VII. The Sweep of Travel Writing

This colonial representation of life overseas developed into the genre of travel writing, to which writers and travellers alike turned in order to depict their journeys. These types of narratives were “all the rage” throughout the nineteenth century, again owing to the fact that “the experience of travel became less unusual” and more accessible (Wevers, Reading on the Farm 37). Travel writing was seen as facilitating “an intersection between a distant culture and a present enterprise”, with the authors acting as mediators between the places they came from and the places they ventured towards (2). The expectation was that travel writing was a simple and detailed collection of the writer’s experiences or interactions, reproduced for literary consumption. In The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Roy Bridges eloquently defines the genre as being “a discourse designed to describe and interpret for its readers a geographical area together with its natural attributes and its human society and culture” (Bridges 53). Since the audience was distanced from the author, the level of intrigue increased, but also the need for accuracy. Thus, travel writing became a process of collecting and redistributing information.

As mundane as a regurgitation of facts might seem to modern readers – readers who are motivated by a driving plot – audiences of the nineteenth century were eager to learn about the day-to-day activities of those stationed so far away. ‘Report’ and ‘account’ were “[frequent] descriptions of nineteenth century travel writing” (102). To understand the settlers’ routines was to have the gap bridged between traveller and audience, for reasons of comfort or desire for knowledge. There was a strong attraction of being confined to countryside Britain and still reading about distant places or peoples in specific detail. Indeed, The Boy Colonists is described as a “valuable record of people and places” rather than a fictional story (E. Elwell ii). Elwell translated his travels exactly, rather than focusing on fictionality and embellishment. For the writers themselves, engaging in travel narratives became an act of processing their surroundings “through ethnographic or geographic observation”; their unusual endeavours could make more sense once chronologically documented or passed on for others to discover (Wevers, Country of Writing 79). The growing population of these writers meant that travel writing gradually moved from “synthetic relations… written for practical purposes”, to more elaborate versions that dealt with personal events (Rubiés 245). ‘Realist’ tales of everyday characters or adventures became the more dominant literary form.

In applying these parameters to Elwell’s work, The Boy Colonists becomes a synthesis of the majority of travel writing circulating throughout the nineteenth century, representing that previously determined wider cohort of passengers armed with the hope of forging a new life. Split into a combination of daily recount, letter excerpts, and a couple of eventful narrative passages, it is motivated by contact to one’s family and the desire to inform about a settler’s way of life. This was a typical starting point for many more amateur works of travel writing, as “writing letters or keeping a journal [was] a print-acculturated response to experience” (Wevers, Country of Writing 155). As a result, their writing style was seen to be more literarily accessible, since it was so personal and anecdotal in tone. The “trivial” narratives of everyday occurrences on the ships, farms and colonies – “the sort of stuff a hobbledehoy who has never been abroad before would write home to his sisters”, as Wevers claims – hit far closer to home for the majority of the audience that consumed travel writing (Wevers, Reading on the Farm 37-8).

The above quote encapsulates much of the content in Elwell’s narrative, as Ernest is very focused on depicting both his day-to-day and his adventures. As the story unfolds, readers can observe the increase in letters addressed back to Ernest’s home which exhibit that anecdotal nature of more personal travel writing. He includes the excerpts asking his “dear Mama” for “brown holland hats” and jam in the same novel that also details his discovery of a man washed up in the creek (E. Elwell 117). This is a text where it appears that the sensational and the sensitive are combined. In his exploration into the first New Zealand travel writings³, William Jennings asserts that “the best example of travel writing are found in letters to friends and family… where the writer was more likely to forget himself a little and reveal more of his thoughts” (Jennings 346). Indeed, the emotional aspect of Ernest’s character is no more evident than when he is writing home to his mother about these hat sizes or new boots (E. Elwell 117). Elwell’s travel narrative thus comes to bridge an emotional gap between audience and narrator, with Ernest serving as the embodiment of young settlers documenting their lives. Despite the gruelling work shearing sheep or building huts far from home, he is still deeply connected to his family and place of origin; he does not shy away from exhibiting this throughout the text.

For all the implication that Elwell depicts a relatively mundane and very difficult lifestyle for Ernest,The Boy Colonists illustrates some wildly exciting events. However, in the pursuit of communicating the accuracy of New Zealand life, Elwell does not seem to be specifically focused on how much he can embellish Ernest’s experiences. Its clinical descriptions of both people and excursions push it closer towards the parameters of ethnographic writing instead: everything is depicted exactly as it is, without being dressed up in grandeur or fantastical detail. The excitement comes from the nature of the situation and allows the events to speak for themselves instead. To take a prime moment from the novel as an example, Ernest and his horse attempt a river crossing which results in their near-peril (123). However, Elwell illustrates how “Ernest recovered himself instantly”, with his clear state of mind and simple execution of saving himself and the horse. Typically, Victorian travel writers embellished what they saw in their writing and thus created a more extreme or exciting account than what may have actually unfolded. However, rather than embellishing Ernest’s experiences, writing in a way that “fictionalised what was seen even before it was described”, Elwell sticks closely to the facts of Ernest’s (read: his) New Zealand life (Evans 21). The events he depicts align audiences closer to the places and characters they read about, ultimately fulfilling what nineteenth-century audiences desired from travel literature: a fostered, informed connection with a person or place.