Life, sometime after the horse was harnessed.
Steph: Preamble for chapters 1 & 2
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I visited the Bolton Street cemetery ( Wellington ) in 2001 with my sister Angela. Specifically, I wanted to look at the Monteith plot and plinth and the Edinburgh granite for Caroline and Louisa Tiffen, a younger and an older two sisters who were wives of my great uncle Henry Tiffen. They were born Miss White in England and Miss White in France, daughters of a RN Captain M. White and his wife.
The women's graves of 1842 and 1876 had been reinterred after the cutting and building of the Motorway out of Wellington. Both women caught my curiosity and affection as Hythe women.
Monteith senior arrived in New Zealand 8 February 1840 with his wife Elizabeth and four children.
in 2018, seventeen years later, I began preparation for the telling of my impressions of family story and its impact upon me.
2022
In 2021 and 2022 I made three trips to the MTG storehouse where I knew all family provincial records have been kept. My aunt Priscilla handed in the artifacts which were accepted with one or two exceptions having already been transferred to the National Archive.*
Above, on the right is a book ' New Zealand Views '. It is black and white photographs of rocks, trees and rivers. There is one photo of people on a lawn in front of a villa, marked. c1862 ( black and white ). The photograph is cited as ‘ Tiffen House’ the identity of the figures represented as ‘unknown’.
Excerpt 1. The right hand edge of the painting is St Mary's Catholic Church., ( now demolished )
tiffen house
Henry and Louisa Tiffen’s residence in 1875 became a study in oil by an artist/surveyor, J. Annabell at the MTG. Napier, around 1876. The work was commissioned by great Uncle Henry. Great grandmother Lucy and her three daughters are visiting her sister in-law Louisa. Louisa had married Henry Tiffen, Fred's ( my great grandfather ) oldest brother. Louisa is dressed in mid 19th Century white. Lucy is painted as the woman in blue. The mother image is a representation with her three daughters. The real family of brown haired girls are all painted as blonds. The setting is looking at the villa and family on Tennyson street with the Napier Hill beyond.
I made a visit to these images at MTG in 2021. Henry, the district surveyor, had appointed acres there as parkland in his survey of 1855.
oil by Artist/surveyor J. Annabell.
Photograph by Stephanie Beth. 2021.
The women are posed playing croquet. Croquet was already an important sport. It was the first English sport, I understand, for mixed sexes. The dubious start was the proposition that women might cheat with ball under a skirt!
I saw a coloured postcard of Annabel’s oil as a young girl, in my Aunty Priscilla's house. I was surprised to realize that it was in colour. clearly an image of pride to her. I travelled to Napier from Christchurch in 2021 to track down the original painting. In the book ' New Zealand Views ’. all the photos are of landforms, streams and rocks except for the one of humans in a domestic landscape. ‘Tiffen House’ with people are the only two photos showing the ‘ migrant English family ’ having arrived and settled. A park reserve of trees is behind them in the image. The house is below Napier Hill, the park which had been surveyed by Henry, a horticulturlist and entrepreneur.
* An example at the National Archive in Wellington, is the deposit and verification of stereographs made in 1858 by George D Monteith. These were deposited by Priscilla Feickert.
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George is my great great grandfather. His and Elizabeth's first two daughters married men in Elsthorpe. Lucy Monteith to Frederick Tiffen and Lizzie Monteith to Alfred Chapman. Both in 1859. Alfred and his brother William Chapman came out from England and bought and farmed land that ran down to the Maungakuri river mouth in Central Hawkes Bay. Alfred became well known for his nom de plume, Steelpen. Chapman' illustrated diaries are stored at the MTG. Napier
The Hinemahanga Rocks. English locals named these The Three Bears.
Watercolours by Alfred Chapman 1845 - 49 MTG. Napier
Alfred Chapman sketches: Departing Plymouth, First house with cow; label about the stream and adjoining Maori; Willams' mill to make bread from flour from Otane; a sketch fragment in a corner of a page of a cocktail party, Plymouth.
These watercolour and ink sketches by Alfred Chapman, range from 1846 - 1855
Frederick John Tiffen. ( 1828 - 1911) visits the second Monteith daughter, Lucy. ( 1839 - 2010). Dixon Street. Wellington.
c 1858. The photograph was taken by George Dalrymple Monteith at the family home on Dixon Street in 1858. Lucy was 19 years old and Fred was 25. George, the photographer, had arrived to live in New Zealand on February 8, 1840.
The Beatrice Cenci Opera
My mother gave me a doll in 1952. It's eyelids opened and shut.
In 2025 I rediscovered it packed away in the ceiling rafters. (There are no attics in this country)
When I walked with my astonishing doll she was waist height to me in 1952. I walked with her in all innocence and amazement.
Photograph 2025.
Seeing it seventy three years later was impressively creepy. I immediately thought about the opera Beatrice Cenci. (1949) (SONY 2 CD. SET 1995). by Berthold Goldschmidt. I had bought a world premiere recording of the opera in three acts, 1995(1) in 1999.
Within days I briefly arranged a mirroring with the SONY CD publication cover image of that digital recording. The illustration gave me the creeps too. I posed the doll on my garden gravel.
Something about the score, written in 1949 by Goldschmidt, in the 1980's , crept over me as a force. The Cenci story is set in Rome. It was an horrific Renaissance tragedy involving patricide.
I felt it important to somehow acknowledge emotions and history with this. The composer Goldschmidt had not written new material for twenty five years after he had fled to England in 1935, after the annexation of Austria and after the Gestapo interrogated his work. He only conducted from after 1980. This piece is an important late Goldschmidt artwork. It premiered in England in 1988 (2)
Only now in Italy 2025, a new law about femicide has just passed. (3) The holocaust is referenced by Berthold Goldschmidt.( 4 )
