Introduction

The sole surviving communication from KM to Maata dates from the acme of their friendship in 1907. The two girls had known each other for at least seven years, as their increasingly elite educations had led them through similar patterns of relocation between New Zealand and Europe, and their relationship had become – for KM at least – intense. The short birthday telegram reveals little, however, of the ardour that KM was expressing for Maata in other personal and creative writing of the same period.

KM met Maata at Miss Swainson’s Fitzherbert Terrace school, probably around 1900. Maata had access to the elite, fee-paying institution through family connections and inherited wealth: she was born to Emily Sexton, whose sister was then a student at Miss Swainson’s school, and Richard Mahupuku, whose family included wealthy and prominent members of Ngati Kahungunu, the iwi located along the east coast of the North Island. Maata’s uncle, Hamuera Tamahau Mahupuku, left a considerable estate (amassed through the farming and leasing of land) in trust for her when he died in 1904. Even after part of this estate was embezzled in 1906, Maata was still heiress to considerable wealth and vast land holdings. From 1904 Maata ‘finished’ her education in Paris, where she became fluent in French and pursued her interest in singing, and in London, where KM was enrolled at Queen’s College. While in London, KM introduced Maata to Ida Baker, who in later life remembered Maata as a ‘very beautiful young Maori princess’, who was simultaneously exotic, hailing from ‘wild, unknown plains’, and yet more sophisticated than the ‘simple, English girl-students’ of Queen’s College. Ida’s memories encapsulate something of the charm that Maata seems to have held for KM: she was seen by both girls to embody a blend of Maori exoticism with the reassuring refinement of European high culture. This was a direct result of her unique circumstances: Maata’s Uncle Hamuera had done much to invigorate Papawai, the site which became the focus of the Kotahitanga Parliamentary movement. Yet while he was engaged in a project that gave strength to Maori culture and politics, Hamuera also supported the Liberal government’s paternalistic land policies, repeatedly siding with the government’s interests over those of Maori.