Colenso work sets standard for NZ writing

Otago Daily Times, Sat, 19 Nov 2011

THE HUNGRY HEART: Journeys with William Colenso
Peter Wells
Vintage

Being a book reviewer is not the glamorous occupation some might imagine.
One has to read a lot of dross thrust upon one by an impatient books editor with a page to fill and really good reads are rare - the odds are probably comparable with those for winning the lottery. And although winning the lottery once a year is admittedly unlikely, one does hope for one good book in a year's reading.
This year's best read has belatedly arrived and is so good it may prove to be the best read of the decade and certainly must be a strong contender in the next round of literary awards.
Of course, there must be an admission of bias: Peter Wells has long been one of my favourite writers so The Hungry Heart held promise from the outset and by the end of the first chapter was already exceeding expectations. It is the type of breath-catching non-fiction that makes the raciest thriller seem plodding.
William Colenso was one of the great figures of 19th-century New Zealand history though after his death in 1899, it was to take a century before his stature would be fully recognised and historians made to rue the loss of so much of his manuscripts and collections, some destroyed, others so widely dispersed as to vanish from public view.
Colenso (a colossus, as his name hints) bestrode the most vital decades of this country's history; more, Colenso lived and breathed that history.
Born in Cornwall in 1811, he came to New Zealand as an ill-educated missionary with the Church Missionary Society in 1834, lived in Paihia and Waimate North before he was sent in 1844 to establish a mission station in an isolated area of Hawkes Bay at Waitangi, near what is now Napier. His parish covered an astonishing 23,000sq km and over the next nine years, Colenso walked most of those squares, including eight crossings of the Ruahine Ranges, a trackless obstacle clad in dense bush.
Then, in 1853, his calling was shattered when news of his somewhat unusual domestic arrangements became public. Summarily dismissed by Bishop Selwyn, Colenso spent the remaining 46 years of his life trying to escape the stench that mired his reputation.
What did Colenso do that was so terrible? In effect, he went native.
Even before going to Hawkes Bay, he had taken an intense interest in all matters Maori and sensed long before others that the race was at a turning point, after which much would be lost never to be retrieved. Unlike his greedy colleagues in the New Zealand mission, Colenso was not there to grab as much land as he could; indeed, he held no land until after his dismissal from the Church. Colenso was aghast at what was happening to Maori and at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Colenso's was the lone voice to interrupt proceedings by publicly and loudly questioning its benefits for Maori.
Colenso and his New Zealand-born wife, Elizabeth, eagerly embraced the chance to launch a mission station in Hawkes Bay where Pakeha were scarce and the natives, they hoped, less tainted by contact. Their policy was total immersion in Maori society; they lived and breathed Maori to the extent that their two children grew up speaking no English for Maori was spoken exclusively in their home. But another Maori custom was polygamy and a Maori servant girl became, in effect, a second wife in the home, something that became a public scandal once she had given birth to a half-caste baby and admitted Colenso was the father.  
Full review at Otago Daily Times.