Part 01: G. W. Rusden letters, 1846-1900

As to my visit to New Zealand it is as yet in nubibus and the clouds are thick.

A Reform debate is going on in the Council as I write to you. What this means you may guess. No one I am sure can safely predict. I do not venture to try. If the session should close soon I will try: i.e. I will start if I can secure (say) a week in Wellington.

I shall go overland to Sydney & return similarly D. V. and in one or other journey a peep at Camden is one of my delights.

Nothing but an impossibility to obtain a passage from Sydney to Auckland or Wellington will divert me to any other voyage

William Campbell has recently sold his Clare station for about £210,000. He is intensely disgusted with the course of affairs here and as the French say he has reason.

I quite agree with you in your estimate of Gladstone's character but I dare say you know that! I did not much admire Dizzy.

In a letter from England lately a friend told me that just before Carlyle's death a saying of his was circulated as then said by him, The only differ "Gladstone & Dizzy "are the two greatest humbugs in "England: the only difference being "that Dizzy knows that he is a "humbug and Gladstone doesn't

I think the Reminiscences of Carlyle will rather puzzle the general world as regards the tenderness of his heart towards his wife & his father and mother. Rugged as he was generally he could melt at home.

However my note has come to a natural end, so with kindest regards I conclude

Yours ever sincerely G W Rusden

25 May 1881

Dear Onslow

Here I am at this late date listening to a debate on a Land Tax Bill in the Council while a debate on the Reform Bill (so called) is going on or to go on. I am therefore without any means of knowing whether or when I can start for N Zealand.

If the Houses had risen I would have tried to catch the Wakatipu which is to sail from Sydney on 31st May,

That I fear is quite out of the question now. The next chance will be on the 16 June by the Panama Mail steamer from Sydney to Auckland.

But even that chance may be lost by the protracted sitting of the House.

If I should be able to start in time to enable me to look in upon you at Camden for a day or two.

I enclose you a copy of a letter about the wine which I hope you will approve I dare say I should not have succeeded in obtaining the five or six bottles which may have been left even if I had tried, and I thought it best to pursue your willingness to give it to the inmates of the Hospital and express my own.

I have heard of several instances of exorbitant waste of the wine sent to the Exhibition — so your case is not peculiar — though I must say that the whole thing is shameful.

They managed such affairs

better when respectable men were sought as Commissioners.

William Campbell is in the House looking well: before I close this letter I will ask if he has any message to send to you. Meanwhile I send my kind regards to you all.

Yours sincerely

G W Rusden