Elizabeth Macarthur
Page 22
Captain Piper is just come on board, we shall set off as soon as possible in his boat, and my father will follow as soon as the heat of the day is over, in his carriage—Adieu, we shall soon be with you—Your affectionate son JAS. MCA.19
Elizabeth was not waiting in Sydney to meet them. Last time John returned she cooled her heels in town for more than five weeks before the ship appeared, so perhaps it was simply a matter of expedience to stay at Elizabeth Farm, continuing to work, and wait for her family to arrive. The joyous end result was just the same.
‘I am yet scarcely sensible of the extent of my happiness,’ wrote Elizabeth to Eliza Kingdon in Bridgerule, ‘and indeed I can hardly persuade myself that so many of the dear members of our family are united again under the same roof.’20 Emmeline, now aged nine, had not seen her father or brothers since she was a babe in arms. She was ‘much engaged in running about, and showing her brothers everything that she can think will amuse them’.21 In turn, her brothers were able to amaze and delight their sisters as they unpacked the crates they’d brought with them. In addition to the plants, seeds and farming paraphernalia, the boys had collected many fine souvenirs including oil paintings of the European landscapes through which they’d passed and gilt-edged dinner services with complex arrays of plates and servers and tea sets. The wonder was that they found room for it all at Elizabeth Farm, which was still a modest square cottage, and not yet the elegant bungalow it would become.
Elizabeth felt John had hardly changed at all. Whether she found that a good or a bad thing, she doesn’t say. But her little boys were now ‘fine young men. James six feet high and stout withal, William more slender but evidently giving promise of being stout also’.22 Both boys were delighted to be home, and neither expressed any regrets about leaving England behind. But the more John and the boys discussed their adventures abroad, the more Elizabeth longed to return to England herself. Now, surely, she could begin to make plans to visit the home—and faces—she’d not seen in nearly thirty years. Her mother, aged seventy, was still living in Bridgerule and Elizabeth’s half-sister, Isabella Hacker, was mother to five daughters (she would go on to have another two). But Elizabeth’s hopes for any reunion were in vain.
John’s optimism about the curative effectives of home did not last longer than his first southern summer. As mild as he found the winters in New South Wales, the cooler weather saw a return of his gout, and along with the pain came the familiar darkness of spirit. He found it hard even to exert himself enough to write a letter to Walter Davidson, and when he did he was candid about his own malaise: ‘You have witnessed how much I used to suffer from mental depression. It is now so much increased that I often pass weeks, without one cheerful moment, and I am seldom relieved from this dreadful gloom, except by the return of acute pain.’23
The management of the estates fell, then, to sons James and William. Hannibal’s help was no longer needed, and he and his wife Maria focused on their growing family and their own substantial holdings. John very much felt himself to be in charge and that he was breaking his sons in ‘by degrees to oversee and manage [his] affairs’.24 But given that he was confined to his bedroom for weeks at a time, perhaps Elizabeth did not step back from managing the farms as much as she might have hoped to. According to their father, the boys appeared ‘to be contented with their lot, but I by no means think them well calculated for it. They have not the sufficient hardness of character to manage’.25 Of course he was wrong. His sons worked hard and learnt fast, and the whole family’s efforts began to pay off. For the next decade or so, the Macarthur family (and, indeed, the whole colony) did exceedingly well, with their main income drawn from the sale of wool. After thirty years of farming, much of it entirely managed by Elizabeth, the Macarthurs were a success.
When James and William weren’t working—and, probably, being young men of spirit, even when they were—they amused themselves by riding, shooting, fishing and occasionally visiting the officers at the Parramatta barracks. In 1819 and the years following, the wild cattle at Cow Pastures were finally brought in and yarded. George Johnston’s son, also called George and at twenty-nine a superb horseman, was appointed superintendent of government stock and given the task. In the course of his work he engaged in a mad race with one of the Macarthur sons, fell from his horse and was kicked in the chest and killed. John Macarthur wrote of his death as having ‘inexpressibly disturbed us all, for he was a most deserving young person’.26 George’s death was a salutary example to all the young Macarthurs but, as it must, life went on.
A year after their return James and William were still regaling their mother and three sisters with amusing accounts of their travels. The household, now full to overf lowing with young adults, was well-stocked with, as Elizabeth noted ‘an excellent collection of books’. Elizabeth went on to tell her goddaughter that ‘we receive most of the new publications from England’.27 Not one for novels, Elizabeth preferred biographies, history and travel. At one stage she read everything she could about Afghanistan, and then she was similarly intrigued by travelogues about India.28 The Macarthur family’s reading tastes were eclectic, and a stocktake, much later, of the library at Elizabeth Farm revealed hundreds of volumes: the novels of Walter Scott and Daniel Defoe; histories; biographies; poetry (including works by Wordsworth and Burns); classics (including Virgil and Milton); prayers and sermons; almanacs; books about gardening and sheep and architecture; well-thumbed grammars; parliamentary reports; catalogues; tracts; picture books; and the complete works of Shakespeare.
The overcrowding at Elizabeth Farm was addressed by moving James and Edward Macarthur down to Belgenny, in the Cow Pastures region. There they lived in the cottage that their canny mother had ‘accidentally’ built in 1815. It is possible that this cottage today forms the service wing of Belgenny Cottage (built in 1822).29 William planted twenty acres (eight hectares) of vineyard, as well as olive trees, with a view to one day producing oil in saleable quantities. And the brothers explored the lands further to the southwest, following the Abercrombie and Wollondilly rivers through the southern highlands to the fertile area north of the present-day township of Goulburn, which was at the time called the Argyle district. Within the next decade the Macarthurs would establish a new estate there, called Taralga.
The collection of Macarthur land grants at Cow Pastures (including Belgenny Farm) were grandly renamed by John as Camden Park, in honour of the Lord who had originally granted the land during John’s first trip to England. In naming the property, John was in effect bragging to his colonial peers about his superior connections and patronage. The family had, in name and ambition at least, progressed from a mere Farm at Parramatta to the far more genteel Park. John was also cannily asserting his ownership over an area that had previously been considered, by the colonists at least, an open common. Governor Macquarie began to provide both the Macarthur boys with further land grants and support in their own names, in open acknowledgment of their explorations and in tacit acknowledgment that James and William were the drivers behind Camden Park’s current success. Elizabeth’s ‘prudent and able management’30 was acknowledged only by her husband, albeit in a letter to Lord Bathurst. By the early 1820s about a hundred European people lived and worked at Camden Park. It is likely that Aboriginal people lived and worked there too.31 A hierarchical system of overseers and upper servants allowed family members to keep their distance from the convict workers. As James succinctly put it, ‘We find it more convenient not to give orders to the convicts ourselves.’32
It was perhaps inevitable that Elizabeth would withdraw from the daily life of the farm work to make way for her sons and husband. But she continued to maintain an interest, and she would later write that she still liked to go out and watch the shearing. If she provided ongoing advice and support to her sons, it was done discreetly, in quiet conversations rather than in the letters that went constantly back and forth between Camden Park and Elizabeth Farm. That her grown-up sons respected her views and opini
ons is evident from the tone of their letters to her; they are never patronising or terse.
John negotiated a deal with Macquarie to sell rams to the government to establish a wool industry in Van Diemen’s Land. The rams left Sydney in February 1820, although of the 312 that were sent, only 181 survived to be distributed among the settlers. Those rams were crossbreds and many were decried as inferior culls, but they were still a cut above any stock in Van Diemen’s Land at the time. The Macarthur sheep had an almost immediate effect on flock quality and, despite the fact that John had kept his finest rams safe at home, the crossbreds’ arrival marked a turning point in the Van Diemen’s Land wool industry. A tradition was established of annual ram sales, held at Elizabeth Farm the day after the Parramatta fair and animal show and advertised in the Sydney Gazette.
John Ryrie Graham, an eminent sheepman who in the 1870s wrote A Treatise on the Australian Merino, remembered seeing Macarthur sheep in 1826. Weighing in at about thirty pounds each they were very small, smaller than the merinos of Graham’s day (which were in turn smaller than modern merinos) and each wore a small leather collar. The fine-woolled sheep were compact, low set and with such short legs that their bodies were close to the ground. Graham believed that at the time he saw them, and for many years after, ‘these sheep were undoubtedly the best in the Australian colonies, and could Mr Macarthur have produced three times the number of rams he did produce, they would have met with a ready sale’.33
As an old man, though, and with the wisdom of a lifetime spent working with and breeding sheep, Graham admitted that the Macarthur sheep were considered exceptional only because other sheep in the colony were so poor. The much-vaunted fine wool of the Macarthur flocks may have been as much the result of the inadequate native grasses and poor nutrition provided by most of the colony’s farms, as it was intelligent breeding. Yet during these heady years the Macarthurs saw a five-fold increase in the quantity of wool they exported, and it sold in London at record prices.
In 1820 the non-Indigenous population of New South Wales was just over 33,000 but by the end of the decade it was 70,000.34 Britain was slowly realising that the despised penal colony could be a place of rich rewards for anyone with the appropriate entrepreneurial spirit, and respectable free settlers arriving in New South Wales were keen to meet the successful Macarthurs. From the Macarthurs a ‘new chum’ could receive advice, and introductions and purchase finely bred sheep with which to begin his own wool-growing enterprises. Brothers Robert and Helenus Scott were just such well-connected and well-educated newcomers when in 1822, shortly after arriving, Robert wrote to his mother in England:
McArthur’s name of course you have heard of; he has been here for many years—the leading man of the colony, I must say deservedly: he is a very clever, shrewd, calculating man, with an extraordinary degree of perseverance and foresight, but a man of the most violent passions, his friendship strong & his hatred invincible.35
John Macarthur’s volatility was becoming more and more evident and there was little, if anything Elizabeth could do to mitigate it.
She did, however, have more time to read for pleasure now, and was able to return her focus to the management of the household at Elizabeth Farm and to the education of ten-year-old Emmeline. Son John, as well overseeing the sale of wool in London and lobbying for parliamentary favours, was responsible for selecting and shipping out all the necessary household and farm goods and implements. In several shipments, he may have failed to meet his mother’s high standards because she felt compelled to remind him that everything he sent out for their personal use should be of appropriate quality:
We wear our things out and therefore wear them long… At this distance from the Mother Country mere articles of show are ridiculous. Our household linen and clothes I contend should be of good quality, both because they are better taken care of—are in the end more useful, certainly more respectable, and in the object of package and freight cost no more than trash.36
She makes it clear that from now on she would like supplies, including table linen and napkins, to arrive on a regular, twice-yearly basis. By this point she clearly has her blood up. ‘The last cambric muslins [you sent] we were greatly deceived in. Your sisters made them up into dresses, they washed to pieces immediately—injured we suppose in the bleaching.’37
Elizabeth’s newfound attention to household matters left her older two daughters, especially Mary who had taken up the housekeeping role while her father was away, at something of a loose end. Eldest daughter Elizabeth struck up a correspondence with her mother’s goddaughter Eliza Kingdon, who it seems she had not met during her English sojourn with her father a dozen or more years earlier. ‘Altho I have not the pleasure, dear Miss Kingdon, of being personally known to you, yet my Mother permits me to hope you will not reject my correspondence.’38 Miss Macarthur attempted to explain to Miss Kingdon how she and her sisters filled their time. ‘We remain out rambling in our woods, or diverting ourselves in our garden until the evening surprises us.’39 This hardly sounds enough to keep grown women occupied and Miss Macarthur hinted as much in her second letter, noting that ‘in the history of our day…there is not much variety’.40
Elizabeth did not seem to encourage her daughters to do more—for themselves or for others—or to somehow make more of their lives. It is worth remembering that the villagers of Bridgerule, when vilifying John Macarthur as ‘too proud and haughty’, also labelled Elizabeth as ‘indolent and inactive’.41 Perhaps they were right. Perhaps Elizabeth, forced by circumstance to be a busy and enterprising woman, may well have preferred the leisurely life she bestowed—or inflicted—on her daughters. We can only imagine, then, the eager anticipation among the Macarthur women of the governor’s ball held in January 1819, to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of Queen Charlotte. For Elizabeth it was a chance to enjoy herself and relax; for her daughters a chance to get out into the world.
Mrs Macquarie’s guest list, a hand-written working document, lists 186 guests. Elizabeth, it seems, did not approve of all the invitees and, as she wrote to her goddaughter, ‘I will not say that these assemblies have been very select.’ That lack of discernment didn’t seem to prevent her attending. The Macquaries ensured the annual Queen’s Birthday celebrations were a lavish affair. The ballroom was decorated with coloured lamps and festooned with greenery and flowers. Revellers danced to the music of the regimental band.42 Eldest daughter Elizabeth was invited too, as were Hannibal and Maria. So was Mrs Lucas, which sheds some interesting light on her status—clearly she was perceived as more than a mere governess or servant. Absent from the guest list, though, is Elizabeth’s second daughter Mary. What trouble did that cause in Elizabeth’s home?
Mary, when mentioned at all in her siblings’ letters, is often described as difficult. Even her mother seemed, at least occasionally, to find her challenging. Mrs Macquarie, following the etiquette of the day, couldn’t be expected to include all the unmarried younger sisters and the list indicates that, for other families too, only the eldest unmarried daughters were invited.43 At smaller, less overtly ceremonial occasions Mrs Macquarie entertained Elizabeth and the other ladies of Sydney in the evenings with ‘Tea, Coffee, Cards, Music, and a little Dance’.44 Perhaps poor Mary was at least invited to these.
Mary was the quintessential middle child, who was never the focus of her parents’ full attention. When Mary was between the ages of six and ten, her father was in England and her mother was juggling the competing demands of baby William, infant James and managing the farms. Upon her father’s return Mary might have expected to see more of her mother, but she may well have felt compelled to compete with her older sister Elizabeth, newly returned from seeing England and the world. Then in 1807 (the year Mary turned twelve), Elizabeth’s almost fatal, paralysing illness and long recovery necessarily took precedence. The surprise arrival of another sister, little Emmeline, and the second absence of her father came at a time when Mary was on the cusp of adolescence. Throughout her tee
n years her needs had to give way to the recovering invalid, the growing baby and her mother’s ongoing battle to keep the family farms profitable. Maybe Mary was the difficult, prickly girl (and then woman) described in her brothers’ letters—or maybe she was simply strong-willed. Perhaps she felt let down by those she loved.
Whatever her thoughts on the matter, Mary was soon to emerge from between her older and younger sisters in a social triumph. In 1823 she married James Bowman, principle surgeon of the colony. According to the Sydney Gazette the couple married ‘On Tuesday, the 4th November, at her Father’s Residence, Parramatta’.45 James was thirty-seven, Mary nine years younger at twenty-eight; spinsterhood was only narrowly avoided. In a letter to Eliza Kingdon, the mother of the bride perhaps gave away more than she meant to when she noted that Mary had ‘broken through the spell of celibacy which seemed to encompass the house’.46 Was Elizabeth speaking only of her unmarried daughters, or did she include herself? Was it that John was often unwell? Or had Elizabeth and John, over time, grown even further apart?
Doctor Bowman had met John and his sons in 1817, when they sailed back to New South Wales together in the Lord Eldon, and John regarded him as ‘a most respectable prudent man’ and believed that the marriage held ‘every rational prospect of happiness’. Ten years earlier, when John vetoed daughter Elizabeth’s marriage to John Oxley because of the young man’s debts, the Macarthurs had not the funds to rectify the situation, if they even had the inclination. But now, flushed with financial success, John bestowed on Mary a magnificent dowry of 2000 sheep and 200 cattle, with which Bowman declared himself ‘perfectly satisfied’.47 The newlywed couple lived in Sydney at the General Hospital, and James Bowman rapidly acquired, via grants and purchases, an estate of almost 5000 hectares called Ravensworth, about 250 kilometres north of Sydney and about 90 kilometres inland from the port of Newcastle, where miscreant convicts were sent to mine for coal. The former naval surgeon had married very well.