Yours very truly
CROSBIE WELLS
Dunedin. August 1854
Sir you will I hope forgive these letters I have no other correspondents & thoughts of you consume my days. I have been waxing philosophical myself in thinking what might have happened if you knew me sooner or if I knew you. I do not know your age so I do not know if you are the elder or if I am the elder. In my mind the difference signifies & because I am the bastard I imagine myself younger but of course that might not be the case. There were other children in the whorehouse several girls who grew up whoring & one boy who died of smallpox when I was very young but I was the eldest always & I should have liked a brother to admire. I have been thinking with much sadness upon the fact that I do not know whether you have sisters & brothers or if there are other bastards or if your father ever spoke of me to you. If I were in London I would be taking every chance to walk to Glen House & look in through the railings & spy my father whom you remember I have never seen. I have his letter still it says he knew of me & watched me and I wonder what he thought of me & what he might think about the life I lead here. But perhaps he is no longer living. You wish not to be my brother you have made that clear but perhaps you are as my priest with our correspondence as confession. I am heartened by this notion for I say with pride that I was properly confirmed. But I expect you are a Church of England man.
Yours,
CROSBIE WELLS
Dunedin. November 1854
Sir do you feel as if you know me or could pick me from a crowd? It struck me lately that I know your likeness though you do not know mine. We are not so dissimilar in our physique though I am slighter I think & my hair is darker than yours & folk would likely say that yours is the kinder face because my expression is too often sullen. I wonder if you walk about & think of me & if you search for fragments of my features in other people’s faces or their bodies when they pass you by. That is what I did every day while I was young & dreaming always of my father & trying to piece him from all the faces I had known. How comforting to think of all that unites us as brothers living at the end of the world. You are the subject of my repeating thoughts today.
Sincerely,
CROSBIE WELLS
The next letter in the sequence was much crisper, and the ink much brighter. Moody looked at the date, and noticed that nearly a decade had elapsed since Crosbie Wells’s last correspondence.
Dunedin. June 1862
Sir I will renew my correspondence to inform you very proudly that I write this as a married man. The courtship was a very short one though I believe the script followed conventional themes. In recent months I have been digging the gullies at Lawrence & though I have amassed a ‘competence’ I am yet to truly strike. Mrs. Wells as I must call her now is a fine specimen of the female sex & one I shall be very proud to carry on my arm. I suppose she is your sister now. I should like to know if you have a sister already or if Mrs. Wells is your very first. You shall not hear from me for some time after this for I must return to Dunstan in order to provide for my wife. What are your thoughts on the gold rush I wonder. Recently I heard a politician speak who called the gold a moral scourge. It is true that on the diggings I have seen much degradation but there was degradation prior to the strike as well. I fancy that it is the thought of men like me becoming rich that has most politicos afraid.
Cordially,
CROSBIE WELLS
Kawarau. November 1862
Sir I read in the papers that you are recently married for which I offer my heartiest congratulations. I have not seen a picture of your wife CAROLINE née GOUGH but she is reported to be a very fine match. I am happy when I think that we will both spend our Christmases as married men. I will journey back from Lawrence to spend the season with my wife who keeps her lodging in Dunedin & does not come to the diggings as she cannot bear the mud. I have never become used to Christmas in the summertime & feel the tradition as a whole is suited best to the colder months. Perhaps I blaspheme to talk of Christmas so but I esteem that there is much that does not retain its meaning here in New Zealand seeming instead like a faded relic from another time. I think of you receiving this letter & sitting down beside the fire perhaps or leaning close into the lamplight to make out the words. Permit me to invent these details it is a great pleasure always for me to think of you I assure you that I remain, from afar,
Yours very truly,
CROSBIE WELLS
Dunstan. April 1863
Sir I have passed this week in a melancholy humour wondering if Alistair Lauderback our father is yet deceased as I expect he is. London seems but a dream to me now. I recall the smoke & fog & cannot trust my own memory at all. As an experiment last week I sat down & tried to draw a map of Southwark in the dirt. I hardly could remember the shape of the Thames & no street names returned to me. Is it the same for you I wonder? I read in the ‘Otago Witness’ with some astonishment that you now style yourself a proud Cantabrian. I feel English through and through.
Yours,
CROSBIE WELLS
Kawarau. November 1863
Sir I like to think that you receive my words with pleasure but am content with the more probable event that you do not read them at all. In either case writing is a comfort to me and gives shape to my days. I read with interest that you have resigned the Superintendency. The word upon the diggings here is that Canterbury is soon to have her rush in gold following Otago’s fade & I rather wonder whether such a discovery would make you regret your decision to step down from that eminent position. The reward offered for a payable goldfield has excited more than one man upon the fields here at Kawarau. The land is steep & the sky very blinding here. I have been sun-burned so often that the shape of my collar has been branded into my neck & though this is painful I do not look forward to the winter months which in this high country will be bitter indeed. If gold is discovered in Canterbury will you run for the Super again? I do not mean that as an interrogative in the proper sense just as an expression of my curiosity in the course of your days. It is in this spirit that I sign myself
Sincerely,
CROSBIE WELLS
Kawarau. March 1864
Sir I write with most important and indeed astonishing news. I have been in Dunstan where I hit upon some extraordinary luck a claim veritably shining with the colour! I am now a wealthy man though I have not spent a penny of it having seen too many fellows spend their dust on hats & coats only to return those items to the pawnbroker’s when their fortunes change again. I will not tell you the amount for fear this message is intercepted but I will say that even by your handsome salary it is an enormous sum & I fancy that now I am the richer brother of us two at least in terms of ready money. What a lark that is. With this fortune I could return to London & set up a shop but I will continue to prospect as I believe my luck has not yet run dry. I have not yet declared the ore and have chosen to export it from the goldfields via a private escort which I am told is the safest route. Notwithstanding the alteration of my fortune I am, as ever,