They told of what
had been done, by means of the little things; a bulwark against the
undoing of the great things. Ever, the handling of personal elements was
the master touch, the vast secret.
Take Sir George's entrance into the circle of Knights Commanders of the
Bath, with Waka Nene and Te Puni for Esquires. He was one of the youngest
K.C.B.'s ever nominated, being only thirty-six, and he just preceded his
old friend Sir James Stephen. 'It struck me as a great shame,' his
feeling had been, 'that one to whom I was so much attached, whose
services to the State were so much longer than mine, should be made to
follow me in the "Gazette." I could have cried over it.'
The notion of Esquires belongs, no doubt, to the truculent age when a
brace of henchmen were useful beside the stirrup of a knight. Sir George
did not revive them, in New Zealand, as a body-guard in any warlike
meaning. Herein, there possibly lay a certain disappointment for his
friends Waka Nene and Te Puni, both Maori chiefs of martial qualities.
The purpose was to identify the Maori people with a reward, which the
Queen of England had conferred upon her representative in New Zealand.
'It is not for me alone,' Sir George Grey put the honour, 'but for all of
us in this distant part of the realm.
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