1.
Lilian Browning was only a matter of weeks away from graduation. She had worked hard for her Bachelor of Arts degree at Victoria College in Wellington and this was uppermost in her mind, as she ran down the front steps of the Gothic Revival styled, Main College building.
The rectilinear forms and the English bond brick exterior, the vast halls and library within, she would certainly miss the bricks and mortar as much as the camaraderie of fellow alumni. But it was the end of an era, that chapter of her life and the excitement of a new one meant that natural enthusiasm would over-ride any nostalgic thoughts that had cause to linger.
She had entered the establishment three years prior, buoyed on by the recent success of Michael Joseph Savage in leading the Labour Party to power in New Zealand for the first time.
The long-serving coalition, the National Political Federation Party, had suffered a heavy defeat to Labour in 1935. Poor handling of issues arising from the Great Depression, was universally believed to have been largely responsible for their demise.
Invigorated by youth and academic rigour, Lilian intended to apply herself to the subject of political science. As the depression receded and the country found new financial health, there was a feeling that intellectual values were driving the new world forward and she wanted very much to be a part of it.
But a year into her studies, she discovered that she didn’t care too much for political activism, overtly socialist views or the unsavoury distaste of the overly ambitious. She did have faith in and found guidance from the motto of Victoria College, which when translated from Latin read; “Wisdom is more to be desired than gold”.
She had developed a genuine interest and passion for History and the fact was not lost on her, that that particular subjects fortunes had been on the rise since the change of government. It was not too long ago that History had been viewed as the ‘softest option in the arts course’ and a poor relation to commerce.
The tag had been given it by the annual student newspaper, the Spike, but as the new society flourished and became freer in thought, those opinions were no longer considered pertinent.
By 1938, one of the strongest departments was History, driven by a man regarded as ’the new generation of lecturer’, John Cawte Beaglehole.
Beaglehole had been appointed as the History department’s first lecturer in 1934, shortly after he’d researched and written a book entitled the Exploration of the Pacific. This would lead to an addiction, for him, of all things Captain James Cook FRS RN related.
Lilian had not only read his work, she adored his lectures and could not stand the thought of ever having to miss one. He embodied everything she wanted in a modern tutor and she fully embraced his teaching practices, which she believed gave an edge and excitement to not just the subject, but learning in general.
In recognising this and in turn, helping to foster her own unbridled passion, J. C. Beaglehole had encouraged Lilian to help revamp the flagging fortunes of the student newspaper, which he considered was a sad indictment of what was possible to put to print and as a doctrine, outdated in format.
Lilian was a very good writer, with the ability to clearly translate thoughts from pen to paper and always well organised in everyday life. He was duly impressed with an essay she had written on the Hungarian newspaper editor, László Bíró (and his chemist brother, György), who had filed a British patent for a ‘ball pen’, an alternative to the often messy and unreliable quills and fountain nibs.
She was a member of the Wellington Co-Operative Book Society and concerned her affairs with social progress, culture and liberty. Beaglehole knew full well that she was a born editor. His persistence with pressing her over the issue was rewarded - and his faith in the project vindicated - with the publication of the first edition of a new student magazine, called Salient.
Lilian had also been influenced by another old alumni of the College, ten years her senior, but a woman whom she greatly respected and admired. Robin Hyde.
Another with a great passion for writing, Hyde had worked as a journalist for Wellington’s Dominion newspaper, although mainly to support her own creative addiction, poetry.
As she walked over the Salamanca Road bridge on the Kelburn cable car route that warm, spring afternoon, Lilian had also in her possession, a copy of Robin Hyde’s most recent novel, the Godwits Fly.
The pair would often spend time together in the old cemetery in Bolton Street. The place had been closed since 1892, but Lilian and Robin would wander through the tombstones, concerned that mourners no longer came to lay their wreaths and flowers.
She was heading there now on her own, wondering what Robin would have made of all the noise pollution associated with the new tram road being constructed at the Western entrance, off Sydney Street.
Hyde had departed New Zealand in February, intending to take the trans-Siberian railway to Europe, via Vladivostok. Lilian had heard that her friend had been delayed in Japanese occupied Shanghai, but was in turn fortunate enough to have met up with a fellow ex-pat, writer and political activist, Rewi Alley.
Alley was in the throngs of helping establish grassroots industrial and economic development in China. His political leanings had meant ostracisation in his home-land, where he himself perceived there to be a fascist streak, but Lilian knew that he would be a source of inspiration to Hyde, as she peregrinated through eastern China.
Lilian was unaware, as she meandered through the old cemetery, dappled in sunlight, that having been handed over to British authorities in the port city of Tsing Tao, Hyde was on her way, via sea, to Southampton. She did miss her company so and held that thought as she approached the chapel, with broken blue windows, where the pair would often sit and share banter and a cigarette.
“Use your words as King’s use gold,” Robin once told her, “and be steadily bold in the counted tale of things.”
Lilian laughed to herself recalling the ornateness of the rhetoric and noticed a starling dash in and out of the chapel in panic. As if by way of communion, it appeared to have flown into a piece of jagged glass and as a result, left a drop of blood on a wild rose, growing amongst a great mass of re-flowering weeds.
She soon thereafter came upon a family plot, once again her attention drawn to the empty jam jars at the feet of the graves. It took just half a century, she thought to herself with a good deal of empathy, for these people to have been completely forgotten about. Further investigation of the tombstones revealed that three of the five children (co-incidentally the three youngest) had all died on the same day in 1881.
Saddened by the thought and annoyed by the not knowing how, Lilian decided that when she returned to Vic the next morning, she would approach Professor Beaglehole directly, to see what historical documentation was available pertaining to the dis-used cemetery and in doing so, hopefully solve the mystery of the three Wallace children.
And their father, John. Who was he? What did he do?
The following morning, she was set to interview Mr. Thomas Hunter, for Salient. Hunter had just been appointed the first Principal of Victoria College. At long last, the institution was to have a designated and permanent academic head.
After that, she was going to apply herself to getting to the bottom of this Wallace family issue, once and for all!