Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  Edward, in England, continued to be sent funds representing his share and he continued to do his best to fill his dead brother’s role as family agent. He procured the annual order of shoes for the family in Parramatta, ordered a riding habit for Emmeline and chose coloured muslins for his sisters’ summer dresses. He regularly sent out books, periodicals and furniture. There was occasionally some talk of his returning to New South Wales but, in his mother’s lifetime at least, it never eventuated.

  Aware that his brothers had shouldered the entire burden of their father’s illness and that he was continuing to live in comparative ease as a result of their efforts, Edward did his best to cultivate powerful friends in England, who could further benefit the family, by bestowing gifts from New South Wales. A pair of black swans for his good friend Lord Cholmondeley; another pair for the duke of Portland. Brightly feathered parrot skins also made most acceptable presents, and Emmeline arranged to send him some more.

  Edward had lobbied for a baronetcy for his father (which as eldest son he would inherit) but was unsuccessful. In a letter replying to Edward’s request, Lord Aberdeen noted that Edward’s father had ‘earned the appropriate reward of an ample fortune’ and implied that, under the circumstances, that was more than enough.39 Like his father and brother before him, Edward inspected the Macarthur fleeces arriving in England and pronounced them too dirty, not well presented, and with the colours too mixed. And as their mother had done before them, battling with dust and dirt and drought, Edward’s brothers duly ignored his advice.

  Elizabeth continued to stay at home, receiving visitors but declining to pay them calls in return. She was not one to mope, and her eldest daughter reported that she was ‘quite well and in better spirits than could have almost been hoped for’,40 but Elizabeth was in the habit of sparing her family her true sorrows. It was not until January 1835, some eight months after John’s death, that she could bring herself to travel down to Camden Park. In the wake of their father’s death, James and William were planning to sell off several hundred acres of land to create a township, which would also be called Camden, near where the Cow Pastures bridge crossed the Nepean River. By 1840 the first 100 half-acre (2000-square-metre) allotments were for sale. But in the mid-1830s there was not even an inn nearby; colonial travellers passing through to places further inland routinely stayed with William and James. Elizabeth, still unable to face encounters with strangers, stayed away until she could be sure of her privacy. ‘I want to be quiet and alone when I make this first visit—which must excite feelings I would not forego but of too solemn nature for publicity,’41 she wrote, though she also said she regretted missing the shearing.

  When finally, in January, Elizabeth did make the journey to Camden Park, she was accompanied by her daughter Elizabeth and her grandson Edward Bowman, now nearly nine. They stayed for three weeks. James came up from the properties at Argyle, further inland, and little Edward’s Uncle William went to some lengths to amuse and divert the boy, presumably so that Elizabeth could have some time alone. The fine new two-storey house, built a mile or so behind and out of sight of the farm buildings of Belgenny, was all but finished and Elizabeth admired it very much. ‘It is a handsome building,’ she wrote to Edward, ‘more of a Classic character than any other I have seen—spacious on the ground floor and indeed sufficiently so on the Chamber floor.’ But she couldn’t help thinking of her husband, so much the originator of the building and very present in every detail, who didn’t live to see it finished. Then one thought led to another and she ached for her missing children. ‘I cannot pursue this train of thought’ she told Edward, ‘you may be sure when weeping over his tomb I thought of and prayed for you also my dear son.’42

  In time a memorial stone was erected above John’s resting place, which includes mention of the first little James who Elizabeth lost in 1797, before his first birthday. Her grown-up son John had his own tombstone at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London. No stone, though, for Elizabeth’s first little girl, who died on the voyage out from England and was buried at sea.

  While she was staying at Camden Park, Elizabeth missed—probably deliberately—a vice-regal ball and some lively meals at the Vineyard. Hannibal’s brother-in-law, Captain Phillip Parker King (son of Anna Josepha and the former Governor King; brother to Hannibal’s wife) was the former commander of schooner HMS Adventure. In company with another ship, King and the crew of Adventure had spent the years 1826 to 1830 charting the coasts of Peru, Chile and Patagonia, with King earning a promotion to post-captain along the way. In 1832 he had returned to his properties and wife Harriet in New South Wales (in a now familiar story, Harriet had been managing them in her husband’s absence). Now, on 12 January 1835, the Adventure was anchored in Port Jackson with that sister ship: HMS Beagle. The two vessels were in the fifth year of a scientific sailing expedition, and one of the scientists on board was twenty-six-year-old Charles Darwin.43

  Darwin admired the bustling city of Sydney, but the great numbers of convicts and the limited number of bookshops (made worse because, apparently, those existing sold a low class of book) led Darwin to fear that Australia ‘with such habits and without intellectual pursuits…can hardly fail to deteriorate and become like…the United States’.44 He took a quick journey across the Blue Mountains to the newly settled Bathurst region, returning to attend a ball hosted by the governor on 26 January, to celebrate the forty-seventh anniversary of the First Fleet’s arrival at Sydney Cove.

  Darwin was fascinated by the Australian wildlife but less impressed with the young ladies. Lunching with Hannibal Macarthur and his family at the Vineyard he heard, much to his patriotic horror, otherwise ‘very nice looking young ladies exclaim “Oh, we are Australians and know nothing of England!”’45 Darwin was equally disappointed in the state of the colony’s society, noting that: ‘The whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring wealth; amongst the higher orders wool and sheep grazing form the constant subject of conversation.’46 Given that most of the ‘higher orders’ Darwin spoke with were Macarthurs, his observations are hardly surprising.

  After her three weeks at Camden Park, Elizabeth returned home to Elizabeth Farm, no doubt to hear all about the visitors, now sailing for Hobart Town (Darwin’s expedition would take more than a year to return to England). Despite her grievous losses, Elizabeth, of course, carried on. Her daughter Mary and the Bowman family moved out of their rooms at the Sydney Hospital and into the fine new home called Lyndhurst that they’d built on nearly 40 hectares at Glebe, at the edge of the Sydney township. It looked across Blackwattle Bay to the Rocks area of Sydney Town. But within a year of their move Doctor Bowman was for some reason removed as inspector of colonial hospitals and, although he continued to receive his official salary for a further two years, the Bowman family may have begun to regret their expensive show home. In August Elizabeth had further cause for worry: her daughter Emmeline caught the measles, although she recovered to be, in her eldest sister’s opinion, in better health than she had been for years.47

  Then in October 1835 Elizabeth suffered a further blow: her old friend Betsy Marsden died. Elizabeth turned to her sons at Camden Park for solace and in November she arrived for a longer visit. Despite losing Betsy, Elizabeth was recovering her equanimity and was less worried about socialising. For this visit she was accompanied by the latest governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke, and his married daughter, Anne, who wrote to her brother that ‘Old Mrs Macarthur and Emmeline went up [to Camden] and made it very pleasant’.48 Elizabeth described Anne as ‘a frank, lively little woman quite free from affectation and I should think very warm hearted. She has a delightful voice and having had the advantage of good tuition she sings most enchantingly.’49 When the governor and his daughter departed, Penelope Lucas came to stay for three weeks, followed by little William Bowman and his Aunt Eliza. Elizabeth returned to Parramatta in early 1836 ‘much better for this excursion’ and ‘blessed with good health’.50 It was just as well because in 1836
Elizabeth lost two more stalwarts.

  The first loss was only temporary. Her son James sailed once again for London, this time to talk to Edward about the family business and to obtain a large loan to buy more land near Camden Park. He also wanted to find himself a wife, although on his last trip to England he had noted to his father that all the young ladies he met, through his brother John, were ‘in circles far too high to suit a Society so peculiar as ours’.51 James also worried about the dangers of marrying an English woman, who would be a virtual stranger, without the benefit of long previous acquaintance.

  The second loss was far more difficult to bear. Mrs Lucas, esteemed and loved by the whole Macarthur family, passed away, aged sixty-eight. In time, someone—surely it was Elizabeth—arranged for a memorial to be erected in St John’s Church, Parramatta. A female figure engaged in teaching children is depicted in a delicate marble carving. Beneath is a loving inscription:

  To the memory of

  PENELOPE LUCAS,

  More than thirty years resident in this colony,

  Who, having contributed to its welfare by the

  Example of her active life and benevolence,

  Dying, bequeathed great part of her property

  For the promotion of religious education

  In this community.

  In unavailing sorrow for her loss

  This tablet is erected

  To commemorate her great worth

  And humble reliance for salvation,

  Not on her own but on her Redeemer’s merits.

  She died in 1836, aged 68 years.

  Elizabeth wrote to Edward with much understatement that she would, ‘miss the solace of friendship the last of so many years’. In that same letter to Edward, written late in December 1836, Elizabeth thanked him for writing with discretion and care ‘about the death of my aged parent’.52 Elizabeth’s mother Grace Bond had died too, aged eighty-nine.

  Grace was only nineteen when Elizabeth was born and forty-two when her daughter sailed for New South Wales. She never saw Elizabeth again. Perhaps that was not so unusual at that time, although Elizabeth certainly had had the means to visit, if not the will. Does it signify that none of Elizabeth’s daughters was named Grace? Some brief excerpts of Elizabeth’s letters to her mother survive, but none written by mother to daughter. We can never know how they truly felt about one another. Grace was buried by the Reverend Thomas Kingdon—brother of Elizabeth’s old friend Bridget—in the churchyard at Bridgerule, beside her third husband John Bond. Her first husband and her infant daughter Grace shared a grave nearby.

  Less than a year later, the whole New South Wales colony was plunged into mourning when the news arrived of the death of King William IV, son of beleaguered ‘mad king’ George III. The king died in June 1837, having ruled for only seven years. William IV was succeeded by his niece, who had just turned eighteen. Her name was Victoria.

  21

  Family Feuds

  This poor old residence is endeared to me by many associations. I should be grieved to see it and the gardens neglected.

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO EDWARD MACARTHUR, 5 MAY 1838

  Two weeks before Victoria’s coronation in June 1838, in a London buzzing with celebration preparations, Mr James Macarthur Esq. married Miss Emily (Amelia) Stone. Finally, there was some happy news for Elizabeth and her family.

  The bride was thirty-two years old, the groom thirty-nine. It was clearly a match entered into with prudence. Miss Stone’s extended family (wealthy bankers, most of them) had been known to the Macarthurs for nearly twenty years, and Miss Stone’s dowry, a neat £10,000, was nothing to be sneezed at. Yet there is also every suggestion that the couple held genuine feelings for each other. Emily’s sister, writing about losing her sibling to New South Wales, correctly predicted James ‘will fill up the place of a sister as well as a husband, he seems to enter so completely into all her feelings’.1 The former tenant of Hambledon Cottage, archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott, officiated at the wedding and he wrote to Elizabeth immediately afterwards to tell her of his great pleasure in performing the ceremony. Emily was, he told her, ‘one of the most amiable young women this country contains. She is in every way worthy of him and he of her.’2 The marriage would, in fact, be a long and happy one. The couple set out on a honeymoon tour of Scotland and England before departing, in November 1838, for New South Wales.

  The newlyweds sailed aboard the Royal George and were accompanied by 102 labourers and their families, all destined for Camden Park. The workers, including six families from Dorset and another six from Kent, were the latest in a long line of skilled immigrants from England and Germany to be selected and supported in their passage out to New South Wales by the Macarthurs. Convict transportation to New South Wales would cease in 1840 but the Macarthurs had already seen the value in selecting and importing their own workforce. Edward, having lost his plum position at court with the ascension of Queen Victoria and at something of a loss about what to do with himself, missed his brother’s wedding. He was in Germany recruiting winemakers and their families to work in the Camden Park vineyards. In the past his brother John had done the same, in England and on the continent. Edward’s trip meant that he and James never really did speak frankly about the family business, although upon his return James assured Elizabeth that all was well in that regard.

  The German families arrived in New South Wales in early 1838, and Elizabeth wrote about them to Edward. ‘I saw them all last night…and was highly pleased with their appearance and demeanour.’3 Various delays meant the families did not arrive at Elizabeth Farm until seven o’clock in the evening, but ‘we had a supper ready for them and I saw men, women and children comfortably arranged on either side of the long table’. Afterwards Elizabeth and Emmeline spoke with the foreman and another man and their two wives in the drawing room. The emigrants set out early the next morning for Camden Park, all, according to Elizabeth, ‘well and cheerful’. Drays carried the baggage; the children and one adult travelled in ‘a convenient Braking carriage’ and presumably the others walked.

  Elizabeth knew Edward would ‘be most solicitous to hear of these poor people’, given that he had ‘taken so active a part in procuring at no small expense of time and trouble families so interesting to our colony, and as such we trust will be beneficial to ourselves more immediately’.4 As always, Elizabeth was interested in the wellbeing of the colony, but far more interested in the wellbeing of the Macarthurs. Under their five-year contract, the German winemakers built a crescent row of cottages at Camden looking out over the vineyards and a lagoon. They planted apple trees, and each family had ‘a cow or two, a garden, and poultry in abundance’.5 These German families would successfully introduce Rhine Riesling into Australia. In time their children, along with those of the English emigrant families and presumably the children of the emancipated convict servants, would attend a school on the estate. Long before the township of Camden was established, the Camden Park estates were a village unto themselves.

  Elizabeth began to mention her own health more often in her letters, although usually describing illnesses only as long or short. She delighted in her grandchildren, but in 1838 the Bowmans began to struggle financially, and they left their grand Sydney home to live at their country estate Ravensworth.6 It seems that Elizabeth never visited them there. She longed to see Edward again, and most of her letters to him during this period contain at least a line or two wistfully wondering when he might return to New South Wales. Yet it is clear that she is trying hard not to nag and in each letter she rephrases the question, noting that ‘various persons’ keep asking when he might be back or telling him how much she ‘regretted his change of mind with respect to revisiting the colony.’7

  Elizabeth was an old woman now and regularly referred to herself as such. So, when James and his bride arrived in New South Wales in March 1839, Elizabeth was nervous. ‘I cannot but feel considerable anxiety lest the country and habits of the community may disappoint my daughte
r-in-law’, she wrote to Edward. ‘Assuredly this Colony in very many instances is too flatteringly depicted which makes me fearful where expectation has been much raised in the mind.’8 And if the colony disappointed her daughter-in-law, perhaps James’s aged and unsophisticated mother—still at heart that girl from the remote Devonshire village—might be a disappointment too.

  Elizabeth need not have worried. The new couple stayed for a short time at Hambledon Cottage while the furniture, china and household goods that had travelled out with them were installed in the big new house at Camden Park, which was to be their permanent home. Elizabeth found Emily to be every bit as amiable and friendly as had been reported, and they would ever after regard one another with affection. James’s brother William may well have also been nervous about Emily, given how close the two brothers were, but again Emily loved everyone her husband loved, and William would live, for the rest of his life, happily at Camden Park with Emily and James. A year after arriving at Camden Park, in May 1840, Emily gave birth to a daughter. She was named, of course, Elizabeth.

  William, perhaps spurred on by the happy example of his brother, may have looked for a wife of his own at around this time. Apparently he cautiously proposed to Kate Macarthur, one of his cousin Hannibal’s daughters. But Kate was then only a teenager and William was in his late thirties, and she turned him down. Shortly afterwards she announced her engagement to Patrick Leslie, who subsequently complained of William disliking and discriminating against him out of jealousy:

  I saw the game he was playing long before he asked Kate but I was never afraid of him as a Rival even with his wide & broad domains—This will explain the whole of their coolness to me but it must explain it to no other single person for Kate would not think it right to let it be known.9