Lovers and Husbands and What-not: A Biography of Margaret L. Macpherson by Reynold Macpherson

Author:Reynold Macpherson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

And they take it from Kaitangata

On narrow straight lines.

The people of Kaitangata

Are very, very good.

They believe in Law and Order,

And do everything they should.

No new idea can enter here,

Unrest shows here no signs

For thought runs in Kaitangata

On narrow straight lines. 558

The rest of the article reported a tour by car from Kaitangata to Port Molyneux and back to Kaitangata via Tahakopa, and then a train trip the following day from Balclutha to Oamaru. It was primarily concerned with Margaret and Hamish’s interaction with her host Bee MacTavish, and her twins Peter and John and the driver Mr. Coneybeare, with occasional descriptions of the passing topology and agriculture. The cultural norms of post-pioneer settler and coal mining culture were implicit in the account, such as rugged self-sufficiency with little travel or excitement. The twins may well have been co-opted from Margaret’s own experience given the many flashes of nostalgic maternalism.

When this article was later converted into Chapter VI of Antipodean Journey, it was given an interesting preface about the gold rush origins of Dunedin and Otago, how Whitcombe and Louper found a pass over the Southern Alps, and reported Margaret’s intellectually congenial meeting with the radical Archdeacon Whitehead and cynical medical students at the University of Otago. 559

The fourth article in the “New Zealand Journey” series was about primary industry scientists in Nelson and scenery of the West Coast. 560 The Nelson component had already been published in the Mirror, as noted above. Margaret visited the Cawthron Institute and enjoyed learning about the research projects of Theodore Rigg in land conversion, Kathleen Curtis in fungus diseases, and David Millar in insect diseases. She and Hamish then visited Westport, Greymouth, and the Franz Joseph Glacier.

The article celebrated scholarly culture, the austere magnificence of the Southern Alps, and the charm of a three-year-old boy called Herbert—the son of their host in Nelson. As noted, the child was highly evocative of Margaret’s son, Boeuf. It was also the only article in the series that had a contemporary portrait of her attached (right).

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