A BEGINNING AT SEVENTEEN
Perhaps my turn for economics was partly inherited from my mother, and
emphasized by my father having been an unlucky speculator in foreign
wheat, tempted thereto by the sliding scale, which varied from 33/ a
quarter, when wheat was as cheap as it was in 1837, to 1/ a quarter,
when it was 70/ in 1839. It was supposed that my father had made his
fortune when he took his wheat out of bond but losses and deterioration
during seven years, and interest on borrowed money--credit having been
strained to the utmost--brought ruin and insolvency, and he had to go
to South Australia, followed by his wife and family soon after. It
seems strange that this disaster should be the culmination of the
peace, after the long Napoleonic war. When my father married in 1815 he
showed he was making 600 pounds a year, with 2,000 pounds book debts,
as a writer or attorney and as agent for a bank. But the business fell
off, the book debts could not be collected; the bank called up the
advances; and for 24 years there was a struggle. My mother would not
have her dowry of 1,500 pounds and other money left by an aunt settled
on herself--neither her father nor herself approved of it--the wife's
fortune should come and go with her husband's. My father first
speculated in hops and lost heavily. He took up unlucky people, whom
other business men had drained. I suppose he caught at straws. He had
the gentlest of manners--"the politest man in Melrose," the old
shoemaker called him. My paternal grandfather was Dr. William Spence,
of Melrose. His father was minister of the Established Church at
Cockburn's Path, Berwickshire. His grandfather was a small landed
proprietor, but he had to sell Spence's mains, and the name was changed
to Chirnside. So (as my father used to say) he was sprung from the tail
of the gentry; while my mother was descended from the head of the
commonalty. The Brodies had been tenant farmers in East Lothian for six
or seven generations, though they originally came from the north. My
grandfather Brodie thought abrogation of the Corn Laws meant ruin for
the farmers, who had taken 19 years' leases at war prices. But during
the war times both landlords and farmers coined money, while the
labourers had high prices for food and very little increase in their
wages. I recollect both grandfathers well, and through the accurate
memory of my mother t can tell how middle-class people in lowland
Scotland lived and dressed and travelled, entertained visitors, and
worshipped God. She told me of the "dear years" 1799 and 1800, and what
a terrible thing a bad crop was, when the foreign ports were closed by
Napoleon. She told me that but for the shortlived Peace of Amiens she
never heard of anything but war till the Battle of Waterloo settled it
three months before her marriage. From her own intimate relations with
her grandmother, Margaret Fernie Brodie, who was born in 1736, and died
in 1817, she knew how two generations before her people lived and
thought. So that I have a grasp on the past which many might envy, and
yet the present and the future are even more to me, as they were to my
mother. On her death in 1887 I wrote a quatrain for her memorial, and
which those who knew her considered appropriate--
HELEN BRODIE SPENCE
Born at Whittingham, Scotland, 1791.
Died at College Town, Adelaide, South Australia, 1887.
Half a long life 'mid Scotland's heaths and pines,
And half among our South Australian vines;
Though loving reverence bound her to the past,
Eager for truth and progress to the last.
Although my mother had the greatest love for Sir Walter Scott, and the
highest appreciation of his poems and novels, she never liked Melrose.
She liked Australia better after a while. Indeed, when we arrived in
November, 1839, to a country so hot, so dry, so new, we felt like the
good old founder of The Adelaide Register, Robert Thomas, when he came
to the land described in his own paper as "flowing with milk and
honey." Dropped anchor at Holdfast Bay. "When I saw the place at which
we were to land I felt inclined to go and cut my throat." When we sat
down on a log in Light square, waiting till my father brought the key
of the wooden house In Gilles street, in spite of the dignity of my 14
years just attained, I had a good cry. There had been such a drought
that they had a dearth, almost a famine. People like ourselves with 80
acre land orders were frightened to attempt cultivation in an unknown
climate, with seed wheat at 25/ a bushel or more, and stuck to the
town. We lived a month in Gilles street, then we bought a large
marquee, and pitched it on Brownhill Creek, above where Mitcham now
stands, bought 15 cows and a pony and cart, and sold the milk in town
at 1/ a quart. But how little milk the cows gave in those days! After
seven months' encamping, in which the family lived chiefly on rice--the
only cheap food, of which we bought a ton--we came with our herd to
West terrace, Adelaide. My father got the position of Town Clerk at 150
pounds a year twelve months after our arrival, and kept it till the
municipal corporation was ended, as the City of Adelaide was too poor
to maintain the machinery; but 75 pounds was the rent of the house and
yards. We sold the cows, and my brothers went farming, and we took
cheaper quarters in Halifax street.
The Town Clerkship, however, was the means of giving me a lesson in
electoral methods. Into the Municipal Bill, drawn up under the
superintendence of Rowland Hill (afterward the great post office
reformer, but then the Secretary of the Colonization Commissioner for
South Australia), he had introduced a clause providing for proportional
representation at the option of the ratepayers. The twentieth part of
the Adelaide ratepayers by uniting their votes upon one man instead of
voting for 18, could on the day before the ordinary election appear and
declare this their intention, and he would be a Councillor on their
votes. In the first election, November, 1840, two such quorums elected
two Councillors. The workmen in Borrow and Goodear's building elected
their foreman, and another quorum of citizens elected Mr. William
Senden; and this was the first quota representation in the world. My
father explained this unique provision to me at the time, and showed
its bearings for minority representation.
After the break up of the municipality and the loss of his income my
father lost health and spirits. The brothers did not succeed in the
country. My sister had married Andrew Murray, an apparently prosperous
man, in 1841, but the protecting of the Government bills bought for
remitting to England, and other causes, brought down every mercantile
firm in Adelaide except A. L. Elder, who had not been long established;
and Murray & Greig came down too. Mr. Murray was a ready writer, and
got work on The South Australian, the newspaper which supported Capt.
Grey's policy of retrenchment and stoppage of public works; so, with a
small salary, he managed to live. When I left Scotland I brought with
me a letter of recommendation from my teacher, Miss Sarah Phin,
concerning my qualifications and my turn for teaching. I don't know if
it really did me any good, for the suspicious look and the question
about how old I was at the time embarrassed me. Of course I was only 13
1/2 and probably my teacher over-estimated me a little, but here is,
the letter, yellow with the dust of over 70 years.
Melrose. June 20, 1839.
My dearest Catherine--Our mutual friend, Mrs. Duncan, told me that you
were not to sail for Australia till next month, and I have been
thinking if my poor testimonial to your worth and abilities could be of
any service to you I ought to give it but how can I trust myself?--for
could any one read what I feel my heart dictates it would be thought
absurd. You were always one of the greatest ornaments of my school,
best girl and the best scholar, and from the time you could put three
letters together you have evinced a turn for teaching--so clear-headed
and so patient, and so thoroughly upright in word and deed, and your
knowledge of the Scriptures equal to that of many students of Divinity,
so should you ever become a teacher you have nothing to fear. You will
be able to undertake both the useful and the ornamental branches of
education--French, Italian, and Music you thoroughly understand. I feel
conscious that you will succeed. Please to remember me to your
excellent mother, and with love to Miss Spence and my darling Mary,
believe me, my beloved Catherine, your affectionate friend and teacher.
Sarah Phin.
My knowledge of music was not great, even in those days, but I could
teach beginners for two or three years with fair success. We thought
that my mother and the two eldest girls could start a school, and
brought out with us a good selection of schoolbooks, bought from Oliver
J. Boyd. Edinburgh, superior to the English books obtainable here,
which we used up in time; but we dared not launch out into such a
venture in 1840, and my sister Jessie had no desire to teach at all.
The years at Brownhill Creek and West terrace were the most unhappy of
my life. I suffered from the want of some intellectual activity, and
from the sense of frustrated ambition and religious despair. The few
books we had, or which we could borrow, I read over and over again.
Aikin's "British Poets," a gift from Uncle John Spence, and Goldsmith's
complete works, a school prize of my brother William's, were thoroughly
mastered, and the Waverley novels down to "Quentin Durward" were well
absorbed. I read in Chambers's Journal of daily governesses getting a
shilling an hour, and I told my friend, Mrs. Haining, that I would go
out for 6d. an hour. Although she disliked that way of putting it, it
was really on that basis that I had made my beginning when I reached
the age of 17. In the meantime I had taught my younger sister Mary
(afterwards Mrs. W. J. Wren) all I knew, and in the columns of The
South Australian I wrote an occasional letter or a few verses. Through
Mr. George Tinline we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Samuel Stephens her
brother, Thomas Hudson Beare, and his family, who had all come out in
the Duke of York, and lived six months on Kangaroo Island before South
Australia was proclaimed a British province. I have been mixed up so
much with this family that it is often supposed that they were
relatives, but it was not so. Samuel Stephens had died from an accident
two years after his marriage to a lady much older and much richer than
himself, and she was living on two acres in North Adelaide, bought with
her money at the first sale of city lands in 1837, and Mr. Tinline
boarded with her till his marriage. The nephews, and especially the
nieces, of the old lady interested me--Lucy, the eldest, a handsome
girl, was about two years younger than myself; Arabella, about the age
of my sister Mary; Elizabeth, the baby Beare, who was the first white
person to set foot on South Australian soil after the foundation of the
province, died from a burning accident when quite young. The only
survivor of that first family now is William L. Beare (84), held in
honour as one of our earliest pioneers. By a second marriage there were
nine more children. Several died young, but some still survive.
It was not till 1843 that I went as a daily governess at the rate of
6d. an hour, and gave two hours five days a week to the families of the
Postmaster-General, the Surveyor-General, and the Private Secretary.
Thus I earned three guineas a month. I don't recollect taking holidays,
except a week at Christmas. I enjoyed the work, and I was proud of the
payment. My mother said she never felt the bitterness of poverty after
I began to earn money, and the shyness which, in spite of all her
instructions and encouragement, I had felt with all strangers,
disappeared when I felt independent. When a girl is very poor, and
feels herself badly dressed, she cannot help being shy, especially if
she has a good deal of Scotch pride. I think mother felt more sorry for
me in those early days than for the others, because I was so ambitious,
and took religious difficulties so hard. How old I felt at 17. Indeed,
at 14 I felt quite grown up. In 1843 I felt I had begun the career in
Australia that I had anticipated in Scotland. I was trusted to teach
little girls, and they interested me, each individual with a
difference. I had seen things I had written in print. If I was one of
the oldest in feeling of the young folk in South Australia in my teens,
I am the youngest woman in feeling in my eighties; so I have had
abundant compensation.