Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  Her fourth lecture, “Our Home Life”, was held again at the Temperance Hall in Pitt Street and listened to by at least six hundred people. It was a meandering talk that highlighted many of her past experiences and achievements, along with current social concerns in Sydney. She spoke passionately about homelessness and child prostitution, unemployment and workers’ wages. Attacking the high cost of rents for crowded, substandard dwellings, she referred to a report by Henry Parkes, later known as the Father of Federation, before claiming that “The houses in Sydney appropriated to the working classes were . . . utterly unfit for homes. In one case seventy human beings were herded together in a house of six rooms.”26 On a personal note, which brought a laugh from the audience, she claimed that “she was paying too high a rent; and her rooms were so small that she could not walk in them with crinoline (laughter). It was a monstrous thing (‘Crinoline’). (Renewed laughter.)”27 She ended this last lecture with an ardent eulogy on democracy, which in 1861 was still approached with considerable suspicion by many people:

  You have of late heard a great deal about democracy . . . It has since been represented to you as a sort of monster whose cravings nothing can satisfy . . . and you may be a little startled when I can assure you that you are all possessed with more or less of this spirit. For a man that wants to support himself and his family in an independent manner is considered a terrible democrat. A man that wants a bit of land and a cottage of his own, that he may not be moved about at the will of another man, is looked upon as a monstrous and most unbearable democrat. A man who wants liberal and equitable laws is put down as a dangerous and awful democrat. A man who may wish to see the salaries of high officials reduced, and that taxes may be lessened is viewed as a most meddling and mischievous democrat . . . Because you dare to advocate and to seek for the rights of man, you are counted as “howling idiots”, as “ignorant and needy” democrats. This is in fact the height, weight, and depth of your Australian democracy.28

  That glowing rhetoric, decidedly radical and eloquent, was to be the final words that Caroline delivered in public. Few could doubt that they emerged from a deep belief in the rights of all people, whatever their condition, sex, creed or ethnicity, or that she had a clear vision for a future Australia based on egalitarian principles. It’s difficult to imagine that Caroline’s lectures didn’t have a substantial effect across the colony. They were certainly well attended by both sexes and by prominent politicians of the day. The fact that at least three newspapers, including two of the major dailies, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Empire, reported on all four lectures suggests that they were considered of genuine interest, mostly covering topical issues of the day. Then, too, the newspapers would have effectively disseminated Caroline’s words and ideas further afield, across Sydney and the bush. For the most part the press supported much of what she said. A month after the first lecture, The Empire, established by Henry Parkes, left no doubt about its opinion of her writing in its editorial: “If Captain JAMES COOK discovered Australia, if JOHN MACARTHUR planted the first seeds of its extraordinary prosperity — if LUDWIG LEICHHARDT penetrated and explored its before unknown interior — CAROLINE CHISHOLM has done more: she has peopled — she alone has colonised it in the true sense of the term.”29 As in London, Caroline’s friends and supporters in Australia included many from the liberal elite, including power brokers such as Henry Parkes, Jack Robertson and Charles Cowper. It may be unrealistic to claim that Caroline’s support for women led directly to the suffragette movement of the 1890s, which would result in Australia becoming only the second country in the world to allow women to vote and the first to give them the right to stand for parliament; yet she was probably the one who started the conversation in the public arena. Once it had begun, there would be no going back.

  *

  Giving up public life possibly for financial reasons, Caroline went back to where her philanthropy had started and opened another girls’ school, but this was not a charitable endeavour. Unlike in India, she charged tuition and boarding fees, no doubt in an effort to alleviate the financial pressure on her family. The scheme had the added benefit of enabling her to supervise the education of her daughters, Caroline, now fourteen, and Monica, eleven. Most likely, Archibald joined Caroline and the girls at the large home she had leased on Stanmore Road, Newtown, and named Rathbone House, after her friends Elizabeth and William Rathbone, whom she had met whilst lecturing in Liverpool, England, in April 1853.

  After placing a series of advertisements in all the Sydney papers, Caroline officially opened Rathbone House school on 1 July 1862. It was a major project for someone with her indifferent health, but she threw herself into it wholeheartedly, promoting it as an “educational establishment for young ladies” which sought to “combine a sound education and intellectual improvement with the social, domestic and practical duties of life”.30 It wasn’t cheap; in grave need of funds, Caroline may have traded on her own celebrity when setting the fees.31 Insisting on payment in advance, she charged fifty guineas a quarter for boarding pupils above ten years of age and forty guineas for those below ten years. Given the views that she had so recently espoused, it appears somewhat ironic that only the wealthy, including the squattocracy, would have been able to afford these fees. Her need of financial security for once overrode her values.

  According to her advertisements, Caroline offered her students the subjects of English, Grammar, Composition, Geography, Arithmetic and Writing, as well as two of the following options: French, Music, Dancing and Drawing. There was no extra charge for such items as stationery, books, washing, bedsteads, bedding or cutlery, and girls who wished to remain at the school during vacation time could do so without extra charge.32 By comparison, an inner-city boarding school for young ladies, advertising in the same newspaper and including the same educational basics as Caroline’s school but with Latin and Italian instead of Music, Drawing and Dancing, charged only £15 (just over fourteen guineas) per quarter.33

  Within twelve months, Caroline had moved her school to Tempe, on the Cooks River. She named her new house Green-Bank, this time after the home of the Liverpool Rathbones.34 Publicising the change, with no alterations in prices, Caroline described a sylvan setting for her young charges that sounded more like a resort than a school: “The Rooms . . . are spacious, lofty, and well ventilated, and the out-buildings are excellent. There are about twelve acres of Pleasure Grounds and Gardens attached, with a fine, large, and open Orchard of Fruit trees, intersected by wide and shady walks. There is also a good Bath-House adjoining the House, where the Young Ladies will have the further benefit of Sea-Bathing, as often as may be deemed desirable.”35 By late February 1864, though, Caroline was running the school alone. Archibald had taken their daughters to Britain, possibly to provide them with a more established education.36 Although there is no evidence, Sydney, not yet eighteen years of age, may have travelled with his father and sisters, also for the benefit of his education.

  Caroline continued to advertise her school in the Sydney newspapers until late April 1864, just two months after Archibald had departed. From that date on, there is no mention of Green-Bank, in the newspapers or indeed in any letters in the newspapers from Caroline either. The school possibly closed for financial reasons, particularly if Archibald was absent, or because of the state of Caroline’s health — the kidney disease had continued to trouble her intermittently. It may also have prevented her from travelling to Britain to join Archibald. She was, however, also waiting for the outcome of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly decision on whether or not to provide her with a substantial testimonial of £3000 in recognition of her immigration work; it is unlikely that she would have left whilst this was still being debated and she had some chance to influence the outcome.

  The idea of a gratuity had been initially raised in parliament in 1862, and supported by, amongst others, Jack Robertson and John Dunmore Lang. The Empire newspaper had campaigned even earlier on Caroline’s behalf, from 1859 onwar
ds. Initially wanting a public testimonial, by 1862 the newspaper reverted to suggesting that the government should give her a substantial gratuity, and it published at least three poems and two extensive articles lauding her work with immigrants and her overall contribution to the colony. One poem was written by renowned Australian poet Henry Kendall, whose sister, Jane, worked for Caroline, teaching music at both her schools.

  Caroline Chisholm

  “A perfect woman, nobly planned,

  To warn, to comfort, and command.”37

  THE Priests and the Levites went forth, to feast at the courts of the Kings;

  They were vain of their greatness and worth, and gladdened with glittering things;

  They were fair in the favour of gold, and they walked on, with delicate feet,

  Where, famished and faint with the cold, the women fell down in the street.

  The Priests and the Levites looked round, all vexed and perplexed at the cries

  Of the maiden who crouched to the ground with the madness of want in her eyes;

  And they muttered — “Few praises are earned when good hath been wrought in the dark;

  While the backs of the people are turned, we choose not to loiter nor hark.”

  Moreover they said — “It is fair that our deeds in the daylight should shine:

  If we feasted you, who would declare that we gave you our honey and wine.”

  They gathered up garments of gold, and they stepped with their delicate feet,

  And the women who famished with cold, were left with the snow in the street.

  The winds and the rains were abroad — the homeless looked vainly for alms;

  And they prayed in the dark to the Lord, with agony clenched in their palms,

  “There is none of us left that is whole,” they cried, through their faltering breath,

  “We are clothed with a sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow of death.”

  He heard them, and turned to the earth! — “I am pained,” said the Lord, “at the woe

  Of my children so smitten with dearth; but the night of their trouble shall go.”

  He called on His Chosen to come: she listened, and hastened to rise;

  And He charged her to build them a home, where the tears should be dried from their eyes.

  God’s servant came forth from the South: she told of a plentiful land;

  And wisdom was set in her mouth, and strength in the thews of her hand.

  She lifted them out of their fear, and they thought her their Moses and said:

  “We shall follow you, sister, from here to the country of sunshine and bread.”

  She fed them, and led them away, through tempest and tropical heat,

  Till they reached the far regions of day, and sweet-scented spaces of wheat.

  She hath made them a home with her hand, and they bloom like the summery vines;

  For they eat of the fat of the land, and drink of its glittering wines.38

  The Empire also produced a small book entitled What Has Mrs Chisholm Done for the Colony of New South Wales?, which was released for sale in the Spring of 1862, priced at one shilling. The book’s title referred to the question asked by Thomas Holt during the testimonial debate in parliament. A former friend and supporter of Caroline’s, Holt was a wealthy pastoralist, company director and benefactor. Despite that, he had questioned her commitment to New South Wales, suggesting that she had neglected it for Victoria and was now “weary of well-doing”. It brought a stinging and fulsome reply from Caroline, also published in The Empire that year, in which she went into great detail on her past activities. By the end of the year, Thomas Holt had apologised, saying that he would not intentionally cause Caroline pain and that he was referring to her work in Britain when she had sent so many immigrants to Victoria instead of New South Wales. It was a flare-up that lasted only a short time, but it indicated that Caroline was jealous of the way her legacy would be viewed and, whilst she could, would do her utmost to ensure that neither she nor her work would be misunderstood or devalued. She was, after all, doing what she had done best for the past twenty years: attracting attention to herself and turning the press to her purpose.

  The matter of the testimonial dragged on for four years as a result of significant resistance within the government to presenting any gratuity to Caroline, many of the members of parliament questioning the value of her past service to the colony. With a persistent group of Caroline’s supporters refusing to give up, the debate went into committee. The £3000 was eventually whittled down to £500 — at one stage one member even suggested £300. A vote to award the money in the government estimates was finally passed at the end of March 1866. With the typically agonising slowness of government, though, another vote on the estimates bill was set for debate in November, meaning that Caroline would receive nothing before then. In the meantime, however, Henry Parkes, amongst others, organised quietly for the Colonial Treasury to pay her half the amount, £250, immediately. That payment was only revealed when several members sought again to reduce the testimonial when it was brought up during the estimates bill in November.39

  Many newspapers were outraged at the treatment that Caroline had received from the government, papers like The Tumut and Adelong Times, which serviced the further reaches of the colony, where many of Caroline’s immigrants now lived. It claimed that she was “deserving of a far greater recognition”.40 The Freeman’s Journal described the final amount as “niggardly justice . . . Well would it be for Mrs Chisholm if she could afford to reject this paltry sum and let future historians of Australia tell how unworthily statesmen had in earlier days repaid the efforts of those who had laboured well and worthily in her cause.”41

  Of course, Caroline would not have been able to do so: she needed the money. It is possible, however, but unlikely, that she may have received some funds when Sarah Jones died in March 1859. Sarah’s will stated that all her land, houses, tenements and other properties be sold and the profits divided amongst her five daughters, of which Caroline was named the youngest.42 This does not lay to rest the question of Caroline’s parentage. Caroline was an extremely well known woman in Britain and achieved recognition far in advance of her roots, so it’s not surprising that Sarah Jones named her in her will. As to the money, there is no evidence that Caroline received anything either in Australia or later in Britain. Any funds, of course, would have gone to Archibald, but one imagines that he would have handed them over to his wife for her use. There have been suggestions that she used the inherited funds to set up her school, but without proof this issue remains a mystery. It is equally likely that any money she garnered from her first lecture, and from Archibald and her two working sons, was put towards the school.

  In late 1864, Henry, then twenty-five, married Kate Heffernan at St Mary’s Cathedral. In a mark of the way Caroline had slipped from public view, the announcement in The Sydney Morning Herald described Henry as “the son of Major Chisholm, late 30th Regiment M.N Infantry”, but made no mention of Caroline.43 The following year she would have welcomed her second grandchild, Henry’s son William, no doubt named for his brother who had died seven years earlier in Melbourne.

  Ironically, during the mid-1860s one of the boats originally commissioned by Caroline’s Family Colonization Loan Society and named after its founder, the Caroline Chisholm, was being used as a passenger vessel on the east coast. Thus, although Caroline herself was rarely heard from during her final two years in Sydney, her name was constantly in the shipping sections of all the local newspapers.

  With Henry now married, Archibald Jnr found rooms for Caroline in the house in which he lived, in O’Connell Street in the city. She was happy there, and her health improved, as she wrote to her friend Elizabeth Rathbone in Liverpool: “I am sure you will be pleased to hear that I am getting better; every day this last week I have been able to go out for a walk twice a day”.44 The location was perfect for her, being close to her sons’ offices. Although she was mostly confined to ho
me, she had a window and made good use of it — she could see her boys when they “pop[ped] to the bank and other offices several times in a day”.45 Maybe just as vital to Caroline’s wellbeing was what else she saw from her room: it was close to The Empire and Herald offices and, as she wrote, “[I] am quite in the way of seeing my old friends.” Then, too, it was not far from the Legislative Assembly, so that when the house met, she wrote, she would be able to watch the debates.46 Caroline may have been infirm and out of the public eye, but she was not about to quit her interest in the world, just yet.