Elizabeth Macarthur
Page 23
The family’s sense of prosperity manifested in several ways. A number of family portraits date from this time, and, shortly after Mary’s wedding, in 1824, John Macarthur finished overseeing the building of a new cottage at Elizabeth Farm, downhill from the original homestead. It was an elegant abode of rendered brick in the Colonial Georgian style, with joinery of Australian cedar and floors of ironbark. The new cottage’s very first inhabitant could not have been more welcome: it was Captain Edward Macarthur.
Elizabeth’s eldest son, now aged thirty-five, returned to New South Wales after an absence of some sixteen years spent soldiering. Elizabeth was overcome, and even two months later wrote that his return was ‘so joyful to us that I hardly yet can think of it calmly’.48 For the first time in the life of her scattered family, Elizabeth had six of her seven living children together in New South Wales. She only needed her second son John, who had not returned from England since he sailed for school at the age of seven, for everything to be perfect. Elizabeth’s joy, though, was short lived. Edward did not stay in New South Wales for long, and in less than a year he sailed for England once more. His father, always very hard on his sons, felt he was ‘entirely unfitted’ for colonial life, and Edward seems to have concurred. He never saw either of his parents again, although they parted amicably and maintained a regular correspondence. John subsequently referred to him fondly as his ‘dear Ned’.
Upon Edward’s departure Elizabeth’s thoughts followed him back to England. Her mother had recently become a widow for the third time. Elizabeth had never liked her mother’s third husband, stating candidly to Eliza Kingdon that John Bond ‘was always an idler’. It’s an odd thing to say to the woman who was but a babe in arms when Elizabeth last saw her and who, along with her brother Reverend Thomas Kingdon, was a good friend to Elizabeth’s mother. Perhaps Eliza had said something in her previous correspondence to encourage such frankness. Elizabeth again mused about visiting. ‘The powers of steam have now become such in their application to navigation that I know not whether I may not be tempted to re-visit England.’49 But if she had any true intention she could have sailed with Edward. She assuaged her conscience ‘through the generosity of Mr Macarthur’ and arranged an allowance for her mother. There seems to have been no correspondence between Elizabeth and her half-sister Isabella, now with seven daughters and, on Elizabeth’s side at least, no love lost. ‘I think of her poor soul, her poverty, her distress without in the least discovering how her situation can be substantially benefited…for so numerous a Family what can be done? They must learn to earn their own Bread, for our means are not unlimited.’50 Isabella, about nine years old when she last saw Elizabeth, perhaps thought of her older sister more fondly—Isabella’s first child, born in 1803, she named Elizabeth Veal.51
Rather than take a trip to England, Elizabeth retired further into the comfort of her family in New South Wales. New colonists, the Scott brothers, wrote again to their mother noting that ‘the Macarthurs are the best educated and keep themselves more clear of the mob than any family in the colony’.52 It is unclear, however, whether the Macarthurs kept ‘clear of the mob’ by choice or by necessity. Elizabeth was sociable by nature and before John’s return from England her letters were full of visits paid and received. Within a year of his return from England, though, John was writing to friends that ‘we only visit or are visited by one family’.53 Even allowing for John’s exaggeration, Elizabeth does seem to step back from social engagements during the decade of the 1820s. Although her daughters Elizabeth and Emmeline and Hannibal’s wife Maria, as well as Penelope Lucas were raising funds first for the Parramatta Bible Association and then for ‘a School, for the Education of Female Servants’,54 Elizabeth was conspicuously absent from the published lists of committee members and subscribers.
Her focus now was on John, and his failing physical and mental health. His depressive episodes were becoming ever more frequent, his outbursts more volatile and unpredictable. As a project took his interest he would begin it with obsessive zeal, only to lose the motivation to complete it. Increasingly quick to anger, John was also becoming paranoid. ‘Suspicion had become a habit with him. He could conceive no opposition that was not built on enmity.’55 There was no chance of Elizabeth taking a trip to England now—John could not possibly travel and she could not possibly leave him behind.
19
Headaches and Public Humiliations
…your dear father has had a severe attack of his old tormenting complaint, with all the customary attendance of despondency and low-spiritedness.
ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO EDWARD MACARTHUR, 17 DECEMBER 1826
Elizabeth was remarkably frank about her husband’s ‘despondency and low-spiritedness’, at least to family members.1 Writing to her son Edward, aware that he would not soon be receiving a similar letter from his father, Elizabeth apologises on John’s behalf. ‘I have let your father know I am writing. He only says “Poor Fellows! What have I of a pleasing nature to write to them about?” This is the disease unquestionably.’2 How astute she was, to recognise his depression as a disease of the mind and therefore not something he could control. So, to the extent that she was able, Elizabeth continued in her role as peacemaker, smoothing over the ‘misunderstandings’3 and soothing her husband when she could. If she appeared outwardly calm, her inner turmoil and stress revealed itself physically—since the time of the rebellion against Governor Bligh, if not before, Elizabeth had suffered severely from ‘tormenting headaches’,4 and during this period and beyond they became worse and more frequent.
Bedridden for weeks at a time, morose and despondent, John would then rally and, with his sons James and William, his nephew Hannibal and son-in-law James Bowman, he looked set to take on the world. He was always very proud of his family, proclaiming its wealth at every opportunity. John already had a coat of arms designed for the family. Now the servants were required to wear livery; a gatehouse was built at Elizabeth Farm, where the paved driveway led into the streets of Parramatta; there was a new cottage at Camden Park; and that second cottage at Elizabeth Farm, for family and guests. John oversaw it all, in frenzies of activity interrupted by weeks in bed when depression or his painful gout (or both) struck him down once more. He became a serial litigator, and, just as he had in the 1790s, engaged in a number of complex court cases with various neighbours, businessmen and even the orphan school at Parramatta.
John caught the attention of Commissioner Bigge, who had been sent out from England to formally review the colony. It was as if John couldn’t help himself: he complained bitterly to Bigge about Governor Macquarie, despite Macquarie’s ongoing warmth and kindness to the Macarthur family. He maintained his intelligent charisma, managing to completely capture Bigge, and the commissioner’s subsequent report and recommendations reveal him to be little more than a mouthpiece for John Macarthur and the cause of significant trouble for Macquarie, who was nearing the end of his tenure. Macquarie had supported the emancipists—he felt former convicts held the key to the colony’s future—but in doing so he alienated the rich and powerful in both Sydney and London.
In 1821 Macquarie was replaced as governor by Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane, Edward Macarthur’s former commanding officer. Further Macarthur prosperity ensued, although as usual John bit the hand that fed him and Governor Brisbane was eventually subject to vicious Macarthur misrepresentations in London about his administration. Elizabeth, also as usual, blithely ignored her husband’s enmities and enjoyed visiting with Lady Anna Maria Brisbane, ‘a dear woman; whose nursery was her occupation and delight’.5 Lady Brisbane gave birth to two children while in New South Wales, patriotically (if not poetically) naming them Eleanor Australia and Thomas Austral. She held intimate weekly dinners, and Elizabeth considered the table ‘handsomely set out and served in a manner superior to anything we have yet seen in the colony’.6 After dinner Lady Brisbane played the piano and sang, and her sister played the harp. Elizabeth, in her usual manner, had found a frien
d in the new governor’s wife. But it was not a friendship that could last.
Brisbane was recalled by the colonial office in London after only a few years, replaced in 1825 by Sir Ralph and Lady Eliza Darling. It was a recall helped along by John Macarthur’s complaints and London connections. To Brisbane’s annoyance, even before he found out about the recall through official channels, Macarthur told him all about it—he had heard of Brisbane’s recall through his well-connected son John. Whether or not Elizabeth was aware of her husband and son’s machinations, she was very sorry to see the Brisbanes go. ‘These changes are very painful to me, who am too advanced in life to look forward with any satisfaction to making acquaintances,’ wrote Elizabeth to Eliza Kingdon. ‘I shall always particularly regret parting with Lady Brisbane, and her Sister Miss Macdougall, more amiable, more unaffectedly right minded persons we must not expect to succeed them.’7 Elizabeth did, of course, befriend Lady Darling and the pair enjoyed going for drives or, as Elizabeth wrote in a letter to her son, taking ‘an airing together in the barouche’.8 Was it mere coincidence that John Macarthur quarrelled most fiercely with the families with whom his wife’s affections lay? Or, conversely, were Elizabeth’s friendships deliberately nurtured to counteract her husband’s inevitable clashes?
In 1826 John devised a grandiose plan to sail to and from Europe via China and Bengal, for none-too-clear trading purposes. Elizabeth, writing to Edward and very much aware of how embarrassing John’s appearance in London might be to both her eldest sons’ careers, pictured ‘to myself your great consternation’9 when they heard of his father’s plan. ‘We none of us liked the thought,’ Elizabeth went on, ‘and were exceedingly pleased when he abandoned the idea. It made a great talk and clatter here for a time.’10 In the end, Edward and his brother could rest easy: their father soon changed his mind.
Indeed, the number of times he changed his mind was part of the problem. Even Governor Darling noticed:
In a former Letter, I mentioned some of the thousand projects he had in view…There is no exaggeration in this, however extravagant it may appear; the whole Plan was entered in a Book, from which he read the details to me. These schemes, however, were all abandoned for the more practicable one of going to South America for the purpose of introducing and improving the breed of Asses! Like the others, this project had its day, and is now no longer heard of.11
In another letter, Governor Darling related with some horror that John had freely boasted that ‘he had never yet failed in ruining a Man who had become obnoxious to him’. The Governor went on to describe John Macarthur as ‘a Man of strong passions, and observes no medium in anything. He is equally ardent in his exertions to serve as he is to injure.’12 Within weeks he again wrote dubiously of Macarthur: ‘He is now like a wayward Child, and remains at home brooding, but I expect is not altogether idle.’13
True to type, John was not idle at all and this time Elizabeth was directly affected by his actions. Buoyed with successfully constructing the second cottage at Elizabeth Farm, he engaged in another building project. In 1799 he had purchased twenty-two hectares on the shores of Cockle Bay (today’s Darling Harbour). Now he arranged to build a stately home there, called Pyrmont. The ground had barely been cleared when he decided to also renovate the main cottage at Elizabeth Farm—the family’s home. John began the work with enormous enthusiasm and, according to his wife, too many workmen. ‘The important improvements your dear father mentions,’ Elizabeth explained in a letter to Edward, ‘are little other than delusions.’ There had been at least fifty different plans, she complained, and goodness knows how many artists consulted and partly employed. Elizabeth’s dear husband had ‘ground marked out in different ways, over and over again—foundations dug out—all sorts of litter and rubbish and still no building begun—whether it will [begin] I cannot tell.’ Elizabeth believed more money had ‘been flitted away than it would have cost to put up the building. Your poor Father cannot do anything in a quiet orderly way.’ 14
Elizabeth could see the folly in John’s actions, but she was powerless to stop him. The days were long since past when she was able to mitigate his wilder schemes. She eventually moved to Sydney, living with her daughter Mary at the hospital, having been firmly told ‘that if I return your dear father will not proceed.’15 This period of marital separation might have been a mere convenience: Elizabeth moved to Sydney simply to avoid the bustle and discomfort of the renovations. But it seems firm evidence of further friction in Elizabeth and John’s relationship. From this point on they were often apart, and Elizabeth’s letters refer more and more candidly to John’s deteriorating mental health.
Elizabeth enjoyed herself in Sydney; there was a constant stream of family and other visitors. Youngest daughter Emmeline, now twenty, was especially fond of her brother James, despite (or perhaps because of) the ten-year age gap. The two often travelled together between Parramatta, Camden and Sydney. On one occasion, a Mrs Abel came to visit and Elizabeth was able to report (in a letter to Edward) that she ‘has been amusing Mary and I with an account of two or three parties she has been at this week, one at Mrs Jones’—a ball and supper. A strange mixture of finery, ostentation and vulgarity—according to her account.’16 Elizabeth had not lost her ear for the telling phrase.
While she was staying in Sydney in 1826 with her son-in-law, Doctor Bowman and her daughter, Mary, Elizabeth (at the age of sixty) became a grandmother for the first time. Mary Bowman gave birth to a healthy boy she named Edward. Little Edward was, of course, the apple of his grandmother’s eye and she regularly mentioned him in her letters to her sons Edward and John. By the end of that year she could write ‘Your sister and your young nephew Edward are well. The little man has some teeth and is growing fast. The Doctor [Bowman] is well also and desires his kindest regards.’17 In yet another letter she describes a Macarthur family visit (which she did not attend) to see Maria and Hannibal Macarthur at their Parramatta property, the Vineyard. In time the Vineyard would boast a fine, two-storey Georgian house, but in the late 1820s John Macarthur’s nephew and his wife were still living in the original small cottage. When Elizabeth’s family visited, two of Hannibal’s brothers were expected any day from England; Maria Macarthur a few weeks earlier had given birth to her eighth child; and Maria’s sister-in-law, also staying at the Vineyard with her family, had just given birth to her seventh son. ‘You may imagine,’ wrote Elizabeth, ‘the Vineyard cottage was well peopled. They must be as thick as hops.’18
Across the river from the Vineyard, at Elizabeth Farm, John harried the men who did not labour fast enough, while Elizabeth’s daughters Elizabeth and Emmeline, and Penelope Lucas, shunted from room to room as the work progressed. Periodically work would stop for weeks, leaving the family to make do in a half-finished house. At times John would change his mind about something, and demand the work be done over again. Eventually he called a halt to the work at Pyrmont, and had sandstone from the site transported to Parramatta for the new verandah at Elizabeth Farm.
It would have been much more convenient for everyone, including the harassed workers, if the family at Elizabeth Farm could have moved into the cottage just down the hill, where Edward had stayed during his brief visit. But that home was currently occupied, rent free, by Thomas Hobbes Scott, the newly appointed archdeacon and former secretary to Bigge (who wrote the damning report about Macquarie). That Scott should be appointed archdeacon almost immediately upon assuming holy orders was somewhat irregular and he was not well-loved in the colony, even though he had only recently arrived. Nor did John Macarthur’s patronage promote his cause, although Elizabeth now and into the future considered him ‘our dear kindhearted friend’.19 In 1827 Scott moved out, and a grateful Mrs Lucas moved in. Perhaps for the first time in her life (she was now fifty-nine years old) she had a home of her own. She called the cottage Hambledon20 and she would live there, dining each afternoon at the main house with the family, until her death in 1836.
Elizabeth stayed several mont
hs in Sydney before she returned to live at Parramatta. Her humble little cottage had been ‘transformed’ wrote James, ‘by our Father’s fertile genius into an elegant and commodious residence’.21 James was quite right. The renovated house had become a long low and very beautiful bungalow with a library, a conservatory and a formal dining room. The kitchens, storehouses, cellars, offices and staff quarters were located behind the house on the southern side—conveniently close but separate to ensure safety in case of fire as well as a modicum of privacy for the family. A deep, north-facing verandah flagged with the enormous sandstone pavers from the family property at Pyrmont was bookended with inviting little sunrooms. From there, Elizabeth could sit and look out across her garden, or step straight out onto the carriage circle. With no second floor, the new house was by no means a grand home by the standards of the colony, but it was perfectly designed and proportioned. Its modesty seems to have reflected Elizabeth’s tastes, rather than John’s, although there is no evidence that she had a hand in the design.
With the house at Elizabeth Farm finished, John may have felt at a loose end, but he was also engaged with the new Bank of Australia, the management of his agricultural and financial affairs, and his various court cases and litigations. And it didn’t end there. James and William Macarthur were appointed magistrates as, in a short-lived and much less successful exercise, was their unpredictable father. But the chief concern of the family in the mid to late 1820s was the Australian Agricultural Company.