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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Disappointment for Margaret - Scoundrel or Saint - Chapter 13
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Extended Work
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| Disappointment for Margaret - Scoundrel or Saint - Chapter 13 | |
| By jean.day | ||||||||||||||||
| 21 December 2007 | ||||||||||||||||
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I have had a letter back from Edward’s sister, Catharine Torlesse, and what a bitter blow it is to me. I have copied it out word for word. 15 May, 1863 St. Mary’s Vicarage Stoke By Nayland, Suffolk Dear Miss Forbes Thank you for your letter of the 10 of April of this year. I was very surprised to hear of the project you have undertaken. You asked for my support in the continuation of it, but I am afraid that I must tell you that I think you are very much misled if you think this is the right task for you. Forgive my frankness, but from your letter, you sound as if you have had only a basic schooling. Are you aware of just how famous a man my brother was? He wrote many, many books. He was so important in Australia and New Zealand that they named rivers and streets after him. There will be many scholars who will have taken on the task of writing about his life. You say you have a few letters from him to your father - and you think them worthy of publication. I have had hundreds of letters from him - all through his life - and surely those will be the ones that will be of importance to those who write his biography. As far as providing you with the details of his years from 1845 until his death - it would be a mammoth task and I am not up to it physically, even if I approved of your idea. He did so much. I cannot only think that it is your very naivety that makes you even think of taking on this onerous task. I can tell you this. His last 10 years were spent in New Zealand, a country he almost founded, and certainly was very instrumental in how it was constructed and run. During his last five years he was not at all well. My only suggestion to you, is that you might contact his son, Edward Jermingham Wakefield who lives at 7 Kilmore Street, Christchurch, New Zealand. He misses his father so much, and it might be that it would help his grief for him to write about him. He too loves writing letters, as Edward did, and he might be willing to answer your questions. I won’t say good luck with your project, as I think it foolhardy, but if you do succeed and get someone to publish your father’s letters, then of course, I would very much like to have a copy of the book, so keep me informed. Yours faithfully, Catharine T Torlesse How little she values my idea! Is she correct in her thinking? Am I wasting my time and effort for something that no one will be interested in publishing? I knew that he was somewhat famous, but it never occurred to me that many others would even now be writing up the story of his life. But having gone this far, I can at least write to his son and see if he is a bit more helpful to me. Here is the next in the series of letters to Pa. “December, 1833 Dear Daniel England and America is the name of my latest book, which I have published anonymously. It is a work primarily intended to develop my colonial theory, which is done in the appendix entitled "The Art of Colonization." The body of the work is fruitful in seminal ideas, though the critics say some statements may be rash and some conclusions extravagant. It contains the distinct proposal that the transport of letters should be wholly gratuitous and that, under given circumstances, "the Americans would raise cheaper corn than has ever been raised." I wish, however, to try out my ideas by founding a new colony in South Australia. Negotiations with the Colonial Office in 1831 and 1832 broke down, but the publication of England and America, in which I further developed my ideas, has revived interest. I suppose it might be true to say that rather than providing new ideas, it is more a careful decoction of existing idea, practices and proposals. England and America provides selective reading on contemporary writings on America, meant to demonstrate how emigration and settlement up to then was badly conducted, in contrast to my own idealized vision of how colonies should be peopled. I nearly called my book - England and `Ignorant, Dirty, Unsocial, Restless, and more than Half-Savage' America. But I need to court friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Your friend Edward Gibbon”
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Or is she perhaps scared of any skeletons falling out of the cupboard?
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