Marched the Twelve Hundred.
‘Forward the Volunteers!
Is there a man who fears?’
Over the ferny plain
Marched the Twelve Hundred!
‘Forward!’ the Colonel said;
Was there a man dismayed?
No, for the heroes knew
There was no danger.
Theirs not to reckon why,
Theirs not to bleed or die,
Theirs but to trample by:
Each dauntless ranger.
Pressmen to right of them,
Pressmen to left of them,
Pressmen in front of them,
Chuckled and wondered.
Dreading their country’s eyes,
Long was the search and wise,
Vain, for the pressmen five
Had, by a slight device,
Foiled the Twelve Hundred.
Gleamed all their muskets bare,
Fright’ning the children there,
Heroes to do and dare,
Charging a village, while
Maoridom wondered.
Plunged in potato fields,
Honour to hunger yields.
Te Whiti and Tohu
Bearing not swords or shields,
Questioned nor wondered,
Calmly before them sat;
Faced the Twelve Hundred.
Children to right of them,
Children to left of them,
Women in front of them,
Saw them and wondered;
Stormed at with jeer and groan,
Foiled by the five alone,
Never was trumpet blown
O’er such a deed of arms.
Back with their captives three
Taken so gallantly,
Rode the Twelve Hundred.
When can their glory fade?
Oh! the wild charge they made.
New Zealand wondered
Whether each doughty soul,
Paid for the pigs he stole:
Noble Twelve Hundred!
(1881)
Work
Katherine Mansfield, ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’
At the corner of Oxford Circus Rosabel bought a bunch of violets, and that was practically the reason why she had so little tea—for a scone and a boiled egg and a cup of cocoa at Lyons are not ample sufficiency after a hard day’s work in a millinery establishment. As she swung on to the step of the Atlas ’bus, grabbed her skirt with one hand and clung to the railing with the other, Rosabel thought she would have sacrificed her soul for a good dinner—roast duck and green peas, chestnut stuffing, pudding with brandy sauce—something hot and strong and filling. She sat down next to a girl very much her own age who was reading ‘Anna Lombard’ in a cheap, paper-covered edition, and the rain had tear-spattered the pages. Rosabel looked out of the windows; the street was blurred and misty, but light striking on the panes turned their dullness to opal and silver, and the jewellers’ shops seen through this, were fairy palaces. Her feet were horribly wet, and she knew the bottom of her skirt and petticoat would be coated with black, greasy mud. There was a sickening smell of warm humanity—it seemed to be oozing out of everybody in the ’bus—and everybody had the same expression, sitting so still, staring in front of them. How many times had she read these advertisements—‘Sapolio Saves Time, Saves Labour’—‘Heinz’s Tomato Sauce’—and the inane, annoying dialogue between doctor and judge concerning the superlative merits of ‘Lamplough’s Pyretic Saline’. She glanced at the book which the girl read so earnestly, mouthing the words in a way that Rosabel detested, licking her first finger and thumb each time that she turned the page. She could not see very clearly; it was something about a hot, voluptuous night, a band playing, and a girl with lovely, white shoulders. Oh, Heavens! Rosabel stirred suddenly and unfastened the two top buttons of her coat—she felt almost stifled. Through her half-closed eyes the whole row of people on the opposite seat seemed to resolve into one fatuous, staring face—and this was her corner. She stumbled a little on her way out and lurched against the girl next her. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Rosabel, but the girl did not even look up. Rosabel saw that she was smiling as she read.
Westbourne Grove looked as she had always imagined Venice to look at night, mysterious, dark, even the hansoms were like gondolas dodging up and down, and the lights trailing luridly—tongues of flame licking the wet street—magic fish swimming in the Grand Canal. She was more than glad to reach Richmond Road, but from the corner of the street until she came to No. 26 she thought of those four flights of stairs. Oh, why four flights! It was really criminal to expect people to live so high up. Every house ought to have a lift, something simple and inexpensive, or else an electric staircase like the one at Earl’s Court—but four flights! When she stood in the hall and saw the first flight ahead of her and the stuffed albatross head on the landing, glimmering ghost-like in the light of the little gas jet, she almost cried. Well, they had to be faced; it was very like bicycling up a steep hill, but there was not the satisfaction of flying down the other side ….
Her own room at last! She closed the door, lit the gas, took off her hat and coat, skirt, blouse, unhooked her old flannel dressing-gown from behind the door, pulled it on, then unlaced her boots—on consideration her stockings were not wet enough to change. She went over to the wash-stand. The jug had not been filled again to-day. There was just enough water to soak the sponge, and the enamel was coming off the basin—that was the second time she had scratched her chin.
It was just seven o’clock. If she pulled the blind up and put out the gas it was much more restful—Rosabel did not want to read. So she knelt down on the floor, pillowing her arms on the window-sill … just one little sheet of glass between her and the great wet world outside!
She began to think of all that had happened during the day. Would she ever forget that awful woman in the grey mackintosh who had wanted a trimmed motor-cap—‘something purple with something rosy each side’—or the girl who had tried on every hat in the shop and then said she would ‘call in to-morrow and decide definitely’. Rosabel could not help smiling; the excuse was worn so thin ….
But there had been one other—a girl with beautiful red hair and a white skin and eyes the colour of that green ribbon shot with gold they had got from Paris last week. Rosabel had seen her electric brougham at the door; a man had come in with her, quite a young man, and so well dressed.
‘What is it exactly that I want, Harry?’ she had said, as Rosabel took the pins out of her hat, untied her veil, and gave her a hand-mirror.
‘You must have a black hat,’ he had answered, ‘a black hat with a feather that goes right round it and then round your neck and ties in a bow under your chin, and the ends tuck into your belt—a decent-sized feather.’
The girl glanced at Rosabel laughingly. ‘Have you any hats like that?’
They had been very hard to please; Harry would demand the impossible, and Rosabel was almost in despair. Then she remembered the big, untouched box upstairs.
‘Oh, one moment, Madam,’ she had said. ‘I think perhaps I can show you something that will please you better.’ She had run up, breathlessly, cut the cords, scattered the tissue paper, and yes, there was the very hat—rather large, soft, with a great, curled feather, and a black velvet rose, nothing else. They had been charmed. The girl had put it on and then handed it to Rosabel.
‘Let me see how it looks on you,’ she said, frowning a little, very serious indeed.
Rosabel turned to the mirror and placed it on her brown hair, then faced them.
‘Oh, Harry, isn’t it adorable,’ the girl cried, ‘I must have that!’ She smiled again at Rosabel. ‘It suits you, beautifully.’
A sudden, ridiculous feeling of anger had seized Rosabel. She longed to throw the lovely, perishable thing in the girl’s face, and bent over the hat, flushing.
‘It’s exquisitely finished off inside, Madam,’ she said. The girl swept out to her br
ougham, and left Harry to pay and bring the box with him.
‘I shall go straight home and put it on before I come out to lunch with you,’ Rosabel heard her say.
The man leant over her as she made out the bill, then, as he counted the money into her hand—‘Ever been painted?’ he said. ‘No,’ said Rosabel, shortly, realising the swift change in his voice, the slight tinge of insolence, of familiarity.
‘Oh, well you ought to be,’ said Harry. ‘You’ve got such a damned pretty little figure.’
Rosabel did not pay the slightest attention.
How handsome he had been! She had thought of no one else all day; his face fascinated her; she could see clearly his fine, straight eyebrows, and his hair grew back from his forehead with just the slightest suspicion of crisp curl, his laughing, disdainful mouth. She saw again his slim hands counting the money into hers …. Rosabel suddenly pushed the hair back from her face, her forehead was hot … if those slim hands could rest one moment! The luck of that girl!
Suppose they changed places. Rosabel would drive home with him, of course they were in love with each other, but not engaged, very nearly, and she would say—‘I won’t be one moment.’ He would wait in the brougham while her maid took the hat-box up the stairs, following Rosabel. Then the great, white and pink bedroom with roses everywhere in dull silver vases. She would sit down before the mirror and the little French maid would fasten her hat and find her a thin, fine veil and another pair of white suède gloves—a button had come off the gloves she had worn that morning.
She had scented her furs and gloves and handkerchief, taken a big muff and run down stairs. The butler opened the door, Harry was waiting, they drove away together …. That was life, thought Rosabel! On the way to the Carlton they stopped at Gerard’s, Harry bought her great sprays of Parma violets, filled her hands with them.
‘Oh, they are sweet!’ she said, holding them against her face.
‘It is as you always should be,’ said Harry, ‘with your hands full of violets.’
(Rosabel realised that her knees were getting stiff; she sat down on the floor and leant her head against the wall.) Oh, that lunch! The table covered with flowers, a band hidden behind a grove of palms playing music that fired her blood like wine—the soup, and oysters, and pigeons, and creamed potatoes, and champagne, of course, and afterwards coffee and cigarettes. She would lean over the table fingering her glass with one hand, talking with that charming gaiety which Harry so appreciated. Afterwards a matinée, something that gripped them both, and then tea at the ‘Cottage’.
‘Sugar? Milk? Cream?’ The little homely questions seemed to suggest a joyous intimacy. And then home again in the dusk, and the scent of the Parma violets seemed to drench the air with their sweetness.
‘I’ll call for you at nine,’ he said as he left her.
The fire had been lighted in her boudoir, the curtains drawn, there were a great pile of letters waiting her—invitations for the Opera, dinners, balls, a week-end on the river, a motor tour—she glanced through them listlessly as she went upstairs to dress. A fire in her bedroom, too, and her beautiful, shining dress spread on the bed—white tulle over silver, silver shoes, silver scarf, a little silver fan. Rosabel knew that she was the most famous woman at the ball that night; men paid her homage, a foreign Prince desired to be presented to this English wonder. Yes, it was a voluptuous night, a band playing, and her lovely white shoulders ….
But she became very tired. Harry took her home, and came in with her for just one moment. The fire was out in the drawingroom, but the sleepy maid waited for her in her boudoir. She took off her cloak, dismissed the servant, and went over to the fireplace, and stood peeling off her gloves; the firelight shone on her hair, Harry came across the room and caught her in his arms—‘Rosabel, Rosabel, Rosabel’…. Oh, the haven of those arms, and she was very tired.
(The real Rosabel, the girl crouched on the floor in the dark, laughed aloud, and put her hand up to her hot mouth.)
Of course they rode in the park next morning, the engagement had been announced in the Court Circular, all the world knew, all the world was shaking hands with her ….
They were married shortly afterwards at St George’s, Hanover Square, and motored down to Harry’s old ancestral home for the honeymoon; the peasants in the village curtseyed to them as they passed; under the folds of the rug he pressed her hands convulsively. And that night she wore again her white and silver frock. She was tired after the journey and went upstairs to bed—quite early ….
The real Rosabel got up from the floor and undressed slowly, folding her clothes over the back of a chair. She slipped over her head her coarse, calico nightdress, and took the pins out of her hair—the soft, brown flood of it fell round her, warmly. Then she blew out the candle and groped her way into bed, pulling the blankets and grimy ‘honeycomb’ quilt closely round her neck, cuddling down in the darkness ….
So she slept and dreamed, and smiled in her sleep, and once threw out her arm to feel for something which was not there, dreaming still.
And the night passed. Presently the cold fingers of dawn closed over her uncovered hand; grey light flooded the dull room. Rosabel shivered, drew a little gasping breath, sat up. And because her heritage was that tragic optimism, which is all too often the only inheritance of Youth, still half asleep, she smiled, with a little nervous tremor round her mouth.
(1908)
David McKee Wright, ‘Shearing’
‘All aboard! All aboard!’ is the cry.
They’re a ripping lot of shearers in the shed;
Big Mick, the Speewah ringer, must make skin and trimmings fly
This season if he means to keep ahead;
For Barcoo Ben will run him and half a dozen more
Of the lank Australian crush upon the board,
And it ain’t no use to tell us of the tallies that he shore,
There’ll be records broke this year, you take my word.
‘Wool away! Wool away!’ is the cry,
And the merry game of busting is begun!
They’re going sheep and sheep, for Big Mick will do or die,
And the fleecy boys are kept upon the run.
It ain’t no kind of joking, it’s a game of killing men—
Up the neck and down the shoulder like a flash,
And the scruffing and the rattle of the battens of the pen
As to gain a catch the ringer makes a dash.
‘Sling ’em out! Sling ’em out!’ is the word,
You can hear the grinding pinions of the press,
Snipping shears and flying brooms upon the board,
And the sheep are growing wonderfully less.
The shepherds’ dogs are barking in the yard,
And the penner-up is cursing at the back,
And the boss is looking savage at a long Australian card
With a look that means it’s odds he gets the sack.
‘Clear the board! Clear the board!’ is the shout,
And Barcoo Ben is caught upon the tail!
Big Mick is smiling grimly as he takes the cobbler out.
With a lead of two at breakfast he can sail.
The shearers laugh like schoolboys as they hurry from the shed,
There’s a clinking of the pannikins and knives,
There’s the ‘barrack’ at the table and the clever things are said,
And yet all those blokes are shearing for their lives.
(1897)
Edith Searle Grossmann, from The Heart of the Bush
The mists came down from the Alps, and the rain fell. Dennis had gone to Roslyn, and Adelaide sat alone machining. It was an artistic machine, and it hummed softly. The small foot on the treadle, under the parted skirts, was dainty enough for a Cavalier lyric, and the slim, half-draped arm was held gracefully to guide the work. But Adelaide was white, and there were tears in her eyes, and in truth she was not quite so pretty as she had been. ‘I thought of everything but this—that he s
hould leave me,’ she was saying to herself. She had expected him back by four o’clock, and had made the room warm and bright, and baked his favourite scones and tea-cakes herself, and tired herself out looking after the dinner. Adelaide had developed the talent for cooking which is displayed by most clever colonial girls in the backblocks, and she took a pride and pleasure in it, which was half artistic, half loving. She had dressed herself with care, not so confidently as she used to do, indeed a little anxiously. She had tried first the blue dress, and put it away because her complexion seemed not so exquisitely fair just now, and then she tried the pink, and thought the chiffon was beginning to look limp. And then at the moment when he should have blessed her with his coming, there came instead of her big, brown, loving Dennis, only a scraggy settler, named Grant, who had happened to be in Roslyn that day, and who handed her a folded leaf, torn from Dennis’s notebook, with a few lines scribbled on it:—‘I have to go on to Dunedin by to-night’s express, Aidie dear. I want to get some of the business men in town to take shares in our Farmers’ Freezing Company. Can’t say when I’ll be back. Take care of yourself, my little girl, and don’t worry. I’ll come home to you as soon as I can.—Your DENNIS.’
This was the first time he had left her for more than a day or two, but she felt it would not be the last. The first day’s absence she had taken lightly, but now he was frequently away from morning till night. Was this to be the beginning of weeks of absence? And when he was at home, he often shut himself up in his office. Often men came to see him, and stayed to dinner, uninteresting, middle-class men, who smelt of rank tobacco, and who did not know what to say to her, but looked puzzled if she interpolated any of her light and airy nonsense. They talked of cows, of cream separators, of cargoes and of carcases, and of other deadly things. Meanwhile, everyone was praising him, that was the irony of it, her father and Major Brandon, with whom he was now quite friendly, and Dr Meares and the Willoughbys, everyone except Emmeline, who watched her, and often embraced her silently. This was the hardest thing of all to bear. When the others talked, she smiled gaily with lips that were a little pale, and said, ‘Oh yes, she was sure nobody else knew so much as Dennis about refrigerating plants and Prime Canterbury and all that sort of thing. She was getting quite learned herself about the frozen meat trade, and knew the names of all the ships that sailed under the Tyser flag’. But she could not bear to be pitied by Emmeline.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 21