This wonderfully disruptive call failed to affect even much of a pause in proceedings but must have been galling to those who were trying to persuade Maori that their English interpretation of sovereignty over the country was good for everyone; and it certainly reinforced the general dislike by the local missionary establishment for the awkward loner who had come among them.
Active evangelicals in that God- bothered time were necessarily a bit mad and a bloody nuisance and Colenso was both those things, but he also had a greatly elevated degree of moral courage. He was a Church Missionary Society man and never buckled down to that bullying prig, Bishop Selwyn - something else I have always liked him for.
Colenso's life by most standards was a disaster. He could not fit in with the CMS settlement in the Bay of Islands (brilliantly evoked by Wells) so after what seemed an unpromising marriage, he was set up as CMS missionary near remote Napier. He had two legitimate children, and then an illegitimate son by a Maori servant. With that disgrace he was cut off by the church.
He slipped into oblivion before emerging as a successful politician and wealthy trader. But because of his disgrace - and because he stayed in Hawkes Bay on the periphery of colonial life - he became more or less submerged under the tide of mainstream history.
So this is a welcome gift from Wells, a thorough and imaginative restoration of a man who was an indefatigable diarist and letter writer and left a remarkable record of his life and times.
What I revelled in most, reading The Hungry Heart, was the way Wells allowed me to accompany him through the personal travails of a biographer in search of the biographed (to coin a word). The reader shares his journey, joins the investigations and pays attention as he weighs the sometimes slender evidence on various aspects of Colenso's life as it is unearthed.
This personal style illuminates the extraordinary enthusiasm, assiduity and authenticity of his research. And he doesn't just take the reader along a narrow trail of Colenso's life, he spreads out over the landscape of life at the time. He speculates interestingly on racial and political challenges; on the abrasions caused by the rubbing together of the two cultures over most of the 19th century; on the ambivalence of Maori towards the "things" Pakeha brought for trade; and on the shifting understanding of how important land was. All this enriches the story of a man who lived between these grinding forces of change and, with pen and paper, reported so much of it.
Colenso emerges as an eccentric, exasperating and powerfully individual figure and, though I'm glad I never had to deal with him, I nevertheless continue to admire him. As Wells put it: "There was something in him, a puritanical sense of truth. It was the beauty of his character and soul to be so out of step with his contemporaries that he was privileged to see things differently... He was like an architect who can provide almost silly ornament and nonsensical detail but who can also occasionally draw a design so individual that it takes your breath away."
This is a tour de force. I thought I knew a lot about Colenso. I didn't. I do now. Not everyone will always agree with Wells' extrapolations from the facts and trends of the time, but his commentary is always driven by a fine imaginative intelligence and deserves at the very least thoughtful respect.
This book as an artefact is in many ways beautiful: striking cover, excellent use of illustrations, satisfying chapter heads and sturdy binding. But, sadly, readability is diminished by the typography: a small, grey face over wide pages, shimmering back from glossy paper.
With a text as compelling as this, readability is the core around which all design ought to be developed.
Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland writer.
