LOVERS AND FRIENDS.
It is always supposed that thoughts of love and marriage are the chief
concerns in a girl's life, but it was not the case with me. I had only
two offers of marriage in my life, and I refused both. The first might
have been accepted if it had not been for the Calvinistic creed that
made me shrink from the possibility of bringing children into the world
with so little chance of eternal salvation, so I said. "No" to a very
clever young man, with whom I had argued on many points, and with whom,
if I had married him, I should have argued till one of us died! I was
17, and had just begun to earn money. I told him why I had refused him,
and that it was final. In six weeks he was engaged to another woman. My
second offer was made to me when I was 23 by a man aged 55, with three
children. He was an artist, whose second wife and several children had
been murdered by the Maoris near Wanganui during the Maori insurrection
of the forties, and he had come to Adelaide with the three survivors.
The massacre of that family was only one of the terrible tragedies of
that time, but it was not the less shocking. The Maoris had never been
known to kill a woman, and when the house was attacked, Mr. Gilfillan
got out of a back window to call the soldiers to their help. Though
struck on the back of the head and the neck and scarred for life--owing
to which he was always compelled to wear his hair long--he succeeded in
his mission. His wife put her own two children through the window, and
they toddled off hand in hand until they met their father returning
with the soldiers. The eldest daughter, a girl of 13, escaped with a
neighbour's child, a baby in arms. She was seen by the Maoris, struck
on the forehead with a stone axe, and left unconscious. The crying of
the baby roused her, and she went to the cowyard and milked a cow to
get milk for the hungry child, and there she was found by the soldiers.
She was queer in her ways and thoughts afterwards, and, it was said,
always remained 13 years old. She died in November last, aged 74. Her
stepmother and the baby and her own brother and sister were murdered
one by one as they tried to escape by the same window that had led the
rest of the family to safety. One of the toddling survivors still lives
in New Zealand. Now, these are all the chances of marriage I have had
in my life. Dickens, in "David Copperfield," speaks of an old maid who
keeps the remembrance of some one who might have made her an offer, the
shadowy Pidger, in her heart until her death. I cannot forget these two
men. I am constantly meeting with the children, grandchildren, and even
great-grandchildren of the first. As for the other, Andrew Murray gave
me a fine landscape painted by John A. Gilfillan as a slight
acknowledgment of services rendered to his newspaper when he left it to
go to Melbourne, and it hangs up in my sitting room for all to see. Mr.
Gilfillan had a commission to paint "The Landing of Capt. Cook" with
the help of Portraits and miniatures of the principal personages, and
some sketches of his of Adelaide in 1849 are in the Adelaide Art
Gallery. If the number of lovers has been few, no woman in Australia
has been richer in friends. This narrative will show what good
friends--men as well as women--have helped me and sympathized in my
work and my aims. I believe that if I had been in love, especially if I
had been disappointed in love, my novels would have been stronger and
more interesting; but I kept a watch over myself, which I felt I knew I
needed, for I was both imaginative and affectionate. I did not want to
give my heart away. I did not desire a love disappointment, even for
the sake of experience. I was 30 years old before the dark veil of
religious despondency was completely lifted from my soul, and by that
time I felt myself booked for a single life. People married young if
they married at all in those days. The single aunts put on caps at 30
as a sort of signal that they accepted their fate; and, although I did
not do so, I felt a good deal the same.
I went on with daily teaching for some years, during which my father's
health declined, but before his death two things had happened to cheer
him. My brother John left Myponga and came to town, and obtained a
clerkship in the South Australian Bank at 100 pounds a year. It was
whilst occupying a position in the bank that he had some slight
connection with the notorious Capt. Starlight, afterwards the hero of
"Robbery Under Arms," for through his hands much of the stolen money
passed. In 1900, when Mrs. Young and I were leaving Melbourne on our
visit to Sydney, we were introduced to "Rolf Boldrewood," the author of
that well-known story. His grave face lit up with a smile when my
friend referred to the author of her son's hero. "Ah!" and he shook his
head slowly. "I'm not quite sure about the wisdom of making heroes of
such sorry stuff," he replied. I thought I could do better with a
school. I was 20, and my sister Mary nearly 16, and my mother could
help. My school opened in May, 1846, a month before my father's death,
and he thought that our difficulties were over. My younger brother,
David Wauchope, had been left behind for his education with the three
maiden aunts, but he came out about the end of that year, and began
life in the office of the Burra Mine at a small salary. My eldest
brother William, was not successful in the country, and went to Western
Australia for some years, and later to New Zealand, where he died in
his eightieth year, soon after the death of my brother John in his
seventy-ninth, leaving me the only survivor of eight born and of six
who grew to full age. My eldest sister Agnes died of consumption at the
age of 16; and, as my father's mother and four of his brothers and
sisters had died of this malady, it was supposed to be in the family.
The only time I was kept out of school during the nine years at Miss
Phin's was when I was 12 when I had a cough and suppuration of the
glands of the neck. As this was the way in which Agnes's illness had
begun, my parents were alarmed, though I had no idea of it. I was
leeched and blistered and drugged; I was put into flannel for the only
time in my life; I was sent away for change of air; but no one could
discover that the cough was from the lungs. It passed away with the
cold weather, and I cannot say that I have had any illness since. My
father died of decline, but, if he had been more fortunate, I think he
would have lived much longer. Probably my mother's life was prolonged
beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle
life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must
have helped me. There were no special precautions against infection in
those days: but no other member of the family took it, and the alarm
about me was three years after Agnes's death.
But to go on to those early days of the forties. There were two
families with whom we were intimate. Mr. George Tinline (who had been
clerk to my fathers' old friend, William Rutherford, of Jedburgh), who
was in the bank of South Australia when in 1839, my father went to put
our small funds in safety, introduced us to a beautiful young widow,
Mrs. Sharpe, and her sisters Eliza and Harriet, and her brother, John
Taylor. Harriet afterwards married Edward Stirling, a close friend of
my brother-in-law, Andrew Murray, and I was a great deal interested in
the Stirlings and their eight children. Mr. William Bakewell, of
Bartley & Bakewell, solicitors, married Jane Warren of Springfield,
Barossa, and I was a familiar friend of their five children. In one
house I was "Miss Spence, the storyteller," in the other "Miss Spence,
the teller of tales!" Some of the tales appeared long after as
Christmas stories in The Adelaide Observer, but my young hearers
preferred the oral narrative, with appropriate gestures and emphasis,
and had no scruple about making faces, to anything printed in books. I
took great liberties with what I had read and sometimes invented all.
It was a part of their education, probably--certainly, it was a part of
mine, and it gave me a command of language which helped me when I
became a public speaker. My brother-in-law's newspaper furnished an
occasional opportunity to me, though no doubt he considered that he
could fill his twice-a-week journal without my help. He was, however,
helpful in other ways. He was one of the subscribers to a Reading Club,
and through him I had access to newspapers and magazines. The South
Australian Institute was a treasure to the family. I recollect a
newcomer being astonished at my sister Mary having read Macaulay's
History. "Why, it was only just out when I left England," said he.
"Well, it did not take longer to come out than you did," was her reply.
We were all omnivorous readers, and the old-fashioned accomplishment of
reading aloud was cultivated by both brothers and sisters. I was the
only one who could translate French at sight, thanks to Miss Phin's
giving me so much of Racine and Moliere and other good French authors
in my school days.
But more important than all this was the fact that we took hold of the
growth and development of South Australia, and identified ourselves
with it. Nothing is insignificant in the history of a young community,
and--above all--nothing seems impossible. I had learned what wealth
was, and a great deal about production and exchange for myself in the
early history of South Australia--of the value of machinery, of roads
and bridges, and of ports for transport and export. I had seen the
4-lb. loaf at 4/ and at 4d. I had seen Adelaide the dearest and the
cheapest place to live in. I had seen money orders for 2/6, and even
for 6d., current when gold and silver were very scarce. Even before the
discovery of copper South Australia had turned the corner. We had gone
on the land and become primary producers, and before the gold
discoveries in Victoria revolutionized Australia and attracted our male
population across the border, the Central State was the only one which
had a large surplus of wheat and hay to send to the goldfields.
Edward Wilson of The Argus, riding overland to Adelaide about 1848, was
amazed to see from Willunga onward fenced and cultivated farms, with
decent homesteads and machinery up to date. The Ridley stripper enabled
our people to reap and thresh the corn when hands were all too few for
the sickle. He said he felt as if the garden of Paradise must have been
in King William street and that the earliest difference in the
world--that between Cain and Abel--was about the advantages of the
80-acre system. Australia generally had already to realize the fact
that the pastoral industry was not enough for its development, and
South Australia had seemed to solve the problem through the doctrinaire
founders, of family immigration, small estates, and the development of
agriculture, horticulture, and viticulture. We owed a great deal in the
latter branches to our German settlers--sent out originally by Mr. G.
F. Angas, whose interest was aroused by their suffering persecution for
religious dissent--who saw that Australia had a better climate than
that of the Fatherland. We owed much to Mr. George Stevenson, who was
an enthusiastic gardener and fruitgrower, and lectured on these
subjects, but the contrast between the environs of Adelaide and those
of Sydney and Melbourne were striking, and Mr. Wilson never lost an
opportunity of calling on the Victorian Legislature and the Victorian
public to develop their own wonderful resources. When you take gold out
of the ground there is less gold to win. When you grow golden grain or
ruddy grapes this year you may expect as much and as good next year. My
brother David went with the thousands to buy their fortunes at the
diggings, but my brother John stuck to the Bank of South Australia. My
brother-in-law's subscribers and his printers had gone off and left him
woefully embarrassed. He went to Melbourne. My friend John Taylor left
his sheep in the wilderness and came to Adelaide to the aid of The
Register. He had been engaged to Sophia Stephens, who died, and her
father John Stephens also died soon after; and Mr. Taylor shouldered
the management of the paper until the time of stress was over.
When Andrew Murray obtained employment on The Argus as commercial
editor, he left his twice-a-week newspaper in the charge of Mr. W. W.
Whitridge, my brother John, and myself. If anything was needed to be
written on State aid to religion I was to do it, as Mr. Whitridge was
opposed to it. This lasted three months. The next quarter there were no
funds for the editor, so John and I carried it on, and then let it die.
At that time I believed in State aid, which had been abolished by the
first elected Parliament of South Australia, although that Parliament
consisted of one-third nominees pledged to vote for its continuance.