A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  Your Excellency have [sic] now an opportunity to carry into effect a public building in a classical stile [sic] without its being attended with more expense … If Your Excellency will grant me the power as an architect to design and conduct any public work, I will exert myself in every way to do Your Excellency credit as a promoter and encourager of the most useful art to society which adds to the comforts of the colony as well as the dignity of the mother country …

  At first, Macquarie must have been shocked by Greenway’s impudence, but perhaps of greater affront was Greenway’s epistle on the virtues of sound design, and the architect’s prospective role as the diviner of such wisdom. In modern parlance, Greenway was saying: ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’. Unwittingly, he was challenging Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie’s treasured creative vision for the colony.

  Unfortunately, Macquarie’s written response has not survived. To be sure, he must have taken offence, but he was also reluctant to punish Greenway. Macquarie could easily have revoked the convict’s ticket of leave or resorted to worse; it is impossible to imagine his immediate predecessor showing similar restraint. But considering the circumstances of a felon addressing the King’s representative in such an audacious manner, Macquarie’s subsequent inaction reveals much about his own motives and desires.

  For Greenway, the timing of his letter had been unfortunate in the extreme. It was dated 27 July, a Wednesday, the very day the convict transport Broxbornebury, bearing Mary Greenway and the children, just happened to sail into Port Jackson after her 156-day voyage. Upon hearing the news of her approach to Sydney Cove the following day, Greenway might well have wished he could temper some of what he had written to Macquarie. But with his impolitic nature now laid before the governor, all he could do was wait fretfully for Mary and the children, hoping his conceited words would not prejudice a swift reunion. Francis had probably not seen Mary since he was taken from Bristol Newgate 15 or so months before. She was now out there in Sydney Cove, yet she might as well still have been in England!

  The 720-ton East Indiaman Broxbornebury had left London on 22 February past, and carried 120 female convicts and 92 free settlers, many of the latter, like Mary and the Greenway children, come to join their convict menfolk in an alien land. Prominent among the free settlers was Ellis Bent’s brother, Jeffrey Hart Bent, the eagerly awaited appointment as the first judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Also arriving was Sir John Jamison. The son of First Fleet surgeon Thomas Jamison, Sir John had come to take up extensive land grants signed over to him by his father. He would in time become an aggrieved client of Mary’s husband.

  Bent’s outright refusal to admit emancipists as attorneys to his court would lead to his eventual dismissal in 1817, and as Macquarie biographers Harry Dillon and Peter Butler noted, the ‘wizened 33-year-old bachelor … [with] a stupendous ego … arrived with a chip on his shoulder’.10 Over the ensuing three years, Bent’s sanity and judgment would be found wanting, yet on the voyage from England his kindness to Mary Greenway, a woman he described as a ‘favourite’, had been notable. His journal recorded several purchases of luxuries he gave to ‘Mrs Greenway for her Children’11 when the Broxbornebury called for repairs at the Spanish port of Corunna (A Coruña) after a particularly bad storm at sea. On one occasion, Bent returned to the ship and ‘gave Mrs Greenway 8 pounds of chocolate, 8 bottles of Malaga [sweet fortified wine] … 2 Dutch cheeses … and also some oranges’.12

  Two convict women and two children died on the voyage, which, like most, was as arduous and dangerous as it was long. The Broxbornebury sailed in convoy through the early and final stages of the voyage with the Surry,13 which was carrying 200 male convicts. The Surry suffered a much worse fate, losing her first and second mates, surgeon, boatswain, two seamen, several soldiers and 36 prisoners to an outbreak of typhus.14 She also lost her captain, James Patterson, when the ship reached Sydney.

  Greenway’s anxiety would only have been heightened by the news of the arrival of a so-called ‘fever’ ship. Memories of his passage through hell on the General Hewett were still troublingly fresh; what if fever had also stalked the decks of the Broxbornebury?

  By Friday 29 July, Macquarie had obviously conveyed his displeasure to Greenway. In response, Greenway assumed a very different tone when again addressing the most senior officer in the colony. He now realised just what was at stake:

  Friday Morn [or Noon]

  I have according to the request of your Excellency made a copy of the Design of the Court House. And I sincerely lament that I should have written any thing to give offence to your Excellency. I most solemnly declare that I had no such intention but quite the contrary. I hope & trust therefore that your Excellency will not consider it in any way to have been intended as in so doing you will add another injury which I feel conscious I do not deserve.

  I now humbly beg your Excellency will grant an order for my wife & three children to come on shore. Her health requires it as she has [?] & preserved on a long & dreadful voyage through the humanity of Mr Bent and the whole of the officers the lives of my children. I ask this favor [sic] for merit & virtue in distress which will be sufficient to claim the attention of your Excellency.

  I remain ever

  Your Excellencies [sic] most

  Obedient Humble svt

  F H Greenway15

  Greenway’s nervousness jumps from the urgent, scrawling hand of this second letter to Macquarie. Yet while fearing the governor might further rebuke or punish him, he could still not contain his pride and his stubborn nature, as he informed the governor that such a response ‘will add another injury which I feel conscious I do not deserve’.

  Francis had obviously had some word from or about Mary, evidenced by the mention of Jeffrey Bent’s kindness. In turn, Macquarie showed his benevolence and Mary was duly allowed ashore, albeit almost certainly after Jeffrey Bent. The incoming judge had refused to disembark until he received a welcome he considered appropriate to his station – complete with a 13-gun salute.

  And of the broader world, the Broxbornebury brought the ‘highly gratifying’ news that the ‘Marquis WELLINGTON had obtained another complete victory over the French in the South; while the Allied Powers of the North had pressed the Armies under Bonaparte almost to his very capital’.16 Victorious or not, Britain had now been at war with France for more than a decade. Within a year Wellington would win his famous victory at Waterloo, and Britain would then count the enormous cost of so many protracted years of conflict. Turbulent times lay ahead, and although New South Wales was remote from the battlefields of continental Europe or the naval blockades of France and Spain, the aftermath of war was about to wash over the colony. Lachlan Macquarie and his soon-to-be architectural collaborator would be unable to avoid the hazardous tide.

  FH GREENWAY, 84 GEORGE STREET

  The Broxbornebury brought official papers, despatches and missives for Macquarie that were greeted with frustration descending to bewilderment. Many of Macquarie’s requests had been refused or ignored, while Whitehall continued to express disapproval of the unique funding arrangements for the new hospital and its connection to the rum trade.

  With Mary and the three children safely landed, the Greenway family took up lodgings at 84 George Street – the northern end of one of Sydney’s busiest thoroughfares and just across from the warehouses fronting Sydney Cove. The George Street address would also serve as Francis’s place of business. Lower George Street was a fortunate choice; a presence in this part of town placed him right under the noses of the merchant princes, speculative entrepreneurs and moneyed businessfolk of Sydney. Hailing from a merchant city, he spoke their language. They were his people and a stream of private clients must surely flow.

  A fourth child, a daughter Caroline Ann, was born in 1816. Charles Capel (1818), Henry John Valentine (1820) and Marion Keziah Jane Agnes (known as Agnes, 1824) would follow over the next eight years. Through the turbulent course of her husband’s professional
life – filled with its enmities and petty disputes – Mary would maintain a stable domestic world, seemingly against all odds. Described by Macquarie as a ‘very pleasant genteel woman’, Mary Greenway commanded respect and admiration in many quarters where her husband repeatedly failed.1 Her stamina alone in bearing and raising seven children in difficult circumstances is impressive. And if she was ever unhappy or regretful of the distant shores onto which fate had cast her, there seems no hint of it in the way she conducted her life.

  To supplement Francis’s modest government stipend and irregular flow of professional fees, Mary set up a small school catering for nine or so girls. The school seems to have run for many years and gained a fine reputation. In 1829 the Sydney Gazette proclaimed that: ‘Of the few respectable seminaries for young ladies with which our Colony is at present favoured, we have much pleasure in speaking favourably of that conducted by Mrs. Greenway, whose accomplishments are acknowledged to qualify her for the important charge she has assumed’.2

  Francis assisted from time to time with the students, teaching drawing, arithmetic, reading and writing. Even he, who usually had little regard for the worth of others, was full of praise for his wife. He knew her to be that vital, unshakeable foundation of his own chaotic existence. ‘And while I pay tribute to the masters of our Australian youths, let me not forget the governesses of our Australian fair’, Greenway would write affectionately in 1829, reminiscing under the pseudonym ‘de Quirosville’:3

  Let me not forget to eulogise the mild, unobtrusive, but talented Mrs. Greenway (the lady of our irritable but fully first rate architect), and also of Mrs. Love … These two ladies have done more for the Colony than we can properly estimate. For, look around; see how many young mothers are an ornament for the highest drawing room in the world.4

  But 15 years before he wrote these words, away from the genteel drawing rooms of a growing colonial society, he had an urgent need to establish a life in raw little Sydney Town. In the Sydney Gazette for 17 December 1814, amid the shipping and sale notices, government orders, and a lengthy report of the trial and conviction for murder of one Patrick Collins, a notice was inserted offering Greenway’s professional services:

  F. H. GREENWAY, 84 George street, from a Practice of many years as an Architect in some of the most extensive Concerns in England, public, speculative, and private; and having been several years connected with one of the ablest Improvers of Estates … flatters himself he may be of Service to those Land holders who may be aware of the present as well as future Advantages of such Improvements in this Colony.

  Greenway’s fee was to be five per cent of his estimate of a building’s cost, and for such a sum he would design, document and supervise everything ‘from the simple Cottage to the most extensive Mansion’. He would compile a bill of quantities, make models and ornaments, and draw ‘Plans of Awnings, Verandas … Stair Cases; of Shop Fronts [and] Chimney Pieces … of the most fashionable Forms now used in England’.

  His shingle on display, all Greenway needed now were clients. If the garrisoned officers or government officials noticed him at all, their reaction would have been one of indifference. Most would remain transient residents and subject to the whims of His Majesty’s ministers and generals, and their onward posting to other distant corners of the empire. They lacked a commitment to the colony, unlike the merchants and successful emancipists whose expressions of wealth were deemed essential both for business and for social advancement.

  For Greenway’s clients among the businesspeople of Sydney, the earliest known projects date from around 1815 and 1816. One was a house and billiard room for merchant Sarah Howe at 96 George Street, and the other a house in nearby Charlotte Place (now Grosvenor Street) for Sarah’s second husband, emancipist George Howe, the government printer and publisher of the Sydney Gazette.5 Greenway would later also design George Howe’s tomb.

  The Howes, and others like them, had qualified for their leasehold grants of land by agreeing to build houses ‘either of brick or stone … and two stories [sic] high’ within a period of five years. Such a regulation, promulgated by Macquarie in August 1810, was deemed necessary ‘in consequence of the number of allotments that remained without any attempt to build upon them’.6 At once a stimulus to build, and a sound town-planning measure, such rules undoubtedly brought clients to Greenway’s door.

  Following his pledge in the Gazette to make ‘ornaments … of the most fashionable Forms’ it seems Greenway had been busy. In April 1815, he rather cheekily petitioned the governor for assistance with his business enterprise following ‘experiments made in artificial stone superior in texture and durability to any Stone yet found in the colony’. Greenway ‘humbly’ hoped that Macquarie would lend him one ‘John Simons now in the Hospital Labourers’ as he had ‘many orders which will be difficult to execute without assistance’. He promised to ‘lay several specimens before your Excellency’ in gratitude for ‘so great a service to your Memorialist & his family’.7

  At the time of his first recorded encounter with the governor, Greenway was probably already experimenting with ‘artificial stone’. He could not contain himself. And as if a lecture on architectural taste were not enough for Macquarie to swallow, Greenway’s imprudent July letter veered off rather oddly to mention with obvious delight his hope of ‘carrying into effect … a figure of a Vestal … large as life … modelled in Clay and baked similar to Codes [sic] Artificial Stone’.8 Coade’s Stone was a moulded ceramic material, fired to a hard non-porous surface finish and widely used in the 18th and early 19th century for statuary and the like. It would have been a very familiar material to Greenway from his days working at his brothers’ yard in Limekiln Street. Now, it seems, he was experimenting with local clays, aiming to decorate Sydney with the products of his tinkering. He hoped that artificial stone would soon grace the mansion of one of Sydney’s most prominent early citizens, a gentleman with whom he was already very familiar. By July 1814, Greenway was closing in on at least one private client, his probable acquaintance from the General Hewett Surgeon John Harris.

  Energetic, politically savvy and with a knack for charting a course through the machinations of both civilian and military society, John Harris had nonetheless been in and out of office as a government functionary with almost monotonous frequency. He might be court-martialled for supposed misconduct one month only to be reinstated the next and then indicted again, yet all the while attending to his medical duties with vigour and dedication. Such a survivor was bound to prosper in turbulent New South Wales.

  Overlooking Blackwattle Creek and Cockle Bay (later Darling Harbour) on the outskirts of the Sydney settlement, Harris’s estate had grown from an original grant of 34 acres made by Governor King in 1803. For his steadfast attempts as naval officer (Sydney’s customs official) to curb the rum trade he was rewarded with further land grants. By 1818 most of the peninsula of Ultimo and Pyrmont was under Harris’s ownership, either by grant or purchase. ‘Ultimo’ as his property became known, was to be very much fashioned as a gentleman’s country seat.9

  In 1809, on their voyage to New South Wales, Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie, together with Ellis Bent, had made the acquaintance of Harris when their respective ships called at Rio de Janeiro. (Harris was England-bound at the time, there to plead the rebel cause in Major George Johnston’s court martial.) With only embryonic imaginings of the strange new world to which they were headed, the Macquaries interrogated Harris keenly. Harris’s enthusiasm for the landed civility to be enjoyed in the colony seemed to both surprise and delight Lachlan and Elizabeth; New South Wales was potentially more than a grim place of punishment lacking in enlightened taste and refinement. At one of their meetings while at anchor at Rio, Harris proudly unrolled a drawing of Ultimo House, the two-storeyed mansion begun in 1804 on his riverside estate. ‘Mr Harris’s House is situated in a park about a mile from Sydney’, noted Elizabeth Macquarie in barely concealed pleasure, ‘the Park is stock’d with Deer, and it look’d altogethe
r to be in much higher style than any thing we expected to find in the new world’.10 Harris was something of an exception among the military and administrative elite of the colony in making a social statement through bricks, stone and mortar.

  Still wearing the King’s colours and assuming rather grand airs, Harris was dubbed ‘Major Sturgeon’ by Ellis Bent after the imperious character of the same name in Samuel Foote’s The Mayor of Garratt, a popular satirical play of 1763. Elizabeth Macquarie remarked further on Harris’s eccentricities:

  This Gentleman came to wait on Colonel Macquarie dressed in a new uniform Coat, & seem’d indeed to think himself a very great man, & to wish that other persons should think the same … one day when he had been on our Ship in the morning in his usual grand style, some of the Gentlemen on board were greatly surprised at meeting him a few hours after dress’d like a Jew, in a shabby little Shop making merchandise of some precious stones he brought for sale from New Holland.

  ‘Strange in manners’, eccentric, or simply a figure brimming with enthusiasm and the hubris of the so-called ‘bunyip aristocracy’, Harris was, as MH Ellis remarked, primed to become a ‘patron of the arts … the first Australian patron of Mr Greenway’.11 Harris would spend much of the next four years in England and Ireland before returning to New South Wales in 1813 as a civilian on the General Hewett, and there again taking charge of his already extensive landholdings at Ultimo, and at Harris Park near Parramatta.

  Despite the grim pall that shadowed the voyage of the General Hewett, one can imagine a lively scene as the two ambitious dreamers – Francis Greenway and John Harris – came together to talk of building for the first time. Perhaps the convict architect was extended the rare privilege of an invitation to Harris’s cabin, where the laird of Ultimo proudly unfurled his drawings of sylvan glades transposed to the Antipodes. And perhaps Greenway brought forth schemes from his treasured portfolio, architectural offerings of which he believed the Ancients would have been justifiably proud.