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| ISBN-13: | 9781742194509 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/1988 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 165 |
| File size: | 290 KB |
About the Author
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The Peaceful Army
By Dale Spender
Penguin Books Australia Ltd
Copyright © 1988 Penguin Books Australia,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74219-450-9
CHAPTER 1
Ode to the Pioneer Women
MARY GILMORE
O braiding thought, move out — move on!
Twine, Memory, your golden thread!
Marble, be monument to them —
Our homage here their diadem —
Lest, as with nations long since gone,
We lose the names should be our bread.
Call them, Australia! Call them once again,
For they are those who on these shores first stood;
Women upon whose long endurings rest
The might and majesty acclaimed by us today.
They are the women who by lonely doorsteps
sat,
And heard with inward ears the throstle and
The nightingale that they would never hear again,
Who saw as in a dream
The little corncrake in dim distant fields,
Or talked of moons of silver as they watched
The torrid rising of our orb of gold.
And though with wistful longing they looked
back,
And knew (so oft!) the sudden tear of memory,
They bore the burden of the strange — they who had never
known
But homely things: the dovecot by the barn;
The skep beside the door; the kindly thatch
That covered them; the woodbine and the rose;
The singing of the lark, that, all day long,
Thrilled out above the gorse his jewelled song.
O firmaments of time,
Where planets ages are,
Ye shall the past sublime
And set each name a star.
For these were they who came —
A cockle shell for ship —
Daring the sun's red flame,
And the wind's wild whip.
The vast about them lay,
The unknown walled them round,
Like doors, that knew no way,
Loneliness was their bound.
Theirs but a grain of wheat,
Theirs but the small frail hand,
But they gave the race to eat,
And they made the land.
The handless dreamer wasteful sits among his
dreams
While worlds about him fall. These, too, had
dreams.
But theirs were dreams of homes, of hope and pride:
And these they braced with deeds!
They were the sainted ones — haloed by courage,
As by endurance they were crowned.
For they were women who at need took up
And plied the axe, or bent above the clodded spade;
Who herded sheep; who rode the hills, and brought
The half-wild cattle home — helpmates of men,
Whose children lay within their arms,
Or at the rider's saddle-pommel hung,
And at whose knees, by night, were said familiar
prayers.
Ah! Though the towers of Ilium topped the skies,
Yet here were women rising higher still.
Of such as these was born the Anzac and his pride.
If ever in the dark embrace
Of fear it is our lot to stand,
Vouchsafe, O God, to us this grace:
That we may be as those who stood,
Lone on the threshold of this land,
In their enduring womanhood.
The Happy Pioneer — Elizabeth Macarthur
M. BARNARD ELDERSHAW
I The Voyage
The exact date of Elizabeth Veale's marriage to John Macarthur is not recorded. It lies somewhere between 1784 and 1788. It was not an event that called for much attention beyond the family circle, for it was far from a brilliant match on either side. The bride was the daughter of a small landowner of Holdsworthy, on the the borders of Cornwall and Devonshire; she was very young (in 1789, when they sailed for Australia, she was barely twenty-one), and was considered by her own family to be a 'timid and irresolute girl'. The young bridegroom — he was under thirty — erred in the opposite direction; his temper was proud and his manner often overbearing, although his fortune and position in life did little to support these traits. He came of a fighting and rebellious stock, for he was the second son of Alexander Macarthur, the sole survivor of seven brothers who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden Moor. Alexander escaped from England and lived in the West Indies until it was safe to return home. Eventually he settled in Plymouth as an army agent, married, and there his children were born. When in 1783 John Macarthur went to live at Holdsworthy, he was at a loose end. He had been retired from the army at the end of the wars in 1783 — on ensign's half pay — and was studying agriculture. He also had leanings towards the law, and spent much of his time reading law and history, chiefly English and Roman. The marriage to Elizabeth Veale must have been a love match, and evidently relatives and friends did not scruple to label it foolish and improvident, for later Elizabeth Macarthur wrote to her girlhood friend, Elizabeth Kingdon:
'I offer in myself an instance that it is not always, with all our wise foreseeings, those marriages which promise most or least happiness, prove in their result such as our friends may predict. Few of mine, I am certain, when I married thought that either of us had taken a prudent step. I was considered indolent and inactive; Mr Macarthur too proud and haughty for our humble fortune or expectations, and yet see how bountifully Providence has dealt with us.'
A partnership that was to prove of national importance had been entered into.
John Macarthur decided to stay in the army, and in 1788 he was appointed to the 68th (Durham) Regiment, and in the following year he volunteered for the New South Wales Corps then forming. His first child, Edward, had been born, and with additional incentive to get on in the world, Macarthur wanted something more stimulating than the slow process of advancement in the army in peacetime. He got his step at once. He was appointed lieutenant on 5 June 1789. He also obtained permission to take his wife and child with him. Only one other officer was to be accompanied by his wife, Abbott, the senior lieutenant of the corps.
Elizabeth was eager for the adventure. She wrote to her mother from Chatham Barracks on 8 October 1789:
'In my last letter I informed you, my dear mother, of my husband's exchange into a corps destined for New South Wales, from which we have every reasonable expectation of reaping the most material advantages. You will be surprised that even I, who appear timid and irresolute, should be a warm advocate for this scheme. So it is, and believe me I shall be greatly disappointed if anything happens to impede it. I foresee how terrific and gloomy this will appear to you. To me at first it had the same appearance, while I suffered myself to be blinded by common and vulgar prejudices. I have not now, nor I trust shall ever have one scruple or regret, but what relates to you.'
This was an act of faith on the young Elizabeth's part, of faith in her husband chiefly. The colony had been founded a little over two years. Apart from Governor Phillip's measured hopefulness, the reports that had come home in the First Fleet were not encouraging. The land offered every obstruction and no sustenance. It was beautiful, but strange and unwelcoming. It might be dangerous; the blacks were uncertain; the majority of the colonists were convicts, for whom not very adequate guards had been provided. Life was very rough, and must remain so for years to come. Lastly, the voyage out was long and perilous, and once arrived there was no retreat. Yet Macarthur does not seem to have hesitated to take his young wife and child with him. He could not as yet have had any plans for the conquest of a new world; Australia was still too much a terra incognita, but his vigorous and hopeful temperament, impatient of the restrictions of the old world, hoped everything from the new.
They embarked in the Neptune, the most notorious ship in the notorious Second Fleet, on 13 November 1789, but it was 17 January before they actually sailed. There were endless delays and inconveniences. The family had not been in the ship a day when Macarthur quarrelled with the master, Gilbert, which 'precluded all further communication between him and Mr Macarthur'. When the ship put into Plymouth they went ashore and fought a duel, from which neither apparently suffered any damage. Mrs Macarthur left the ship to pay a last visit to her mother, but was brought back in the middle of the night by a report, issued by the master, that the Neptune was about to sail. This was too much. Captain Nepean, of the corps, who was sailing in her and had also been hoaxed, complained to the owners, and Gilbert was replaced by Donald Traill. 'Experience soon taught us a very disagreeable truth,' laments Elizabeth; 'Mr Traill's character was of a much blacker dye than was ever in Mr Gilbert's nature to exhibit.'
On 8 January 1790, the Neptune sailed, but was turned back by bad weather, and anchored at the Motherbank for another week. The 17th saw her final departure, and she ran straight into a heavy storm in the Bay of Biscay. 'For the first time, I began to be a coward,' Elizabeth wrote in her journal.
She had every cause for fear and unhappiness. The Neptune was a transport, crowded with convicts and badly found. Macarthur was soon at loggerheads with the master and, more serious still, with Captain Nepean, who sided with Traill. Captain Nepean, said Elizabeth tartly, adopted 'that very generous maxim, every man for himself'. The Macarthurs' cabin was separated only by a thin partition from the women convicts' quarters, so that they were constantly aware of their unhappy neighbours and in constant dread of the fevers and diseases rife among the women. Their only exit was through a dark and noisome passage, used and slept in by the convicts, which Elizabeth dared not use for fear of infection. 'Thus precluded from the general advantage that even the convicts enjoyed, air and exercise, no language can express, no imagination conceive, the misery I experienced.' Their maid fell ill of a gaol fever, and before the ship was a fortnight on its way little Edward was taken very ill, 'and continued in the most pitiable weak state during our passage to the Cape'. The heat of the tropics made conditions worse.
'Approaching near the equator (where the heat in the best situations is almost insupportable), assailed with noisome stenches that even in the cold of an English winter hourly diffusions of oil of tar in my cabin could not dispel, two sides of it being surrounded with wretches whose dreadful imprecations and shocking discourses ever rang in my distracted ears, a sickly infant constantly claiming maternal cares, my spirits failing, my health forsaking me, nothing but the speedy change which took place could have prevented me from falling helpless victim to the unheard-of inhumanity of a set of monsters whose triumph and pleasure seemed to consist in aggravating my distresses.'
The 'speedy change' was transfer to another ship, the Scarborough. A quarrel between Macarthur and Nepean over the soldiers' rations brought matters to a head. Permission to transfer was readily given. They were much more comfortable aboard this ship, where they shared quarters with Lieutenant and Mrs Abbott; but their troubles were not over. At Cape Town Macarthur got soaked in the surf one windy day as he was embarking some drunken soldiers for the transport. He contracted rheumatic fever. 'It continued to rage till every sense was lost and every faculty but life destroyed,' wrote Elizabeth; 'and my little boy at that time was so very ill that I could scarcely expect him to survive a day. Alone, unfriended, and in such a situation, what do I not owe to a merciful God for granting me support and assistance in these severe moments of affliction.'
The rest of the voyage appears to have been uneventful, and the Scarborough made Port Jackson at the end of June 1790, a very speedy voyage for those days. When Elizabeth stepped ashore, she left the most arduous part of her pioneering behind her. This voyage, and its distresses, was crucial in her life; it changed her from a gentle, indeterminate girl into a woman of character. It hardened and strengthened her, and bred in her a will to survive equal to her husband's. It fitted her for the part she was to play, and it is for that reason that I have dwelt on it at such length. Certainly she suffered, but never once in the diary and the letters that remain to us does she express pity for or sympathy with the convicts who shared the terrible journey with her, and whose sufferings were so much greater than her own. There were tragic scenes in Sydney Cove when the convicts were disembarked from the Second Fleet. They were emaciated with starvation and disease; many were too weak to help themselves, and had to be lowered into the boats in slings like cargo; many died before they could be brought ashore. The masters had starved the convicts so that they might sell their rations at famine prices in Sydney. The worst of them, Donald Traill, was brought to trial for it, and the scandal rang through England — but not loudly enough.
II Husband and Wife
Elizabeth Macarthur's first years in Australia appear to have been very happy ones. She has left in her letters a cheerful record of them. It was a brand-new world, and she was full of eager curiosity. The colony had been established only three and a half years when she landed, and everything was in a very primitive state. She saw a magnificent harbour with many winding, thickly wooded inlets, and on one of its coves a small settlement, a collection of makeshift huts for the most part, into which the methodical governor was trying to bring some order and semblance of dignity. Westward of the settlement the bush stretched in an apparently unbroken wall to the range of mountains that showed pale blue on the horizon. Sixteen miles away, on another branch of the harbour, where the soil was better, there was another small settlement, called Rose Hill.
When the Second Fleet made port, Sydney was in the grip of a famine. Everyone from the governor down was on a common weekly ration of 2 lb salt pork, 21/2 lb flour, and 2 lb rice. Clothing, too, was almost exhausted. Scarcely a soldier had a pair of boots to his feet, and the convicts were going round like scarecrows in any rags they could find. The Second Fleet, with its burden of sick and dying humanity, did little to relieve conditions, but it did break the grip of depression on the starving community. It had believed itself forgotten and abandoned by England; now communication was established once more, and the ships brought enough food to give a little relief.
It was not then a very hopeful world into which the Macarthurs stepped, but they were as comfortably placed as anyone. Elizabeth had few complaints. She was interested in everything, the climate was perfect — she had never known such bright, warm winter weather — and little Edward, who, although over a year old now, was not as developed as a normal child of four months, began to improve rapidly. Socially Elizabeth had a great success. She was the only lady, it is said, who was invited to the parties at Government House. (What, one wonders, had become of Mrs Abbott, the senior lieutenant's wife, and Mrs Johnson, the chaplain's wife?) Governor Phillip was, in the phrase of the time, very attentive. The vice-regal dinner parties were for the most part a feast of soul, as the governor had turned his private stocks of food into the public store, and only the ordinary ration was served there, albeit dressed by a French chef. Gentlemen were expected to bring their own bread, but 'there is always a roll for Mrs Macarthur'.
Of her daily life at this time Mrs Macarthur wrote to her friend in England, Miss Kingdon:
'We passed our time away for many weeks cheerfully, if not gaily — gaily indeed it could not be said to be. On my first landing everything was new to me, every Bird, every Insect, Flower, etc., in short, all was novelty around me, and was noticed with a degree of eager curiosity and perturbation, that after a while subsided into that calmness I have already described.'
Her chief care was to find some occupation. They became very friendly with the young officers of the garrison which the NSW Corps was to replace, especially with the accomplished and charming Captain Tench and the more studious Lieutenant Dawes.
'Mr Dawes we do not see so frequently. He is so much engaged with the stars that to mortal eye he is not always visible. I had the presumption to become his pupil, and meant to learn a little astronomy. It is true I have many pleasant walks to his house (something less than half a mile from Sydney), have given him much trouble in making orreries, and explaining to me the general principles of the heavenly bodies, but I soon found I had mistaken my abilities and blush at my error. Still I wanted something to fill up a certain vacancy in my time, which could neither be done by writing, reading, or conversation. To the two first I did not feel myself always inclined, and the latter was not in my power, having no female friend to unbend my mind to, nor a single woman with whom I could converse with any satisfaction to myself ... These considerations made me still anxious to learn some easy science to fill up the vacuum of many a solitary day, and at length, under the auspices of Mr Dawes, I have made a small progress in botany. No country can exhibit a more copious field for botanical knowledge than this. I am arrived so far as to be able to class and order all common plants. I have found great pleasure in my study; every walk furnished me with subjects to put in practice that Theory I had before gained by reading ...'
Elizabeth had not long to complain of too little to do. The Gorgon, man-of-war, arrived with sufficient stores aboard to give the struggling settlement a new lease of life. The arrival also gave a fillip to social life, as, besides the officers of the ship, Captain Parker had brought his wife, and Phillip Gidley King and Mrs King were aboard, en route for Norfolk Island to resume the governorship. There were dinner parties at Government House and excursions on the harbour, and Mrs Macarthur was happy in the company of 'acceptable females' at last. In December the Gorgon sailed, taking with her most of the officers of the marine detachment, including Captain Tench and Lieutenant Dawes. The little society was left desolate, but Elizabeth had little time to lament, for her husband was seriously ill throughout December, and in January they moved into a new and more commodious home. Her family was increasing too. Elizabeth, her eldest daughter, was born in Australia, and a boy, James, who died when he was eleven months old. She had her hands full, but the elegancies were not quite forgotten. Mr Worgan, who came out as surgeon in the Sirius, Phillip's flagship, left Elizabeth his piano, on which he had taught her to play.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Peaceful Army by Dale Spender. Copyright © 1988 Penguin Books Australia,. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Books Australia Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword to the Penguin Edition DALE SPENDER,Foreword FLORA S. ELDERSHAW,
Ode to the Pioneer Women MARY GILMORE,
The Happy Pioneer — Elizabeth Macarthur M. BARNARD ELDERSHAW,
Jenny DORA WILCOX,
Mary Reibey and her Times DYMPHNA CUSACK,
Release DOROTHEA MACKELLAR,
Caroline Chisholm and her Times ELEANOR DARK,
Australia is so modern Sesquicentenary: London, Sydney HELEN SIMPSON,
A Group of Noble Dames FLORA ELDERSHAW,
Rose Scott: Some Aspects of her Personality and Work MILES FRANKLIN,
The Woman of the House OLIVE HOPEGOOD,
Some Pioneer Australian Women Writers WINIFRED BIRKETT,
Pioneer Women Artists MARGARET PRESTON,
Snow in London KATHLEEN MONYPENNY,
Pioneering Still Goes On KYLIE TENNANT,
Afterword: In Praise of Kylie Tennant DALE SPENDER,
Notes on Contributors,
Acknowledgements,