Christina Fulton

Christina Fulton, 1838-1874 Regular contributor Rowan Gibbs, a researcher, author and bibliographer, contributes original research on the 19th Century New Zealand poet Christina Fulton, whose first book doesn’t survive. On a rainy night in September 1867 the inhabitants of the tiny Otago goldfields settlement of Blue Spur, raising funds for the local school and church, were entertained by literary readings, “An Evening with the Poets”, given by George Bailey, editor of the Tuapeka Press in nearby Lawrence. “The Readings were given in a masterly style,” reported the Bruce Herald (11 Sep.1867 p.5), “and consisted of selections from Milton, Southey, Lord Macaulay, Byron, Hood, Poe, Mrs Fulton, and others,” adding: “Mr Bailey offered something like an apology in reading Mrs Fulton with the British Poets; he need not have done so, as the piece which he selected from that lady’s writings, ‘The Collision at Port Chalmers,’ was highly applauded, and is entitled, I think, to ‘pass muster’ with many productions which we have been accustomed to consider ‘sublime.’”1 At the close of the evening the chairman proposed “three hearty British cheers” for “our excellent friend and neighbor, Mrs Fulton … the only living author from whose writings we have had such a delightful treat this evening.” Mrs Christina Fulton had settled in Blue Spur with her husband Robert Gammell Fulton in 1862. Born Christina Dods in Edinburgh in 1838 to James Dods and Helen Sinclair, she and the family migrated to Melbourne in 1853 and soon moved to the goldfields of Bendigo. They remained there several years and by the mid 1860s her father, a “victual dealer” in 1841 but a stone mason in 1851 and 1856, had established a successful vineyard at Emu Creek. In 1856, in nearby Strathfieldsaye, Christina, spinster, age 18, married 28-year old farmer Robert Gammell Fulton. Robert, born in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, son of Ebenezer Fulton, farmer, 1799-1880, and Jane Gammel, 1804-1836, had arrived in Melbourne from Halifax in 1852 heading for the goldfields. Again it was gold that drew Robert to Otago in 1862, and he is on the Waipori electoral roll of April 1862, occupation miner, and he was a holder of mining rights in Lawrence in 1862-3, though before long he turned to blacksmithing and he and Christina were living in the settlement that had grown at Blue Spur. We get a few glimpses of them, Christina in charge of the local library and writing a prologue for “an entertainment on behalf of the Wetherstones School”, but the whole area was becoming unstable due to the sluicing for gold. In December 1867 a dam above their house threatened to break and “the ground is also cracked through, in front of Mr R.G. Fulton’s house and garden, and from thence to the gully at the back of the blacksmith’s shop”. By June 1868 Blue Spur township, which had already been shifted from the head of Gabriel’s Gully to the top of the ridge, was doomed: “Not long ago a busy little township was situate on the spur near Mr. Fulton’s blacksmith’s shop. There was then a large hotel, a butcher’s shop, two general stores, and a number of private dwellings, but as time rolled on the people saw that all the ground in that vicinity was doomed for sluicing purposes, and a gradual stampede took place, until now the site of the former township is completely deserted … Mr. R.G. Fulton was obliged to remove his house on account of the numerous cracks and fissures underneath it.”2 The writing was on the wall and that winter was bitter: “…very severe this last fortnight … we are nearly all ‘kilt’ with snow, hail, and frost”, said the Tuapeka Times (18 July 1868 p.13), “if this weather continues, doubtless many who are able to go to greener fields and a sunnier sky will emigrate to the Fijis or elsewhere … I regret to say that we are loosing [sic] Mr. and Mrs. Fulton, so long known and deservedly respected at the Blue Spur. Mr. Fulton has ‘sold out;’ and they are about to sail for the Fijis, where I understand they have friends of some standing, and who have held out considerable inducements to emigrate thither”. ‘Fiji fever’ swept over Australia and New Zealand that year and accompanied by a number of other Otago settlers the Fultons sailed on the Banshee on September 20th, and established a plantation at Balaga (Valaga) in Savu Savu Bay on Vanua Levu, together with Christina’s father, mother and brothers.3 An English visitor in 1879 describes meeting the Dods family at Valaga, “father, mother, and sons … Mr Dods senior, a most charming old gentleman”, admiring their house and playing in a cricket match (H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands, 1880, I p.272, 279). But by then Christina had died, on December 26th 1874, “a victim to the insalubrity of the climate”, said the Otago Guardian (26 Feb 1875 p.[2]). A death notice appeared in the Fiji Times 13 (& 16) Jan.1875, then in the Bruce Herald and Tuapeka Times (2 Mar. and 3 Mar.1875), the latter adding a note: “From Mr. Fenton, who has been here on a visit, we had heard that Mrs. Fulton was very ill when he left Fiji, and not expected to recover”. She and Robert had no children. Robert returned to New Zealand in 1877 and took over the lease of the Clifton Hotel in Beaumont. He was bankrupt the following year but married Jane Cranley, née Oxley, widow of John Cranley. In 1880 he rebuilt the Golden Age Hotel in Wetherstones and returned to mining, applying for a lease as Fulton’s Quartz Mining Co. Jane died in 1898 and Robert the following year; both are buried in Lawrence cemetery.4 Christina and her poetry had not been forgotten when she left New Zealand for Fiji in 1868: a few years later the Dunedin correspondent of the Tuapeka Times (26 Sep.1874 p.3) quoted her when describing the recent fierce weather: “the ocean has been roaring for the past two or three days”, whipped up by strong gales, a “‘hoarse and hollowsounding roar’ (as Mrs Fulton, of Blue Spur fame puts it in one of her little poems)”. This was a line from her first book of poems, Original Poetry, by Mrs C. Fulton; to which are added a few Poems by her Father, Mr James Dods, published in 1867. No verse by her has been found in Australian or New Zealand newspapers prior to this,5 and it seems very likely that this was her first venture into print. And it came about only because in late 1866 two wet and weary travellers stopped at her home in Blue Spur. One was the eccentric J.G.S. Grant and he tells the story in a review of her book in his Saturday Review, 25 May 1867 pp.543-4: The history of this little volume of 131 pages is a romantic episode in literature. About seven months ago we made a tour of Otago, and among other places, we paid a visit to Blue Spur. It was a very wet morning when, in company with Mr. Greig, Tuapeka ‘Press,’ we started from Lawrence, and proceeded, via Wetherstone’s village, along the ranges of the Blue Spur. After inspecting the sluicing operations at the head of Gabriel’s Gully …we entered a pretty little cottage, and being perfectly saturated with wet, warmed and dried ourselves over against a roaring fire, and partook of an elegant repast, hospitably spread out before us by the polite lady of the cottage. She — having learned our name from the gentlemen accompanying us — brought out from her desk a beautiful album, and modestly requested us to favour her with our opinion of the merits of sundry poems therein elegantly engrossed. On opening the album before the cheerful fire, after having refreshed our languishing frame with the good things of this life, our spirits began to revive, and we forgot that we were in the midst of a waste howling desert, and began to scan the verses of the manuscript. After a pause of meditation, we closed the book, gave it to the lady, and inly exclaiming “Eureka ! Eureka !” like the ancient sage, importuned our fair hostess to hand it over to Mr. Greig for publication. Reluctantly, on the strength of our commendation she assented, and so we, accompanied by Mr. Greig, retraced our steps to Lawrence… No copy now survives of this first book of hers, which has gone unrecorded, so for its contents we have only quotations in Grant’s and other newspaper reviews… To settlers in New Zealand, the perfect truthfulness of this poetic picture of the glory of its translucent atmosphere will at once appear. Mrs. Fulton requires to make no apology for publishing this volume of original poetry, which was written for her own amusement and gratification in the solitudes of the interior uplands of Otago, because they are certain to minister to the pleasure of many appreciative readers. The verses throughout breathe a devotional spirit, Winter 2017 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and, we ought to add, are dedicated to the father of the authoress, who appears, by selections from his own writings, to have been embued with no mean share of the poetic spirit.” And the Bruce Herald (10 July 1867 p.6) devoted a whole column to the book: “We have read with much pleasure a small book of Poems, by Mrs Fulton. The printing of the book is very creditable for Lawrence, and the printers seem to have been under that impression themselves, as their names flourish on the outside title-page, whereas the publisher’s name is placed in an obscure corner at the end of the book, which arrangement is hardly just towards the Authoress, for we understand the responsibility of the printing, and the sale of copies rests upon her. Poetry, either in the home country or in the colonies, is seldom a paying speculation ; indeed, if we look at the subject from a monetary point of view, we might say that not one out of a thousand rhymsters make more than sufficient to keep them alive. But while this is the case, we would not depreciate the pursuit of the Poetic Art. We have great faith in the refining tendency which the study of nature and art must have on the mind ; and we believe there is infinite pleasure derivable from the exercise of those powers of reflection and imagination which are brought into play even in the stringing together of a few simple couplets. The small volume of Poems under consideration is made up of a miscellaneous selection of minor poems, some of which show great freedom of expression. In some cases the Authoress catches the inspiration of the moment, and places before the mind some pleasing images. The largest poem of the group is one entitled ‘The Friends,’ the interest in which is well sustained throughout. The story of her life that Helen’s friend recites is true to nature, and very touchingly told, and we cannot do the Authoress better justice than by quoting a few verses from this part of the poem: Helen’s friend waiting for her drunken husband’s return. There was a brief notice in the North Otago Times (31 May 1867 p.2): “…We have perused the book with pleasure. There are gems of thought and fancy in almost every page, but in our opinion the chief merit is to be found in the shorter pieces. The authoress is not so successful with poems of any length ; rhythm and poetical fancy alike are not so well sustained.” And she sent a review copy to the Age in Melbourne, which acknowledged it (19 June 1867 p.7) as “creditable alike to author and publisher”.6 A second book of verse followed in August 1868,7 Lella: A Poem, printed by the ‘Evening Star’ Office in Dunedin, prefaced with a fulsome dedication to James Macandrew, Superintendent of Otago, “seated on places high”… This is one long poem, sub-titled on the half-title leaf ‘A Glimpse of the Northern Island Twenty Years Ago’. Unlike her first book this is recorded in the New Zealand National Bibliography (2072) and in Percival Serle’s 1929 A Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse, and copies survive in libraries — Turnbull, University of Canterbury, Hocken, and at the University of Melbourne and National Library of Australia. Source: Abridged from Poetry Notes. Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA (Winter 2017, Volume 8, Issue 2, ISSN 1179-7681). Read the full article here: https://poetryarchivenz.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/poetry-notes-wi...