'Poor Tauranga'

Horace Annesley Vachell
The New York Public Library Digital Collections, Ref. 5154783

I’m probably showing my literary ignorance, but I doubt many Tauranga residents have heard of 20th century English writer Horace A. Vachell. However, it appears that he had heard of us when he wrote his short story 'Civility Pays' and had it published in the August 1930 edition of Windsor Magazine. And while Tauranga receiving a mention in an overseas magazine hardly seems noteworthy, the reaction to it in New Zealand certainly was.

Miss Inez Isabel Maud Cluett née Peacocke
Courtesy of Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

No doubt Varchell’s story would have gone without notice if it wasn’t for the New Zealand author and journalist Isabel M. Cluett (née Peacocke). Cluett’s article, ‘Through English Eyes’, which first appeared in Auckland Star in October 1930, expressed consternation at the negative portrayal of a New Zealander. She writes:

“Only recently I read a story by a well-known English author, Horace A. Vachell, in which he represents a New Zealander in London as dressed in "rough tweeds, red tie, white spats with brown boots, billycock hat jammed on the back of his head, and hands like a leg of mutton," the very image, as I conceive it, of some "flashy" racecourse tout at Epsom, but without the slightest resemblance to any New Zealander of my acquaintance. The author makes this worthy, who is "doing" England—which he fatuously refers to as "My England"—force his way into an exclusive London club, assault an elderly gentleman and the silver-haired hall porter, both of whom he knocks down by "well-directed" kicks and generally maltreats, and all because he does not agree with an article on food, which he believes the elderly gentleman to have written—mistakenly, by the way. This bounder and "bruiser" comes from Tauranga, New Zealand! Poor Tauranga, with its rather exclusive and conservative population, many of them, by the way, retired English people; what has it done to be singled out by this author as the hometown of his barbarous creation?”[i]

Cluett’s patriotic response to the ignorance of the English towards New Zealanders who, in her opinion, had earned a place in the Commonwealth following the sacrifices of the Great War, was picked up by newspapers throughout the country. The phrase ‘Poor Tauranga’ was repeated multiple times, including in the Evening Post – our plight having reached the capital! “The well-known author Mr Horace A. Vachell has displayed lamentable ignorance of New Zealand and New Zealanders in a story called 'Civility Pays.' His portrait of a New Zealander is such a gross caricature that it has moved Miss I. M. Cluett to pillory him.”

“Average Tauranga men?” – Group of unidentified young men, possibly surfers, Tauranga, c. 1940s
Vernacular photograph by unidentified photographer
Collection of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī, Ref. 09-153

And what did our very own Bay of Plenty Times make of ‘Poor Tauranga’ and the picture painted of our character? Beyond reprinting Cluett’s defence of the town it would seem we were prepared to rise above it or simply had nothing else to say.

Reference

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[i] Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 241, 11 October 1930.