The dead tell tales
Herbert Horatio Spencer Westmacott 1885-1960
Currently there are two memorials to Lieutenant Spencer Westmacott: in Otorohanga Cemetery there’s a modest, deskstyle granite headstone on his grave and at Te Papa’s ‘‘Gallipoli: The scale of our war’’ exhibition there’s a larger-than-life model of the man himself in army uniform, left arm outstretched pointing a gun. The difference in impact and scale of these two representations could hardly be more pronounced.
The model of Westmacott in the Gallipoli exhibition was made by Weta Workshop, with advice from his daughter. It shows him half-lying, half-sitting, blood dripping from a wound in his right arm, yet valiantly fighting on. This in itself is a measure of Westmacott’s character: staunch, determined and resilient. By the end of that first day, April 25, 1915, he was evacuated with severe injuries. He later described his one day of military action as ‘‘the most glorious day of my life’’. His right arm was amputated at a hospital in Egypt and he spent many months recuperating in England. Blood poisoning affected a knee joint, locking it. Thereafter, he walked with a stiff leg. His first challenge was to learn to write, paint and sketch with his left hand. Frustrated with his inactivity he asked to join a training unit on the front line in France. At Gallipoli and in France he painted several watercolours. Spencer Westmacott was born in Christchurch to a middle-class family, and although he dreamed of a military career he went to work on his father’s farm at Waikakahi. He developed from being a skinny, tall schoolboy to a strong and capable farmer, learning from his father’s men and also his dog, who taught him the best way to round up sheep. In 1910 he came north to the King Country to break in some land that his father leased from King Mahuta. It was rough, bush-clad country in the Rangitoto Range east of Te Kuiti. Even finding the survey pegs was a feat of endurance, cutting tracks through the bush.
Westmacott was not afraid of laughing at himself: he had had visions of being like ‘the squire’ in sketches by Finch Mason. This stout, well-fed squire, with servants and farm staff, led such a comfortable life he could light up his first cigar after breakfast. Westmacott’s reality was nothing like this vision: hard work, years of discomfort, poor food and loneliness. He had a horse, a dog and a cat for company. He wrote that at times he couldn’t turn over in his uncomfortable camp bed for fear of disturbing the cat curled up behind his knees. With a lot of help he soon had over 100 acres of pasture developed from the cleared bush land.
In 1913 Westmacott went up to Auckland as one of ‘‘Massey’s Cossacks’’ to control the waterfront strike – the beginning of his longed-for military action. His dream came true in August 1914 when he signed up with the Auckland Battalion. He rode out from Rangitoto, driving his house-cow before him to the neighbours. He wrote that this made him feel ‘‘self-conscious and ridiculous’’, not the heroic figure he had imagined.
In London in 1918 he married a childhood friend, Jean Campbell, who was nursing in France. They were to have two daughters and a son. After a few years in Christchurch, in 1926 they returned to the Rangitoto farm, now accessible by road. Although disabled, he could mount and ride a horse, but could not drive a motor vehicle. According to research done by the Kiwiana team at Otorohanga, he had a piece cut out of the dashboard of his vehicles to accommodate his stiff leg; he had to throw his stiff leg into place before clambering into the vehicle. After Westmacott’s death in 1960, his daughter-in-law Honor Westmacott found some of his memoirs – she has edited them as ‘‘The after-breakfast cigar; selected memoirs of a King Country Settler’’. They cover only his first four years at Rangitoto. Westmacott wrote in great detail about life in the bush, living in tents and huts, learning to chop wood and dock lambs. His later memoirs of Gallipoli: ‘‘April 25, 1915: ‘the most glorious day of my life’ were edited by Christopher Tobin and published in 2014.
Note: Pauline Way (recently deceased) lent me her copy of
‘‘The After Breakfast Cigar’’.
Thanks to Rob Gordon of the Otorohanga Friendship Club for pointing out Westmacott’s grave, and to other members of the club. Some of Westmacott’s paintings are in http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/
2015/04/01/introducing-spencerwestmacott-farmer-soldierartist/. See also http:/ /www.teara.govt.nz/en/ biographies/