Abstract
The large cache of letters held in the Seddon Papers in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, makes it clear that the Premier of New Zealand and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, became close friends as well as allies in the cause of closer Imperial unity between 1897 and Seddon’s death in 1906.1 At first glance this friendship between the wealthy and privileged Chamberlain and the self-made mechanical engineer, storekeeper, publican and autodidact populist from St Helens and Kumara, Richard John Seddon, makes little sense. Indeed, it is hard to imagine two men who were more different. Seddon’s corpulent, pear-shaped body which signified success in the late nineteenth-century world because it suggested a man who had never gone hungry, contrasted with Chamberlain’s more svelte shape. Chamberlain was also a clean-shaven dandy with his monocle, cravats, yellow jackets and orchids in his lapel, whereas, despite his penchant for classy, dark coats and white carnations, the bearded Seddon could hardly be described as either sartorial or fashionably dressed.2 His own former Minister of Labour turned historian, William Pember Reeves, rather described him asnoteworthy for a fine chest girth and an equal measure of self-confidence … His head made one think of iron wedges, stone axes and things meant to split and fracture. And the pallor of the face was lit by two alert blue eyes and by a peculiarly pleasant – nay, sweet smile playing round a well-shaped mouth. He looked as though he might be handy with his fists, as indeed he could be. Most things about him appeared big, vigorous, restless: you thought him a man made for drums and tramplings.3