Secret code captures Pania of the Reef visionary
A Napier housewife who claimed to say hello to the other side yielded a seafront statue forever looking to sea.
On July 10, 1930, the Manawatu¯ Daily Times printed an articlewith headlines that read: ‘‘Handclasps in the spirit world!’’ and ‘‘Did she have the secret code?’’
The story, via the Press Association from Napier, read: ‘‘Mrs Vmay Cottrell, clairaudient and writingmedium, claims to have received a communication from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’’, who had died a few days earlier.
‘‘In the course of which the departed states, ‘Words are totally inadequate to convey the true happiness and great joy one feels in beholding loved ones long removed from physical ken. As handclasp follows handclasp I am overwhelmed with gladness ... Now I know from personal experience that which I so firmly believed myself and expounded to others for so long is an actual marvellous fact. There is no death, only transition from one state of being to another’.’’
The British doctor, famous as the author of the popular Sherlock Holmes books, was also known for his intense interest in and writings about spiritualism. He had even visited Christchurch in 1920 to give a series of lectures on the subject.
Mrs Cottrell, on the other hand, was amodest Napier housewife.
She and Conan Doyle knew each other through letters. She had written about her own voyages into spiritualism but otherwise was a private, non-flamboyant person.
She would, however, become famous in her own right for something completely different – as the originator of Pania of the Reef.
Violet’s birth name was Violet May Grainger. She was born in Napier in 1887, the daughter of a postmaster-engineer and his wife who lived in the Kiritaki bush settlement.
When she was 28, she married Horace Cottrell, a salesman in his father’s china and fancy goods store. They had a son and a daughter, and Horace would support her unusual interests throughout their life together.
From the 1920s, Violet began to explore her talent for writing and her curiosity about many philosophies. She developed a belief in the power of the subconscious mind, of life after death, and psychic communication. Horacewas also developing his own talents.
The couple were members of the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society and they studied the Cape Kidnappers gannets. Horacemade hand-coloured lantern slides of the birds and wrote a lecture about them, which was sponsored by the American Chautuqua Association.
Horace’s lantern-slide lecture was presented 99 times throughout New Zealand in 1923.
When the Napier earthquake struck eight years later, Horace’s work dried up. He joined the staff of the Napier Daily Telegraph, and later the family moved to Wellington, where Horace worked for the Land and Income Tax Department.
Violet joined the New Zealand Women Writers and Artists’ Society, and had many of her poems and stories published in its magazine.
On February 18, 1939, local newspapers announced in their women’s pages that ‘‘Mrs Vmay Cottrell, Hataitai, Wellington, has received advice that her story, The Lost Cave of Pukerangi, has been accepted by Frederickwarne and Co of London for publication in their series of books for children’’.
Violet’s psychic experiences had now ramped up. Her ‘‘spirits’’ were urging her to write for families of the dead. Horace, at first worried by the ‘‘spooky business’’ and anxious for it to stop, eventually became kindly supportive.
When her parents died, May told the newspapers, their communications from the ‘‘other side’’ gave her comfort.
She told the Telegraph: ‘‘I had never heard of automatic or inspirational writing, for I knew nothing of spiritualism or any of its phenomena. Thus, it was a long time before my friends across the border overcame my fears sufficiently for me to try to write their messages direct.’’
Later, she added, the spiritual writing gave way to clairaudience, the hearing of ‘‘spirit voices’’.
The Cottrells’ son, an air force pilot, was killed on active service during World War II, and May, as she was usually called, and Horace moved back, finally, to Napier.
At some point in the early 1950s, May was inspired to write a poem about a beautiful sea sprite named Pania, possibly based on an old Ma¯ori legend. It began: ‘‘Pania, beautiful sea maiden/coming from dark depths mysterious/from the ocean’s strange weird caverns.’’ The poem told of Karitoki, son of ama¯ori chief, who fell in lovewith the mysterious Pania and married her. However, Pania was able to staywith him only at night. At the first light of dawn, she ran to the seashore and leapt into the waves, returning again at evening.
Karitoki, wanting to keep Pania all the time, consulted a kauma¯tua, who told him: ‘‘Place a morsel of cooked food into her mouth as she sleeps and when she wakes she will no longer remember her sea kindred.’’
So Karitoki waited until Pania slept and placed a tiny piece of cooked food on her tongue.
Immediately, Pania sprang up and without a backward glance ran back to the ocean, where she remained forever.
The poem captured the imagination of Napier’s city fathers, then preparing for the provincial centennial. The Thirty Thousand Club commissioned the creation of a bronze statue, to be placed on the waterfront and named Pania of the Reef. It was unveiled on June 10, 1954, by then prime minister Sidney Holland.
Violet May Cottrell, now a widow, died in Napier in her name month: May 28, 1971. She was survived by her daughter.