The Fabric of History

The Out of Europe Sale on December 10th includes a small wooden box of assorted items which belonged to a young Victorian lady. Its contents are exactly what one would expect of its genteel owner: a Book of Common Prayer, sewing items, bits of haberdashery, lace doilies, veils, a shawl, and assorted mementoes, such as beads, seashells and mineral specimens. Another lot in the same auction, linked to the same young woman, a Miss Annie Elizabeth Tookey, relates, through her letters and later articles about her life, a very different story to the docile, sheltered life we may have imagined for her.

In 1860, in her early twenties, Miss Tookey sailed to Fiji as a Methodist Missionary. Undaunted by lurid contemporary accounts of cannibalism (which of course, served to justify the Mission’s evangelical zeal), Miss Tookey eventually landed on the island of Bau, where she taught reading, writing and needlework to the wives and children of local chiefs. Here she received the protection and patronage of Seru Epenisa Cakobau, the self-styled King of Fiji, and a recent convert to Christianity. The school where she taught was built on land gifted by Cakobau, and among her pupils were his daughter, Asenath, one of whose letters, written in Fijian and praising Miss Tookey, forms part of this remarkable archive.

These letters and accounts conjure incongruous scenes of tea parties and games of blind man’s buff, giving the impression that Miss Tookey had sailed around the world to engage in the very same pursuits she would have enjoyed at home. This, of course, was arguably the point of her employment, and would explain why it was that how to cure and cook bacon was set as an examination question by the Wesleyan College where she trained. However other items in her collection (again included in sale of December 10th) show that Miss Tookey was not totally isolated from the indigenous culture of her new home. She seems to have collected or been gifted many artefacts, and these items, rare and precious in themselves, provide an essential cultural context to her time in Fiji. Among these artefacts are fishing implements, a tattooing tool, two headrests (one of which is said to have belonged to Cakobau himself) and two substantial lengths of strikingly decorated Tapa cloth.

Miss Tookey’s career as a missionary was a brief one, she left Bau due to ill-health and married in 1863, settling in New Zealand. We will never know whether it was with regret or relief that she packed up her mementoes of Fiji, which she kept until they were sent to her family in England after her death, but her care of them suggests that she at least acknowledged that her life had briefly and quietly intersected with history.

It is, of course, impossible to imagine that Miss Tookey would have described this history in terms so familiar to us today – those immense nineteenth century themes of Imperialism and Colonialism. But she must have been aware that, for two years, she had lived in a country which was undergoing immense change, and its culture, history and very identity were being challenged to the core. These items of Miss Tookey’s, which are included in the Out of Europe Sale, offer a fascinating and visceral micro view of history. In some cases, you could say that they are literal fragments of the very fabric of history.

Below are a few of the lots from Elizabeth Tookey's collection included in our Out of Europe Sale.

View all lots from Elizabeth Tookey's collection