John Coleridge Patteson

“ Their childhood showed the future man."
At Eton Patteson obtained among his schoolfellows the sobriquet of Old Patteson; and while he was known to the masters as a good boy in school, he was known also to his playmates out of school as a good sculler, a good swimmer, a good cricketer, and a good player at fives and at football. Coleridge, like Patteson, was a favourite of the head-master, and if he inherited a good deal of the family talent, it is no disparagement to them to say that he was indebted to Dr. ”

“ Most men of a year or two past forty are at the most vigorous period of their existence, generally indeed with the really individual and effective work of their lives before them, having hitherto been only serving their apprenticeship; but Coleridge Patteson had begun his task while in early youth, and had been obliged to bear at once responsibility and active toil in no ordinary degree. ”

“ The first curate of Alfington was Judge Coleridge's son Henry, the well-known author of the beautiful Life of St. Francis Xavier. On his leaving our communion, it was his father's wish that Coleridge Patteson should take the cure; and, until his ordination, it was committed temporarily to other hands, in especial to the Rev. Henry Gardiner, who was much beloved there. In the spring of 1853, he had a long and dangerous illness, when Coley came to nurse him, and became so much attached to him, that his influence and unconscious training became of great importance. ”

“ He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained deacon in 1869. At first he laboured with energy and tact as vicar of Wolverhampton in his father’s diocese of Lichfield; but the martyrdom of John Coleridge Patteson, bishop of Melanesia, led him to volunteer for service in the Australasian Archipelago. After three years’ service, during which the bishopric remained vacant, he was nominated as Patteson’s successor (1877) . For twelve years he threw himself with intense energy into his arduous work, but his health broke down and he returned to England in 1890. ”

“ In New Zealand he found plenty of people to appreciate these qualities in a bishop.
Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links. His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary ”

“ These latter drawbacks are doubled when the subject of the biography has passed away in comparatively early life: when the persons with whom his life is chiefly interwoven are still in full activity; and when he has only lived to sow his seed in many waters, and has barely gathered any portion of his harvest.
Thus what I have written of Bishop Patteson, far more what I have copied of his letters, is necessarily only partial, although his nearest relations and closest friends have most kindly permitted the full use of all that could build up a complete idea of the man as he was. ”

“ The birthday letter of February 11 is a happy one, though chiefly taken up with the business matters respecting the money required for the Mission, of which Sir John was one trustee. Life was pleasant then, for Patteson says:—
'I do feel sometimes that the living alone has its temptations, and those great ones; I mean that I can arrange everything—my work, my hours, my whole life—after my own pleasure a great deal more than probably is good for me; and it is very easy to become, in a manner, very self-indulgent. ”

“ The traders engaged in the nefarious traffic in Kanaka labour for Fiji and Queensland had taken to personating missionaries in order to facilitate their kidnapping; Patteson was mistaken for one of these and killed. His murderers evidently found out their mistake and repented of it, for the bishop’s body was found at sea floating in a canoe, covered with a palm fibre matting, and a palm-branch in his hand. ”

“ Primitive Methodism and Plymouth Brethrenism supplied the void, gave opportunities of prayer, and gratified the quickened longing for devotion; and therewith arose that association of the Church with deadness and of Dissent with life, which infected even the most carefully tended villages, and with which Patteson was doing his best to contend at Alfington. The stage of gaining the people's affection and confidence, and of quickening their religious life, he had attained ”

“ Before the old year was out came the tidings of the death of good Miss Neill, the governess whom Patteson had so faithfully loved from early childhood, and whose years of suffering he had done his best to cheer. 'At rest at last.' In the same letter, in answer to some complaint from his sister of want of detail in the reports, he says: 'Am I trying to make my life commonplace? Well, really so it is more or less to me. Things go on in a kind of routine. Two voyages a year, five months in New Zealand, though certainly two-thirds of my flock fresh every year. ”

“ The omission of Patteson's name from among the select was a great mortification, not only to himself but his father, though the Judge kindly wrote:—
'Do not distress yourself about this unfortunate failure as to the Newcastle. We cannot always command our best exertions when we want to do so, and you were not able on this occasion to bring forward all you knew. It was not from idleness or want of attention to school business. Work on regularly, and you will do well at Oxford. ”

“ I have been very happy at Alfington; and I hope to be ordained Priest, on the 24th of September, with a calm mind. I trust I am not following any sudden hasty impulse, but obeying a real call to a real work, and (in the midst of much self-seeking and other alloy) not wholly without a sincere desire to labour for the honour and glory of God.'
With this purpose full in view, Coleridge Patteson received Ordination as a Priest in the ensuing Ember Week, again at the hands of Bishop Phillpotts, in Exeter Cathedral; where a beautiful marble pulpit is to commemorate the fact. ”

“ So ended Coleridge Patteson's school life, not reaching to all he saw that it might have been; but unstained, noble, happy, honourable, and full of excellent training for the future man. No sting was left to poison the fail-memory of youth; but many a friendship had been formed on foundations of esteem, sympathy, and kindness which endured through life, standing all tests of separation and difference.
CHAPTER III. UNDERGRADUATE LIFE AT BALLIOL AND JOURNEYS ON THE CONTINENT. 1845—1852.
University life is apt to exert a strong influence upon a man's career. ”

“ I remember the present Bishop of Carlisle inciting Cambridge undergraduates to become, by virtue of earnestness, gentleness, and toleration, "guides not judges, lights not firebrands." He drew a perfect description of Patteson, who came more completely up to that ideal than anyone I ever knew. Here was a man capable of the purest and most tender friendship, with an exquisite appreciation of all that is noblest in life, and he was ready to give up all, and content to lead the forlorn hope of Christianity, and perish in the front ranks of the noble army. ”

“ Patteson suddenly came on six men with bows bent and arrows pointed in his direction. He at once recognised a man from Veverao, the next village to the station, and called out 'All right!' It proved that a report had come of his being attacked or killed on the other side of the island, and that they had set out to defend or avenge him.
He received his champions with reproof:—'This is the very thing I told you not to do. It is all your foolish jealousy and suspicion of them. There is not a man on the island who is not friendly to me! ”

“ The note to his cousin Arthur written at this time thus ends: 'We worked together once at Dresden. Whatever we have acquired in the way of accomplishments, languages, love of art and music, everything brings us into contact with somebody, and gives us the power of influencing them for good, and all to the glory of God.'
Many were touched when, on the first Sunday in Lent, as Sir John Patteson was wont to assist in Church by reading the Lessons, it fell to him to pronounce the blessing of God upon the patriarch for his willing surrender of his son. ”

“ Poor John! But I can't help him; he must make such terms as he can, for he and his people are wholly in their power.
'Our talk being ended, I found a great circle of men assembled on the outside with a pile of yams as usual in the centre for me. I was glad to see a small pile also for the Frenchman. I made my speech in his presence, but he knows not Lifu. "Be kind to the French, give them food and lodging. This is a duty which you are bound to pay to all men; but if they try to persuade you to change the teaching which you have received, don't listen to them. ”

“ The Primate has left us to hurry down the sailing master of the "Sea Breeze." It was a very rough morning, but is calm now, boats passing and repassing between the shore and the schooner at anchor off Kohimarama.'
The habit of writing journals was not at once resumed by Bishop Patteson when his father was not there to read them; and the chance of seeing his sisters, no doubt, made him write less fully to them, since they might be on the voyage when the letters arrived in England. ”

“ Five years old is in many cases an age of a good deal of thought. The intelligence is free from the misapprehensions and misty perceptions of infancy; the first course of physical experiments is over, freedom of speech and motion have been attained, and yet there has not set in that burst of animal growth and spirits that often seems to swamp the deeper nature throughout boyhood. By this age Coley was able to read, and on his birthday he received from his father the Bible which was used at his consecration as Bishop twenty-seven years later. ”

“ Light baffling winds continually, and we in a vessel as different from the "Southern Cross" as possible, absolutely guiltless, I should think, of having ever made two miles an hour to windward "in a wind." The one thing that stands out as having relieved its dreariness is the presence of Mr. Patteson, the visits he used to pay to us, and the exquisite pathos of his voice as, from the corner of the hold where we lay, we could hear him reading the Morning and Evening Prayers of the Church and leading the hymn. ”

“ One man in particular had a shell eyelet-hole let into his nose, into which he inserted his unicorn decoration. The Bishop amused himself and Coley by saying, as he hung a fishhook on this man's nose-hook, 'Naso suspendis adunco.' Others had six or eight pieces of wood sticking out from either side of the nose, like a cat's whiskers. Two young men were taken from hence, and more would have gone, but it was not thought well to take married men.
The isle of Mara or Malanta had a very shy population, who seemed to live inland, having probably been molested by the warlike Gera men. ”

“ They were born in the same year at the latter end of the last century, and after receiving their first education in the place of their birth, the one at Coney Weston, under his father's curate and friend, the Rev. M. Merest, the other at Ottery St. Mary's, under his uncle, the Rev. George Coleridge, they went to Eton at the commencement of this century; where they contracted a lasting friendship for each other, which ripened afterwards into a nearer and dearer relationship. ”

“ John Patteson, father of the subject of the present memoir, was son to a clergyman of a Norfolk family, and was born at Coney Weston, on February 11, 1790. He was educated at Eton, and there formed more than one friendship, which not only lasted throughout his life, but extended beyond his own generation. Sport and study flourished alike among such lads as these; and while they were taught by Dr. ”

“ Patteson, saying that they saw that this teaching of the Church was right, and they wished to work in it. It was a difficult point, as the London Mission was reasserting a claim to the Loyalty Isles, and the hopes of making them a point d'appui were vanishing; but these men and their wives could not but be accepted, and Simeona was preparing for baptism. A long letter to Professor Max Muller on the languages will be found in the Appendix. The Bishop of New Zealand thus wrote to Sir John Patteson respecting Coley and his work:—
'Taurarua, Auckland: March 2, 1857. ”

“ Nihill went to Nengone with his wife and child. His lungs were much affected, but he hoped that the climate would prolong his power of working among the Christian community, who heartily loved and trusted him.
Other fellow-labourers the Bishop hoped to obtain at home, though it was his principle never to solicit men to come with him, only to take those who offered themselves; but all the particulars of the above narration had been known to Coley Patteson through the Bishop's correspondence with Mr. ”

“ It will be remembered that she had parted from him during the year of waiting and irregular employment:
'We were away from New Zealand nearly three years. We had heard at Feniton dear Coley's first happy letters telling of his voyages to the islands in 1856-7, letters all aglow with enthusiasm about these places and people. One phrase I well remember, his kindly regret expressed for those whose lot is not cast among the Melanesian islands. On our return we went to live for some months at St. John's College, where Mr. Patteson was then settled with a large party of scholars. ”