Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  Elizabeth focuses on the local plants and produce, noting that ‘every shrub & flower I saw, being new, was interesting…the face of the Country is very romantic’ and ‘these works of nature at the foot of the mountains represent a beautiful Shrubbery, where innumerable beautiful flowers & plants delight the eye or regale the senses’. She notes that ‘fruit is to be had in great abundance. The grapes are fine, beyond what I can describe to you; you have no idea to what a pitch of luxuriance they arrive. It is here the season of Autumn & apples, pears & such fruits are now just in perfection—We get Wine for about one shilling the Bottle.’15

  The letter Elizabeth sent to her mother from Cape Town is about 1500 words long, half the length of her entire shipboard journal. It was dispatched midway through her sojourn at the Cape. In it she also records that Surgeon Beyer advised her to spend ‘as much time as possible on Shore, in order to get very strong & prepared for the remainder of the voyage’. It is the closest Elizabeth comes to mentioning her pregnancy, which was by then about five or six months advanced. Heeding the surgeon’s advice, Elizabeth arranged to spend her final eight days boarding with ‘a genteel private family’. John remained aboard the Scarborough, supervising the convicts and the transfer of goods from HMS Guardian, and visited her daily. ‘Mr Macarthur has enjoyed a remarkably good share of health, ever since we left England’ wrote Elizabeth to her mother, ‘& I trust will continue to do so’.16 She was, of course, tempting fate.

  Elizabeth would record in her journal that a ‘few days before we quitted False Bay Mr Macarthur was attack’d with a violent, & very alarming Fever; it continued to rage until every sense was lost, & every faculty but life destroyed, and my little Boy at that time was so very ill, that I could scarcely expect him to survive a day.’ She received some assistance from a Captain Reid ‘who commanded an Imperial East Indiaman that then lay in the Bay with us he visited Mr M. frequently, & supplied me with a few comforts that afterwards were of the greatest service’.17 Captain Reid—who was previously unknown to Elizabeth—provides an early example of John Macarthur’s ability to spontaneously make firm friends. Unfortunately, John would demonstrate the same skill at making even firmer enemies. Once the Scarborough was at sea again, Captain Marshall did what he could to help, but Elizabeth complains that none of the other officers made the slightest offer of assistance. The end of Elizabeth’s journal, describing this last leg of her voyage, is torn but the remaining fragments and subsequent letters home give some inkling of Elizabeth’s predicament.

  Leaving the Cape, the Scarborough travelled south and east into the maw of the Southern Ocean. Ships travelling beyond the Cape of Good Hope generally maintained a latitude of about 40 degrees south, then moved gradually northwards towards India or the Spice Islands (Indonesia). Those bound for New South Wales, however, were forced further south, often as far as 50 degrees, in order to clear the southernmost tip of New Holland (Tasmania). At such latitudes, the rigging grew icy and the cold seeped into the holds and the cabins. Icebergs were another hazard, as Captain Riou of HMS Guardian had discovered.

  The huge stretch of open ocean east of the Cape, lacking any protective landmasses, results in consistent and often gale-force westerly winds, known as the Roaring Forties. A ship could travel here for days at speeds unheard of in the northern hemisphere. And the dangerous combination of high winds and landless sea produces enormous waves that could lift a ship up high before passing ahead and leaving it to sink into the trough where the lower sails could sag in the calm, rendering it vulnerable to swamping from the next wave. Sailing in these conditions involved running straight down the face of a wave with enough speed to cross the trough and rise back up again, up into the gale and over the crest once more.

  Even in fine weather the constant pitching motion of the ship in the Southern Ocean was wearying. But Elizabeth saw little if any fine weather. The Neptune’s log recorded that the weather was very stormy for the Second Fleet’s crossing between the Cape and New South Wales.18 Every activity and movement, however small, required enormous effort, and throughout the crossing, Elizabeth’s husband and her child ‘continued intermittent for a long time’. For five weeks after they left the Cape, she had ‘one, & sometimes two Soldiers sit up every night’, presumably to watch over and tend to John. Elizabeth snatched rest when she could by ‘laying my head on a Locker’ until eventually someone gave up his cabin for her use.19 She could not retire to bed in her own cabin while a soldier was there with her husband.

  Stormy weather meant no exercise for the convicts or passengers and no cooking fires—for anyone. The inadequate rations, now served cold, continued to wreak havoc among the below-decks population, with scurvy and starvation now taking an even grimmer toll. A sailor would later allege that some convicts deliberately concealed their colleagues’ deaths, so that the dead man’s rations could continue to be claimed by his bunk mates. The same sailor claimed that the convicts ‘were reduced to such extremities that they have eaten the [oaten] poultices taken from their sores’.20

  The convicts were now also subject to exposure and hypothermia. Despite the sealed hatches, the orlop deck was at best damp and very often waterlogged. In any wooden ship a good deal of water normally leaked through the sides, let alone that which made its way down from the upper decks. Captain William Hill, John Macarthur’s fellow officer aboard the Surprize, claimed the vessel was unseaworthy and shipped so much water that the convicts were often waist-deep in it.21 Weeks later at Sydney Cove, the Reverend Johnson concurred, noting that ‘sometimes for days, nay, for a considerable time together, [the convicts] have been to the middle in water chained together, hand and leg, even the sick not exempted—nay, many died with the chains upon them. Promises, entreaties, were all in vain and it was not till a very few days before they made harbour that they were released out of irons.’22

  Sydney Parkinson, one of the two official artists who some twenty years before had sailed with Cook in the Endeavour wrote of his own experience of the Southern Ocean. ‘The sea ran mountain-high, and tossed the ship upon the waves: she rolled so much, that we could get no rest, or scarcely lie in bed and almost every moveable on board was thrown down, and rolled about from place to place. In brief, a person, who has not been in a storm at sea, cannot form an adequate idea of the situation we were in.’23

  Elizabeth knew. It was in such a storm, in such a sea, that Elizabeth Macarthur lost her baby girl.

  6

  Heavenly Bodies, Botany and Piano Lessons

  Week after Week stole away; and Month after Month with little diversity.

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO BRIDGET KINGDON, 7 MARCH 1791

  Elizabeth’s first letters home were permeated with sadness. The arrival of the Second Fleet had done little to alleviate the problems of the fledgling colony and much to make things worse. But the ships did not stay long at Sydney Cove. By late August 1790, all of the Second Fleet vessels had sailed and the empty harbour was a constant reminder of the colony’s isolation. The little brig Supply had been sent alone to Batavia (now Jakarta) for supplies before the Second Fleet arrived. She was expected back daily and the colonists couldn’t help but keep turning to look down the long harbour, checking for the distant South Head signal flag which would announce the Supply’s return.

  Any immediate threat of starvation had been lifted by the Second Fleet’s arrival, but for the next few years the colonists mostly failed in their farming efforts and relied almost entirely on imported food: salted meat pocked with mould, flour from barrels containing nests of dead rats, and rice alive with weevils. To the horror of the New South Wales Corps, Governor Phillip insisted that every person—convicts, soldiers and officers alike—receive the same weekly ration of food from the closely guarded storehouse. Until the new settlers could grow enough to feed themselves, Phillip was forced to repeatedly recalculate the weekly ration as convicts arrived or died, and visiting ships brought stores or livestock. Those with the means to do so supplemented their grim fare of f
lour and salted meat by hunting or fishing but game was far from plentiful and, besides, venturing beyond the campsite at Sydney Cove had become dangerous.

  The original cautiously expressed gestures of friendship between the colonists and the local Eora people1 descended, within months of the First Fleet’s landing, into acts of aggression. Convicts and sometimes soldiers—in direct opposition to Governor Phillip’s orders—plundered and murdered the Eora. Unsurprisingly, those people replied in kind. Since the First Fleet’s arrival, well over a dozen British men had been killed or wounded by Aboriginal people.2 The number of Eora killed by the colonists was not recorded. Phillip inf licted judicial punishment upon convicts and soldiers both, but the Aboriginal witnesses were sickened by the spectacle of flogging, rather than heartened by any display of impartial justice.3 In 1789 smallpox had devastated the Aboriginal clans around the harbour. Scores of corpses lay where they’d fallen, along the shore, among the trees and in caves. Bennelong, Phillip’s Aboriginal captive turned ally, later told him that up to half the local population was lost.4 By mid 1790, when Elizabeth arrived, local wildlife had been over-hunted and over-fished by the inexpert colonists. Even with the Aboriginal population tragically reduced there was never going to be enough game to cater for the influx of one then two thousand extra people. Everyone was hungry. The Eora now stayed well away from Sydney Cove but they watched the Second Fleet arrive, and saw—no doubt with dismay—the population of the colonists’ campsite double.

  After the initial bustle of her arrival there was very little to occupy Elizabeth’s mind. Daily life in a wattle and daub hut had few entertainments to offer. Infant Edward had his own nursemaid—the same never-named woman who had travelled with the family from England—and John had his military duties and obligations. Elizabeth was bored and lonely. She could not even go for a walk. The surrounding bush appeared dense and threatening to the inexperienced new arrivals and no one ventured any distance unarmed. And, of course, the settlement itself was an open-air prison. Elizabeth lived surrounded by convict men and women who might find any number of reasons, and ways, to harm an officer’s wife, so she was necessarily accompanied on excursions by at least one soldier. In her first eight months in the colony, Elizabeth did not walk more than five kilometres from Sydney Cove, and that distance only twice: ‘once to a farm which Capt Nepean has for his Company, to which we sent our Tea equipage & drank Tea on the turf; and once to a Hill situated between this & Botany Bay, where I could command a prospect of that famous spot’.5

  Elizabeth ‘filled up the vacuum of many a Solitary day’ by reading, or by writing long letters in which she complained of having no female friends. 6 None of the other officers were accompanied by their wives. Some of the rank-and-file soldiers had their wives with them, but the class divide rendered any friendships there impossible. Even if Elizabeth was willing to bridge that gap (although nothing suggests that she was), the social habits of a lifetime—reinforced by notions of regimental propriety and proper discipline—prevented the soldiers’ wives from expressing anything beyond mere civilities to the only ‘lady’ in the colony. Friendship with the Reverend Johnson’s wife may have been possible but Elizabeth described her as ‘a person in whose society I could reap neither profit or pleasure’.7 The Johnsons were not well liked—two months after the Second Fleet arrived, the convicts were threatened with the withdrawal of rations unless they attended the Sunday church service.8 Elizabeth’s antipathy was such that she delayed little Edward’s long overdue baptism for nearly another year. 9

  But Elizabeth’s natural optimism soon asserted itself. Just as she had at the Cape, Elizabeth took the time to look around and appreciate the landscape. ‘Every thing was new to me, every Bird, every insect, Flower, &c in short all was novelty around me, and was noticed with a degree of eager curiosity.’10 Elizabeth was herself noticed with a degree of eager curiosity by Sydney Cove’s small society of officers, who had endured more than three tedious years of one another’s constant company. Among the officers at least, Elizabeth was instantly and extraordinarily popular. They fell over one another to be her friend. Here was a pretty young woman who, protected by her marriage and her child, could converse with freedom and intelligence.

  Second Lieutenant Dawes, at twenty-eight only four years older than Elizabeth, was a talented polymath whose skills encompassed engineering, science, surveying and astronomy. ‘He is so much engaged with the stars,’ wrote Elizabeth, ‘that to Mortal Eyes he is not always visible.’11 Elizabeth attempted to learn astronomy from Dawes and he went to great efforts to make models of the solar system for her and to explain the general principles of the heavenly bodies. Elizabeth, though, soon claimed she had mistaken her abilities and brought an end to her astronomical studies, writing ‘I blush at my error’ to Bridget, perhaps implying that, intellectually, she simply wasn’t up to it. But she may well have been blushing about other things entirely—the evening visits to Dawes’ observatory opened many opportunities for others, possibly even Dawes himself, to misinterpret her educational motives. Instead Elizabeth and Dawes sensibly looked to the daytime art of botany, and Elizabeth was soon able to class and order common plants.

  Surgeon George Worgan, thirty-three, had improbably managed to bring a piano with him on the First Fleet. More like harpsichords in shape, the small five-octave pianos of the late eighteenth century were enormously popular. Worgan gallantly began to tutor Mrs Macarthur, telling her she had ‘done wonders in being able to play off God save the King and Footes Minuet’ and that she was ‘reading the Notes with great facility’.12 Worgan went as far as to make Elizabeth a gift of the little piano upon his departure from the colony in 1791.

  Thirty-two-year-old Marine Captain Watkin Tench, the famously wry and genial observer of the colony, also became Elizabeth’s friend, ‘indeed we are in that habit of intimacy with Captn Tench, that there are few days pass that we do not spend some part of together’.13 Can we judge a woman by her friends? Tench and Dawes—and indeed Governor Phillip—were genuinely willing to engage with the local Aboriginal people. Dawes, described by one of his peers as ‘truly religious’ yet ‘without any appearance of formal sanctity’,14 was a friend of English abolitionist William Wilberforce and went on to become an active participant in the anti-slavery movement. Tench in his Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, published in 1793, attacked the argument that the ‘sufferings of the wretched Africans’ in the heat of the West Indies was necessary because apparently no white man could bear to work in such a climate. He saw that the convicts could, and did.15 Governor Phillip, during his First Fleet preparations, wrote of New South Wales that ‘there shall be no slavery in a free land’.16 But what were Elizabeth’s views? While at sea, just after her transfer to the Scarborough, she noted in her journal that ‘we passed a French Guinea Man, bound to Martinico with Slaves’.17 But she adds nothing else, no sympathetic remarks about injustice nor any mercantile comments about the value of the ship’s cargo to indicate what she thought or felt.

  Whatever Elizabeth’s opinions, they seem to have had no impact on her ability to attract admirers. Many of the young officers had (or professed to have) friends and connections in Devon, and all often stood to toast ‘the banks of the Tamar’.18 The older officers also curried Mrs Macarthur’s favour. Captain Nepean, who at sea had gladly washed his hands of the tiresome Lieutenant Macarthur and his obstinate wife, in Sydney found it expedient to change his mind. Generously, so did Elizabeth. ‘He is truly a good hearted Man,’ she wrote, ‘and has I believe a great friendship for Mr McArthur.’19 Even Governor Phillip was not immune, raiding his private garden and ‘sending us some little thing or other every day’.20 The Macarthurs dined regularly at Government House and although during these times of food rationing each guest was required to bring their own bread, Macarthur family lore has it that upon Elizabeth’s invitation card there was a note from the Governor himself saying there would ‘always be a roll for Mrs Macarthur’.21

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sp; It can be difficult to be the husband of a popular woman. But if John complained, we never hear a whisper of it from the always-loyal Elizabeth. And as a man continually with an eye to his own advantage, he must have recognised that Elizabeth’s popularity was of benefit to him too. In October 1790, His Majesty’s Brig Supply returned from its dash to the East Indies for supplies. Elizabeth couldn’t resist telling Bridget that a Lieutenant Ball, the Supply’s commander, ‘very soon call’d upon us, and complemented me with many little comforts procured at Batavia, which were truly acceptable’.22 In a letter to her mother, though, Elizabeth was more circumspect, noting that she had received from Mr Ball ‘many articles at very moderate prices’.23 Clearly Elizabeth tailored her letters home, to cater for what she believed the recipients should hear.