In 1840 the New Zealand Company settlement of Wellington, Port Nicholson barely existed.1 New immigrants were still moving their possessions from ship to tent to raupo hut; negotiations for land purchases with local Māori were tentative and legally problematic; socially there were few meeting places apart from Barrett’s Hotel on the beach and the intermittent hospitality of visiting ships.
Given this, it may seem odd that one of the first things that the settlers set about was the formation of a Pickwick Club. The New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator of 22 August 1840 described the inaugural meeting of the Pickwick Club of New Zealand comprised of what the paper called the ‘gay son of Erin, the calm reflecting Scotchman, and the blunt and manly Englishman’ (‘The Pickwick Club of New Zealand’, 22 Aug. 1840).2 ‘To our friends in England’, the Gazette had written earlier,
this cannot fail to awaken…