Cabinet 01
On 9 August 1901, the Hocken family left for their long overseas trip to England via Japan and the East. On leaving Sydney on 29 August 1901, they travelled on the Yawata Maru, a Japanese steamer that carried some 175 passengers in first class accommodation. Here is Dr Hocken, posing with binoculars on the deck of the Yawada Maru. They arrived in Japan on 24 September 1901.
Dr Hocken on board the Yawada Maru, September 1901. S09-393a. Hocken Pictorial Collection.
Dr Hocken commissioned his friend Henry Frederick Hardy (1831-1904) to design and build a house, which became ‘Atahapara’ (Māori, ‘Time of the Dawn’), a two storey house on the corner of Moray Place and Burlington Street. Ready for occupation in June 1871, it became the hub for Dr Hocken’s professional and social activities. Hocken married twice: Julia Anne Dakyne Simpson (married 3 July 1867; died 1881) and Elizabeth Mary Buckland (married 24 July 1883; died 1933). They no doubt enjoyed the house and its garden. ‘Atahapara’ (phone number 139) was demolished in 1920 to make way for a soldier’s hospital and Returned Services Association hostel.
‘Atapahara’, Dr T. M. Hocken’s residence in Moray Place, c. 1900. Photograph by J. McGregor. S09-393c. Hocken Pictorial Collection.
On 9 January 1908, the Dunedin architect John Burnside was appointed to design the extension to the Otago Museum that would house Dr Hocken’s collection of books, manuscripts and pictures. The Hocken Wing, the first substantial addition to the Otago Museum, was opened by Lord Plunket on 31 March 1910. Dr Hocken was too ill to attend the ceremony, dying 6 weeks later on 17 May 1910. The books and manuscripts were held on the upper floor and a Māori Hall based on artefacts in his collections on the lower level.
Hocken Wing, Otago Museum, from Otago Witness, 6 April 1910. 507-119c. Hocken Pictorial Collection.
Too ill to attend the opening of the Hocken Wing on 31 March 1910, Hocken compiled a long letter to his friend George Fenwick which, when printed in the Otago Daily Times, detailed what he collected and why. This Otakou Press limited edition of Hocken’s letter was hand-set by Dr John Holmes to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Deed of Trust on 2 September 1907. The ‘quite a complete collection of works relating to New Zealand’ includes his extensive pamphlet collection.
[T. M. Hocken], A Gift to the Dominion. Dunedin: Otakou Press, 2007. DU434.H6 HN866. Special Collections.
Elizabeth Mary Buckland (1848-1933) was 35 when she married Dr Hocken on 24 July 1883 at St John’s Church, Invercargill. Bessie (as she was known) was a superb host, and ran an excellent household. She was well-travelled, a linguist (Italian, German, French and Dutch) and like her father (William Thorne Buckland) knew Māori. She was musical, a more than competent photographer, and sketched in oils and watercolour. Hocken was reluctant to acknowledge her contributions to his work, and yet he did make good in 1898. The Dedication in his Contributions is as follows: ‘To My Wife To Whose Counsel and Help I Owe So Much.’ She was Hocken’s true help-meet; a worthy and loved companion.
Elizabeth Mary Buckland, second wife of Dr Thomas Morland Hocken. c.1900. S09-393d. Hocken Pictorial Collection.
Kā Taoka Hākena. Treasures from the Hocken Collections was published in 2007 to celebrate the centenary of the signing of the Deed of Trust. It documents almost 200 ‘treasures’ that are in the present day Hocken Collections at the University of Otago. On display is An Appeal to the Men of New Zealand (1869), which was the first pamphlet to advocate New Zealand’s women’s right to vote. ‘Fémmina’ has been identified as Mary Ann Wilson, who married Dr Stephen Müller, resident in the Nelson-Blenheim area. The original item is now bound with others in Hocken’s pamphlet volume 21.
Ka taoka Ha kena. Treasures from the Hocken Collections. Edited by Stuart Strachan and Linda Tyler. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2007. Private Collection.
Gladys, Hocken’s only child, was born 12 June 1884. She certainly had a comfortable, if not spoilt, over-indulgent upbringing. She was musical, painted and had an interest in photography. Her diary of the ‘world tour’ of 1901 and 1904 is full of petulant school-girl observations: weather, men, everything is boring. In March 1902, while travelling through the Mediterranean on board the Kawachi Maru, Gladys met Alan Le Francois, a merchant marine officer and her future husband. They would marry in Yokohama in 1911. Gladys acknowledged that ‘Father and I never seem to be able to get on well’, yet this photograph, admittedly staged, shows a snug domestic scene between Hocken and his daughter. It was taken by Bessie.
Dr Hocken and his daughter Gladys, c.1900. S09-393h. Hocken Pictorial Collection.
Dr Hocken began compiling his bibliography as early as 1885, and by 1906, after official inspection, it was in the hands of the Government Printer in Wellington. A Bibliography of the Literature Relating to New Zealand appeared in late July 1909 in a functional brown buckram cover, with gold-tooled title on the spine and three rectangular blind impressed rules on back and front covers. At 632 pages, this solid, plain book retailed at 10 shillings. On the title-page Hocken’s fulsome credentials sat above a Maori motto: ‘He Mahi Nui Rawa Atu’, translated as ‘Truly this is a very laborious deed’, which no doubt it was. On display are various entries detailing some of his pamphlets, including Mary Ann Moeller’s An Appeal to the Men of New Zealand (1869).
T. M. Hocken, A Bibliography of the Literature Relating to New Zealand. Wellington: Government Printer, 1909. Brasch Z4410.HP86. Special Collections.
Dr Thomas Morland Hocken lived in Dunedin from 1862 until his death in March 1910. Over that forty-eight year period, he amassed some 2,800 pamphlets which he had bound into 218 volumes. The earliest pamphlet in his collection is James Magra’s Journal of a Voyage Round the World in His Majesty’s Ship Endeavour, surreptitiously edited and published in 1771, while the latest are items such as the Kaikorai School Jubilee Souvenir, 1869-1919, which was published in 1919 and was later added to Hocken’s Pamphlet Collection (vol. 204, no.1 ). Pamphlet numbers vary in each volume. A hand-written contents page of six titles sits opposite one of his two variant bookplates.
New Zealand. Handbooks. 1879-1880. Vol. 1. Hocken Pamphlet Collection.
Dr Hocken, his wife Bessie, and Gladys, their only daughter, visited Fiji in April 1898 and on an outer island witnessed a fire-walking ceremony. The Tennessee-born W.C. Gardenhire made an earlier voyage to the South Sea Islands in 1869-70. He returned to California with four native Fijians and exhibited them in San Francisco. He not only sold the Fijians to well-known circus-man P. T. Barnum for $20,000, but he wrote a very popular account of his travels to Fiji. Hocken owned this particular work and bound it with 21 other pamphlets under the general heading ‘Ethnology’. Hocken almost always signed the title-pages of books he owned.
W. C. Gardenhire, Fiji and the Fijians; and Travels among the Cannibals (San Francisco: B. F. Sterett, 1871). Vol. 62, no 22. Hocken Pamphlet Collection.