Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  Official figures tell another story altogether. There was a small but significant decline in the percentage of both major religions in Australia between 1851 and 1856. What makes it particularly interesting is that the drop, albeit minor, came at a time of massive population growth in the colony. The 1851 census shows that 30.4 per cent of the population was Roman Catholic, but that had dropped to 29.9 per cent by 1856. Similarly, in 1851, members of the Church of England made up 49.7 per cent of the population, but that receded slightly to 49.4 per cent in 1856. In both cases, there were marginal increases of Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Jewish people and “Mahomedans, Pagans, and all other Persuasions”, suggesting that the first inkling of multiculturalism was finally seeping through the barriers built by the original white invaders.49 Whether the British Government was aware of these figures or not, the Colonial Secretary ignored Lang’s concerns.

  *

  As 1853 dawned, Caroline was ready to rejoin Archibald in Australia. First, though, she had to collect her son William from Rome. She left London for Paris in the northern spring of that year. To Caroline, Europe was just another conglomerate of countries where the underprivileged and middle class were awaiting her message. Crossing the Continent, from France through Germany then south through Italy to the Vatican City, she made the most of her opportunities by holding lecture meetings along the way, and attracted large audiences. She spoke good French, though it is not known if she could converse in German; however, German immigrants had been settling in South Australia since 1838 and from 1850 until 1914 were the largest non-British or non-Irish group of European settlers in Australia. Moreover, gold fever had crossed the Channel and there was widespread interest in emigration to the Antipodean El Dorado. A few years later Caroline explained, almost with a certain amount of smugness, that “she had some difficulty in getting her name put into the papers [in France], but when it became known that she was in the country, numbers flocked to her to get her advice about emigration. She asked one of them why they wished to travel 16,000 miles when they were so fond of the Emperor [Napoleon III], and the reply was — very good to fight under, but very bad to farm under.”50 There is no evidence that Caroline had any direct effect on emigration to Australia from Europe, but her single-minded determination and her unwavering belief in her ability to influence people remained her hallmarks.

  About two months after leaving London, Caroline arrived in Rome. Sixteen-year-old William was enrolled as a second-year seminarian at Propaganda College, in training to be a missionary, but he had apparently been unwell and deemed unfit to continue his studies. Whilst in Rome, Caroline obtained an audience with Pope Pius IX. Although the small anteroom in the Vatican was filled with women, Caroline was the third person introduced. As she was about to make the usual obeisance on being presented, the Pope rose from his chair and took her arm: “Caroline Chisholm. Eccellentissima! [Che] perseveranza! Bravo!” — “Most excellent lady! Such perseverance! Well done!” — he said, while clapping his hands to demonstrate his approval of her work. “He told her that the plough was good for the country, good for men, women and children, and recommended her to persevere in her efforts to introduce agriculture into Australia. He said that railroads were missionaries of commerce and civilisation, but the most necessary thing was the plough should prosper.”51 The Pope then presented her with two mementos: a twenty-four-and-a-half-centimetre alabaster bust of herself and a gold medal. It is not known who made the Pope aware of her work, possibly her friend Bishop Ullathorne or, more likely, Cardinal Fransoni, who was in charge of Propaganda College and in regular contact with Caroline about William. The bust remained with the family until it was recently lent by Caroline’s great-great-grandson, Professor Don Chisholm, to the Australian Catholic University in Sydney for permanent display, but the gold medal is missing, pawned in Sydney in the late 1850s when Caroline and Archibald were in desperate need of funds.

  Caroline and William returned to London in August 1853, to discover that news of her pending departure to Melbourne had spread throughout the city. In her absence, a testimonial had been held to raise funds to thank her and support her voyage back to Australia. Those behind the testimonial had held a meeting at the London Tavern, and the list of attendees was impressive, including Sidney Herbert and his wife, Elizabeth, and other parliamentarians, such as the Member for Northamptonshire, Robert Vernon, and Robert Lowe who, after being a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council for many years, had become leader writer of The Times newspaper before entering the House of Commons. Also there were the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr J.G. Hubbard, and various clergy. The subscription list included colonials, notably William Charles Wentworth; nobles such as Viscount Canning; and wealthy Jewish families, including the Montefiore and Rothschild families, whilst Florence Nightingale was amongst other friends and humanitarians who also contributed. The pounds came in from the well to do, the shillings from the ordinary people.

  Punch magazine made its own contribution, a “carol” commemorating Caroline’s work:

  A Carol on Caroline Chisholm

  Come, all you British females of wealth and high degree,

  Bestowing all your charity on lands beyond the sea,

  I’ll point you out a pattern which a better plan will teach

  Than that of sending Missioners to Tombuctoo to preach

  Converting of the Heathen’s a very proper view,

  By preaching true religion to Pagan and to Jew,

  And bringing over Cannibals to Christian meat and bread,

  Unless they catch your Parson first and eat him up instead.

  But what’s more edifying to see, a pretty deal,

  Is hearty British labourers partaking of a meal,

  With wives, and lots of children, about their knees that climb,

  And having tucked their platefuls in, get helped another time.

  Beyond the roaring ocean; beneath the soil we tread,

  Your’re English men and Women, well housed and clothed and fed,

  Who but for help and guidance to leave our crowded shores,

  Would now be stealing, begging, or lie starving at our doors.

  Who taught them self-reliance, and stirred them to combine,

  And club their means together, to get across the brine,

  Instead of strikes, and mischief, and breaking of the law,

  This cartoon of Caroline appeared above the “carol” published in Punch in 1853. (Alamy)

  And wasting time in hearing incendiaries jaw?

  Who led their expeditions? And under whose command

  Through dangers and through hardships sought they the promised land?

  A second Moses, surely, it was who did it all,

  It was a second Moses in bonnet and in shawl.

  By means of one good lady were all these wonders wrought,

  By CAROLINE CHISHOLM’S energy, benevolence, and thought,

  Instead of making here and there a convert of a Turk,

  She has made idle multitudes turn fruitfully to work.

  The ragged pauper crawling towards a parish grave

  She roused — directed to a home beyond the western wave;

  She smoothed his weary passage across the troubled deep,

  With food, and air, and decencies of ship-room and of sleep.

  There’s many a wife and mother will bless that lady’s name,

  Embracing a fat infant — who might else have drowned the same,

  A mother, yet no wife, compelled by poverty to sin,

  And die in gaol or hospital of misery and gin.

  The REVEREND EBENEZER I’d not deny his dues,

  For saving Patagonians, and Bosjesmen, and Zooloos;

  But MRS CHISHOLM’S mission is what I far prefer;

  for saving British natives I’d give the palm to her.

  And now that a subscription is opened and begun,

  In order to acknowledge the good that she has done

  Among the sort of natives
— the most important tribe —

  Come down like handsome people, and handsomely subscribe.52

  And they did. In all, between £800 and £900 was collected and given to Caroline. This time she was willing to accept the money. When she had left New South Wales she had been given an expensive gift rather than coinage, but now it seems that she needed the cash — she may even have found it difficult to return to Australia without pecuniary assistance. Her four months’ travelling in Europe would have been expensive and she would have still had to pay rent on the house in Islington and possibly pay a servant to help Sarah Laws look after the five children there. Then, too, the fares for herself and her children to Melbourne would have been costly. The Crimean War was underway and the government had begun commandeering vessels as troop ships, resulting in far fewer boats being available to make the Antipodean run and, in turn, inflated ticket prices. Caroline and her family were booked on the Ballarat. For her half cabin of 2.1 metres by 2.1 metres plus rations, Caroline paid £100. Tickets for the four boys — Archibald Jnr (now eighteen years of age), William (seventeen) Henry (fifteen) and Sydney (seven) — cost £40 each for second-class accommodation, taking meals with Caroline, whilst tickets for the girls — Caroline (six) and Monica (three) — cost £21 apiece.53

  When the Ballarat sailed for Melbourne on 14 April 1854, it was just short of eight years since Caroline, Archibald and their four sons had arrived in Hull. The intervening period had not just added two (living) daughters to the family and enlarged Caroline’s girth, it had also proved what was possible with aspiration and determination. Only a few weeks before her forty-sixth birthday, Caroline stood in rarefied seclusion atop an extraordinary summit. Britain, midway through the Victorian era, was settling into its glorious years as the world’s pre-eminent empire, and boasting that the sun would never set on its flag. Caroline stood out against its conformity. A woman of humble beginnings, married to an unremarkable soldier, had without guile or guilt, pervaded the nation’s consciousness. She had used the most modern technology of her time to do it, the train, the newspapers and the telegraph carrying her ideas to the north, south, east and west of the kingdom. Now she was leaving on her own terms.

  It was a challenging time for her campaigns. At least two of the Family Colonization Loan Society’s boats, the Robert Lowe and the Caroline Chisholm, both kitted out according to Caroline’s specifications, had been requisitioned by the British Navy as troop carriers, and the chairman of the society, Sidney Herbert, was now Secretary of State for War, and therefore more concerned with the conflict and Florence Nightingale’s nurses than Caroline’s emigrants. Nevertheless, Caroline’s departure was reported across the country, particularly in London, in such papers as The Times and The Illustrated London News, which devoted three-quarters of a page, including an illustration, to her farewell. Some twelve years later, Caroline and Archibald would slip back into London with virtually no one aware of their return. Before then, however, there were the Victorian goldfields to tame.

  CHAPTER 13

  A Golden Land

  1854–58

  En route to the Victorian goldfields, October 1854

  She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with air and savouring the pungent scent of the eucalypts, freed by the heavy downpour just passed. “Can you smell that?” she asked the young man next to her in the dray, having mopped her eyes and forehead with a plain piece of linen. “It is the aroma, the essence of the Australian bush that I have kept in my heart all those years at home . . . Home?” She questioned herself now as though the inconstancy of her soul had only just occurred to her. “I no longer know what I should call home.” She pondered a moment then inhaled again. “Yes, this is how I remember it. Do you?” she asked the boy again.

  Her son beside her shook his head, damp brown curls swaying beneath his dark brown hat. “No, Mama,” said Archibald Jnr, “but there is something familiar in all this,” his arm arcing towards the bush beyond the dray.

  The driver, seated in front of them, lashed the reins with more show than effect, whooping for the horses to giddy-up. Turning a grizzled face to Caroline, he addressed her with little deference. “We’d best look for a camp in the next few miles,” he said, “before we reach the Black Forest, otherwise we might get stuck for the night. The mud’ll be up and there be wombat holes as big as wheels, an’ worse. They say Mad Dan Morgan is back this-a-way again, too.”

  There was a wicked glint in the driver’s eye that Caroline disliked. She wouldn’t be held captive to fear. She looked to the sky: the rain may not have passed, but there were still a good few hours of daylight left. She said they should go on.

  The driver gave a derisive snort. “As yer wish.”

  “Are you sure, Mama?” asked Archibald. “Papa said that I was to keep you safe.”

  “We keep going,” said Caroline.

  The heavens darkened. To the east, a crack of lightning was followed by thunder. They smelt the storm before it hit with fury, but it didn’t last long. A pale rainbow hung upon the moist sunshine, the heat rose again. Eventually the dray plodded into the grey-green shade of the Black Forest to be met by a raucous avian cacophony of cawing and screeching. Much to Caroline’s chagrin, she realised that the driver had been right. In dry weather, the track, with its holes, tree roots and narrow bends crisscrossing in all directions, would have been treacherous enough, but the heavy rain had created a river of mud that was all but impassable. They would have to walk.

  Leading the horses and dray, the disgruntled driver pushed through a small opening in the vegetation to a patch of higher ground and claimed it for their camp site. No one argued. As they settled onto the grassy verge, they missed, at first, the figure crouching in the shadows next to a fallen tree. “Hello there, where you be travelling?” asked a thin voice.

  The driver let forth an oath, swung round looking for his gun, but Caroline had the man’s measure.

  “I am Mrs Chisholm, with my son Archibald,” she said. “We are heading for Bendigo. You seem unwell. Can we help you?” she asked.

  “Wrong way. ’Tis a pity,” he said trying to stand, lurching forward and all but collapsing at their feet.

  Whilst the driver built a smoky fire, Caroline sat the man down and had his story from him. Not much older than her son, he had been at the diggings for the past five months but had found little there apart from dysentery and loneliness. He’d dug up only a few pounds of gold, not enough to live on once he’d paid for his licence and food. Others did well, he said; maybe he just wasn’t cut out to be a digger. He’d sold everything, even his tent, and now had only 1s 9d left in his purse, so he was heading back to town to find a job before he starved.

  “Have you no family here?” asked Caroline.

  “No, I came out alone,” he said, “to make my fortune.” She sat him next to the fire, put a dry blanket around his shoulders and gave him tea and damper to eat. Exhausted, he fell into a heavy slumber almost as soon as he had finished the best meal he’d eaten in days.

  A little while later, crawling under the dray to sleep on the sodden earth, Caroline winced as she manoeuvred herself onto a blanket with a shawl for a pillow. It had been almost a decade, she thought, since she had last slept so rough, and she was not as supple as she had been then.

  Morning brought bright sunshine and the cheerful birds’ chorus. Whilst he ate more tea and damper, Caroline asked her new acquaintance about the goldfields. Wouldn’t the government be wise to help the diggers secure land for their long-term livelihood, she asked.

  He disagreed. “I didn’t come out here to farm. I’m town bred. I came to find gold. Trouble is,” he said draining his mug of tea and holding it out for a refill, “they don’t give us a go. They charge us £1 to work a claim . . . that’s £1 each month whether we find gold or not. Mark my word, there’ll be trouble soon.” He stopped, a little rueful. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You’ve been kind to me. I shouldn’t be carrying on to you.”

  He dragged himself to
his feet. “Thank you, Mrs Chisholm, and to your son too, for all your kindness.” He nodded to Archibald. “I hope all goes well for you at the diggings.” Handing back the blanket, he bade them farewell, “I should head off now, I still have a long walk ahead.”

  Cautiously he limped away, picking his path through the muddy track.

  They struck camp and Caroline climbed back into the dray. There was little talk as the horses dragged them mile over weary mile. The road hardly improved, but at least it was visible in the sunlight, and beginning to harden again. Every now and then they passed a farmhouse or a hamlet with a few log buildings and a pub, or a cart coming in the other direction.

  It was early afternoon the following day when they descended, finally, towards Bendigo Creek. Spread out before them was a startling ugliness. It was as though a giant miscreant, an enemy of nature, had ripped the vegetation — trees, grass, scrub, all of it — from the slopes either side of the struggling rivulet, leaving a barren, ulcerated landscape. Hundreds of men pounded the lifeless ground, desperate for a Midas incarnation.

  Slowly Caroline’s party made their way down, stopping occasionally to ask the way to the Gold Commissioner’s lodging, where they had been promised accommodation. The sounds of the bush receded and were replaced by the rattle of the miners’ cradle, the crunching and scraping of the shovel and the thud of pick hitting sand and rock. The miners they passed hardly raised an eye from their labour, let alone evinced any interest in their progress.

  As they advanced, an international tent city spread out before them across the valley, with flags proclaiming allegiances to Great Britain, nations of Europe, and America. The larger tents run by shopkeepers were selling everything from ladies’ stays to grog; off to the side, shunned by the rest of the miners, was the Oriental camp. The commissioner’s man welcomed Caroline and offered her what passed for a room in a rough-built cabin. Archibald, uncomplaining, acted as his mother’s aide de camp, whilst Caroline at once began questioning the diggers. Some had heard of her, some had even travelled in her boats; others had no idea who she was and a few thought her questions impertinent. None of them wished to give details, saying there were already too many of them and they wanted to keep others from invading the diggings.