WIDENING INTERESTS.
During this period my work on the State Children's Council continued,
and I never found time hang heavily on my hands; so that when Mr.
Kingston met me one day later in the year, and told me he particularly
wished me to accept an appointment as a member of the Destitute Board,
I hesitated. "I am too old," I objected. "No, no, Miss Spence," he
replied laughingly, "it is only we who grow old--you have the gift of
perpetual youth." But I was nearly 72, and at any rate I thought I
should first consult my friends. I found them all eager that I should
accept the position. I had agitated long and often for the appointment
of women on all public boards, particularly where both sexes came under
treatment, and I accepted the post. Although often I have found the
work tiring, I have never regretted the step I took in joining the
board. Experience has emphasized my early desire that two women at
least should occupy positions on it. I hope that future Governments
will rectify the mistake of past years by utilizing to a greater extent
the valuable aid of capable and sympathetic women in a branch of public
work for which they are peculiarly fitted. Early in my career as a
member of the board I found grave defects in the daily bill of fare,
and set myself to the task of remedying them as far as lay in my power.
For 30 years the same kind of soup, day in and day out, followed by the
eternal and evergreen cabbage as a vegetable, in season and out of
season, found its way to the table. My own tastes and mode of life were
simplicity personified, but my stomach revolted against a dietary as
unvaried as it was unappetizing. An old servant who heard that I
attended the Destitute Asylum every week was loud in her lamentations
that "poor dear Miss Spence was so reduced that she had to go to the
Destitute every week for rations!" My thankfulness that she had
misconceived the position stirred me to leave no stone unturned for the
betterment of the destitute bill of fare. I was successful, and the
varied diet now enjoyed bears witness to the humanitarian views of all
the members of the board, who were as anxious to help in the reform as
I was. My heart has always gone out to the poor old folk whose faces
bear the impress of long years of strenuous toil and who at the close
of life at least should find a haven of restfulness and peace in the
State for whose advancement they have laboured in the past.
She was a witty woman who divided autobiographies into two classes...
autobiographies and ought-not-to-biographies--but I am sure she never
attempted to write one herself. There is so much in one's life that
looms large from a personal point of view about which other people
would care little, and the difficulty often arises, not so much about
what to put in as what to leave out.
How much my personal interests had widened during my absence from home
could be gauged somewhat by the enormous increase in my correspondence
after my return. American, Canadian, English, and Continental
correspondents have kept me for many years well informed on reform and
kindred subjects; and the letters I have received, and the replies they
have drawn from me, go far to make me doubt the accuracy of the
accepted belief that "letter writing has become a lost art." A full
mind with a facile pen makes letter writing a joy, and both of these
attributes I think I may fairly claim. My correspondence with Alfred
Cridge was kept up till his death a few years ago, and his son,
following worthily in the footsteps of a noble father, has taken up the
broken threads of the lifework of my friend, and is doing his utmost to
carry it to a successful issue. My love of reading, which has been a
characteristic feature of my life, found full scope for expression in
the piles of books which reached us from all parts of the world. It has
always been my desire to keep abreast of current literature, and this,
by means of my book club and other sources, I was able to do. Sometimes
my friends from abroad sent me copies of their own publications, Dr.
Bayard Holmes invariably forwarding to me a presentation copy of his
most valuable treatises on medical subjects. Mrs. Stetson's poems and
economic writings have always proved a source of inspiration to me, and
I have distributed her books wherever I have thought they would be
appreciated. Just at this time my financial position became brighter. I
was fortunate in being able to dispose of my two properties in East
Adelaide, and the purchasing of an annuity freed me entirely from money
and domestic worries. Perhaps the greatest joy of all was that I was
once more able to follow my charitable inclinations by giving that
little mite which, coming opportunely, gladdens the heart of the
disconsolate widow or smoothes the path of the struggling worker.
Giving up my home entirely, I went to live with my dear friend Mrs.
Baker, at Osmond terrace, where, perhaps, I spent the most restful
period of a somewhat eventful life.
The inauguration of a Criminological Society in Adelaide was a welcome
sign to me of the growing public interest in methods of prison
discipline and treatment. I was one of the foundation members of the
society, and attended every meeting during its short existence. My one
contribution to the lectures delivered under its auspices was on
"Heredity and Environment." This was a subject in which I had long been
interested, holding the view that environment had more to do with the
building up of character than heredity had to do with its decadence.
How much or how little truth there is in the cynical observation that
the only believers in heredity nowadays are the fathers of very clever
sons I am not prepared to say. I do say, however, that with the cruel
and hopeless law of heredity as laid down by Zola and Ibsen I have
little sympathy. According to these pessimists, who ride heredity to
death, we inherit only the vices, the weaknesses, and the diseases of
our ancestors. If this, however, were really the case, the world would
be growing worse and not better, as it assuredly is, with every
succeeding generation. The contrary view taken of the matter by Ibsen's
fellowcountryman, Bjornsen, appears to me to be so much more
commonsense and humanizing. He holds that if we know that our ancestors
drank and gambled to excess, or were violent-tempered or immoral, we
can quite easily avoid the pitfall, knowing it to be there. Too readily
wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors,
society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as
they should do, to their own selfish and weak indulgence and lack of
self-control. Heredity, though an enormous factor in our constitution,
need not be regarded as an over-mastering fate, for each human being
has an almost limitless parentage to draw upon. Each child has both a
father and a mother, and two grandparents on both sides, increasing as
one goes back. But, besides drawing on a much wider ancestry than the
immediate parents, we have more than we inherit, or where could the law
of progress operate? Each generation, each child who is born, comes
into a slightly different world, fed by more experience, blown upon by
fresh influences. And each individual comes into the world, not with a
body merely, but with a soul; and this soul is susceptible to
impressions, not only from the outer material world but from the other
souls also impressed by the old and the new, by the material and the
ideal.
"The History of the Jukes" is continually cited as proving the power
and force of heredity. Most people who read the book through, however,
instead of merely accepting allusions one-sided and defective to it,
see clearly that it forms the strongest argument for change of
environment that ever was brought forward. The assumed name of Jukes is
given to the descendants of a worthless woman who emigrated to America
upwards of a century and a half ago, and from whom hundreds of
criminals, paupers, and prostitutes have descended. But how were the
Jukes' descendants dealt with during this period? No helping hand
removed the children from their vicious and criminal surroundings known
as one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York. Neither church
nor school took them under its protecting care. Born and reared in the
haunts of vice and crime, nothing but viciousness and criminality could
be expected as a result. Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member
of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian
treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that "there wasn't nothin'
in 'erry-ditty,' it was all tommy rot," I still hold to the belief that
environment plays the larger part in the formation of character. Every
phase of criminal reform is, I candidly admit, dealing with effects
rather than causes. Effects, however, must be dealt with, and the more
humanely they are dealt with the better for society at large. So long
as society shuts its eyes to the social conditions under which the
masses of the people live, move, and have their being as tending
towards lowering rather than uplifting the individual and the
community, the supply of cases for criminal treatment will
unfortunately show little tendency to decrease. The work before
reformers of the world is to prevent the creation of criminals by
changing the environment of those with criminal tendencies as well as
to seek to alleviate the resulting disease by methods of criminal
reform.
Many interesting lectures were given by prominent citizens under the
auspices of the society, which did a great deal to awaken the public
conscience on the important question of criminal reform. The Rev. J.
Day Thompson, who was then in the zenith of his intellectual power and
a noble supporter of all things that tended to the uplifting of
humanity, dealt with the land question in relation to crime. He gave a
telling illustration of his point--which I thought equally applicable
to the question of environment in relation to prison reform--that no
permanent good could result from social legislation until society
recognised and dealt with the root of the social evil, the land
question. "In a lunatic asylum," he said, "it is the custom to test the
sanity of patients by giving them a ladle with which to empty a tub of
water standing under a running tap. 'How do you decide?' the warder was
asked. 'Why, them as isn't idiots stops the tap.'" It was the Rev. J.
Day Thompson who first called me the "Grand Old Woman" of South
Australia. When he left Adelaide for the wider sphere of service open
to him in England I felt that we had lost one of the most cultured and
able men who had ever come among us, and one whom no community could
lose without being distinctly the poorer for his absence.
Just at this time the visit of Dr. and Mrs. Mills created a little
excitement in certain circles. Their lectures on Christian science,
both public and private, were wonderfully well attended, and I missed
few of them. I have all my life endeavoured to keep an open mind on
these questions, and have been prepared to accept new ideas and new
modes of thought. But, although I found much that was charming in the
lectures that swayed the minds of so many of my friends, I found little
to convince me that Christian scientists were right and the rest of the
world wrong in their interpretation of the meaning of life. So far as
the cultivation of will power, as it is called, is concerned, I have no
quarrel with those who maintain that a power of self-control is the
basis of human happiness. So far as the will can be trained to obey
only those instincts that tend to the growth and maintenance of
self-respect--to prevent the subordination of our better feelings to
the overpowering effects of passion, greed, or injustice--it must help
to the development of one of the primary necessities of a sane
existence. When, however, the same agency is brought to bear on the
treatment of diseases in any shape or form I find my faith wavering.
Though there may be more things in earth and heaven than are dreamed of
in my philosophy, I was not prepared to follow the teachings set before
us by the interpreters of this belief, whose visit had made an
interesting break in the lives of many people. Truth I find everywhere
expressed, goodness in all things; but I neither look for nor expect
perfection in any one thing the world has ever produced. "Tell me where
God is," a somewhat, cynical sceptic asked of a child. "Tell me where
He is not," replied the child; and the same thing applies to goodness.
Do not tell me where goodness is, but point out to, me, if you can,
where it is not. It is for each one to find out for himself where the
right path lies, and to follow it with all his strength of mind and of
purpose. Pippa's song, "God's in His heaven-all's right with the
world," does not mean that the time has come for us to lay down our
arms in the battle of right against wrong. No! no; it is an inspiration
for us to gird our loins afresh, to "right the wrongs that need
resistance;" for, God being in His heaven, and the world itself being
right, makes it so much easier to correct mistakes that are due to
human agencies and shortcomings only.
I found time to spend a pleasant week at Victor Harbour with my
friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Wyles. I remember one day being asked
whether I was not sorry I never married. "No," I replied, "for,
although I often envy my friends the happiness they find in their
children, I have never envied them their husbands." I think we must
have been in a frivolous mood; for a lady visitor, who was present,
capped my remark with the statement that she was quite sure Miss Spence
was thankful that when she died she would not be described as the
"relic" of any man. It was the same lady who on another occasion, when
one of the juvenile members of the party asked whether poets had to pay
for poetical licence, wittily replied, "No, my dear, but their readers
do!" Although so much of my time has been spent in public work, I have
by no means neglected or despised the social side of life. Visits to my
friends have always been delightful to me, and I have felt as much
interested in the domestic virtues of my many acquaintances as I have
been an admirer of their grasp of literature, politics, or any branch
of the arts or sciences in which they have been interested. This
seaside visit had been a welcome break in a year that had brought me a
new occupation as a member of the Destitute Board, had given me the
experience of a political campaign, had witnessed the framing of the
Constitution for the Commonwealth 'neath the Southern Cross, and had
seen effective voting advance from the academic stage into the realm of
practical politics. During the year Mrs. Young and I addressed together
26 meetings on this subject. One of the most interesting was at the
Blind School, North Adelaide. The keenness with which this audience
gripped every detail of the explanation showed us how splendidly they
had risen above their affliction. I was reminded of Helen Keller, the
American girl, who at the age of 21 months had lost sight and hearing,
and whom I had met in Chicago during my American visit, just before she
took her degree at Harvard University.
To all peacelovers the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the
South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less
degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has
always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to
my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether
unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the
publication of his book "Oceana," after his visit here in the
seventies. His indictment of England for her treatment of the Boers
from the earliest days of her occupation of Cape Colony was too
powerful to be ignored. I felt it to be impossible that so great a
historian as Froude should make such grave charges on insufficient
evidence. The annexation of 1877, so bitterly condemned by him,
followed by the treaty of peace of 1881, with its famous "suzerainty"
clause, was, I think, but a stepping stone to the war which was said to
have embittered the last years of the life of Queen Victoria. The one
voice raised in protest against the annexation of 1877 in the British
House of Commons was that of Mr. Leonard (now Lord) Courtney. Not
afraid to stand alone, though all the world were against him, the war
at the close of the century found Leonard Courtney again taking his
stand against the majority of his countrymen, and this time it cost him
his Parliamentary seat. I have often felt proud that the leadership of
proportional representation in England should have fallen into the
hands of so morally courageous a man as Leonard Courtney has invariably
proved himself to be.
We are apt to pride ourselves on the advance we have made in our
civilization; but our self-glorification received a rude shock at the
feelings of intolerance and race hatred that the war brought forth.
Freedom of speech became the monopoly of those who supported the war,
and the person who dared to express an opinion which differed from that
of the majority needed a great deal more than the ordinary allowance of
moral courage. Unfortunately the intolerance so characteristic of that
period is a feature, to a greater or lesser extent, of every
Parliamentary election in the Commonwealth. The clause in the Federal
Electoral Act which makes disturbance of a political meeting a penal
offence is a curious reflection on a so-called democratic community.
But, though its justification can scarcely be denied even by the
partisans of the noisier elements in a political crowd, its existence
must be deplored by every right-minded and truehearted citizen. In Miss
Rose Scott I found a sympathizer on this question of the war; and one
of the best speeches I ever heard her make was on Peace and
Arbitration. "Mafeking Day" was celebrated while we were in Sydney, and
I remember how we three--Miss Scott, Mrs. Young, and I--remained
indoors the whole day, at the charming home of our hostess, on Point
Piper road. The black band of death and desolation was too apparent for
us to feel that we could face the almost ribald excesses of that day. I
felt the war far less keenly than did my two friends; but it was bad
even for me. No one called, and the only companions of our chosen
solitude were the books we all loved so much, and
The secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind.
I had hoped that the Women's National Council, a branch of which was
formed in Adelaide a few years later, would have made a great deal of
the question of peace and arbitration, just as other branches have done
all over the world; and when the Peace Society was inaugurated a short
time ago I was glad to be able to express my sympathy with the movement
by becoming a member. As I was returning from a lecturing tour in the
south during this time, an old Scotch farm-wife came into the carriage
where I had been knitting in solitude. She was a woman of strong
feelings, and was bitterly opposed to the war. We chatted on the
subject for a time, getting along famously, until she discovered that I
was Miss Spence. "But you are a Unitarian!" she protested in a shocked
tone. I admitted the fact. "Oh, Miss Spence," she went on, "how can you
be so wicked as to deny the divinity of Christ?" I explained to her
what Unitarianism was, but she held dubiously aloof for a time. Then we
talked of other things. She told me of many family affairs, and when
she left me at the station she said, "All, well, Miss Spence, I've
learned something this morning, and that is that a Unitarian can be
just as good and honest as other folk."