Buying an old book at the Masterton hospice shop is not unlike adopting a cat from the SPCA: you know you shouldn’t take it because you already have enough of them, but you can’t help feeling sorry for the poor thing and can’t help believing you really ought to give it a good home.
It’s a fraught business. Mistakes can be made. But fortunately, my latest adoption from the hospice shop has turned out to be a most amusing companion. Titled From N to Z, the little orange volume (it has lost its dust jacket) was first printed in the 1940s and is a book of a sort now seldom published in New Zealand: a gently witty, satirical guide to this country and its people written by a putative outsider who had long lived among us “Kiwi birds”.
Its author was a Carl V Smith, an unprepossessing name but in fact a Scottish-born chap who was quite the local business titan in the mid-20th century. He was president of the NZ Manufacturers’ Federation, a member of the commission that guided the country’s economy during World War II and the long-time chair of Dunedin’s much-loved confectionary company, Cadbury Fry Hudson, from 1938 until he retired in 1963. He was knighted in 1964, presumably for services to biscuits.
Quite what possessed such a busy and lofty fellow to set himself to satirising his adoptive home I cannot be sure; despite his bestselling book being republished through many editions, he does not seem to have talked to any newspaper about his motivation for writing it.
But I am glad he did write it. Much like Austin Mitchell’s The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise, From N to Z is a quite-splendid, if hit-and-miss snapshot of the way we were, with illustrations from one of New Zealand’s most celebrated newspaper cartoonists of the period, GE Minhinnick.
The New Zealand we live in now would likely be an outlandish country to Smith, but a number of his droll findings about this country are as true now as they were in the middle of last century.
Are the North Island and South Island not still “separated by a stretch of rough sea and a lot of jealousy”? When the All Blacks lose, is there still “no disgrace for the beaten team – the selection was bad to begin with and the refereeing was deplorable”?
No less true are his observations on Wairarapa in the chapter that offers a quickish tour of our small towns and big cities. “At this point,” Smith reflects, “the man who gave our towns their names must have run out of ideas, for as we motor down the Wairarapa, names like Masterton, Carterton, Greytown and Featherston inspire no emotion.
“This seems a great pity, for the people of Wairarapa are so hospitable and English in their outlook that they deserve to have names such as Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Campden or Bury St Edmond.”
Certainly, a change of name might be what Masterton needs to perk itself up as the dire year of 2025 draws to a close. Like so many small towns in this country, Masterton has witnessed a hollowing out, with its central business district fading, some of its largest employers closing or moving away and its population ageing.
Business advocacy group Tupu Ana organised a business breakfast called “Creating a Resilient Town: Revitalising Masterton”, which more than hints at the troubles already here and those ahead. The idea that businesses should be shaping the future of any New Zealand town is not one that appeals much to me – a community ain’t a row of shops – but the organiser told the local paper the project was about Masterton “crystalising its identity” beyond its broad function as a rural service town.
What better way to do that than to take Smith’s clear suggestion from 78 summers ago and change the town’s thoroughly boring name? Stow-on-the-Wold might be a bit too olde England. But Greater Lush Placesville has a certain ring to it.
