A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  Greenway and Druitt clashed frequently. Druitt controlled the distribution of labour to government sites and, according to Bigge, ‘The chief engineer did not always enter into the architectural views of Mr. Greenway; and, from various pretexts … the best mechanics … were removed, without [Greenway’s] knowledge, to other places’. The unpredictable and uneven quality of his workers was a constant frustration for Greenway. Druitt had a strong preference for building by government labour without incentive, whereas Greenway favoured piecework with time off as a sweetener for a completed job. Both systems were problematic. An unmotivated workforce was slow. Druitt was too distracted by the ‘great variety of works carried on at the same time’ and, as Bigge concluded, improvement in productivity was ‘hopeless’ without more attentive supervision.11

  Greenway on the other hand was conflicted. He knew full well that the incentive of piecework would free up the most skilled of workers for use in his own private practice. According to Bigge, overseers like Lawless were ‘hurrying the government work to employ convicts in labour of their own. Their interest was thus strongly placed in opposition to their duty’. The same could be said of Greenway. His utterances about saving convicts from the lash, and training a legion of young workers who would themselves become contractors, all ring rather hollow in the light of his own labour preferences.

  With Mr Bigge’s presence, Greenway was effectively serving two masters. Feeling exploited and insecure, he began playing the commissioner off against the governor. In December 1819, in an attempt to demonstrate his usefulness, Greenway furnished Bigge with an estimate of expenses for the stables. For good measure he also enclosed an ‘estimate of Work done by Government under the Immediate Superintendence & Direction of F.H. Greenway, Civil Architect’, listing 21 buildings completed or in progress, and an estimate of their cost if erected under contract. His estimate totalled £112 580, but by dint of his professional skill, why, the cost to the government had only been half that! A man of Bigge’s acuity would have been instantly suspicious of such convenient accounting. And of course, as Broadbent and Hughes conclude, ‘the corollary to how much Greenway thought he had saved government was how little he had been rewarded for such devotion to duty and perspicacity’.12

  Greenway later revised his estimate of work done by contract to £120 380, and tellingly added an estimate of fees that would rightly be due to him ‘as a professional man’. Fees of eight per cent on contracted projects, work by government labour, plus projects not proceeded with, and travelling expenses, came to a total of £11 877 15s. He then deducted £645 for ‘what I have received from Government … going on six years’, leaving a net ‘Balance due to F.H.G.’ of £11 232 15s.

  In early 1820, while Greenway brooded, and Bigge and Scott roamed the colony gathering evidence, listening to the many with a grievance to offload, Macquarie took up his quill in rebuttal of the calumnies of Henry Grey Bennet. He felt deep apprehension of what Bigge might say in his official reports. Macquarie’s letter was published as a pamphlet London in the following year, but just as the governor’s forts were no real defence for Sydney, so his letter would be no match for the eventual weight of Commissioner Bigge’s findings.

  As part of his own Letter to … Viscount Sidmouth, Macquarie defended his protégé. Greenway was a man who had ‘been restored to his former rank in society, which he promised to maintain with credit to himself and usefulness to the Government’. And much as he had previously written to Bathurst, informing his lordship of Greenway’s presence, Macquarie explained that:

  He brought me a letter from Governor Phillip, recommending him strongly to my protection, and informing me that he was an architect of eminence, who had been employed in erecting public buildings at Bristol and Clifton. Feeling great respect for that most excellent man, I had much pleasure in attending to the first request he ever made [of] me.13

  In the broader defence of his building program, Macquarie wrote:

  I cannot suppose that it is the wish of the British people, that this their Colony should be allowed to remain in the state of nature in which it was found, and her settlers and convicts turned adrift into the woods, without churches, schools, courts, barracks, hospitals and all other accommodation of civilised nations.

  But as Ellis observed, ‘there was a faint odour of disapproval about the Viceroy’s praise, a tendency to place on the shoulders of Governor Phillip … rather than his own, the responsibility for Mr Greenway’s employment’.14 Greenway was the emancipist surrogate son, the one who showed great promise, the one who could be the exemplar to all who doubted the worth of Macquarie’s enlightened stance. Yet while he was no recidivist, Greenway had instead caused his benefactor reason to doubt his own judgment.

  Macquarie waited until early February 1821, almost the eleventh hour, to answer a series of ‘Points of Colonial Administration …’, criticisms put to him by Bigge. Rising to his haughtiest tone and replying in the third person through his secretary, Macquarie left the commissioner in no doubt as to how he felt:

  Suffice it then to say that the Turnpike gate may be unsuitable, the Obelisk not necessary, the Fountain absurd, the Tower, Lighthouse Railing &c all useless extravagant expenditure – but the Governor did not consider them so … The governor cannot enter further into the subject … than finally to declare that they were one & all of them done with the sole aim and view of rendering Services to the Public and the Government …15

  Continuing, Macquarie turned to his architect, and despite his numerous frustrations, still recognised Greenway’s contribution:

  When [the Governor] reflects that until the arrival of Mr Greenway, there was no Architect in the Colony, and even in the services of Mr Greenway, great as his Talents are, he has had many difficulties to contend with … the Governor cannot help repeating that he feels both pride and exultation in having been enabled to complete, in so short a time, So many useful and important handsome Buildings for the use of Government.

  In mid-February, after nearly 18 months in the colony, Bigge and Scott departed on the Dromedary. The ship took almost a week to clear Port Jackson, and at one stage nearly foundered on the Sow and Pigs. More than a few might have thought that particular hazard an appropriate final destination for the commissioner and his secretary.

  Despite the meddlesome inquisitors having quit New South Wales, there would be no return to the laissez faire paradigm of old. Macquarie was increasingly anxious to be gone and Greenway was as busy as ever. St James’, the market house and alterations to the hospital were all in hand, and construction commenced in 1821 on a police office in George Street, a granary and store at Parramatta, and a fine courthouse at Windsor. Designs were underway for a Roman Catholic chapel (not built) and a hospital at Liverpool, a building that would eventually be regarded as one of Greenway’s finest. In 1822 he was possibly also designing a rectory for St Matthew’s at Windsor.

  Greenway’s continuing heavy workload only fuelled his disgruntlement. In March 1821 he wrote to ‘My dear sister’ (either Mary or Elizabeth), including a copy of his calculation of professional fees. He hoped to:

  shew [sic] my friends in England that I have not been idle in New South Wales & to urge them … to do Justice at least to my young family, as you know my indifference … as to worldly motives & feeling that I despise it on any other principle than that of having the power of doing good …16

  Perhaps he was thinking of the good ‘Gentleman of the highest respectability’ from his trial as being those ‘friends’ who somehow would again intercede on his behalf. Such a notion was as delusional as the thought of Macquarie springing to his aid. ‘The Governor is a steady & faithful friend so far’, he told his sister, ‘& no doubt will keep his word most faithfully to see me remunerated in some way … according to his promise’. Greenway was either naïve or disingenuous, and perhaps both.

  As 1821 ebbed by, so Greenway’s chances of recompense faded. His sulky ruminations could not be held back any longer. In October, two w
eeks before Macquarie’s successor arrived in Sydney, Greenway staked his claim:

  Sir,

  When you were pleased to make me Acting Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer you said you were not authorized to allow me my per Centage [sic] according to the custom of my profession but that it was in your power to make it good in various ways which as I then stated I was well aware of and trusted entirely to your Justice and Liberality as the Representative of a Great Nation …17

  Greenway enclosed copies of the valuations given to Bigge, and told the governor that he could fulfil his promise of compensation ‘for the sake of a numerous family … by granting me land … [and] without any expense to the government’. He had lit the fuse and all he could do was wait.

  The record of the ensuing tense days and weeks is confusing, and in best Greenway fashion, much of it is obscure. In one recollection, Macquarie eventually sent for him and caught him by the hand with ‘apparent emotion’. The governor apologised for hurting his feelings and regretted listening to the ‘falsehoods of Major Druitt’. Moreover, the governor had ‘declared the truth’ in Greenway’s documents, and that Sir Thomas Brisbane would not see him suffer.18

  Asked by Macquarie for a further justification of his claims, Greenway responded with four longwinded pages that had little to do with the matter at hand. In an outpouring of incoherent verbiage, he turned over many familiar themes: hospital contractors who ‘winked at every species of vice …’; convicts ‘doomed … to suffer under the lash of the law’; and others who ‘made immense fortunes at the expense of these unfortunate men and the public’. Greenway, the guardian of all things just, was determined to ‘drag this Hydra-headed monster into [the] light & shew [sic] his hideous form to the duped world’.19 No doubt, his Excellency tossed aside such a missive as the ravings of a madman.

  On 30 November 1821 – his last day in office – Macquarie granted Greenway 800 acres and six cows from the government herd. Rather than welcomed, the governor’s largesse was soon batted away as a ‘mere mockery’. In a further letter that Ellis described sarcastically as Greenway’s ‘masterpiece’, the architect impugned Macquarie’s integrity in the most insolent terms.20 Greenway accused the governor, a man ‘whose word should be his bond’, of reneging on his promise and of ‘holding out … encouragement [he] did not mean to fulfil’. He carped about ‘promises’ and ‘my per Centage as a professional man’, and was mortified at being offered a scrap of land, ‘the value of which would not pay more than … the six years of my travelling expenses only’. And by his reckoning, the government had not paid him for travel for ‘upwards of three years’. He informed Macquarie that he had laid his claims before Sir Thomas, and despite lambasting the former governor, Greenway had no doubt ‘that everything will be done consistent with reason and justice between you’.21

  In those early days of optimism and unfettered progress, Macquarie had promised Greenway some future compensation in lieu of ordinary professional arrangements. In the governor’s recollection it would take the form of a ‘Grant of Land and a donation of some Government cattle’ to be bestowed at the end of his term. Greenway ‘appeared to be perfectly satisfied’ at the time, yet here was a grossly inflated claim for £12 000 (including his salary already paid), made by a man who for several years was but a convict.22 The sum Greenway sought equated to the governor’s total salary for those six years, or about a quarter of all expenditure on government buildings in the previous three!23 Both the tone and substance of Greenway’s manic letters and preposterous claims show a man bereft of reason, edging ever closer to disintegration.

  By Greenway’s account, his final encounter with Macquarie was fiery. He claimed to have been summoned to a meeting with Macquarie and Brisbane, ‘expecting every satisfaction from them’. Instead, he faced a furious former governor – alone:

  Major General Macquarie … in a most extraordinary way, addressed me in such language I will not stain my paper with, threatening me … saying that he could swear that he never promised me a remuneration equal to my per centage in money … and that his word would be taken before mine …24

  Macquarie’s only concession was to promise that Greenway’s travel claims would be met. The architect drew himself up, ready to storm out of Government House. His final words to his former collaborator and protector were to the effect that ‘a brave good man would scorn to take advantage, or wound the feelings of a man so circumstanced who only claimed his right for the sake of a large family, for whom he had professed great friendship’.

  So ended six years of planning and scheming, dreaming, building, bitterness and strife. A fruitful partnership had withered to a wretched denouement. And to paraphrase Ellis, of all the emancipists who had grabbed their second chance under Macquarie, only one would not mourn the old viceroy’s departure to the end of their days.25 Within the week, Lachlan, Elizabeth and young Lachlan Macquarie were gone from New South Wales.

  In the flurry of his last days in Sydney, Macquarie was unable to deal properly with Greenway’s claims or that last notorious letter, which he naturally regarded ‘in the highest degree insulting … considering our relative situations’.26 Macquarie had intended leaving the new governor with copies of Greenway’s correspondence and an accompanying commentary, but in his haste, the documents had been inadvertently packed away ready for travel.

  In his commentary, Macquarie carefully outlined the circumstances of Greenway’s appointment and his conduct in government service. Of his rise from convict to the ‘highest of all favours, entrée to the Governor’s table’, Greenway ‘proved himself most unworthy’. And as to the claim for fees, it was ‘only an impudent and daring attempt to impose and to extort from the Government a greater remuneration for his Services than they merit’. In June 1822, and almost home, Macquarie wrote a covering letter to Brisbane from on board the Surry. He simply hoped that Sir Thomas would adjudge Greenway’s claim with the ‘contempt and neglect it so justly deserves’.27

  Distinguished soldier and gentleman scientist, Major General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane maintained Macquarie’s liberal policy towards emancipists, yet like his predecessor, he found Greenway’s barefaced opportunism too much to swallow. By the time Macquarie’s documents reached Sydney at the end of 1822, Brisbane had long ago moved on the question of what to do with Mr Greenway.

  At the beginning of May, the colonial secretary, Frederick Goulburn, had informed the architect that Sir Thomas considered his claims ‘either too indefinite in their nature or advanced at too late a period to receive any notice’.28 And to avoid any further disputes, Goulburn stipulated terms for Greenway’s continuing employment. He and his family were allowed to remain in the house in George Street and it would be maintained at government expense. In addition, his salary was to be increased to 100 guineas a year, but without the fringe benefits of travelling expenses, governmentsupplied rations, servants, clerks, horses and coals.

  Crucially, Greenway was to receive, on his own estimate of value, a fee of three per cent on any government building erected by contract, and five per cent on those built by government labour. Such ‘Articles of Agreement’ were considered ‘ample Compensation for any Duty’. No further claims would be entertained, ‘however long or however short the period may be during which your services shall be deemed useful’.

  Greenway replied a few days later, stating that he ‘felt quite satisfied with those Terms which are just and Honourable’. And well might he accept his new generous conditions of employment, which at last offered him what he sought – a fair percentage fee. But rather than forgetting the recent bitter past, Greenway, like a scavenging dog, returned to the still-unburied carcass of his dispute with the previous governor. He thought his treatment ‘inexplicable’. Here was poor Greenway, ‘left with [a] large family to support, £100 in debt for travelling expenses’, and liable ‘to be arrested without the present means of answering to it’. He despaired that he had received ‘not an acre of Land or any remuneration’ due
to the ‘really cruel [and] unfeeling conduct on the part of Major General Macquarie’. It was mostly the same old dirge. Yet what Greenway really hoped for, but would not profess openly, was to be granted title to the land on which the George Street house was situated – a far richer prize than 800 acres of miserable scrub and a few scrawny cows.

  Despite his now clearly redefined relationship with the government, the usual enmities and fights kept festering and erupting. There was the dispute over the roofs for the courthouse and the market house. His authority questioned or simply ignored, Greenway was fast being rendered irrelevant.

  Brisbane appointed a board of works to oversee and coordinate public building projects, no doubt hoping for order and discipline. But as Ellis remarked, these were the most ‘unimaginative and censorious of men’.29 The board comprised: the new engineer and Druitt’s replacement, Major John Ovens; the surveyor-general, John Oxley; the colonial secretary, Frederick Goulburn; and possibly Greenway as well. Oxley was an ally of Macarthur’s and therefore an exclusive, while Ovens soon grew tired of the architect’s frequent quarrels. Outbreaks of harmony or respect for Greenway’s position were unlikely, and his contrary temper only served to harden the board against him.

  Through his many disputes Greenway foolishly thought Ovens would shield him from men who were interested in ‘dealing a death-blow to my good name’.30 These were men of ‘ignorance and wickedness’ – it seems Greenway’s own nightmarish many-headed Hydra was rising, about to do him in.