beloved for his charity and respected for his learning. Fr Petitjean was one of the first groups of French Marists - a real missionary who in his 37 years of service to the Lord in New Zealand walked most of its length from Whangaroa in the north to Foveaux Strait in the south. And there are the obscure and unremembered. In the lower section of the cemetery is a sandstone monument, with the grave surrounded by an iron paling fence.

It is just possible to make out the worn lettering on the sandstone - to discover that a young man of noble birth nobly met with death. ‘Pray for the soul of Henry Lawson, second son of Sir William Lawson of Brough Hall in the County of York. He was drowned in the swollen waters of the River Witangi in the Province of Otago on the third day of January 1857 in the 24th year of his age in the attempt to save the life of his drowning shepherd. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John C XV v 15.’

There is always something special about a person who gives their life for another. Who was this Henry Lawson, and why was he buried in Wellington when he had died some 600km to the south? These questions have taken several years to be answered, and the picture has emerged of a man who could well be claimed to be a saint and martyr of our early days. Starting point of the search was Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage where his family was listed as still living in the ancestral home. A letter to the current baronet brought an exciting reply from Ben Worthington his son-in-law.

The bereft mother, Lady Clarinda Lawson, on receiving the news of her son's death had compiled an album in his memory. Mr Worthington was prepared to send this to Wellington with a friend who was staying with him and coincidentally was about to return to a teaching post there. The precious black book arrived and the picture started to build.

Henry was an aristocratic-looking young man with a gentle loving nature - page one has, as well as a portrait, some tiny pressed flowers he picked for his mother in Pecknell Wood not long before his departure for New Zealand.

This was not he first time he had left home for foreign parts - as a ten year old he had made his first communion and the same day was confirmed in the church of the Jesuit Fathers in Nice, France. The certificates commemorating these sacraments are in the album. This education was in keeping with the tradition of his deeply Catholic family. As far back as 1500 they had sent their sons to school in France.

The diary of a Lawson who was educated at Douai at that time is still in the family. Of Henry's three brothers one became a priest, and all his three sisters were nuns.

This time away Henry landed in the new town of Lyttleton on the Grasmere on 4th May 1855. The next we hear of him is in December 1856 when he bought from a W.H. Valpy the licence for Run 17 in North Otago, bordered by the Waitaki (the Witangi of the tombstone), the Otekaike and the Maerewhenua Rivers. He took up his sheep- station, hired a couple of brothers named Mc. Lean as shepherds and invited a friend up to stay.

No doubt they would have climbed to the highest point of the rolling acres to admire the panoramic view, with the Waitaki River stretching away out to the Pacific coast. Good land and a good future!

Three weeks later, in high summer, in that area where rain can be so scarce, Henry was drowned. They were dipping sheep in the Washpool in the Otakiroa Creek near the Takiroa Cliffs. These were of interest to the traveller then as now - Māori rock drawings dating back to about 1400 AD decorate the base of the cliffs, and these were recorded by Mantell, one of the early surveyors in his travel notes of 1848. No doubt Henry with his own richly recorded family history going back to the same era would have been intrigued by this corner of his property.

A sheep lost its footing. One of the Mc. Lean brothers - whose name was also Henry, and he too was 23 - dived at it and got out of his depth. He could not swim, nor could his brother who called out to Henry Lawson who must have been nearby. Henry tossed off his hat, and confident of his own strong swimming plunged in, coat, boots and all.

Henry Mc. Lean in panic seized his would-be rescuer and, as related in a letter to Wellington, ‘they both sank to rise no more in life.’ The two bodies were recovered some hours later and as the Lyttleton Times reported ‘although Dr Rayner who was a guest of the unfortunate gentleman was promptly in attendance, life was, of course, extinct.’

What a sad task for Dr Thomas Ottery Rayner who had come to visit his young friend's newly acquired property.

He himself became a notable man in the history of the area. He had arrived in New Zealand as a ship's surgeon on the Edward Paget in 1856 after a distinguished academic career in England. He was one of the first registered medical practitioners in the South Island. He settled in Temuka later in 1857, was instrumental in obtaining a medical school for Christchurch, was active in local body affairs and a strong proponent of South Canterbury's becoming a separate province.

His dying words should be enshrined in the hearts of all South Cantabrians: “Long may Temuka prosper”' (Tīmaru Herald, 4 Nov 1879).

Mr Daniel Lawlor of neighbouring Otakika Station was a Catholic, and he wrote to Fr O'Reily in Wellington to tell him the sad news and ask for the prayers of the community there. He mentions that he had also written ‘to my sisters in Nelson to beg the prayers of the Roman Catholic Congregation there for him - I am sure Mr Garin will have him prayed for in chapel.’

This letter, the first item in Lady Clarinda's album, was written the day before Mr Lawlor and a Catholic workman buried the men on top of a cone-shaped hill near the Maerewhenua River as there was no Catholic priest or church in the province.

No doubt if Parson Andrew the Anglican minister (and also a Yorkshireman) had been within reach he would have conducted the service; but in early January he and his family were just leaving Christchurch on the three weeks’ journey to their new home at Otematata.

Also in this letter we get a glimpse of Henry as a person of deep spiritual convictions: ‘Poor Mr Lawson was a most earnest Catholic - and most attentive to his religious duties so far as the nature of such essentials permitted being practised in this remote district … he had been most attentive to his morning and evening devotions and his respect of Friday and fast day restrictions - on his person was (sic) found an Agnus Dei, a miraculous medal, rosary beads and a crucifix.’

Fr O'Reily obviously forwarded this letter to England, no doubt accompanied by some consoling message of his own. He must have known Henry because his associate Fr Petitjean knew him and loved him well. These saintly men, as mentioned both buried in the same cemetery as Henry, must have found joy in his visits to Wellington from the South Island.

Fr Petitjean wrote to the family later: ‘… the very last time he was in Wellington, of course as usual he went to confession and after to the Holy Communion. But as the vessel which was to take him to the Southern Island delayed a little on account of contrary winds ‘the more opportunity is left to me’, did he say to Mrs Clifford, ‘I know not when I can receive the Holy Sacrament again, I must have the happiness to communicate this time once more’ - and so he did, thus taking a double provision for a long journey, the journey to Eternity.’

At this time it was most unusual for a layman to receive Communion on a daily basis.

The Mrs Clifford mentioned was Mary Ann, wife of Sir Charles Clifford whose family had close connections with the Lawsons. They too were staunchly Catholic Yorkshire landed gentry. Fr Walter Clifford, a Jesuit and a cousin of Charles, was the Lawsons’ family chaplain at Brough Hall and Charles' son George subsequently married Henry's niece. It seems likely that during Charles' visit home to England, 1848-50, he could have fired the teenage Henry's imagination with his talk of the possibilities of sheep-farming in the new colony, and even encouraged him to emigrate.

With his cousins William Vavasour and Frederick Weld, Clifford had been in at the very beginning of sheep farming in this country. He was a prominent politician as well as a farmer and was elected the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1854.

His position in the colony no doubt meant that when Henry visited Wellington he would have been mixing with the notables of the town. On May 15th 1857, shortly after news of the accident reached England, Fr Clifford preached at the memorial service for Henry in the family chapel of St Paulinus. One of his themes was the nobility of the lineage. ‘In the ancient annals of his illustrious house are blazoned many and many a noble deed which his numerous ancestors have written there, and by them gained such great and glorious names, and has the dear departed one degenerated from them, will his generous noble deed be least and last upon those pages? The achievements of many are written in characters of blood for it was in the strife of war and in bloodshed of their fellow creatures that they earned their title to be heroes, but this their descendant has gathered with unstained and unsullied hands a far more glorious crown: he has sacrificed his own life in trying to save a fellow creature.’

Another theme is the fulfillment of the duty of a master to a servant in accordance with the fourth commandment.

A letter was promptly dispatched to the colony with instructions that could only come from a family of strong convictions and adequate funds. Henry Lawson was to be disinterred from the hasty grave on the hill in Otago, and his body was to be brought to Wellington to be buried on consecrated ground with the full rites of the Church. Here was the key to the mystery of Henry's Wellington grave. Although the reburial merited only a few lines in the New Zealand Spectator of July 29th 1857 it must have caused quite a stir in the town.

‘On Monday afternoon the remains of the late Henry Lawson Esq (which were brought from Waitangi in the Lady Grey last week) were interred in the Catholic Cemetery, Wellington. The funeral left the residence of C. Clifford, Esq., and was very numerously attended, C. Clifford, Esq., with his son and N. Levin Esq attending as chief mourners.’

That same day Mary Ann conveyed some consoling and surprising details to Henry's parents: ‘I think it will comfort you to know that every office of the Church has been performed over your dear son's remains. The disinterment was confided to Mr Curnin, a Catholic and one who tho' he had known him only a short time yet valued him highly. l have just returned from the Church where most of the Catholics and a large number of Protestants attended. (Ecumenism flourished in Wellington under Fr O'Reily's tutelage). The noble act with which he ended his life made everyone anxious to shew every mark of respect - even to the lowering of the flag at the Government House, a thing which I never before saw done.’

And, ‘The body had been buried in a wooden coffin on 5th Janry - it was removed to Wellington after being in the ground six months - the coffin had in places decayed - the length of time it took to remove it from its first place of burial to Wellington was a voyage of one week. When the coffin was opened at Wellington the body was found quite perfect, free from the slightest bad smell, and he looked as though he was only sleeping – but a little paler than in life.’

While this account of bodily preservation is surprising particularly in view of the death by drowning, it is not unprecedented. The bodies of many saints have remained incorrupt. However, Mrs Clifford’s letter conflicts with the local tradition which says the men were buried on the hill without coffins. There is no way to verify either aspect of her story.

The disinterment entered local lore in the settlement of Duntroon which grew in the 1860’s close to the site of the two Henrys’ graves. Someone had taken away one of the bodies - the Roman Catholic's. Most Catholics in the area were Irish - so, it was assumed, was Henry Lawson. And if this wealthy Irish family: had removed the body, the obvious place to remove it to was Ireland. This story was recorded in the Ōamaru Mail in 1904 and had lingered until February 1981 when the pieces of the jigsaw were finally put together.

There was astonishment that Wellington had been the destination. The first grave site beside the Presbyterian Manse in Duntroon used to be marked by a picket fence, but this disappeared some years ago. A macrocarpa tree sits on the hill where Henry Mc. Lean still lies, and apparently some years ago a minister new to the area caused a stir by decorating it with coloured lights at Christmas. He did not know it was a grave - surely the Henrys would not have minded!

Mr Curnin was another of the people in Henry's story who had great talents. He was born in India about 1851, was educated at London University and called to the Bar. He came to New Zealand arriving in Lyttleton on the William and Jane in March 1857. This was two months after Henry’s death, so Mary Ann Clifford’s mention of the short time they had known each other must have been conjecture.

For many years, until his retirement in 1894 he was ‘the Crown Law Draughtsman of the colony…. He is known everywhere in the colony as the author of Curnin's Index to the Statutes. He was a prominent figure in the Roman Catholic community of Wellington and was created a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire some years ago.’ (Obit. Evening Post 8.8.1904).

He also rated a photo in Cardinal Moran's History of the Catholic Church in Australasia as a prominent layman.

Sir William and Lady Clarinda had not heard the last from their son's friends in New Zealand On February 18 1858 Fr Petitjean wrote to them to tell them of his love for Henry and his visit to the area where he had lived and died. Fr Petitjean accumulated an impressive record of journeying around the South Island in the days when it was a choice between foot and horseback, and the rivers were unbridged.

Some time between June and November 1857 he travelled between Christchurch and Dunedin and must have diverted to make the visit recorded in his letter to the Lawson's.

‘Perhaps it will be a new assuagement of your sorrow that in a long journey which I undertook to visit the Catholics of Otago Province I went to the station lately occupied by your lamented son. To satisfy my sorrowful heart for I knew and loved him tenderly, I went to every spot which was of some melancholy interest, his house, his resting place, but particularly to the little stream where out of sheer heroic charity he perished. My grief took me to the grave where he had been first deposited and there poured out a fervent prayer for the repose of his noble and virtuous soul.’

He records Henry as saying, ‘There is no fear’ before throwing himself into the water. And continues, ‘Henry was young but ripe for heaven. His soul still quite uncontaminated was to become exposed in a country where alas virtue is rare and scarcely assisted by external means of religion. In that place and in fact in all the province there was no chapel, no priest, hence it was that the Almighty called to himself the innocent and pious young man. Henry loved the Blessed Virgin so much. I was showed the spot where every morning after his breakfast he used to go to say the Rosary.’

And presumably from a member of the household, or maybe Mr Lawlor – ‘I was able to procure a lock of his hair - I send it to you and present it to your family at the same time offering them the sentiments of my sincere condolence.’

In November 1857 Fr Petitjean had written a long letter to the Superior-General of the Marist Order in Rome which is principally an account of this missionary journey. There is a section about Henry, obviously written to relieve the good Father's own feelings rather than to console the recipients. It is quoted in M.C. Goulter's Sons of France.

‘Financially and from every other point of view the Catholics of this Province have reason to feel deeply a grievous loss they have just suffered in the person of an excellent young man, taken away by sudden death. Lawson was his name, and the family that mourns him in England is most pious and respectable. By his piety even more than by his riches, this interesting young man seemed about to become one of the strongest pillars of Catholicism in these parts. Such were our hopes: God thought otherwise. He is no more; he is dead in the flower of his age, and without doubt also in the flower of his innocence. He died the victim of a heroic charity; for it was in trying to save another that he perished in a river.

‘I shall always remember the edification he gave to the parish of Wellington when he came there by sea, to fulfil his sacred duty of confession and to be nourished by the Bread of the strong. The last time we saw him in this town, as if he had a presentiment that he would never again have this happiness, he profited by the delay of his ship to come twice in succession to the Holy Table. I know from eye-witnesses that at home he went every morning to a retired spot, under a rock, (perhaps the Takiroa cliff) to give himself to prayer and specially to the recitation of the Holy Rosary. He did this up to his last day. Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors sanctorum ejus. My Very Reverend Father, in a letter of this kind I would not have spoken at such length of this young man if I had not to comfort my own grief, and sing the praises of such striking virtue - too rare, alas in these desolate countries. Enough about this worthy young man: let us return to my journeys.’

This letter is the strongest evidence of the esteem in which Fr Petitjean held him.

In Yorkshire too there were many concerned to console the Lawsons for Henry's loss. ‘It was suggested that a stained glass window (for the Chapel of St Paulinus)…should commemorate the death of Henry, the beloved son of the worthy baronet…. The young man was as much beloved as his father was respected, and as soon as the subscription was set on foot and made known, not only his friends and dependents, not only Catholics, but Protestants and neighbours of all ranks, both rich and poor showed an anxiety to contribute towards the memorial.’

The consecration of the windows was an impressive occasion - the Bishops of Beverly and Southwark and five other clergy were involved in the ceremony. Then there was a banquet - ‘the poorest subscriber had been invited as well as the most wealthy, and it was a most pleasing union
of high and low, landlord and tenant, master and labourer’ (newspaper clipping, album)

Lady Clarinda busied herself with the memorial album, including newspaper clippings, mementos of his childhood, and with carefully copying by hand the letters received from New Zealand and the sermon of Fr Clifford's. An unknown hand penned an eight verse poem typical of the period beginning:

When the helpless one lay
‘neath the dark waters sinking
O thine was the heart and the arm that would save;
For regardless of life, and with courage unshrinking,
Thou didst rush to his rescue and share in his grave!

And in Wellington, possibly at Charles Clifford's instigation, another reminder was being prepared for the family: a watercolour painting of the grave with its headstone and iron-paling fence. In the background is a corner of the verandah of Fr O'Reily's house. At the bottom corner are the initials C.D.B. - Charles Decimus Barraud, one of New Zealand’s valued early artists.

He left a detailed record in sketch and watercolour of the New Zealand landscape as he saw it from his arrival in 1849. He was also the founder-president of the Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand, which has just celebrated its centenary. Was the painting of the grave commissioned or was he too a friend of Henry’s, paying his own tribute?

In the years since the painting was done, the scrub around the grave has grown into a canopy of trees, the house has long since disappeared, Victoria University has mushroomed around the cemetery, and the bare hills are now covered by the homes of Kelburn.

Henry’s story, too, was almost covered by the moss of time. But its rediscovery points to the conclusion that North Otago numbers a man of unusual sanctity amongst its pioneer sons.

Note:

This was submitted as a story of less than 1500 words (according to the competition rules.) On hearing the author had an expanded version, we asked her to allow us to upload that instead.