Chapter 5

Facing Up to Fear

‘Looking back, I realise what a wonderful friend as well as father he was; sometimes talking to us, pointing out a lovely view or sunset, and trying to make us appreciate anything of interest or beauty—sometimes silent and full of thought, and sometimes laughing at us (he was a terrific tease) but never unkindly.’

In Gertrude’s mind, at least, the new independence of the New Zealand Russells required a residence to match. In 1912, the old homestead that had been transported piece by piece from its original site above the Tutaekuri River was pulled down. In its place rose the magnificent three-storey, Natusch-designed homestead that now stands at Tunanui, with its rimu-panelled halls, servants’ quarters, plantings of beautiful trees and gardens. It cost about 10,000 pounds to build—a huge outlay in the currency of the time—and Guy Russell told his grandson John in later years that the project nearly broke him. Although he was happy to have pleased his wife by agreeing to it, he would clearly have been content with something much more modest.

Meanwhile, there were the demands of family, and particularly those of his five growing children—Katherine (Kath), Janet (Jan), Andrew (Andy), John and Margot—all born between 1897 and 1906. Family records reveal a strict but affectionate father, requiring obedience, good manners and self-discipline of his offspring, including physical training before breakfast. From an early age the Russell children were taught to ride and shoot. Before lunch every Sunday, the family would gather for prayers.

Subaltern Guy Russell passing out from Sandhurst with the sword of honour for best cadet officer of his year, December 1887.

Three generations of Russells. L to R: Guy, his father Ham, and his grandfather ‘The Colonel’, late 1880s.

The Russell brothers in 1895. Standing L to R: Arthur, William (later Sir William), Gerald (Rear Admiral, Royal Navy). Seated: (left) Herbert and (right) Guy’s father Ham.

Katherine (Kate) Tinsley, Ham’s wife and Guy’s mother.

Gertrude Russell (nee Williams), 1896.

Gertrude Williams in her teens.

The first dwelling built at Tunanui by the Russell brothers—a two-roomed whare on the banks of the Tutaekuri River, 1860s.

Guy’s sister Milly taking tea on the front lawn at Tunanui with Gertrude and Guy, about 1900.

The Russell family take tea at Tunanui, about 1912. L to R: Gertrude, John, Janet, Andy, Guy and Kath; Margot is in front.

The Russell family homestead at Tunanui in Hawke’s Bay soon after it was built in 1912. Guy admitted that the expense nearly broke him financially.

Guy with three of his children, about 1912. L to R: John, Margot and Andy.

The Russell homestead at Tunanui in the early days (1920s–30s).

Guy and Gertrude’s second son, Lieutenant-Colonel John Tinsley Russell DSO, killed in action in Libya, September 1942.

The funeral procession of Major-General Sir Andrew Russell leaving St Matthew’s Church, Hastings, December 1960.

Not unusually for the time, Guy believed in corporal punishment—for the girls as well as the boys. His daughters mostly got a stern lecture or a smack on the hand; if the boys had had a scrap, they were told to fight it out with staves or boxing gloves. Nor were there many idle moments—the Russells worked the station as a family, with the boys and girls all riding with their father to help muster sheep and cattle, helping in the yards, or burning the manuka left by the scrubcutters. Where chores on the farm had to be done, Guy would give the orders and expect them to be carried out to the letter; if not, the children would be sent back to finish the job.

Guy encouraged his children to both think for themselves and to face their fears. Fear, he told them, destroyed much of the enjoyment of life and had to be rooted out. Kath remembered him patiently helping her overcome her fear of jumping her pony, rock climbing, diving from heights and, later, flying. Margot remembered her father as ‘always terrific fun out riding, urging us on to exploits of all sorts’.

Driving with their father was another risky experience for the young Russells. He always drove his cars as fast as possible along narrow country roads, and had many near-misses and several accidents. In later years, Kath recalled the impact of Guy’s risk-taking on her mother: ‘My dear and poor mother, who was also of a nervous disposition, must have and did suffer from my father’s sometimes wild escapades—for he had no fear of anything—or if he did, never showed it.’

Guy and Gertrude were keen for their children to have the best education, and at that time the best was, arguably, still in Europe. They intended to send the two boys to Harrow, like their father had been, and the girls to a finishing school in Paris. In the meantime, the children were home-schooled by a succession of governesses, who stayed if they could stand up to the boisterous and assertive Russell brood. If they could not, they left—as did a good number of the domestic staff.

The Russells insisted on a good grounding in the arts and music, and so the drawing room at Tunanui became the classroom for their musical education. It included a trio consisting of Guy playing the cello, Kath the piano, Jan the violin, with their mother conducting. The ensemble was not a great success because Guy’s timing was poor and Gertrude would eventually give up in despair. As Kath said later, ‘It was the same with his dancing—he preferred a hard gallop.’

In the quiet times Guy would read to his children—mostly favourite stories from the classics or poetry—or entertain them with tales of his army days in India and Burma. Every summer, the family would go picnicking at Konini Creek or at the site of the old Tunanui homestead above the Tutaekuri River. There the children were taught to swim, catch small crayfish (koura) and eels and, when they were older, to swim their ponies across the river.

Their father’s whimsical sense of humour and genuine interest in what young people thought made him a fine companion for his children. He also liked vigorous discussion and well thought-out opinions, even if they did not agree with his own. He became impatient if his offspring (or house guests) simply parroted the views of someone else, and he would sometimes change sides in a discussion ‘just for the hell of it’. If Guy Russell had a fault, it was impatience with family members who showed fear, or whose mental processes—‘uptake’ in the parlance of the time—were not as quick as his own.

The Russell children were all to inherit their father’s prodigious energy, if not his seeming indifference to danger: Kath, short, plump, unsure of herself in the realm of vigorous physical activity but a talented organiser and perhaps the only one who was intellectually a match for their father; Jan, slim, athletic, impulsive, and ‘brave as a lion’; Margot (‘the little general’), impulsive too, but also immensely kind, and a skilful horsewoman; John, energetic, extroverted, physically courageous and a natural leader. In a family of extroverts, Andy—diffident, private and reserved by nature—stood out. Like his brother John he was not scholastically inclined, but was to make his mark in later years as a highly successful Gisborne farmer.

Farm and family dominated those early years, but Guy sought other outlets for his energy and leadership abilities. In 1899, he had helped form the 15,000-strong Farmers’ Union, and in 1903 he was elected chairman of its Hawke’s Bay branch. A prime union goal was the abolition of a protective tariff that compelled farmers to buy what they saw as expensive and shoddy locally made goods, and which, by creating jobs in ‘unnecessary’ industries, had caused a shortage of rural labour. The union also wanted to secure for farmers who held their land on lease-in-perpetuity the right to convert to freehold. ‘It is solid,’ Guy wrote of the new union, ‘has sensible, shrewd views—a little self-seeking perhaps, but in no sense a tool of either [political] party.’

Guy’s efforts to increase local membership of the union, however, were frustrated by apathy, and by what he saw as the bigger landholders’ mistrust of small-farmers. At national level, he felt that the union lacked political clout: ‘It is not productive to merely pass resolutions which Ministers receive politely and then shelve. What they want is a little fighting blood, but they are terribly anxious not to hurt anyone’s feelings, or play the part of dictator, and consequently their influence is, so far, very little political.’

Guy Russell’s public life did not end there. His interest in soldiering had revived and by now he was working to establish the first volunteer mounted rifles squadrons to be set up in Hawke’s Bay since the South African War. He was also chairman of the local A&P (Agricultural & Pastoral) Association, chairman of directors of an agricultural implement factory, a director of the Frimley cannery (forerunner of the present-day Wattie’s Canneries), and a director of the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Cooperative, a position he held for the next 52 years. ‘I mean to retire as much as possible from public duties,’ he wrote to his father. ‘They interfere with business too much.’

It was not to happen. In 1905, he became deputy chairman of the Hawke’s Bay branch of the Political Reform League. The league had its roots in the national associations formed by groups of businessmen and farmers in the 1890s to promote conservative views and candidates for political office. In the early 1900s, it put its weight behind Reform Party leader Bill Massey, who campaigned on a policy of firmer resistance to the militant unions, an end to ‘socialist’ legislation, and support for the freehold policy of the Farmers’ Union. In 1914, Russell would take his first step into national politics as vice-chairman of the party’s Hawke’s Bay branch.

As if the demands of family, large-scale farming and his extensive business, political and military interests were not enough, Guy became involved in the early 1900s in the management of another three large rural properties. In 1908, his youngest sister Evelyn married an aristocratic Englishman—Mowbray St John, the youngest son of the 16th Baron St John. Guy felt Australia offered good farming prospects for the newlyweds, and combed the Australian outback by train and car for three weeks looking for a suitable property.

In the end, the hunt came to nothing and the couple was settled on the 2500-acre (1011-hectare) Dunmore run near Ngaruawahia. Despite Guy’s tutelage, however, Mowbray was a failure as a farmer. In 1912 the family returned to England, leaving Guy to manage the property until it was sold, to his great relief and a small profit, in 1915.

The same year, Gertrude Russell bought the 6310-acre (2554 hectares) Mount View station in partnership with a Mrs Caccia Birch. Guy supervised its purchase and management (with the exception of the war years) until the property was converted into a private company in 1939. In 1914, he added to the family land holdings by buying, in partnership with his cousin Jim Dennistoun, the 4300-acre Craigdean estate at Mangamahu, but sold it at a loss in 1916.

In spite of his heavy commitments, Guy made time for other interests, this time of a quasi-religious kind. Although his beliefs were conservatively Christian, he became a member of the Order of the Table Round, ‘a neo-Arthurian mystical and chivalric order’ said to have been formed in Britain about 462 ad to bring Christian ideals into the social and political life of the time.

The order first put down roots in New Zealand in 1912 when its forty-first Grandmaster, Dr Robert Felkin, arrived from Britain with his family. Felkin was a man of varied and exotic background—a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a medical missionary and explorer, a prolific author on Uganda and Central Africa, and an early anthropologist. Felkin’s mission on settling in Hawke’s Bay was to establish two secret schools. One would be a school of Christian spiritual wisdom and the other a school of Christian chivalry—the Order of the Table Round. Together they would work to spread Christian ideals throughout his adopted country.

Details of Felkin’s subsequent activities and Guy’s ongoing involvement with the order are sketchy, but on the former’s premature death in 1914 Guy was installed as the second New Zealand Grandmaster after earlier initiation as a ‘knight’ of the order. That year, however, he was compelled to relinquish the title in anticipation of his departure overseas in command of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade. The new Jerusalem that Felkin had planned for the most distant of Britain’s dominions would have to wait upon the exigencies of war.