Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  Elizabeth, the amateur botanist who so carefully described the gardens of Cape Town to her mother, would have overseen the layout of the new gardens at Elizabeth Farm, a bountiful mix of the productive (just over a hectare of vines, fruit trees and vegetables in squared off allotments to the east of the house, down beside the creek) and the ornamental (closer to the house).21 In the evenings, or when she had a moment to sit, there was still no opportunity for rest. Elizabeth would have been unusual if she didn’t make clothes for herself and the family. The diary of Mary Braidwood Mowle, a woman who settled with her husband in the Canberra district in the 1850s, records almost every day the unremarked phrase ‘worked’; by which she meant making and altering clothes.22

  Elizabeth was not too busy, though, to visit friends now that she had some women of her own age and class to mix with and a drawing room in which to receive them. Years later, Elizabeth, in a letter to a grown-up Edward, drolly apologised for not writing sooner. Instead of hiding away at the writing desk, ‘I kept myself disengaged to talk, which occasionally you know Edward I am very fond of’.23 But just as in any modern expatriate community, lasting friendships were made difficult by the constant comings and goings, as officers and high-ranking civilians were routinely transferred and reassigned to other settlements and countries.

  The Reverend and Mrs Marsden arrived in early 1794, cradling a baby girl who was born at sea nine days earlier during a gale blowing strong enough to split the mainsail. The child was no sooner born than the cabin was swamped by a cold wave, drenching mother, infant and all the linen.24 When Betsy Marsden first arrived she sent a letter home saying there were ‘several ladies’ so at least she had ‘some respectable society’. Before the year was out the Marsdens took up a large land grant at the Field of Mars, just across the Parramatta River from Elizabeth Farm. Elizabeth warmed to Betsy and it seems the feeling was mutual. Elizabeth Macarthur was Mrs Marsden’s ‘one companion at Parramatta…a very pleasant agreeable lady, mother of three fine children’.25 But John Macarthur and Samuel Marsden would very soon fall out, professionally and personally, and it became difficult for their wives to visit each other.

  Senior among the ladies of the colony when the Marsdens arrived was Major Grose’s wife Frances. Next in the hierarchy was Captain Paterson’s wife, Elizabeth. Plump, ‘pleasant and obliging,’26 Elizabeth Paterson was also described by one of the marines as ‘a good, cosy, Scotch lass, and fit for a soldier’s wife’.27 Mrs Paterson had been one of those enjoying the boating picnics on the harbour with Elizabeth, before she and her husband left with Lieutenant King and his wife for Norfolk Island. The Patersons returned to New South Wales in early 1793; Major and Mrs Grose departed the colony in 1794 and Captain Paterson became acting lieutenant-governor. Elizabeth’s friend Elizabeth Paterson was, for a little while, the colony’s first lady. The new governor, John Hunter, was expected daily although as it happened he didn’t arrive for nearly another year. This was the same John Hunter that Elizabeth had met and liked during her early days in Sydney, who had lost the Sirius on the reef at Norfolk Island in 1790. Hunter was exonerated during the subsequent court martial and he returned to New South Wales in September 1795. As things turned out, Captain Hunter might have been better off staying away.

  9

  Babies, Bluster and Boasting

  He is an indulgent Father—beloved as a Master, & universally respected for the integrity of his Character.

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO BRIDGET KINGDON, 1 SEPTEMBER 1798

  Elizabeth may have excused herself from attending the ceremonies to welcome her old friend Governor Hunter, because within weeks of his arrival her three fine children became four, with the birth of Mary Isabella in October 1795. Less than two years later, a fifth child, James, was born. Elizabeth then had five children under the age of eight. Caring for the children, the household and at least some aspects of the farm, she certainly had no time for piano lessons or botany any more. Meanwhile John was also working hard, in his unpaid role as inspector of public works, and Governor Hunter’s first impressions of the colony and of John Macarthur were favourable. That didn’t last.

  With Hunter’s appointment the governorship was back in naval hands and a halcyon period ended for the New South Wales Corps. Lieutenant-Governors Grose and Paterson were both army men; they served beside John Macarthur. It is difficult to overestimate their esprit de corps, their sense of brotherhood. If life under Grose and then Paterson was kind to the Macarthurs, it was no coincidence—officers looked out for one another. The population of New South Wales when Hunter arrived was only 3211 and convicts made up 59 per cent. Almost all the rest were military and administrative personnel or prisoners who had served their time.1 Elizabeth’s small circle of female friends were the wives of the officers, the clergy or the civilian administrators. There were only a dozen or so free settlers, and the settlement was confined to a small region close to the coast, with its economic centre at Parramatta.

  Toy-town political games leading to intense rivalries and bitterness were inevitable in a claustrophobic settlement full of alpha males and unclear chains of command. Surgeon Harris (who had seconded John in his duel on the wharves at Plymouth) had, in April 1793, purchased Experiment Farm from emancipist James Ruse and was the Macarthurs’ nearest neighbour. But he and John were no longer friends. ‘Captain Nepean is quite in the dumps, and my friend Mac being more so, by God I am perfectly happy,’ he wrote.2 The ranking wives of the colony could not avoid becoming embroiled. As their husbands fell in and out of alliances they could either follow suit by cutting off the relevant wife in a social sense, or else continue to pay and receive visits while feigning a brittle ignorance of the men’s disputes. Similarly, the genteel wives of the colony were not immune to rivalries and resentments of their own. John and Elizabeth Macarthur were very much in the centre of these seething social maelstroms.

  When Hunter was last in the colony, during Phillip’s time as governor, most work had been concentrated on the public farms and on the construction of roads and buildings. By late 1795, though, privately held farms far exceeded in area those belonging to the government. Although the colony was not yet self-sufficient, the officers and small farmers produced much of the grain supply and owned most of the livestock. So many convicts were employed privately that few were left for public works, even though the male convicts were required to work their ‘government hours’ in the morning, for which they received no remuneration. But in the afternoons they were free to work their own holdings, or to undertake paid work for others. Rum had become the currency of choice for the convicts and they often refused to work outside government hours for anything else. This suited the officers, given that they were the colony’s chief importers of liquor. Throughout his governorship, Hunter attempted to regulate the importation of spirits but the task was beyond him. The whole trade was controlled, in practice, by those very officers who most profited by it. Under these circumstances, even a wise man would have to tread carefully. Hunter, experienced in the ways of the sea rather than politics, began to step on some toes.

  Hunter, deliberately or not, began to undermine Macarthur’s authority, and in February 1796 Macarthur submitted his resignation as inspector of public works, although he continued his work as a commissioned officer. Perhaps Elizabeth hoped he might now spend a little more time focusing on the needs of Elizabeth Farm, rather than leaving it all largely to her. Instead John used his spare time to stir up the hornets’ nest that was the New South Wales administration. While he commanded the respect of the troops, and had the loyalty of his brother officers, few of the civilian officials were on friendly terms with John Macarthur, with one writing to call John a ‘base rascal and an atrocious liar and a villain’.3 While Hunter had initially been pleased with Macarthur’s efforts, many in the colony were delighted to see him step down. Hunter accepted Macarthur’s resignation ‘without reluctance’4 and within days appointed to the inspectorate position the man perhaps least qualified for th
e role: Richard Atkins.

  Atkins was about fifty years old, tall and handsome with an easy and engaging manner. He was also habitually drunk, frequently unclean and notorious for frauds and unpaid debts. His family were, and had been for hundreds of years, closely associated with royalty—a fact to which Atkins regularly alluded: he was the third son of a baronet; his elder brother was a general and a baronet; his second brother was also a baronet and, crucially for Hunter’s future career in the Royal Navy, an admiral. Atkins was, in other words, unassailable. Yet John Macarthur was determined to take him on.

  In mid-1796 Macarthur and Atkins started arguing about turnips.5 Atkins alleged that soldiers were stealing from the governor’s garden. Macarthur, writing in response to Atkins, sought the names of the offenders. John, usually a very careful correspondent, entirely failed to include the appellation of Esquire. Atkins protested strongly at the snub, and while still refusing to yield the names of the thieves, took further offence at John implying that by keeping the names to himself he might be involved in fraud. Macarthur called in Governor Hunter and although the soldiers were eventually tried (and both found not guilty), the argument escalated. Atkins’ allegations, and the subsequent trial, were widely discussed and roundly condemned by the soldiers and officers of the New South Wales Corps. Parramatta and Sydney Town buzzed with talk about it. As far as the private soldiers were concerned, Captain Macarthur was their staunch defender. Elizabeth, living as she did so near the barracks at Parramatta, must have been aware of the spat, but we cannot know the extent to which she and John discussed the particulars. However throughout her life Elizabeth exhibited steadfast loyalty to John and—publicly at least—always took her husband’s side.

  Not content to let the matter rest, John wrote to Governor Hunter, vowing to ‘prove that Mr Atkins is a public cheater, living in the most boundless dissipation’. John lacked the self-control to leave it there. ‘In Mr Atkins public and official capacity drunkenness and indecency are almost inseparable from him.’ Then came the clinching argument: John could prove that recently ‘he was exposing himself at an early hour of the morning in the public streets in the most disgracing state of intoxication’.6 This put Governor Hunter in rather an awkward position. However, a string of partisan and malleable witnesses was found to testify to Atkins’ sobriety and strength of character, and Atkins was triumphantly cleared of all charges—charges that Macarthur had in fact yet to formulate and bring before the governor.

  Atkins couldn’t resist sending Captain Macarthur a gloating letter. He sidestepped the accusations of fraud and vice and instead focused on what he knew would have the greatest impact: class. ‘Your original meanness and despicable littleness pervades your every action. It shows the cloven foot. Return to your original nothing; we know what you have been and what you are now…You have passed the Rubicon of dishonour…you are a leper in reputation…you ought to be driven from society lest you be infectious.’7 John decided to sue for libel. Hunter refused to allow it. Then, further infuriating Macarthur, he appointed Atkins as judge-advocate, effectively the chief justice for the colony. John Macarthur took what he saw as his only remaining course of action, a gamble that put his entire career at stake. He went over Governor Hunter’s head, and yet again John’s hair-trigger sense of honour drove him to put his family’s future at risk.

  He wrote to the colonial secretary, then the duke of Portland, enclosing copies of his unsatisfactory exchanges with Government House and, in a further effort to undermine Hunter, outlining a plan he had put to the governor earlier in the year about farmers feeding their own convict workers. Unsurprisingly, the view of English officialdom was that private farmers should themselves feed and clothe their convict labourers. Equally unsurprising, the view of New South Wales farmers was that the free labour was vital to their fledgling endeavours. John Macarthur, though, saw a way through and explained his views in his career-risking letter to the colonial office. In his opinion ‘officers and persons holding farms ought, in return for the very liberal indulgences granted to them, to maintain their servants in bread, by which means Government wou’d be relieved from the expense of purchasing grain for the greater part of the colony’.8 John and Elizabeth, by feeding and maintaining nearly all of their servants, were therefore leading by example. The reality was not so simple. The government in England was keen to see the public farms in New South Wales thrive in order to reduce the costs of buying or importing the food necessary to feed the convicts. The private farmers, though, made their money by selling produce to the commissary—if the commissary gained all its requirements from the public farms, the private farmers would have no market. Governor Hunter was caught in the middle.

  Macarthur also wrote to the British commander-in-chief, via his old friend and supporter Major Grose. There was no skulking involved, no subterfuge. Macarthur clearly informed Hunter of his letter-writing plans. Hunter, understandably disgruntled, sent the colonial secretary a letter of his own outlining how difficult things were, which in many ways directly contradicted his earlier glowing dispatches. Then both men had to metaphorically sit back, waiting on the interminable mail to discover which way their gambling chips would fall. It would be nearly a year before they knew. We can only speculate about the extent to which Elizabeth was aware of John’s letters, and whether she influenced how they were worded. A decade of marriage, with rarely a night spent apart, had seen them work successfully together, both committed to securing financial stability for their growing family. So while John was arguing with Atkins and Hunter, Elizabeth was concentrating on the needs of her children.

  She was thinking hard about the future of their oldest son, Edward. There was nowhere in New South Wales to educate the children adequately and, even if there were, Elizabeth felt ‘it would be unjust towards them to confine them to so narrow a society. My desire is that they may see a little more of the world, & better learn to appreciate this retirement.’9 Like many immigrants before and since, John and Elizabeth had painted for their children a glowing picture of England as home. Elizabeth, writing to Bridget Kingdon in Bridgerule, acknowledged that she and John had over-egged the pudding somewhat, noting that the children considered England as no less than ‘a seat of happiness and delight’ that contained ‘all that can be gratifying to their senses’ and where ‘of course they are there to possess all they desire’. 10 Elizabeth recognised that her children needed to experience England for themselves but she did hope that some of them would then choose to make Parramatta their home. So little Edward Macarthur, aged eight, was sent to school in England. He travelled in the care of Captain Hogan, aboard the Marquis Cornwallis,11 and had for company Lieutenant King’s illegitimate son Norfolk King, also eight, who until then had been living with his father and stepmother on Norfolk Island.12 To Elizabeth’s dismay Edward ‘almost quitted me without a tear’.13 But as if losing Edward wasn’t enough, Elizabeth and John subsequently endured another, more searing bereavement.

  ‘I have had the misfortune to lose a sweet boy of eleven months old,’ wrote Elizabeth to her old friend Bridget about baby James, ‘who died very suddenly by an illness occasioned by teething.’14 Just as for the baby girl who died at sea, a single sentence written months later encapsulates all Elizabeth’s sorrow. Her claim that James’s death was caused by teething may well have been correct. A common treatment at the time was to use a razor or sharp knife to cut the baby’s gums and ease the passage of an erupting tooth. But any infection, whether caused by such an intervention or not, was potentially fatal. A baby who woke healthy and strong in the morning could, with a sudden spike of fever, be gone by nightfall.

  Elizabeth didn’t dwell on her grief and the tone of her letter shifts almost immediately. ‘The other three Elizabeth, John and Mary are well. I have lately been made very happy learning the safe arrival of Edward in England.’15 Bridget told Elizabeth in her next letter that Edward was having the time of his life. Upon arriving in England, he spent a happy week at Bridgerule, chasing
after hares with the Reverend Kingdon and returning to the vicarage covered with dirt.16 All was not sadness for Elizabeth, despite her loss. In December 1798, she safely delivered a healthy baby boy; in a bittersweet gesture she called him James. He grew to be, according to the newspaper of the day, a ‘fair-minded, courteous gentleman’,17 and from the surviving correspondence it is obvious he always remained very close to his mother. This James lived out his full allotment of three score years and ten.

  When the second James was born, the Macarthurs had been living at Elizabeth Farm for five years. They had made remarkable progress. Their holding now encompassed more than 400 hectares and was bordered on three sides by rivers or streams. More than forty hectares was cultivated with wheat; the Macarthurs had been first in the colony to use a horse- or oxen-drawn plough, rather than having the soil manually turned with a hoe. Elizabeth and John employed (on a seasonal basis) up to fifty people with all, excepting two convicts still kept by the Crown, fed and clothed by the Macarthurs, who fattened and killed hogs, and kept large stores of supplies for the purpose. ‘You will wonder,’ wrote Elizabeth to Bridget, ‘how a return is made for the daily expense…we incur.’ 18