Godley Gifts

Godley Gifts is a collection of essays, watercolours and the children’s story Seadrift, by early Canterbury settler James FitzGerald. In 2007 a limited edition, finely-bound, facsimile set was produced in Christchurch. On 16 December 2009, one of these sets, appropriately number 59, was gifted to Christchurch City Libraries by the J. R. Godley Trust in honour of the 150th anniversary of the libraries’ founding in 1859.

The Godley Gifts can be viewed in the Research Room of the Aotearoa New Zealand centre of the Central Library. There is also an excellent website about the project. The original manuscript is held in the Canterbury Museum.

John Robert Godley

John Robert Godley and James FitzGerald were good friends and important figures in the establishment of the Canterbury settlement. John Robert Godley is known as the ‘Founder of Canterbury’. He was persuaded to become the leader of the Canterbury Association’s new settlement. On 12 April 1850, Godley and his wife Charlotte and their son Arthur arrived in Canterbury aboard the Lady Nugent ahead of the first four shiploads of colonists.

Godley provided a strong leadership of the colony for the next two and half years before returning to England in December 1852, where he continued to write and advocate for colonial reform.

James FitzGerald

James FitzGerald was an energetic character who contributed widely to cultural and political life in Canterbury and on the wider New Zealand stage. Following a meeting with Edward Gibbon Wakefield in 1849, he became secretary of the Canterbury Association. He helped to plan the new settlement and drafted the constitution of the Society of Canterbury Colonists. He was also appointed emigration agent of the association.

FitzGerald arrived in Lyttelton 16 December 1850 on the Charlotte Jane. He was the first Canterbury pilgrim to leap ashore. FitzGerald was the first editor of the Lyttelton Times and went on to found the Press newspaper. He became the first superintendent of Canterbury and played a significant role in national politics and the establishment of government as we know it today. FitzGerald was renowned as an orator, a skilled watercolourist and writer and also played the guitar well. He involved himself in intellectual and social life throughout his 80 years.

Seadrift, the watercolours and the essays

Seadrift is the first illustrated children’s book written in New Zealand. It is a lively sea story about the yacht Seadrift which is cursed with ill luck and bad storms which eventually lead to its sinking.

The watercolour illustrations are very dramatic. Over a period of seven years, FitzGerald created the book for Godley’s son Arthur who received it as a Christmas present in 1858. When FitzGerald heard that Godley was returning to England he created the album of watercolours as a memento of Godley’s time in the colony. The 34 watercolours recall the voyage to the new colony and capture scenes of the early Canterbury settlement. There are paintings of early buildings in Lyttelton and Christchurch and of the plains and the high country which Godley visited.

The watercolours return home

The Godley family returned the book of watercolours to the Canterbury Museum in the 1950s but Seadrift remained in the family possession, much loved and read over the generations, until it was given to Haydn Rawstron in 2000 to be returned to New Zealand. Haydn Rawstron is a New Zealander who re-formed the Canterbury Association in the United Kingdom. He is a trustee of the John Robert Godley Trust which was gifted the manuscript of Seadrift by the Godley family in 2000 to mark the sesquicentenary of Canterbury’s founding.

Copies of the limited edition of 100 are still available for purchase and the money raised by the trust is used to support the arts, architecture and heritage of Canterbury. The income from the sale of twelve sets of Godley Gifts has already been committed to the special 4.5 million dollar endowment fund for the choir of New Zealand’s ChristChurch Cathedral which was named after John Robert Godley’s Oxford college, Christ Church.

Part One of Godley Gifts consists of seven essays commissioned from actor/writer, David McPhail, to set the artworks in their historical context. Part Two is Seadrift. Part Three is the collection of FitzGerald’s watercolours which are a story in themselves showing scenes of FitzGerald’s voyage to the new colony and of early Canterbury.

How Godley Gifts was produced

Sets of the Godley Gifts have been given to the National Library of New Zealand, the library of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Queen’s Library at Windsor (a great honour — many books are offered but few are chosen apparently). An interesting connection is that the team of binders in Christchurch was led by Matthew Hinman of Cover to Cover, who spent four years working for the Queen’s bindery firm Sangorski Sutcliffe, where he changed from “tradesman binder to artisan binder”. During this time he worked with such exotic things as jewelled bindings using pearls and opals and was involved in restoring a rare copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam from the British Museum (of the original three copies, one was destroyed by bombing in World War II, and one went down with the Titanic). He worked on the leather and peacock inlay of the front cover.

Many tricks of the trade were used to create the aged look of the books including using 13 tonnes of pressure on the leather binding to recreate the look of the aged Moroccan goatskin on the original. The work involved hundreds of hours by three people over a three-month period.

Award-winning Christchurch contributions

Local printing firm Rainbow Print made numerous trips to the Canterbury Museum to match their colour plates to the colours of the original. The designer for Godley Gifts was Mike Coker from local firm Quiqcorp. The project went on to win three gold medals in the National Print Awards. The awards were in the ‘Sheetfed Printing - 4 or more colours - bound by any method, Specific Products and Processess - Limited Editions Print/Agency’  and the ‘Specific Products and Processess - Case Bound Books’.

Resources

• Godley, Charlotte Letters from early New Zealand 1850 - 1853 Christchurch, 1951
• Bohan, Edmund  “Blest Madman”: FitzGerald of Canterbury. Christchurch, 1998
• Rice, Geoffrey W. Christchurch changing: an illustrated history. Christchurch, 2000
• Godley Gifts website