Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Everywhere Betsy would have seen convicts at work, shackled at the ankles in chain gangs. Roger Therry, a lawyer who arrived in the colony a few years later, was appalled: ‘Early in the morning, the gates of the convict prison were thrown open, and several hundred convicts were marched in regimental file and distributed amongst the several public works in and about the town . . . one met bands of them in detachments of twenty yoked to wagons laden with gravel and stone, which they wheeled through the streets; in this, and in other respects, they performed the functions of labour usually discharged by beasts of burden at home.’28

  Perhaps Betsy accepted the treatment of these men as the natural order of things. She had grown up in a slave society; as she has left no personal observations on the life of the convicts we do not know. But as Helen Heney observed in Australia’s Founding Mothers, Georgian women ‘lived in a time of harsh reality’.29

  I imagine Betsy escaping to a favourite place with her little daughter Bessie in her arms. She might have followed a path behind Government House that wound through the exotic trees, palms and ferns of the Botanical Gardens, established with the encouragement of Sir Joseph Banks, and emerged onto the sloping lawns that extended to the promontory of land on the far side of Farm Cove. At its tip a ledge in the sandstone offered a comfortable seat. It would have pleased her to learn that this had been a favourite resting place for Elizabeth, the wife of the previous governor, who had come there so often that the rock shelf was still called ‘Mrs Macquarie’s Chair’.

  Sitting there, Betsy could take in the activity across the bay at Fort Macquarie and at the wharves beyond it, ships coming into port and others unfurling their canvas sheets as they sailed down the harbour and out through the headlands to the open sea. Occasionally she would see other craft on the harbour: the local Eora people fishing from bark canoes. She could not have known—for few Europeans knew or cared—how restricted the diet of the Eora had become since the arrival of white men, how the strangers’ wharves and ships and rubbish had fouled the clear waters of the bay and destroyed their oyster and mussel beds.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘THE INTERESTING MRS ABELL’

  The Balcombes began to make new friends. Given William’s bon vivant personality and the gentle, hospitable nature of his wife, they rarely had trouble doing so, except with those of a highly rigid, conservative nature. Mrs Abell was of interest to many in Sydney Town who had heard of her friendship with Napoleon or could remember the newspaper stories about the cheeky Betsy Balcombe. The family soon found some congenial companions. The new chief justice Francis Forbes and his wife Amelia had arrived a month earlier and were settled in a house in Macquarie Place, just around the corner.

  Mrs Forbes was well pleased with her ‘commodious dwelling’ with its broad verandah shaded by trees. Beyond the garden wall was a stone obelisk, established during Governor Macquarie’s term, ‘which marked the distance from that spot to the settled towns, up country’. A military band played once a week in a little rotunda near the obelisk, ‘and, as we could hear it, quite distinctly from our verandah, we generally made the band day the occasion for a pleasant gathering of friends at our house. Sydney was not very extensive at that time, nor were the inhabitants of the best class, but we soon made some agreeable acquaintances.’

  Justice Forbes was a man of learning and broad liberal sympathies. His previous appointments, accompanied by his young wife, had been as attorney-general in Bermuda and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland. He was generally considered to have acquitted himself with humanity, integrity and wisdom in both positions, and—with the exception of a few enemies—came to be so well regarded for his role in New South Wales that a knighthood was conferred in 1837.

  Among the regular visitors for the ‘band evenings’ were John Campbell, Sydney’s wealthiest merchant and owner of a number of warehouses down at the wharves, who had a fine house and garden nearby. As well, there were the commanders of the two regiments stationed in the colony, and government officials with their families, including the governor’s aide-de-camp Major John Ovens, the colonial secretary Major Frederick Goulburn, John Oxley the surveyor-general, and the new attorney-general Saxe Bannister with his two sisters.1

  Not long after their arrival, the Balcombes and their daughter Betsy Abell were invited to one of these evenings on the verandah. Amelia Forbes later recounted that as the wine flowed, William Balcombe was willing to open up on a subject of great fascination to everyone present and ‘had some very interesting stories to tell about Napoleon Buonaparte’. At The Briars summer-house ‘the great man who had once kept the world in awe took up his residence, and became very intimate with Mr Balcombe’s family’.2

  ‘We enjoyed, of course,’ wrote Amelia Forbes, ‘the usual interchange of dinners, dances, and receptions, and all went happily in this new sphere of life in Australia.’3 Through these connections, the Balcombes were introduced into the most lively stratum of Sydney colonial society. In the absence of a true aristocracy, those of the ‘Parramatta party’ considered themselves the colonial version, but they kept to themselves and were rarely in town. The people the Balcombes met through the Forbes tended to be liberal in attitude, with progressive ideas for the future of the colony. They were called ‘the fashionables’, and the most fashionable among them was Captain John Piper, the naval officer.

  Piper had previously been an officer of the New South Wales Corps, but his attachment to a convict’s daughter twenty years his junior, Mary Ann Shears, obliged him to leave his regiment. Governor Macquarie rescued him by appointing him naval officer in Sydney, a position which involved the control of lighthouses and the collection of harbour dues, customs duties and excise on spirits. It was extremely remunerative, involving a percentage on all monies collected, so that Piper’s income was on average just over £2000 a year, which ‘still put him among the highest paid public servants in the colony’.4 He had been granted 190 acres of land on a promontory four miles across the harbour from Sydney Cove (today called Point Piper); at a cost of £10,000, he had constructed a dazzling white mansion, Henrietta Villa, which had a domed ballroom.

  Piper enjoyed sharing his wealth with his friends and was well loved for his generosity. When he hosted a party at his villa, which he did almost every evening, the lights glimmered and bounced across the harbour waters with the strains of music from his personal band. His musicians doubled as his boatmen, ferrying the guests there and home. Captain John Piper seemed a colonial version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby in almost every sense, except one: he had a wife, to whom he was devoted. He had married Mary Ann and they produced many children. Once introduced to the Pipers, the Balcombes were soon welcome guests, particularly the glamorous and mysterious Mrs Abell.

  On Monday 17 May 1824, the Charter of Justice, establishing the new Supreme Court, was formally promulgated by Chief Justice Forbes in a ceremony at Government House attended by Governor Brisbane and all the leading civil officials, naturally including Balcombe, as well as the magistrates, clergy and senior military officers. After the Oath of Judicial Office was administered, the governor congratulated the chief justice and thanked the Mother Country for the privileges bestowed upon ‘her distant and rising Colonies in the Southern World’. The battery at Dawes’ Point fired a royal salute.

  The first Supreme Court of New South Wales was ready to function that afternoon and Criminal Court sessions began. That evening, Brisbane entertained the chief justice, the retiring judge advocate John Wylde and all the heads of the various public departments to dinner at Government House, Sydney.5 He no doubt attempted to convey an atmosphere of peace and goodwill, but he had just sent a letter to Lord Bathurst complaining of Frederick Goulburn’s ‘arrogance and insubordination’. (John Macarthur, no stranger to arrogance himself, agreed with the governor on this point, expressing the view that Goulburn was a worthy successor to Bligh in ‘despotic behaviour’.6) It would not have taken long for Balcombe to realise that he and Goulbu
rn could never be natural friends, unlike himself and Brisbane, but he soon became adept at navigating his way around departmental enmities. His everyday life and future success in the colony depended on obtaining the goodwill of both men.

  Ten days later, William Wemyss, the deputy commissary-general, gave ‘a grand dinner party’ for the same key government officials, in order to discuss what was effectively the creation of a new society.7 Almost all of them were the first to occupy their positions.

  The Balcombes had made a new friend among ‘the fashionables’, Sir John Jamison, one of the colony’s largest landholders. He was formerly a physician in the Royal Navy, serving in many parts of the world. In 1809, he had been on a hospital ship with the Baltic Fleet and helped curb a serious outbreak of scurvy among Swedish seamen. For this he had received a knighthood from King Charles XIII of Sweden, later confirmed by the Prince Regent. On the death of Jamison’s father, he inherited several grazing properties in New South Wales, and in 1814 had arrived in Sydney to look after his interests. By the 1820s he had acquired more land by grant and purchase and was immensely rich, influential and assertive.8

  On 20 May, Jamison hosted a large ball and supper at Regentville, his grand mansion beside the Nepean River, 34 miles from Sydney at the base of the Blue Mountains. The Balcombes and Mrs Abell attended, as did almost anyone who mattered in the colony. Even Boyes was there, who reported: ‘I think we sat down about a hundred and forty. He has a famous large house and one room contained the whole party. About a dozen private carriages conveyed us all to the house by nine o’clock—and the doors were not open till eight.’ What Boyes found most remarkable about the evening was that there was only one theft: ‘Somehow or other the Constables at the doors permitted a great number of people looking like servants to fill the lobbies and though they were all convicted felons, I heard but of one Robbery—D’Arcy Wentworth, the chief of Police lost a diamond brooch of considerable value. The whole thing with that exception was conducted in the most orderly way and might be quoted as an example to the most fashionable routs in the English Metropolis. The women danced tolerably well—but all preserved their good humour. I returned pretty well sick of it at three in the morning but a large proportion kept it up till daylight.’9 The dyspeptic Boyes was fed up with most things and told his wife: ‘Generally speaking I dislike the people here beyond anything I have ever experienced and except our own little circle I do not mean to visit or receive.’10

  The Balcombes, however, had been swept up in a social whirl. On 24 June, they were at another of Sir John’s sumptuous parties, this time at his Sydney home. Under the heading ‘THE FASHIONABLE WORLD’, the Sydney Gazette gushed: ‘The Ball and Supper, given by Sir JOHN JAMISON on the evening of Thursday last, was of the most fascinating and splendid description. The ballroom was fancifully fitted up for the occasion. The Company flocked in from 8 to 9: the carriages were rolling rapidly down our streets between those hours. Captain PIPER, with his usual zeal in these cases, had his own Band in attendance upon the noble Host.’ The most distinguished of the 170-odd guests were listed: Chief Justice Forbes and his wife, the Wyldes, Pipers, Blaxlands, Coxes and Oxleys, Saxe Bannister, the Balcombes ‘and the interesting Mrs Abell’, the latter being the only one singled out for a special description ‘among the happy group of Fashionables that were invited from all parts of the country to this elegant banquet’.11 A hostess was conspicuously absent from the list, as always. The ‘invisible woman’ who shared Sir John’s bed never appeared.12 She was like Charlotte Brontë’s madwoman in the attic in the Rochester household, for the ‘convict stain’, like madness, was a disgrace to polite society.

  ‘Dancing, consisting of country dances, quadrilles, and Spanish waltzes,’ the Gazette’s report continued, ‘presently commenced, and was maintained with the utmost animation till midnight, when the guests were ushered in to the supper-room . . . All the rare and choice delicacies that Australia possesses, whether natural or imported, decorated the festive board: upwards of 170 sat down to supper. The rooms were elegantly festooned, and exhibited one refulgent blaze.’ The ‘concentration of beauty, rank, and fashion’ returned to dancing until dawn, when carriages took them home, presumably to collapse, although it was a weekday.13

  The wealthy 47-year-old emancipist businesswoman Mary Reibey did not attend any of these events and was not considered one of the ‘fashionables’. Having made a visit to England three years earlier, she gave an ironic account of the Sydney social scene to her cousin in Lancashire: ‘You wish to know what Public ammusements we have in Sydney—You will be surprised when I tell you we have not one not even so much as a Public Ball or Assembly—I assure you my dear Cousin our ears are not assailed by any of the Wanton or corrupting airs of the opera no nor the majestic and ennobling melody of the Oratorio but they are frequently assailed with the noise of intoxicated People and the disgusting language of the Aborigine—The Winter generally passes away with but one or two Balls and when sweltering summer arrives there are very frequently 4 and 5 in succession sometimes the “Sheriff ” entertains a numerous assemblage of fashionables when the “Interesting Mrs Abel” makes her appearance—sometimes our gay Naval Officer entertains his friends . . . as to the Eligibility of it I think I should not presume to offer an opinion as I never enter into Society except a few friends who we sometimes dine with or spend the Evening.’14

  Reibey’s gently mocking use of the Gazette’s expression ‘the Interesting Mrs Abell’ suggests that Betsy had become somewhat famous in the colony—for her beauty, her style, her obvious lack of a Mr Abell, and most of all, for the rumour that she had been ‘the favourite’ of Bonaparte. While this would have made her an object of fascination for some, it would not have endeared her to others. Many men in the colony had been soldiers or naval men and spent years of their early adult lives fighting Bonaparte’s forces. They may have been wounded themselves or lost fathers, brothers and comrades.15 Few would have cared to know about what old newspapers described as a silly girl who got up to high jinks with the villain. Indeed, numerous Napoleonic War veterans held important positions in society, not least the governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, who at the Duke of Wellington’s request had been promoted to brigadier-general and commanded a brigade heavily engaged in battles from Vittoria to Toulouse.16 Major Ovens, his aide-de-camp, had been by his side in those conflicts. Major Frederick Goulburn had spent much of his life in active service, in the Peninsular War, in France and at Waterloo. It would be unsurprising if Goulburn felt resentment towards people said to have admired Napoleon, and that may be the reason he never liked Balcombe.

  Betsy and her parents kept quiet about their former connection, except with friends, but even her father’s storytelling on the Forbes’ verandah may have embarrassed her. It is frustrating to have no account in her own voice—in a journal or letters to friends abroad—of their early years in Sydney. But she was soon to write a letter that has survived, albeit on a very different and most urgent matter.

  Young Thomas and Alexander Balcombe, aged fourteen and thirteen, had been enrolled in April at the Sydney secondary school. By June they were successful in their half-yearly public examination, having ‘read, and explained Seleciæ and Profanix, and applied the Rules of Syntax, with much promptitude and accuracy’.17

  The following month their father joined the scramble for land, submitting a request to the governor for grants for himself and his sons. He had no doubt enjoyed many useful discussions with Edward Macarthur during the five-month voyage, and although Edward was away prospecting for the huge Macqueen grant of 10,000 acres, goodwill between them remained. Balcombe was only too aware of the importance of owning land: in Britain it entitled you to vote, it gave status, made you a gentleman; if your domain was extensive enough you might become a Member of Parliament and even acquire a title. In New South Wales he saw how obtaining land by government grant and purchase had made men rich, and he intended to secure a future for his family.

  Betsy also kne
w that owning land would provide a measure of independence for herself and her daughter, and chafed at the ruling that single women—which included deserted wives—could not apply. She had spoken to Governor Brisbane, who said that only a very influential patron could persuade the Colonial Office to make an exception.

  Balcombe’s application to the governor was successful and he was granted 2000 acres in the county of Argyle at Bungonia, 20 miles south-east of the then smaller settlement of Goulburn. The land had frontage to the north side of Yarralaw Creek and he was able to purchase land on the southern side, making his total property 2560 acres. He resolved to call it ‘The Briars’ after his beloved home on St Helena. William, the eldest at sixteen, intended to take up farming immediately, so made an application in his own right, and Brisbane granted him an additional 800 acres at Bungonia. But it seems young William did not take up the grant, because of the obligations and expense involved, managing his father’s land instead.

  Once a land grant was obtained, regulations demanded that the new owner invest a quarter of the land value in improvements within seven years—in fencing, dams, stockyards, and residential and farm buildings—and assign convicts to work the land and look after the livestock. No sale of the land was permissible until at least seven years after acquisition, sometimes longer, and if the owner did not intend to live on the property, he had to employ a resident manager. After 1825, annual payments to the government called ‘quit rents’ were also mandatory, usually 10 per cent of the land valuation.18