Adrian Moody's confession and plea for forgiveness to Walter Moody

Adrian Moody’s relationship with Walter Moody is revealed through a letter that makes a belated attempt at reconciliation out of confession. Adrian arrives in Hokitika seeking his younger son, and explains that debt, drink, and deliberate abandonment shaped the years of separation. He asks Walter to withhold judgment until he has read the whole account, admits his failures without claiming they can be undone, and offers the possibility of a sober reunion while leaving Walter free to refuse it.

A father arrives in Hokitika

Adrian reaches the beach by skiff from a steamer and sets about finding Walter. Even in his best suit, with his hair oiled, his boots blackened, and a scented handkerchief, he appears worn by a lifetime of heavy drinking: his eyes are pouched, his nose swollen, and his complexion permanently flushed. His stiff, lumbering walk and restless gaze make his anxiety visible in his body. He keeps his hands in his pockets or picks at his lapels as he moves through the town.

After directing his luggage to a hotel on Camp Street, Adrian walks along Revell Street, studying the shop windows and the faces in the crowd. The courthouse doors are locked, and the armoured carriage carrying Francis Carver’s body has already returned to Seaview; Adrian barely glances at the building. His immediate purpose is private and familial. At the Hokitika Post Office, he joins the queue and asks for a letter to find Walter Moody, identifying Walter as his son. He gives the postmaster the name and agrees to pay the fee, turning his search into a message that can reach Walter even if he cannot find him in person.

The account of his departure

The letter, dated April 27, 1866, begins by asking Walter to read to the end before judging him. Adrian says he has taken lodging at the Temperance Hotel, a choice that would surprise Walter because his father had been known for an Epicurean temperament. He now claims a different character: he has sworn never to drink again, and says the oath has held. He presents the letter as an effort to recover intentions that drink had obscured and, in his account, distorted.

Adrian explains that he left the British Isles because of debt. Frederick had heard from an acquaintance on the Lawrence field in Otago that prospects were promising and had decided to go there. Walter, meanwhile, was in Rome and planned to spend the winter on the continent. Adrian chose to travel secretly, hoping to return rich before the year was out. He also acknowledges a less defensible reason: there were men in London and Liverpool from whom he wanted to escape.

Before leaving, Adrian set aside his final savings, £20, for his wife. He later learned that the money never reached her because the man entrusted with it, Piers Howland, stole it. By then Adrian was in Otago, far away and unable to make contact without risking pursuit or conviction for crimes that had gone unpunished, as well as debts that remained unpaid. He says he did nothing: he counted his wife abandoned, prayed for forgiveness, and continued prospecting with Frederick. The admission gives the separation a concrete history of money entrusted, money stolen, and a husband who chose silence rather than return.

Gold, estrangement, and Frederick

The brothers found only pay dirt during their first year in Otago. Adrian describes their struggle and frequent despair, then identifies the discovery that changed their prospects: seven months before writing, Frederick found a nugget the size of a snuffbox caught between two boulders at the bend of a stream. That find began their fortunes, but it did not prompt Adrian to contact the family he had left behind.

Adrian recognizes that Walter might reasonably ask why they did not send the nugget home with apologies and blessings. He says Frederick had long urged him to write to Walter, get in touch with his abandoned wife, and even invite her to join them. Frederick also pressed him to stop drinking and reform his conduct. Adrian resisted all of this. The repeated arguments ended in a separation on less than civil terms, and Adrian admits that he no longer knows where Frederick is. The prospect of reunion with Walter therefore arrives amid another unresolved family rupture: the son who urged repair is himself absent.

Confession and appeal for forgiveness

Adrian’s letter balances remorse with an effort to define the person he hopes to become. He describes himself as weak and cowardly, vulnerable to vice and sin, and says that the vow of temperance has forced him to confront his character. His claim of sobriety is not proof that Walter will trust him, but it is the change on which Adrian bases his appeal. The Temperance Hotel and the promise of a dry reunion give that claim a practical setting as well as a moral one.

His message to Walter is not simply an apology for leaving. Adrian says he has never been ashamed of Walter, whom he regards as the family’s scholar, and expresses pride that his sons are better men than he is. He calls this pride painful, suggesting that admiration does not erase the distance or his awareness of what he failed to provide. He asks Walter’s forgiveness and Frederick’s too, then offers a future meeting on the condition that he will not drink. Even the briefest reply, he says, would encourage him.

A relationship left open

The letter makes Adrian’s return a plea rather than a completed reconciliation. He has come to the same town as Walter, but the evidence establishes his search and his written confession, not Walter’s response. That distinction matters: Adrian can explain his choices, acknowledge the harm of abandoning his wife, and promise reform, but he cannot make forgiveness an automatic consequence of disclosure.

The relationship is shaped by a contrast between what Adrian has done and what he says he values in his sons. He once left secretly, withheld contact, and resisted Frederick’s attempts to restore family ties; now he asks Walter to hear the whole account and judge him afterward. His appeal gains force from its specifics—the stolen £20, the snuffbox-sized nugget, the arguments with Frederick, and the vow made at the Temperance Hotel—while remaining uncertain in outcome. Fatherhood becomes, here, a bond Adrian can name and seek to repair, but not a claim that obliges Walter to answer.