Both women wore — under their huge poke bonnets — a deceptive look of gentle obedience (being “good wives” in the particular fashion of the period); but though the eyes were dark and dreamy, wide-set under broad brows, the mouth, full-lipped and bow-shaped, was yet very firm. And there was something more — a bit of the fay — in their look; probably from that slight, unexpected flare of nostrils of a longish, well-cut nose; or perhaps from the way the head was set to the shoulders. It is the face that appears in most of Leslie’s better pictures, for “Harry” became his “Stunner” when she became his wife. When Anne Beauchamp sat for him (for instance as “The Widow Wadman,” one of his most popular tableau portraits), she appeared so like her sister as to be but a variation of the feminine type he was making so popular among his contemporaries.
Both women were more intellectual companions to their husbands than was usual in their era. Mrs. Beauchamp shared her husband’s enjoyment of poetry; Mrs. Leslie supported hers in his heroworship of contemporary artists of whom (with his “well-intended reticence”) he preserved in his Memoirs”only the good.” It is significant that John Constable, R.A., who knew them so well, should have written to Leslie:”You are always right and if not, you and Mrs. Leslie together are never failing.” If Anne Beauchamp’s relation to her husband was slightly different, in this particular respect, it must not be forgotten that she had married a “Pa Man.”
The Leslies were a part of the artistic coterie living in St. John’s Wood, safely removed — like the Constables in Well Walk, Hampstead, and the Beauchamps in Hornsey Lane, Highgate — from the “unhealthy humours” of “the slimy marshes of Chelsea and Paddington and St. Pancras.” Though the trip between any two of these was “so much expense” (in a fly), and to have “safely made the journey” sufficient cause for a letter of congratula- tion, the families were close-knit in the bond of children of the same age, and exchanged frequent visits.
John Constable had met the Beauchamps through Leslie, and his two boys were thrilled by the Holborn workshop.
“I went with my boys to Mr. Beauchamp’s last evng.” (Constable wrote to Leslie on January 20th, 1833)”their delight was great — not only at the very great kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp and the boys, but at the sight of almost all that was to their heart’s content — forges — smelting potts — metals — straps — and bellows — coals ashes dust — dirt — cinders — and everything else that is agreeable to boys.
“They want me to build them just such a place under my painting room — and had I not better do so — and give up landscape painting. Poor Mrs. Beauchamp was suffering with toothache — but her politeness made her assure me that I succeeded in ‘taking it off’.”
And on another day:
“John” (who was age eight)”set off alone to Holborn yesterday. Master Beauchamp has engaged him to ‘mind his carronade’ — which he did very nicely.”
From these artistic circles — rather than from the Highgate Grammar School — Arthur Beauchamp probably derived those advantages in culture which, in colonial life later, placed him beside men of good birth and background. John Constable was not the only eminent acquaintance of Arthur’s uncle, Leslie, for he frankly admitted the pleasure he found in “consorting with his superiors.” Turner was an associate of his; Edwin Landseer, the dark curly- headed”boy dog” was in the Academy when Leslie, in his first years over from America, was studying on a Philadelphia grant. Washington Irving was an intimate family friend. Leslie, despite his weakness for men of eminence, lived in closely-knit family ties; and Arthur’s associations with the St. John’s Wood family began very early.
In July, 1830, when his mother was posing for “The Widow Wadman,” Arthur (the sixth of nine sons) was three years old. Since he was the youngest Beauchamp at the time, it is probable that he was taken with her to the St. John’s Wood studio, opening off a garden, from which his handsome young uncle “picked a honeysuckle or a rose” daily before breakfast for the glass “on the mantelshelf of his painting room,” hung, not with his own compositions, but with his copies of the masters. The oldest cousin, Robert Leslie, was four at the time; the boys were of an age to have begun the habit of intimacy, amusing each other while the artist (“keeping up a kind of whistling”) posed his sister-in-law, Anne Beauchamp, as the too refined captivator of Uncle Toby.
3
Jane Beauchamp never went out to New Zealand, though her land titles were under dispute for years after that one burst of independent investment with the Tollemaches, when — at £100 a section — she bought some 1,100 acres in Wellington. Her investment lacked the personal attention which it needed. Land sections were chosen in order of the original land ballot, and though three of her London drawings were among the first 500, her allotted land in Wellington adjoined the Bolton Street Cemetery; while drawings made immediately after hers won sections off Lambton and Thorndon Quays — by position, assured of being important business districts. Her other eight sections were near Wadestown, far to the rear of the proposed city.
Colonel Wakefield had selected the Wellington site, bartering with the Maoris for the 400 miles encircling the Harbour,”100 red blankets, 100 muskets, 2 tierces of tobacco, 48 iron pots, … 60 red nightcaps, 10 dozen looking glasses, 1 gross of jew’s harps,” etc.
The colonisation of New Zealand by the New Zealand Land Company was a remarkable undertaking. In spite of its many practical mistakes the enterprise conceived by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and carried into operation largely by his two brothers, Colonel Wakefield and Captain Wakefield, R.N., marked a new epoch in colonial adventure. The newness consisted in the fact that it was no longer adventure; it was a carefully planned attempt to establish the best type of British stock and the best type of British polity in a country where they could flourish. The necessary capital for the development of public services and the remuneration of competent officials was raised by the selling of land in London; a just proportion between responsible capital and self-respecting labour was deliberately sought. The project was largely and nobly conceived; and it was infinitely in advance of any conception of colonisation in the minds of the Tapers and Tadpoles of Whitehall. It was a highminded and in the final event entirely successful attempt to force the British Government by example into some consciousness of its imperial responsibilities.
On September 20th, 1839, Colonel Wakefield arrived at Port Nicholson, now Wellington, with directions “to purchase native land, to acquire information, and to prepare places for immediate settlement.” In less than three months he was able “to report that he had purchased a territory as large as Ireland, for which he paid to the natives goods valued at, in round numbers, £9,000, and within which he had reserved a tenth part of the whole as land exclusively for the natives.” Meanwhile the Company in London had sold land to the value of more than £100,000, and had despatched 216 first- and second-class passengers and 909 labourers as emigrants to New Zealand, despite the warning of the Colonial Office that the action was illegal. The struggle between the responsible Company and the irresponsible Crown was to vex the early life of the colony.
The immigration ships which immediately followed established the class and character which was to remain New Zealand’s for all time. In addition to administrators — men of good birth and breeding, traditional land-owners — there were mechanics and agricultural labourers, heads of families not over thirty years of age, who were given free passage. This was a select group of serious, law-abiding people, their general character indicated by the compact they made among themselves when they found that — having embarked without Crown sanc- tion — they were without civil authority. Having agreed to live to all intents and purposes as British subjects, and to punish “as if the offence had been committed against the law and within the realm of England,” the colony of 1,500 English and 400 natives lived together for four months “without a serious breach”
