Pemberton’s Happy Colony: Reappraising the Reception and Legacy of a Nineteenth-Century Utopia

Abstract

Drawing from his travels through Britain and Europe, and mindful of the work of other theorists and designers, Robert Pemberton proposed a model settlement based upon a new understanding of society and learning. His project challenged the accepted view of lifestyle and class, how people relate to landscape and their urban environment, the nature of learning and education and contemporary commercial practice. His 1854 design of the “Happy Colony” for a New Zealand site proposed a settlement of 10 communities formed in concentric circles. Each community would include places of learning that comprised a small model farm, manufactories, churches and communal habitations interspersed within a series of circular green belts. Pemberton’s proposed settlement was a startling, if somewhat impractical, proposition that attempted to subvert educational, urban, commercial and administrative practice. Despite sustained self-promotion and enthusiastic reception within Robert Owen’s circle, Pemberton’s work made little impression in his own lifetime. However, since the beginning of the twentieth-century, its impact has increased. Significantly, it influenced Ebenezer Howard’s thought on Garden Cities, which has impacted on much subsequent development. The project is now discussed in several disparate fields including education, urban theory, utopian studies and New Zealand studies.

Notes

1. Robert Pemberton, The Happy Colony (London: Saunders and Otley, 1854).

2. Robert Pemberton, The Science of Mind-formation, and the Process of the Reproduction of Genius Elaborated (London: Houlston and Wright, 1858), 7.

3. Robert Pemberton, The Attributes of the Soul from the Cradle (London: Saunders and Otley, 1849).

4. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 131; Pemberton, The Attributes of the Soul, 317, 339.

5. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 80, 81.

6. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 130.

7. Lyman Tower Sargent, “Utopian Traditions: These and Variations,” in Utopia: the Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (New York: New York Public Library, 2000), 15.

8. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 53.

9. John Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist: Robert Pemberton F.R.S.L.,” New Zealand Journal of History 15 (1981): 156–178; John Pemberton, “John Pemberton’s Family Tree project: Robert Pemberton,” http://johnpemberton.nz/genealogy/

10. Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 166.

11. Pemberton, The Attributes of the Soul, 311; Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 35, 36; Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 161–163; Pemberton, “John Pemberton’s Family Tree project: Robert Pemberton.”

12. Robert Pemberton, Model Institution of the School of Genius (London: Houlston and Wright, 186?), which was listed in the 1862 Exhibition catalogue, should be added to Rockey’s comprehensive list. Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 163; The International Exhibition of 1862: The Illustrated Catalogue of the Industrial Department, Vol. II (British Division), class 29, p. 51.

13. Letter from Robert Pemberton to Robert Owen, 2 October 1854, Owenite Socialism: Pamphlets and Correspondence, vol. 10 Correspondence II: 1839–1858, ed. Gregory Claeys (London: Taylor and Francis, 2005), 333.

14. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 207–209.

15. Robert Pemberton, An Address to the Bishops and Clergy of All Denominations and to All Professors and Teachers of the Christian World, on Robert Owen’s Proclamation of the Millennial State to Commence this Year (London: Saunders and Otley, 1855), 21, quoted in W.H.G. Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560–1960 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 222.

16. Robert Owen, Robert Owen’s Address, delivered at the Meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, Long Acre, London; on the 1st of January, 1855 (London: Effingham Wilson, 1855), 8.

17. Letter from James Rigby to Robert Owen, 16 September 1854, Owenite Socialism, vol. 10, 319. These men were probably Geo. A. Fleming, John Moss, F.J. Furnivall and E.V. Neale. Lord Ripon/Viscount Goderich was Prime Minister for a short period in 1827–1828.

18. Letter from Robert Owen to James Rigby, 30 September 1854, James Rigby Correspondence Collection, GB 1499 RIG/15/1/7/23, National Co-operative Archive, Manchester. This refers to W. Newton, a working engineer who represented the iron trades.

19. Letter from Owen to Rigby, 30 September 1854.

20. Letter from Robert Pemberton to Robert Owen, 21 October 1854, Owenite Socialism, vol. 10, 334.

21. Letter from Pemberton to Owen, 21 October 1854.

22. Sargent, “Utopian Traditions,” 9, 11.

23. Tommaso Campanella, La Cité du Soleil, ou, Idée d’Une République Philosophique, trans. François Villegardelle (Paris: Levavasseur, 1840).

24. John Rockey, “From Visionary to Reality: Victorian Ideal Cities and Model Towns in the Genesis of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City,” The Town Planning Review 54, no. 1 (1983): 86; Tessa Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities 1460 to 1900: Reconstructing their Architecture and Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2015), 139, 148, 151.

25. Owen, Robert Owen’s Address; “Robert Owen’s Address,” London Investigator 1 (1855): 163–165; W.A.C. Stewart and W.P. McCann, The Educational Innovators 1750–1880, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 94, 95; Rockey, “From Visionary to Reality,” 104. Buckingham’s scheme appears in James Silk Buckingham, National Evils and Practical Remedies (London: Peter Jackson, Late Fisher, Son, & Co., 1849).

26. Letter from Robert Owen to H.R.H. Prince Albert, 10 November 1855, Owenite Socialism, vol. 10, 366.

27. Owenite Socialism, vol. 10, 337–340.

28. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 37, 38, 103; Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, vol. 1, 93; Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 168; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 141; Helen May in “Archive Fragments: Infant Schools for the Youngest Settler Children in the Colony of New Zealand, 1840–1850s,” New Zealand Research in Early Childhood Education 7 (2004): 16.

29. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 130, 131; Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Letters on Early Education. Addressed to J. P. Greaves, esq., trans. J.M. Morgan (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1827); E.A. Sheppard, “The Happy Colony,” in Visionary Architecture: October 1962 (Auckland: Pelorus Press, 1962), n.p.; Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, vol. 1, 93; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 147.

30. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 78, 216; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 146.

31. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 26. Pemberton took pains to disassociate himself from phrenology, which Combe espoused.

32. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 209; Armytage, Heavens Below, 221; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 146.

33. Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City: in its Architectural Evolution (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), 139.

34. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 24.

35. Irish Architectural Archive, Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720–1940, “Armstrong, Robert Williams.” Available at http://www.dia.ie/architects/view/53/ARMSTRONG-ROBERTWILLIAMS.

36. Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors, Vol. I (London: Graves, 1905), 63.

37. Pemberton, The Science of Mind-formation, advertisement section, 4.

38. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 131.

39. S. Lang, “The Ideal City from Plato to Howard,” Architectural Review 112, no. 668 (August 1952): 101. Most writers claim for a direct connection between Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s saltworks at Chaux and the Happy Colony. For a more tentative connection assigned to these projects, see: Robert A.M. Stern, et al. eds., Paradise Planned: the Garden Suburb and the Modern City (New York: Monacelli Press, 2013), 208; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 151.

40. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 35, 36.

41. Pemberton, The Happy Colony, 42.

42. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L’Architecture Considerée sous le Rapport de l’Art, des Moeurs et de la Législation, 2 vol. (Paris: Lenoir, 1846–1847).

43. “… la forme est pure comme celle que décrit le soleil dans sa course” Ledoux (1804 edition) quoted in Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 42, no. 3 (1952): 512.

44. Rosenau, The Ideal City, plate XXXIb and Figure 29; Colin Rowe, “The Architecture of Utopia,” Granta 63, no. 1187 (January 24, 1959): 23.

45. Rosenau, The Ideal City, 139.

46. Rowe, “The Architecture of Utopia,” 26.

47. “Summary,” The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Science and Art, no. 1967 (1854): 845; “Our Library Table: The Happy Colony,” The Athenæum, no. 1405 (1854): 1169; Samuel Phillips, Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park (London: Crystal Palace Library, 1854), Advertiser section, 10.

48. “Our Library Table,” The Athenæum.

49. The book’s publisher, Saunders and Otley, was an advertiser in the Dixon’s Athenæum.

50. “Literature,” John Bull 34 (1854): 633.

51. Robert Pemberton, “Explanation [of his Happy Colony],” in Owen, Robert Owen’s Address, 21–24.

52. Letter from Robert Pemberton to Robert Owen, December 16, 1854, Correspondence of Robert Pemberton, 1854–1856, Robert Owen Collection, GB 1499 ROC/16/30/4, National Co-operative Archive, Manchester.

53. “Robert Owen’s Address,” The London Investigator, 163.

54. “Mr. Owen’s Conference and the ‘Times’,” The Reasoner and London Tribune 17 (1854): 412; “Mr. Owen and the Times,” The London Investigator 1 (1855): 158; Owen, Robert Owen’s Address, 19, 20.

55. Advert, The Reasoner and London Tribune 17 (1854): 416; “Mr. Owen’s Trade Conference,” The Reasoner and London Tribune 17 (1854): 422; “Robert Owen to the Editor,” The London Investigator 1 (1855): 156; “The Permanent Happy Existence of the Human Race, or the Commencement of the Millennium of 1855,” The London Investigator 1 (1855): 157.

56. “Mr. Robert Owen and his Millennium,” Daily News (January 2, 1855), 5; “Mr. Robert Owen and his Millennium,” Morning Advertiser (January 2, 1855), 6. This latter text was reprinted in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. The people mentioned were Alexander Campbell and E. Wilkins.

57. Pemberton, The Science of Mind-Formation, 72; Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, 96.

58. Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 166; Robert Pemberton, Report of the Proceedings at the Inauguration of Mr. Pemberton’s New Philosophical Model Infant School, for Teaching Languages, Native and Foreign, on the Natural or Euphonic System (London: Educational Repository, 1857). This was also known as the “Infant Euphonic Institution.”

59. Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 175.

60. The International Exhibition of 1862, class 29, p. 50, 51; “The International Exhibition,” Daily News (June 17, 1862), supplement p. 3; “Food for Babies,” The Spectator 35 (1862): 823.

61. The International Exhibition of 1862, class 29, p. 51.

62. Letter from Alexander Campbell to Robert Owen, 2 October 1854, GB 1499 ROC/3/5/21, and letter from Alexander Campbell to Robert Owen, 30 November 1854, GB 1499 ROC/16/30/5, Correspondence of Alexander Campbell, Robert Owen Collection, National Co-operative Archive, Manchester.

63. George Jacob Holyoake, History of Co-operation in England: its Literature and its Advocates: Volume II the Constructive Period 1845–1878 (London: Trübner, 1879), 339.

64. “The Happy Colony” [advert], The Reasoner and London Tribune 19 (1855): 104, 112, 120, 128.

65. Rosenau, The Ideal City, 139; Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898).

66. Most writers argue for a direct link between the projects: J.M. Richards, “Views of Utopia,” The Times Literary Supplement (July 17, 1959): 420; P. Batchelor, “The Origin of the Garden City Concept of Urban Form,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 28, no. 3 (1969): 184–200; N.N. Patricios, “The Conceptual Determinants of Two Archetypal City Forms,” Planning Outlook, 15, n.s. (1974): 9; Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 159; Rockey, “From Visionary to Reality,” 94; Mark Girouard, Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 351; Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 202; Morrison, Unbuilt Utopian Cities, 195. Stern is more tentative, Stern, et al., Paradise Planned, 209.

67. Howard, To-morrow, diagram nos. 2, 3 and 5.

68. Howard, To-morrow, 103–04, 112, 113.

69. Howard, To-morrow, 5. Rockey and Stern reproduce the manuscript drawing of the Master Key: Rockey, “From Visionary to Reality,” 87; Stern, et al., Paradise Planned, 210.

70. Rockey, “From Visionary to Reality,” 86, 87, 94.

71. C.B. Purdom cited in Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 159.

72. Rockey, “An Australasian Utopist,” 159.

73. Pers. comm. Gillian Lonergan, National Co-operative Archive, Manchester, May 9, 2017.

74. Batchelor, “Origin of the Garden City Concept,” 184–200.

75. Robert Freestone, Model Communities: The Garden City Movement in Australia (Melbourne: Nelson, 1989), 66–70; Ben Schrader, “Avoiding the Mistakes of the “Mother Country”: the New Zealand Garden City Movement 1900–1926,” Planning Perspectives 14 (1999): 395–411; Caroline Miller, “Theory Poorly Practised: The Garden Suburb in New Zealand,” Planning Perspectives 19 (2004): 37–55; Diane Brand, “Grand Designs Down Under: Utopias and Urban Projects in Mid-Nineteenth Century New Zealand,” Journal of Urban Design 22 (2017): 323.

76. Garth Falconer, Living in Paradox: A History of Urban Design Across Kainga, Towns and Cities in New Zealand (Auckland: Blue Acres Press, 2015), 147.

77. Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922), 318.

78. Archibald E. Dobbs, Education and Social Movements, 1700–1850 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 150.

79. Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, 93.

80. Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, 97.

81. Lyman Tower Sargent, “Utopianism and the Creation of New Zealand National Identity,” Utopian Studies 12, no. 1 (2001): 2; Lyman Tower Sargent, “Colonial and postcolonial utopias,” Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 205.