Then somehow, amidst all the bickering, Colonel Paterson came to believe that a private friendly letter, written by his wife to Elizabeth Macarthur, had been made public by John, who ‘in communicating its contents, misconstrued it’.9 If only we knew what the letter said! The offence caused was enough to have Paterson challenge John Macarthur to a duel. It was an extraordinary move for a colonel to make against his second-in-command, and hardly conducive to regimental discipline. Surely for any other offence Paterson could, or should, have invoked military regulations and reprimanded or punished Macarthur accordingly. Paterson’s challenge was issued on 10 September 1801, for a rendezvous the following day, but rain prevented the contest for another four days. Again, it is unlikely that either wife was told of, or knew of, her husband’s impending folly, although the letter must also have been a source of friction between them. For the women though, their only recourse was to cut each other dead socially, rather than to shoot each other dead literally. In the event, it was Anna King who proved herself to be quite the social duellist.
On 13 September 1801, the day before the duel eventually took place, Elizabeth Macarthur received a shocking social slight. Governor and Mrs King sent out invitations to celebrate the anniversary of King George III’s coronation to every officer of the NSW Corps—except to John and Elizabeth Macarthur. In a demonstration of solidarity, Macarthur’s closest allies, known usually to be the most peaceable of men, declined their own invitations: Captain Abbott (who had known the Macarthurs since he shared a cabin with them on the Scarborough); Ensign Minchin (whose descendants would make sparkling wine at Minchinbury, the family estate); and brothers Captain John Piper (who would become a good friend to Elizabeth and who named his Sydney property Point Piper) and Ensign Hugh Piper.
The following day, at one in the afternoon, William Paterson and John Macarthur met near Parramatta. Surgeon Harris, who had acted as John Macarthur’s second ten years before at the Plymouth wharves oversaw the proceedings. It wasn’t the first duel to be fought in the colony and it was far from the last, but it turned out to be one of the most unusual: against the odds, Macarthur hit his target. Paterson took a ball through his right shoulder and fell. Macarthur stood his ground while Paterson was assisted, waiting for Paterson to shoot in return, as was the protocol, but was soon informed that he should leave. Macarthur subsequently sent a note saying that he would be ready for Captain Paterson at any time. Paterson’s second interpreted the note to be ‘exulting in victory’, infuriating Macarthur, who never spoke to the man again.10
Governor King arrived in Parramatta that same afternoon, unaware of the incident, and found himself in the midst of a public furore. Perhaps John Macarthur, on arrival at home, found himself in the midst of a private one. Surely Elizabeth was fed up with John’s foolish and dangerous bravado. Paterson received medical care, and although for the first few days his situation was touch and go, he recovered. Macarthur and the two seconds were placed under ‘close arrest’, an arrangement which in practice meant the men merely stayed within the confines of their properties. Although Paterson had clearly erred in calling out his subordinate officer, King glossed over this and laid most of the blame, and all of his fury, squarely on Macarthur.
If John was berated at home by his wife, his subsequent correspondence shows nothing of it and instead shimmers with all the gleeful happiness of a man intent on needling his enemies. John was a man riding high on adrenalin and audacity and nothing anyone said could bring him back to earth. At first King threatened to send Macarthur to Norfolk Island; Macarthur, all innocent good faith, enquired whether his proposed exile was ‘intended as a punishment for some supposed offence, or whether it is considered as in the ordinary course of duty?’11 If it was a punishment, John demanded a copy of the charge and permission to answer it immediately before a general court martial. If it was the latter then John was forced, with all due respect, to point out to His Excellency that actually it was Captain Abbott’s duty, as Macarthur’s junior, to go to Norfolk Island. Here, for once, John’s impeccable logic saved Elizabeth from exile to the tiny Pacific island.
King could legally only keep Macarthur, and the seconds, under close arrest for eight days. So, in lieu of confining him to the common gaol, King offered bail if Macarthur would be bound under civil law to keep the peace. Macarthur was affronted by the implication that he intended to break the peace and yet again made a stand. He declined to come out of close arrest, but said that in the interests of the service he was willing to perform his duties if it remained understood that he was still under arrest. Further, John again demanded to be brought before a court martial so that:
I may have an opportunity of clearly proving that I have betrayed no private correspondence, no private conversations, that I have displayed no exultation over a wounded opponent, or in any way behaved unlike a gentleman, but that, on the contrary, I am the person who has been betrayed, who has been exulted over and who has been treated with the basest ingratitude and the blackest treachery.12
Governor King, besieged by the many who wished Macarthur ill and completely fed up himself, decided to grant John’s request. King ordered him to stand trial—in England.
If the decision seemed extreme to the colonists, it did not to those in England to whom King had been sending his formal dispatches, which were full of his frustrations with John Macarthur and the rest of the New South Wales Corps. Indeed, King was almost hysterical in his hatred of John Macarthur—though within a year he would confess that he pitied and esteemed Elizabeth.13 In these sentiments he was not alone. The senior men of the colony invariably liked Elizabeth Macarthur, even as she fell in and out of their wives’ good graces. While John was written about by many as a devious villain, it is impossible to find even the merest hint of dislike for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, however, had many reasons not to love Governor King. How hurtful that a former friend would deliberately send her husband into exile. By ordering John Macarthur to England for trial, King rid himself of a constant irritant and freed himself from any claims of an unfair judicial process. The only thing souring his plans was John himself, who, while waiting for an appropriate ship to England, remained in high spirits. John purchased 1200 sheep and a farm at Toongabbie from Colonel Foveaux, who was posted to Norfolk Island (where he proved himself a sadist of the highest order). Some have suggested that Macarthur bought Foveaux’s sheep just to vex King, who was on the verge of buying them for the colony. John dashed off genial farewell notes to his friends, and enhanced his popularity with his soldiers by treating each of them to a pound each of meat and wheat, and a gill of spirits to wash it down.
While John was saying his jolly farewells, Elizabeth was worrying about the details. She had mere weeks to prepare the household and enterprises for John’s absence. At the same time, everything had to be prepared in haste for the voyage: clothes, food, travelling trunks and baggage. There was linen to be washed and mended, before being carefully folded and packed away. And there were dozens of decisions to be made about the farms (including the new one just purchased), the finances and, most important of all, the children. Should the older ones stay home with their mother, or travel with their father?
England had been at war with France and her allies, off and on, for nearly a decade so the usual dangers of a sea voyage were exacerbated by the possibility of an encounter with an enemy warship. Elizabeth had long been a soldier’s wife, but she’d never before sent her husband, let alone her children, off towards a conflict. A mere two months after his duel with Paterson, on 15 November 1801, John sailed for England, leaving Elizabeth to manage without him. No one was quite sure when, or if, he would come home. With John so buoyant and all the children’s spirits to be kept up, if Elizabeth wept she did so in private.
11
Managing Alone
The management of our concerns gets troublesome to me in the extreme and I am perpetually annoyed by some vexation or other.
ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO CAPTAI
N PIPER, 15 APRIL 1804
As John’s ship sailed down the harbour and out of sight Elizabeth stood at the water’s edge with Mary (aged six), James (almost three) and William (not quite one). Elizabeth farewelled not only her husband, but two more of her children. Although it may well have broken her heart, Elizabeth had agreed to send her eldest daughter Elizabeth (nine) and her second son John (seven) to England with their father. With typical bravura John managed to turn his own banishment into a grand tour for his children. In England, young Eliza would remain with her father, but John was to join his brother Edward at the Grove Hall Academy.
The result was that every one of those feverishly busy last few weeks had also to be savoured—Elizabeth knew it would be at least a year before husband John and her daughter would return, and many more years before her son could. Sadly, though, young John would grow to manhood and die in England without ever returning to New South Wales. Although he and his mother regularly wrote to one another, Elizabeth never saw him again. The unhappy drive back home to Parramatta—the family could hardly stay in Sydney with the Kings or the Patersons now—gave Elizabeth plenty of time to contemplate her responsibilities. Elizabeth Farm she knew well, but the newly acquired Seven Hills farm at Toongabbie was an unwelcome burden.
Why didn’t Elizabeth go with John and the children to England? Having seen one too many toddlers die recently, was she scared to sail with the little ones, or was it simply too expensive to take the whole family? John could live alone in England more frugally and in less style than he could in all conscience keep his wife. And money was, and always would be, key to Macarthur motivations. Buying the Seven Hills property depleted their credit and cash reserves, so having a competent manager to maintain and rebuild their finances was vital. While the Macarthurs would in later years employ a farm manager for their outlying properties, at this stage skilled and, more to the point, trustworthy labour was hard to come by. Elizabeth, whether she liked it or not, was best placed for the job.
Her situation was unusual, but only among women of her social standing. In the British Empire of 1801 ideas of a woman’s place were underpinned by legal, political and social practices that subordinated women, but these were pragmatically combined with the recognition of women’s economic worth in family enterprises. No one blinked at the draper’s daughter helping in the shop, the printer’s widow carrying on his business, the publican’s wife serving at the bar. Sometimes the publican was herself a woman—by 1815, of the ninety-six licences issued in the Sydney area to sell alcohol, twelve were held by women.1 Still more women, no doubt, made a living selling alcohol without a licence. It was certainly true that in New South Wales Elizabeth Macarthur was not the only woman running a farm, although she was perhaps the most genteel.
By 1800 about twenty women held land in their own name. Some lived in town while men worked it for them; some owned the land but ceded control of it to their husbands or partners. But a few managed their land themselves. Midwife Margaret Catchpole lived alone on her fifteen acres (six hectares) where she raised goats, pigs and sheep. Eleanor Fraser, a widow with two small boys, was granted forty acres (sixteen hectares) at Concord. She subsequently cohabited with a soldier who had land of his own but they seemed to have kept their farming interests separate. In 1797 Jane Poole was granted 160 acres (sixty-five hectares) on the Hawkesbury River ‘as a provision for herself and her family’ when her soldier partner died, leaving her to care for the children of their de facto marriage.2 First Fleet convict Esther Abrahams went on to manage Annandale, the farm she shared with her de facto husband, Major George Johnston, when he was transferred to Norfolk Island in 17963 and she continued to run the farm when George went back to England, under arrest for illegal trading in spirits. Under her management it became a thriving estate that included a fine brick home.
So Elizabeth had female peers, but none who was her social equal, none who managed such large holdings, and most likely none who had her eye for breeding quality livestock. Elizabeth wrote, with a breeder’s sensibility, about her favourite mare, Kitty, to her friend Captain Piper. ‘I took a particular survey of Kitty and her foal yesterday. The mare looks well & has much improved within this week…The young one does not promise to be large but in action much resembles her Grandmama.’4 As well as the horses, Elizabeth oversaw the farms’ extensive production of fruit and grains; a large vegetable garden and poultry yard; goats; hogs; and a herd of cattle, some for meat, others to provide milk for the dairy. And, of course, she also managed the sheep.
In 1801 nearly all of the colony’s sheep farmers were breeding for meat rather than wool. The return for meat was immediate and nearly four times that of wool,5 and the colony provided a ready, albeit small, market. The Macarthurs, though, had begun to take a longer view. They concentrated on using their so-called Spanish rams to improve the quality of a flock consisting mainly of hairy Bengal, Irish and Californian sheep imported from India and the Cape. More by chance than design, the offspring of those particular hairy sheep and the Spanish rams were versatile animals that coped well with the dry, Australian conditions. In the years to come they would be bred to create the redoubtable Australian merino.
In October 1800, not long before John Macarthur left for England, Governor King had dispatched samples of eight fleeces to England to be examined by Sir Joseph Banks’ wool experts. Included in the sample were two fleeces from Elizabeth Farm. ‘Nearly as good as the King’s Spanish Wool at Oatlands’, noted Banks’ wool classer, ‘and an excellent quality; worth 5/- per pound; and could the colony produce such kinds of wools it would be a great addition to our manufactury in England’.6 John was not, of course, aware of that remark when he left Sydney, but it did mean that on his arrival in England he had the ear of industry players.
Elizabeth settled into a farmer’s routine of early mornings and long days, the tasks dictated by the seasons. She had a team of workers, of course, but managing people was hard work in itself, and Elizabeth never had as many workers as she needed. With John’s purchase of Foveaux’s holdings at Toongabbie the Macarthurs became the colony’s largest sheep producers. By mid-1802 their flock numbered 2750 and, claimed John in England, by the end of the year it had increased to more than 3000.7 The sheep grazed on unfenced grassland with shepherds employed to keep them from straying, and to keep them from harm and theft. Shepherding was a difficult task for a farm manager to oversee effectively. Several shepherds were killed by Aboriginal people (including two who worked for Elizabeth), some absconded, and some drank themselves to the point of being useless. Elizabeth had sixteen assigned convicts when John left, but needed more. So did everyone else. Wars in Europe meant convicts tended to be pressed into (that is, forced to serve in) the armed forces rather than be sent at great expense to New South Wales. The colony certainly felt the lack. And while John was away the Macarthur sheep numbers grew too large to maintain—Elizabeth was forced to cull the flock.8
Elizabeth confessed, again to her friend Captain Piper, that she was prey to anxiety and ‘much uncertainty’. ‘The management of our concerns gets troublesome to me in the extreme and I am perpetually annoyed by some vexation or other…God grant me Health and patience, for indeed my good friend, I have need of both to keep my mind in tolerable frame.’9
In 1803 Matthew Flinders, who had recently completed his circumnavigation of the continent, was once more in Sydney and Elizabeth sought his advice on how to enforce payment for £500, relating to the sale of some cattle. Although many women ran successful businesses, when those women had to deal with people—men—outside the family, problems often arose. Elizabeth’s labouring employees, suppliers, bankers, agents were all men, with certain expectations of appropriate feminine behaviour, leaving her at a distinct disadvantage over any outstanding payments.10 In his letter of reply Flinders, clearly all at sea when it came to matters of agricultural commerce, referred to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
‘Under the head “Sale” of the Encyclopedia Britannica,’ wrot
e Flinders to Elizabeth ‘it appears that “if ” the buyer proves insolvent before delivery, the seller is not bound to deliver the “goods without payment or security”.’11 Flinders’ advice was not helpful, amounting to little more than a reiteration of Elizabeth’s problem. All Elizabeth’s contracts were in her husband’s name and, with his continued absence, they may have been legally unenforceable. Elizabeth faced other difficulties in business too, and she felt she was given poor terms when procuring a supply of goods for her stockmen. ‘I have every reason to suppose that the most unfair advantage has been taken of me, without my having the means of redress. Had I known the man before I should have taken clear precautions.’12 It is unlikely, though, that Elizabeth allowed herself to be played for a fool a second time and, in time, any trader would have cause to regret having offended the Macarthurs.
In a flurry of letter writing undertaken before he left Sydney for England, Flinders also wrote to Mrs Kent, who had just arrived back in Sydney after an absence of two years. Eliza Kent was married to former Governor Hunter’s nephew and was a member of Elizabeth’s social circle. Flinders’ words provide an insight into the ongoing ill-feeling among the ladies of the colony. He mentions the welcome assistance he received from Governor King and his:
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