by Mary Hoban
In May 1848 Tom reached New Zealand and using his Oxford degree and his father’s name — a potent mixture in the web of influence that existed in imperial circles — he quickly established connections. Among them was Thomas Collinson, a young captain in the Royal Engineers, who would become a lifelong friend. Collinson has left one of the most vivid accounts of Tom Arnold at that time in his life:
Naturally he was a studious, wide minded and large hearted man, of simple and gentle disposition; a character in short on which a strong impression would be made by the teaching of more powerful characters than his own. The result … a vagueness in all. We all loved him; it was impossible not to love so amiable and openhearted a young fellow, who was so full of the best learning of the day, and straight from the society of the principal men of the day in art, science and politics. He became at once the representative with us of the advanced party in the philosophy of life.
Nothing in this description would suggest a farmer, but it took several setbacks before Tom himself realised his destiny was not in farming and that he was better fitted to teaching. Although he achieved some success when he established a school in Nelson — by March 1849 he had twenty pupils — he was often lonely and he began to consider the practical need for a wife. His highly respected name and good looks made him the object of some formidable attention, but despite his loneliness, he appeared unwilling to succumb to the temptations thrown his way. He had no intention, he told his mother, of plunging into marriage with eyes shut. His chance meeting with Andrew Clarke and the prospect of £400 a year would irretrievably alter this view.
5
Finding Love
From their first meeting in Mrs Poynter’s drawing room, Julia’s romance with Tom Arnold progressed rapidly. She had been immediately attracted by his difference. His background, and his passage through Oxford to Tasmania, was quite contrary to the official, military, and settler society she knew so well. In light of her mother’s betrayal, the fact that Tom was not a member of the military, made him even more attractive to her. And her father, whom she loved deeply, had read and admired Arthur Stanley’s biography of Dr Arnold, which only made Julia more intrigued to meet his son. Tom’s stammer and his shyness added another dimension. She could never forgo rescuing people and animals from their misfortunes. She did not resist his overtures, but instead set out to enjoy the attention of this new man, a handsome adornment to Hobart society. It was not difficult.
Tom had no need to scheme his way into the houses, parties, and balls that she was invited to. His connections in the small world of Hobart — apart from his friend Andrew Clarke, he also had a cousin, John Buckland, the headmaster of Hutchins School — and his position as inspector of schools made him a desirable guest in all the best drawing rooms of Van Diemen’s Land. There, he assiduously pursued Julia. Tom had fallen in love with her at first sight and so overwhelming were his feelings towards her, he felt it was less a conquest than an annihilation. She was, he believed, his moral equivalent and it was this affinity that drew him to her. Such was Tom’s intense pursuit of her — he was unable to look at, or speak to, or think of, any other person but Julia Sorell — their romance quickly became the principal on dit in Hobart. When the gossip reached an unprecedented frenzy, the Reverend Dr Bedford, who had christened Julia, felt it incumbent upon himself to question her about her feelings for Tom. He was satisfied with what she told him, and with his blessing, when Tom proposed, she accepted. It was less than a month after their first meeting. Julia had been, quite simply, swept off her feet.
Instead of abating, the gossip grew even more voluble and vindictive. The engagement had come so quickly, some in Hobart society believed Julia was pregnant. Annie Baxter certainly didn’t believe this, although she did think, rather spitefully, that Tom needed rescuing from Julia who was determined certainly to get somebody to marry her.
But not all the opposition to the match arose out of spite or from ignorance. Tom’s New Zealand friend Captain Collinson, who was passing through Hobart on his way home to England, thought they were so unsuited it would be a doomed marriage. He believed that Tom was incapable of turning the high-spirited Julia, the ruling belle of Hobart, into the Victorian ideal of a wife, someone of a faithful and modest nature. He also believed, as did others, that Julia could never be a poor man’s wife. When Tom refused to listen to him, Collinson turned to Julia, endeavouring to make her see the wisdom of breaking off the engagement. She was deeply touched by what he had to say about Tom’s otherworldliness, his gentleness, and unable to ever hide her feelings, Julia wept at his words. But it changed nothing, except that Collinson, like so many others, fell in love with her, so much so that had Tom not been engaged to Julia, Collinson confessed to Tom that he himself would have asked her to marry him.
During their engagement Julia met Tom as often as her social calendar and his work allowed. His frequent absences from Hobart — his position required him to journey into all parts of the colony — did not hinder their relationship. Quite the contrary. Tom’s literary skills were a far stronger weapon than his stuttering voice, and his wooing techniques on paper were formidable. In his letters to her he sang her praises, proclaimed her beauty, and expressed his jealousy of anyone she encountered. In one such letter from Launceston on Thursday 4 April 1850, Tom wrote:
My own Julia, you cannot think how unspeakably happy your love makes me. The first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night, comes that sweet thought, my Julia is mine, and I am hers. I am prouder than if I was king of the world. And even as to ambition and the love of fame, ‘that last infirmity of noble minds’, what is there that a man need despair of effecting, who was sustained by the love of a being like you …
And on another occasion he wrote from Longford:
O my own Julia, I shall never forget how beautiful and captivating you were that night; what a rage I was in at finding you had gone home without me. After all, it was my chiefly own fault, for leaving my place by your side, where I was happy as a prince, in order to ask Mrs. Chapman to dawdle through an insufferable quadrille.
All this tender flattery was interspersed with humorous descriptions of his travels and his impressions of the island and all those he met.
Many women would have loved the writer of such letters, and Julia was no exception, but when Tom was in Hobart, she found him to be possessive and jealous. He wanted to spend all his time at her side, he found dancing with anyone else an ordeal, and he hated the young officers in their red uniforms bowing and soliciting the pleasure of dancing with her. Although irritated by it, Julia simply interpreted Tom’s jealousy as an expression of his love for her. She was also irritated by Tom’s desire to change her.
From the beginning, and despite his rapturous adoration of her, Tom found those very qualities that had so drawn him to her — her vivacity and her openness — deeply unsettling, as he did the whispers about her past. Julia, keen to assuage his anxiety, but not understanding the extent of his unease, suggested she absent herself from parties while he was away. Once challenged, though, Tom insisted she continue to go out if it would give her pleasure, providing she did not overstep the limits which engaged persons ought to observe … and act in all these things according to your own sense of what was right and fit, and you may be sure I shall be well pleased with whatever you do. Already it was as if these two lovers actually loved one another more apart than together.
Julia did not take umbrage, or even warning, at Tom’s lecturing tone, but simply consigned it to the basket marked ‘jealousy’. Living with her gentle father and with no intimate model of married life before her, she had not observed the desire on the part of some men to master their wives, and could have no understanding of what it might mean for her own independent spirit. Surely Tom could not condemn her for the very warmth and animation that he found so enchanting, nor for the jealousy that her grace and beauty sometimes caused, particularly among women. She was only half
correct in her surmise. Tom could forgive the jealously she triggered, believing that it was in great part because of her generosity, frankness, kindliness, and sincerity, but he had no desire for a spirited wife. That she did not perceive.
Julia shone brightly when she and Tom attended the ball given at the Custom-house by the Hon. Captain Keppell and the officers of the H.M.S. Meander. Many of her admirers were present, and as she danced to the music of the regimental bands in the flag-draped room illuminated by the two large sconces, Tom was sent into a jealous pique, his dancing partners into despair, and the Hobart gossips into a fever.
It was only at such social functions or in drawing rooms lined with chaperones, that Julia could meet Tom. Decorum demanded that they never be alone together, only adding to the intensity of their public meetings, as they tried to guess at the deeper meanings held in glances and words. They knew little of each other’s ambitions, beliefs, fears, or follies. Julia did not know that Tom had abandoned religion altogether. She did not know anything of the despair that had caused it, nor did she know of his intransigence once his mind was made up. For his part Tom knew only a little of her life in Brussels, even less of her prosaic, practical religious beliefs — there had been no cause for her deep hatred for Catholicism to emerge — and he knew nothing of the curse that she felt was upon her and her family. They rarely, if ever, had any opportunity to discuss their feeling and thoughts, their expectations of each other, or their future married life. Such conversations could only be had afterwards.
For all the real and potential differences that were hinted at and then glossed over, this relationship had an impetus of its own. Tom may have averred that he would never plunge into marriage with his eyes shut, yet Julia had so blinded and subjugated him that he felt he belonged more to her than to himself. She was his first thought in the morning and the last at night. A future without this vivacious, beautiful girl was unimaginable even if in Tom’s mind Julia was in need of a firm mind and a faithful heart to help her overcome her temptations and become all that nature has qualified her to be. Tom was being consistent at least. He was determined to have Julia — he would mould her into the sort of woman he deemed worthy of being his wife — and nothing would deter him.
Julia was equally determined to have Tom, an attitude that puzzled Annie Baxter. After canvassing several possible explanations, she decided that Julia was simply exhausted with the marriage game and tired of always being expected to marry. Annie believed that remaining unmarried was cause for anxiety and contempt, and Julia, at twenty-four years of age, could not be immune to the pressure to conform, each year counting against her. Annie’s belief was reinforced when Julia’s sister Ada told her that Julia loved Tom quite as well as she can ever love anybody. But, unlike Annie, Ada knew that Julia did not view marriage as an escape from a dreary life of duty, caring for her father and her brothers and sisters. Quite the contrary. She knew that any love Julia had would be fierce and irrevocable. Julia could love in no other way. So what was it about Tom that finally drove Julia to marriage?
For some time, and almost blindly, Julia had been searching for a deeper connection with life. She had no interest in dogma or institutional religion and had resisted the efforts of her dear friend Mrs Nixon, the wife of the bishop, to become more interested in religion, yet the yearning was still there. Then Tom appeared in her world of whiskers and swagger. Tom, with his earnest, sensitive nature, his deeply spiritual temperament, and his self-deprecating humour. Tom, the son of a good and religious man, one whom her father admired deeply. Surely there could be no one better than Tom to counter this growing unease she felt but did not understand. There was, too, the irresistible pleasure in snatching this desirable target from the grasping hands of Hobart’s matrimonial matrons, who for so long had subjected her to their relentless scrutiny, their pious approval, their closeted unease. Marrying Tom Arnold would provide a sanctuary, an escape from these same women, and from any shame that might still linger from her mother’s legacy.
Here was a perfectly eligible young man offering not simply love but adoration, an adoration that was so intense it was difficult to resist. And Julia did not want to resist. She, like Tom, believed in their essential likeness and congruity of soul and she loved him deeply. It was enough.
Julia Sorell became Mrs Tom Arnold on 13 June 1850 at St David’s Cathedral in Hobart. Tom may have chosen the date — it was his father’s birthday — but Julia insisted that the elderly Dr William Bedford, who had counselled her in the lead-up to her engagement, should marry them. The pews filled quickly. Many of those present felt, as Annie Baxter and Chester Eardley-Wilmot did, that unless they witnessed Julia marry with their own eyes, they would not believe it had taken place. Shortly before eleven, Tom and his best man, Andrew Clarke, arrived. Tom was dressed in a blue frock coat, with white waistcoat with lapels, light grey doeskin trowers, and a tie of brown and white silk, tied in large bows. The groomsmen were Annie’s brother Captain Hadden and Edward Bedford, the son of Dr Bedford, with whom Tom had struck up a strong friendship.
At eleven precisely, the wedding party entered the church. Julia was on the arm of her father and followed by her sisters, who acted as bridesmaids. Also in the bridal party were her two brothers, her grandfather Mr Kemp, and her aunt Mrs Jones. Tom thought there was nothing more beautiful than Julia in her muslin dress, high to the throat, with two deep flounces, richly trimmed with lace, and overlaid with a white lace mantle. A white chip bonnet with a small feather, a white lace veil, white satin shoes, and an ornate Indian gold chain round her neck completed her finery. She carried a bouquet of orange blossom and jasmine. In the language of flowers, a language which flourished in the Victorian era, orange blossom and jasmine translated as eternal love and sensuality. Julia was pale. It was not surprising. Marriage would determine the shape of her life. Would she reach a point in the future, when she, too, would wish to flee her marriage just as her mother had?
Annie Baxter’s version of the wedding, while biting in its commentary — the awful ceremony took place; & they are now ‘One flesh’ … — exposed further bitter divides in this isolated Hobart community. Here it was not enough that white was against black, convict against free, settler against government. Difference of any sort was abhorred.
We went into the Organ loft, and were congratulating ourselves on being so alone, when in walked Mrs Curll & all the family of Jews, i.e. Hortz & Cohens! Poor Marianne! She said so quaintly ‘I would give £20 gladly, to be out of this pew’! ‘I will go home! I hate coming in contact with such persons’. I agree with her in all she said; excepting about the £20; - which I said, I would rather keep, myself.
Annie’s agitation and horror were only exacerbated when she saw another outcast, ‘Mad Paddy’! Poor soul! He was so cleanly dressed, with his hair so smooth, and looking so orderly. Julia was always unwilling to cede to petty-mindedness and social convention and in her generous, frank way had invited the Hortz family, the Cohens, and Mad Paddy. It is little wonder her passionate nature was condemned, for any woman who strained against convention was considered dangerous. Yet Julia’s tolerance in these matters only made her intolerance in other matters even more stark.
The service was short and when Julia and Tom left the church, they passed through several lines of onlookers, before driving to her father’s house in Macquarie Street for the wedding breakfast. As soon as they arrived, Julia burst into tears — not, she claimed, tears of sorrow, but simply tears of relief that the wedding was over. She had always been expressive, unwilling to restrain her feelings, and in this instance those tears of relief were mingled with anxiety at what lay ahead. She had no mother hovering to offer advice and sympathy, to give her knowledge of what would come next. After the wedding cake of ponderous dimensions was cut and distributed, the colonial secretary, Mr Bicheno, toasted the couple’s health, and Tom thanked the assembled party on his and Julia’s behalf. At half-past one, after kissing her family, Julia
left her father’s house with Tom and went straight to their new home in New Town, about two miles from the centre of Hobart.
A shortage of funds and the demands imposed by Tom’s inspection work prevented a honeymoon. Julia’s married life began as it would continue. She had not married a rich man, nor an idle one.
6
A Woman’s Destiny
New Town may have been on the outskirts of Hobart, but both Julia and her family were determined that neither her marriage nor distance would exclude her from their lives or from Hobart’s social and cultural life. She and Tom continued to attend balls, parties, and dinners at Government House, and she often joined her sisters in the governor’s box at the theatre. But Julia also loved those evenings when she was alone with Tom in their cottage, she sewing, writing letters, playing the piano, while he read or wrote reports for his work or letters to his family and friends. Sometimes he would read to her. And together they gardened and walked — Julia had quickly acquired Tom’s love of walking — and Tom, on one occasion, like lovers down the ages, carved their entwined initials on the log they paused to rest on.
Julia’s determination to accompany Tom on his travels only strengthened their closeness. It took some courage for her to undertake these journeys as the weather often made the roads hazardous and bushrangers were an ever-present threat. Although gentlemen often had pistols to hand, Tom did not carry arms, believing that New Town, so close to Hobart, would be immune from the terrors of assault. He was wrong. One evening, as the night closed around them on their return home from dining in Hobart, they were chased by a man intent on robbery. Julia was terrified, sobbing in fear, and only regained her composure when the frantic steps faded behind them. It was enough for Tom to determine that he would never go on that road again without arms.