Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  Patrick Leslie was the nephew of Walter Davidson who was in turn the nephew of John Macarthur’s patron and friend Sir Walter Farquharson. Arriving in the colony at the age of nineteen, Leslie had ambitions to emulate the pastoral success of the Macarthurs, but when Leslie fell out with his uncle, James and William Macarthur took Davidson’s side, while Hannibal Macarthur and his family took Leslie’s.

  When Kate Macarthur and Patrick Leslie eventually married in 1840, in a lavish ceremony with eight bridesmaids, Elizabeth declined to attend the ceremony and the jolly luncheon held afterwards at the Vineyard. No one thought the worse of her for that, given her age and her often precarious health, but perhaps there was more to her absence. Emmeline and William Macarthur arrived so rudely late that they met the wedding party as it emerged from church and they left the luncheon as early as they could. Family feuds are always complex, but Pat Leslie was a brash young man who, like many young men, was inclined to assume that any problems could only be the fault of others. Soon after Kate and Patrick’s wedding, his brother George Farquhar Leslie married Kate’s sister, Emmeline Maria—no doubt further entrenching family battlelines.

  Far more compelling than any hurt feelings of William’s was the economic context of the late 1830s and the 1840s. The colony’s economy had slowed, and most of the pastoralists—including both Macarthur families—had fallen into debt. Prices for wool, livestock and grains plummeted. William was diversifying into wine and horticulture and although wealthier colonists across the eastern seaboard would, now and into the future, source the plants in their gardens from his annual catalogue, it was hardly enough to replace the lost wool income.

  Worse, the Macarthurs were no longer considered the leading breeders of merino sheep and their ram sales declined accordingly. Over time the family had concentrated their breeding efforts on the fineness of wool to the neglect of other features. Others had begun to breed sheep that were hardier, larger, with denser fleece and a longer staple. William was asked by John Hughes, a visiting pastoralist, why he bred such sheep when his own sheep, in a similar climate and landscape, yielded nearly double the money per fleece. William replied with an air of hauteur that his family ‘bred the pure blood’. Hughes replied that ‘in South Australia we bred for pure money’, which William described ‘as a Yankee way of looking at it’.10 The Macarthurs’ days of pre-eminence in sheep breeding were fading fast.11

  In the meantime, Mary Bowman and her husband, now with five children, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and were quietly supported financially by William and James. Elizabeth and her daughters Elizabeth and Emmeline lived frugally, as they always had anyway, and allowed their annuities to fall into arrears. Edward, still at a loose end in London, wrote yet again to his brothers, to complain and advise. His mother, though, remained unaware of the growing tensions.

  Under the terms of their father’s will, Edward was entitled to half the net profits (after the annuities had been paid) and James and William were to receive a quarter each. But the brothers had agreed that, with James and William continuing to work in the field as it were, the net profits would be shared equally—one-third each. Edward insisted, however, on retaining ownership of half the stock and of all the land bequeathed to him and, with his usual tin ear, sent a high-handed directive about the sale of the Pyrmont property. His letter arrived just as the preparations for Kate’s marriage to Patrick Leslie were in full swing, and a disappointed William was in no mood to prevaricate. He poured out all his resentments into a long and bitter reply to his older brother: ‘The tone & substance of [your previous] letter have given me great surprise & concern. I think we have cause to feel aggrieved by them.’12 William then proceeded to set out his many grievances.

  Since arriving back in New South Wales almost twenty-three years ago ‘I have been engaged the entire period in the active management of the property; during several years of which, & those most disastrous ones, with the entire weight of the concern on my shoulders. I have scarcely ever been ten days at a time absent from them during the whole time.’13 It would have been far better for his own financial interests, William explained, if he had withdrawn from the family pastoral concern and established his own properties. He certainly felt that he’d had the right to do so and ‘had fairly earned it’.

  I had for years performed a degree of drudgery to which not every one in my place would have submitted during so long a period. I had to teach myself the difficult trade of wool sorting. Up to 1831, every fleece, every flock of sheep was sorted at great pains by me. It formed nearly constant occupation of a very irksome kind for two or three months of every year. I should have preferred hard labour in the field. I never shrank from it not uttered a word of complaint because I knew it was necessary but I have often performed it with aching eyes, amidst all sorts of interruptions & discomforts, which a sense only that it was for the good of all would have induced me to submit to.’14

  What had Edward been doing in the meantime? ‘I do not put this as a reproach,’ wrote William reproachfully,

  but merely to point out, that whilst we were devoting the best years of our lives to the interests of a group concern & sacrificing without a murmur the opportunities never to return of realizing our independence for ourselves, you were pursuing your own separate profession; the very means of your advancement in it being in a great degree the fruit of our exertions. Will it be either just or generous in you to take advantage of this now? 15

  William went into some detail about conversations he’d had with their father about the disposition of the estates, carefully pointing out that when their father had been lucid late in 1833 he and James had steadfastly refused to allow their father to alter his will in their favour, even though their father John had ‘frequently lamented’ what ‘he called an act of injustice towards us’. The emphasis was William’s and he was not above twisting the knife a little harder. ‘I will not dwell upon the distressing periods (with reference to our Father’s health) of 1830 & 1832 to 1834, but I do think it hard that because we did not neglect our duty then, we should, by your means, be made to suffer for it now.’16

  William told no one of this letter and kept it without sending it for over a year, hoping the situation—and Edward’s attitude—would improve. Neither did. Edward, unaware of his brother’s building animosity, was concerned by the lack of regular financial reports and distrusted his brothers’ prudence and business abilities. The colony fell into a severe economic depression and the conditions could not have been worse for breaking the brothers’ partnership. William, though, could see no alternative.

  In 1841 he finally brought his concerns, his letter of more than a year before and Edward’s earlier letters, to Elizabeth’s attention. She, hitherto unaware of the growing hostilities, felt the rift very deeply and told Edward so in no uncertain terms. Her next letter to him, full of cold anger, distress and disappointment, also carefully articulates the sense of family solidarity and ambition upon which she based the work of her entire adult life.

  My dearest Edward, I have carefully perused the accompanying letter, [ie William’s] and can fully concur in the accuracy and truth of the statements in it. Often has your dear and respected father held conversations with me…hoping and praying…that our children would be satisfied with the disposition of his property, and that his greatest consolation was founded on the belief that the family were so strongly united in the bonds of mutual confidence and affection—and in the desire to carry out his plans for the general good as would lead them hereafter to act, each individual, for the benefit of the whole, and for the attainment of the objects he had through life ardently devoted himself to rather than for any views of individual or separate advantage. I do assure you, my dearest Edward, this dissatisfaction of yours has given great pain—I was only apprized of it a short time since and only within the last two days saw your letter announcing your displeasure, which was to me as an Electrical Shock having been assured by James on his last return from England in answer t
o my Enquiry that all had been arranged with you in accordance with the proposed plan submitted to me before he left the colony and in the justice and propriety of which I entirely agreed. I certainly did strenuously urge you to come out and see for yourself…knowing how impossible it is to judge of the state of things without seeing…this I still urge you to do, as the proper course in every point of view, for it will enable you, if you prefer returning to England to speak from your own knowledge, and thereby add great weight to your statements and representations in behalf of the Colony.17

  Although the brothers eventually managed to reach agreement about the management of the family properties without breaking the partnership, theirs was an uneasy truce. Edward did not visit the colony, and William would not write to Edward again until 1845, leaving all correspondence to James. Elizabeth, though, could not hold a grudge against her beloved son and her subsequent letters to Edward revert to her usual warm and loving tone.

  In early 1842 Elizabeth again travelled down to Camden Park, this time staying for about three months. For some of her visit her daughter-in-law Emily and son James were in Sydney, with James attending his duties as a member of the Legislative Council, to which he had been appointed in 1840. But Elizabeth was perfectly happy staying with William. Yet again she delighted ‘in seeing daily all the interesting farming operations’, and, in what must have been a relief to Edward, wrote in an affectionate style to tell him all about it. ‘Sheep washing and shearing, wool sorting and packing. Hay making and wheat harvest—all I am thankful to say satisfactorily completed.’18 Elizabeth also spoke highly of her daughter-in-law Emily, whom she considered ‘affectionately attached to James, to his interests, and to those of the family generally, hospitable and courteous to all practicing at the same time a laudable economy’.19 Even better than Emily, though, was Elizabeth’s healthy eighteen-month-old granddaughter, ‘the little Elizabeth’ who was ‘a very interesting child’ who prattled away with a sweet temper ‘not at all spoilt by over indulgence’.20 Except, perhaps by her fond grandmama.

  Elizabeth returned to Parramatta in April but was home for only a week when the unthinkable occurred: her daughter Elizabeth died suddenly. She was only forty-nine years old. Her death fell on 19 April—the anniversary of her brother John’s death eleven years earlier.

  Elizabeth’s daughter’s body was taken to Camden Park, where she was buried near her father. The cause of her death is not known, but if she was weakened by her childhood illness in some way, it had not affected her ability to serve on the committee of Parramatta’s school for servant girls, or to go for long walks, or to spend hours working in the garden. Her death was a shock to her mother and family. Six months later Elizabeth was still suffering. ‘She I trust in God is happy,’ wrote Elizabeth to Edward, ‘still I mourn, and tears flow when I think of her many virtues, her unaffected piety, her sweet disposition—to me she was the most devoted of daughters but I must not proceed in this strain, and therefore for a few minutes I will lay down my pen.’21 Elizabeth had now lost four children. It was a heavy burden for a seventy-five-year-old mother and a widow, even one as mentally strong as Elizabeth Macarthur.

  Rather than stay at Elizabeth Farm and dwell on her sorrows, Elizabeth distracted herself by travelling to Sydney to see Mary and her family, recently returned to Lyndhurst from their Ravensworth property in the Hunter Valley. Surely she did not expect peace and quiet in a household of children, but shortly after her arrival there was an extraordinary ‘explosion’.22 Son-in-law Doctor Bowman, no longer drawing a salary and with his capital sunk into the fine Sydney house and Ravensworth, had made a series of unfortunate investments and was now threatened with foreclosure by the Bank of Australia. Mary, and the wider Macarthur family, were entirely in the dark about the extent of his debts, making the revelations all the more shocking. Even Mary’s enormous dowry was entirely swallowed up, and Mary was furious about it all.

  ‘I leave you to imagine the dismay this has caused,’ wrote Elizabeth to Edward. She tried to encourage Mary towards acceptance of her lot, but ‘poor Mary whose lofty spirit can ill brook reverses is little prepared to submit with Christian forbearance’.23 Mary told her mother in no uncertain terms that if the crisis had been caused by the will of God then she would have submitted without a word but given that her whole family was now at risk thanks to the ‘most unwarrantable and ill judged speculation’ of her husband, Mary was indignant and resentful.24 Her brother William would later claim, as men often do about angry women, that she went slightly mad.25

  James and William Macarthur undertook, however, to bail Bowman out. At a cost of £6000 and much trouble, they took over the management of his estates. Although they repaid his most pressing debts, the bank gave them a mere five years in which to pay off the rest. Edward, at this point still fighting with his brothers about the management of their own estates, was livid. Mary became overwrought and unwell, so her mother stayed on to lend a hand. Lyndhurst would be sold at the end of 1843 and until then Elizabeth frequently stayed at the house with Mary.

  Elizabeth kept her beloved grandchildren out from under their mother’s feet by taking them for rides in her carriage. One of their favourites was to drive into the Domain, in the heart of Sydney town, to hear the military band play on summer afternoons. While the children listened to the music, Elizabeth enjoyed chatting to the many people she knew there. The regimental commandant never failed to pay his respects, nor did the many ladies of Elizabeth’s acquaintance. A former military colleague of Edward’s would often ride over to ask after her son. Elizabeth, ever the horsewoman, watched the major’s mount with a smiling eye. ‘His horse is always endeavouring to get close to the stand of the Military Musicians—it is quite laughable to observe the animal.’26 On other days she and the children drove to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, an outlook point that then as now offers a fine view over Sydney town and the harbour. Despite her advancing years, Elizabeth was still active: on one January day she and the children walked some four kilometres from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair southwards to Woolloomooloo (‘What a name!’27 remarked Elizabeth) then eastwards over the hill at Potts Points, around Rushcutters Bay to Darling Point.

  In the brief intervals when Elizabeth returned to Elizabeth Farm, there was yet more socialising. She rarely attended dinners and balls, but there seems to have been a steady stream of visitors to Elizabeth Farm. Elizabeth had, a few years earlier, told Edward that ‘dear ancient Parramatta’ was now ‘quite the fashion to admire as an antiquity in respect to the date of the Colony—and the old Cottage, Garden and Grounds attract great attention from most strangers’.28 The latest governor, Sir George Gipps, and his wife were frequent visitors, and Elizabeth grew to like them both very much. Emmeline was on excellent terms with Lady Gipps, regularly visiting her informally and often a guest at Government House receptions. But Lady Gipps wasn’t the only attraction at Government House for Emmeline. Henry Watson Parker, Lady Gipps’ cousin and Governor Gipps’ private secretary, caught Emmeline’s eye. In 1842, shortly after her sister’s death, Emmeline and Henry, both aged thirty-four, announced their engagement. But if the happy couple expected congratulations, they were sorely mistaken. The Macarthur family, Elizabeth included, were appalled. All visiting to Government House ceased immediately.

  22

  The ‘Dear Old Lady’

  [Elizabeth Farm is a] home endeared to me by its having been my abode so many years and in a variety of circumstances—some indeed of a very painful nature—and others of serene happiness—and surrounded by many blessings conferred upon me for which I pray to God I may be sufficiently thankful.

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO EDWARD MACARTHUR, 31 MAY 1849

  Elizabeth may have had words with Lady Gipps, furious at her for encouraging the unsuitable match, although the family’s reasons for rejecting Parker as a suitor are not at all clear. James and his wife Emily described Parker as penurious, which was to some degree true given he only had his modest salary to live on. His father in
England was well off, but, as a fourth son, Henry’s expectations of an inheritance were probably low. Elizabeth admitted that Parker’s reputation was sound but found him bad tempered and narrow minded. She wrote to Edward, as the head of the family, seeking guidance—her concerns were ostensibly all about Emmeline’s happiness. ‘I feel horrified and apprehensive when I look forward—fearful for the happiness of the poor thing, the youngest and most cherished and indulged.’1

  Was it Emmeline’s happiness she was fearful for though, or her own? In an 1829 letter to Edward, Emmeline had responded to his request for details of home life with a searing insight into her daily life:

  Every day occurrences of this place cannot possibly interest you and as for home details an account of the stupid monotonous life we lead would give you the horrors—I certainly envy you when I read your letters from Italy and Switzerland—so interesting—so captivating to a poor unsophisticated Australian!2

  More to the point, with her sister Elizabeth’s death it was now entirely clear to Emmeline (and her family) that the care of her elderly mother would fall to her. So the timing of her engagement was perhaps not at all coincidental and nor, perhaps, was her family’s refusal to allow it.

  Elizabeth had, some f ifteen years earlier, refused on Emmeline’s behalf, another offer of marriage. In 1827 Saxe Bannister, then attorney-general of New South Wales, had suggested to John Macarthur a match between himself and the then nineteen-year-old Emmeline. John consulted with Elizabeth, and they were of one view when John replied, firmly, in the negative. As far as Elizabeth was aware, Mr Bannister and Emmeline ‘had never been thrown into each other’s company nor could we discover the least partiality other than that of a very general nature. We none of us dropped the least hint to her, not thinking it necessary as Mr Bannister was so soon to quit the country.’3