We never actually met Mr. Wigglesworth. But we took our attorney’s advice when we hired him to be our accountant in New Zealand when we first arrived.
“Our best advice is Horwath Porter Wigglesworth,” he answered to our request. “We are the Queen’s Solicitors and we always recommend their firm to new immigrants to New Zealand seeking a reputable accountancy group.”
I held the phone away from my ear for an instant. Beau made big eyes at me and held his phone away from his ear too. We weren’t sure we had heard our attorney correctly. “Let me get a pen to write this down. O.K. Ready. Can you spell that for me, please?”
And so he spelled. “—and that’s W-i-g-g-l-e-s-w-o-r-t-h and their phone number is—”
Beau was cracking up and I had a hard time writing down the phone number. But I eventually got it and we made the call.
“Horwath Porter Wigglesworth. How may I direct your call?”
After the Queen’s Birthday and Princes Wharf, well, we should have known that our solicitor wasn’t pulling our leg with this Wigglesworth business.
This brings me back to the subject of naming in New Zealand, in particular. And to the subject of Kiwi English, in general.
Apparently, according to the Jewish Bible—which Christians like to refer to as the Old Testament, to the chagrin of practicing Jews, another instance of the dangerous pitfalls inherent in this process of naming—anyway, apparently God gave Adam the task of naming all the creatures of the world. So this business of naming is very important it would seem.
Shakespeare seems to differ from the Holy Book here. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Oh, really? So would you rather be known in life as Mr. Sterling or Mr. Wigglesworth? Mr. Buckingham or Mr. Wigglesworth? Mr. Shakespeare, for that matter, or Mr. Wigglesworth? I think I know the answer to that, William.
The Complete Works of William Wigglesworth. Hamlet by William Wigglesworth. Romeo and Juliet by William Wigglesworth.
No, Mr. Beaglehole, I don’t think so.
That’s right. You just read correctly. Mr. Beaglehole. You see, I’m reading The Penguin History of New Zealand by Michael King, the foremost historian in our new country. Trying to familiarize myself more each day with my newly adopted patrimony: its culture, its sociology, its economic life, its literature, its history. In his wonderful and substantial book, King references an earlier historian of New Zealand, who won fame as the world’s greatest authority on Captain James Cook. This historian was named Mr. J. C. Beaglehole and he wrote, among other books, The Discovery of New Zealand. In his own history book, Michael King also references a couple of famed New Zealand social scientists, an Ernest Beaglehole and a Pearl Beaglehole.
“Beau, here, take a look at this.” I held out the heavy history book and with my finger I underlined the name: J. C. Beaglehole.
“Jesus Christ Beaglehole!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t blaspheme, Beau. We weren’t raised that way,” said Dee sleepily from her easy chair across the room, Kanji draped across her fat tummy, rosary beads almost falling from her arthritic fingers, fingers that had twisted and cut and curled countless thousands of heads of hair and had probably created and baked millions of Basque and French pastries of one sort or another. Fifteen years old to seventy-seven — what a long lifetime of hard work, I thought as I glanced over at her retired self.
“Hail Mary—my God, it is so beautiful here, just look at the Bay today, again it’s gonna take me hours to say my Rosary—but I never enjoyed it more.”
“What a horrible spelling,” I whispered to Beau. “How would you like to sign that on all your checks and letters and documents? It must be pronounced like Big-e-low, or something. You know, the way the English pronounce the hideous surname Cockburn as Co’burn?”
So I asked our architect about this matter the next time he was in the Far North.
“Rick, how do you pronounce this name.” I underlined it with my finger, just as I had done for Beau.
“Beaglehole!” he almost shouted. He pronounced it just as it was written. Dee just looked at him. Then she whispered in her booming voice, “They’re not all locked up.”
“Isn’t it really pronounced like Big-e-low or something like that?”
“No. Just as it is written. It’s a prominent family in New Zealand.”
“I suppose the Wigglesworth family is prominent too?”
“Quite. An old and well-established family in New Zealand, the Wigglesworths.”
I was not completely sure that Rick wasn’t having us on, given his own name. I refuse to burden you with his surname. It is just so unbelievable and I am afraid I will lose all credibility.
Oh, well, all right then. Our architect almost did not get hired by us because of his name. So here it is—
“But you can’t not hire someone because you don’t like his family name,” Beau had protested. “That would be discriminatory. And we get along with this architect better than any of the other seven we interviewed and he is very good at the homes he has designed.”
“I can see the article now in the New Zealand House and Garden,” I said. Architectural design by Rick Lambone Associates. No, Beau, there is something wrong with a person who is born and raised in New Zealand and is known as Rick Lambone and doesn’t change his name. Do you know we have twelve sheep in New Zealand for every single person? Only 4,000,000 people and 48,000,000 sheep. 48,000,000 sheep and one Kiwi architect named Rick Lambone.
I guess all the Asian immigrants that the right-wing is up in arms about ’cause they’re flooding Auckland with an Asian Tide, I guess all the Asians in Auckland must call him Lick Lambone. No, this I refuse, it’s not an option.”
Of course, Beau convinced me in the end. He started referring to me as Mr. Pigheaded, even in public. “Oh, I don’t know about that, sir. You’ll have to ask Mr. Pigheaded here. Mr. Pigheaded, how much petrol do we want? Fill ’er up?”
And so I folded and we hired Lick. Lambone.
In thinking this over, I realize that you probably think I am making all this up just to be entertaining. I mean Wigglesworthand Beaglehole and Lambone. So, although it’s not that kind of book, let me give you some references: from Michael King’s The Penguin History of New Zealand, Index, page 450:
Beaglehole, Ernest and Pearl 324
Beaglehole, John 91, 99, 314, 315, 364, 437
On second thought, you can simply Google Beaglehole and you will see that I am telling the God’s truth. And Google Wigglesworth. You’ll find a whole tribe of Wigglesworths. Accountants, pharmacists, an industrialist, a professional rugby player, a faith healer who claims God cured him of hemorrhoids and then allowed him to raise several persons from the dead (Smith Wigglesworth). Google and Wikipedia are truly my favorite wonders of the modern world. Along with my Kindle.
What more can I say? Perhaps this. The first Englishman who came to this land in 1769 was named Captain James Cook. And the Māori—when he “discovered” them—were, at that time, cannibals. Cook. Cannibals. You can see where this is going.
In their defense, I should say that the Māori often practiced the art of cannibalism but they only killed and ate enemies, usually other Māoris defeated in battle. But sometimes an occasional group of Englishmen or Frenchmen—there will be no jokes about the relative merits of French versus English cuisine—I might also add that the English in those days kidnapped, chained, bought and sold other human beings, bought and sold them into slavery, but they only did so to people they considered inferior. In fact, in those days in Merry Olde England, husbands sometimes sold a no-longer-wanted-wife because wives were legally chattel in England and in the rest of the, um, civilized world. Wife-selling lasted in England until the late 1800s.
There is always an excuse for any kind of inexcusable behavior in this world.
Anyway, in 1773, ten of Captain Cook’s crew members from the good ship Adventure were killed and eaten at Grass Cove on Arapawa Island in Queen Charlotte Sound on the South Island—where Beau and I came that close to buying an island-bound sheep station. I’ll tell you about that but all in good time. Cook’s ship was well and truly named. It was more of an Adventure than anyone could have foreseen when they set sail down the Thames.
Captain Cook, you and your men are invited to an uncooked dinner this evening.”
Now we all know the English are infamous for their poor culinary skills but this is just too ridiculous. Who says that Lady Clio, the Muse of History, does not have a sense of humor? Imagine the tabloid headlines in those far-off days, in far-off England:
That might have put a damper on the restaurant business in London for quite some time.
So if you think you will find moving to New Zealand easy because we share a common language and share a common Anglo-Saxon culture, think again. I have already explained about cow cockie and chippie and sparky and brickie. And chrissy pressies for Christ’s sake—Christmas Presents. And Kiwis.
Kiwis are fond of inventing slang and seem to be especially fond of what sounds to us like baby talk. The French are fond of calling Americans les grands enfants, grown-up children. I wonder what they would call the New Zealanders.
Now this question of a different language and a different culture in New Zealand brings me to our invitation to Tea with the Descendants of the Reverend Matthews—well, some of his Descendants, those from whom we had bought our farm. Our farm was land-locked by Matthew’s land on the south, east and west sides—land they had “gotten” from the Māoris in the 1830s—and by beautiful Doubtless Bay on the north side. North, looking towards the sunny equator.
So the phone rings in Whatuwhiwhi.
“G’day Aaron. We’d like you and Beau and his Mum to come for Tea Friday night. A sort of little welcoming party now that you are here full time. And a welcome for Beau’s Mum on her first visit to New Zealand. It will also give you a chance to meet the rest of the family.”
“Sure. We’d love to come for tea. What time?”
“Oh, say about eight.”
Seven p.m. Friday evening finds Beau and Dee and me all sitting around our little table in Whatuwhiwhi, filling up on a beautiful home-cooked meal, home-cooked by Beau and his “Mum.” I always stay far from the kitchen when the staff of The Little Basque Dough Boy Café and Restaurant starts tornado-ing between the stove and the fridge and the pantry. It can be dangerous to get in the way.
So we are happily chowing down, fortifying ourselves before tea with the Matthews.
“What a funny time for tea. Eight o’clock, what a funny time,” says Dee. “I thought the English always had tea at five o’clock.”
“They do things differently here in New Zealand, I guess. But it does seem late for tea.”
The phone rings.
“G’day Aaron. Norm and Dionne Drake here. How are things?”
“Oh, hi. We’re eating actually. Beau and Dee cooked a beautiful French-Basque dinner. Or do we say ‘supper’ in New Zealand?”
“No, we say ‘Tea,’ Aaron. The evening meal is referred to as ‘Tea.’ In fact, we would like you and Beau and his Mum to come for Tea any time you like next week. Dionne is going to cook all her specialties, lamb on the spit, fresh snapper and crayfish and mussels from Doubtless Bay, and the Kiwi national dessert. Pavlova.”
I put my hand over the phone. “Dee. Beau. Stop eating right now. We’re going for ‘dinner’ tonight with the Matthews tribe. ‘Tea’ means ‘dinner’ in New Zealand.”
“Lord. I’m not sure I can eat another bite.”
But at 7:30, we are heading down the peninsula to the other side of the Bay to have dinner with the descendants of the Reverend Matthews. Or about thirty of them. Practically everybody in the Far Far North of New Zealand is related ultimately to the Reverend. Māori and Pakeha, nearly all of the really quite small population up here has the Reverend Matthews’ blood coursing through the veins.
Among the local Māori, Matiu is both a popular first-name and a common surname. Whatever the Reverend Joseph Matthews’ beliefs, he took literally the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply.
And multiply and multiply.
Why, you should get a load of the many-branching family tree that has Joseph Matthews as its main trunk. And all his descendants share a strong belief in that same Biblical injunction. They have been fruitful and multiplied like rabbits in Australia, or like possums in New Zealand.
The Reverend Joseph Matthews was the first white man to arrive in the Far North, in what is now Kaitaia, in November 1832. He came out from England when he was very young and was immediately invited to “Tea” by the local Māori.
As Shakespeare would say, not where he eats but where he is eaten.
The Māori chief informed Joe The Reverend and his companions that they were welcome to stay the night but would be eaten on the morrow.
END OF CHAPTER NINE
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Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published on Substack.
Before too long!
In a Desert or a City
BOOK I
‘PRINCE CARTIER’ or HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE BEING GAY WITH MY SAUDI PRINCE AND TO START WORRYING
BOOK II
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE, PARIS
BOOK III
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
BOOK IV
TYROMANCY AND LUCIFER
BOOK V
WHY WAIT FOR THE LIGHT?