Thirty Years in Australia

by Ada Cambridge

The vans came, and we settled ourselves. I find an entry in my journal for February 10th (1873), "G. and I making a dining-table." And, three days later, "G. and I making a sideboard." We must have done these things, or they would not be set down, but how we did them, and with what result, I have no recollection, although the two sofas, also made for this house, are as plain to the mind's eye as they ever were. We could buy furniture at the shops—"stores" we called them—of our little town; bullock drays, that took weeks to do the journey from Melbourne, kept us regularly supplied with all necessary goods; so that the explanation of our various dabblings in the art of cabinet making will at once occur to the reader. We had expended the capital of £50 with which we started housekeeping, and, if I remember rightly, the parson's stipend did not exceed £250 per annum. In a parish of the dimensions of this one, horses (as distinct from a horse) were indispensable, and they had to be fed and shod. A buggy (second hand) and a piano (on time payment) were here added to the establishment; likewise a second baby and a nurse-girl. To make ends meet, and at the same time to have things as one wished—nay, as one was determined—to have them, considerable ingenuity and invention were required. I flatter myself that we did well, considering our youth, and that we were new to the conditions in which we found ourselves; but still we had to learn experience in many directions at an unexpected cost in cash. It is extraordinary how quickly money melts in Australia, compared with what it does at home. The reason is not that living is dearer, but that the ways of this country are so lavish and free-handed.

It was about this year (1873) that I began to write for the Australasian—trifling little papers, at long intervals—not because I found any fascination in such work to dispute the claims of the house and family, but to add something to the family resources when they threatened to give out. I had no time for more, until one day the editor of the Australasian wrote to inquire what had become of me and my contributions, when it occurred to me that it might be worth while to make time.

The Sunday school was at the further end of the township—it was the common school on week-days—and I used to rush thither morning and afternoon on Sundays, and return breathless to attend to my baby and play the (American) organ in church. I trained the choir, visited every parishioner within reach, did all that hard work unfairly demanded of the parson's wife under these democratic systems of church government; besides the multifarious work at home—making and mending, cooking and nursing, and, as it appears, building sideboards and dining-tables. Moreover, the Free and Compulsory Education Act had come into force (January 1873), and as the State had to be satisfied that our little nursemaid, who was within school age, was being educated according to law, I charged myself with this job also, rather than lose her services for the greater part of the day. And I may add that the baby in arms was rarely trusted to this functionary, except for airings in the garden under my eye. All other attentions that it required I gave myself. So there was enough occupation for one not-over-robust woman, without the addition of literary work.

Touching upon this matter, I am reminded of a conversation that I had with Bishop Perry soon after our arrival. It was not the hardships of the clergy that troubled him, he said, but the killing strain upon their wives—literally killing, for he quoted figures to show the disproportionately high rate of sickness and untimely death amongst them. I rather think I have heard Bishop Moorhouse express himself to the same effect. Certainly my own long and intimate acquaintance with the subject leaves me in no doubt as to which of the clerical pair is in the shafts and which in the lead. It is not the parson who, to use the phrase so often in his mouth, bears the burden and heat of the day, but the uncomplaining drudge who backs him at all points, and too often makes him selfish and idle by her readiness to do his work as well as her own. Under colonial and "disestablished" conditions, he is not largely representative of the class from which our home clergy are drawn; as a general rule he comes from that which, while as good as another in many ways, and perhaps better in some, is not bred to the chivalrous view of women and wives—regards them, that is to say, as intended for no other purpose than to wait upon men and husbands. The customs of the profession accord so well with this idea that it is not surprising to find a pious man killing his wife by inches without having the slightest notion that he is doing so.

Amongst my colleagues of those days was a lady of exceptional culture and refinement. Her husband, a Bush clergyman like my own, was poor, of course, and they averaged a baby a year until the baker's dozen was reached, if not passed. The way she "kept" this family was such that I never saw a dirty child or a soiled table-cloth or a slatternly touch of any sort in her house. She taught the children as they grew old enough; I know that she did scrubbing and washing with her own hands. In addition, she did "the parish work."

One day, when she was run down and worn out, her husband told her that the organist, from some cause, was not forthcoming, and there was no time to procure a substitute. "So, my dear, you will have to play for us." He knew that she could do it, for she had often done it before; it was the merest trifle of a task, compared with those she hourly struggled with; but it was the one straw too many that breaks the over-loaded back. She looked at him in silence for a moment, flung out her arms wildly, and, exclaiming "I can do no more!" went mad upon the spot. She had to be put into an asylum, and the parish and the husband and the growing young ones had to do the best they could without her. The husband, I may say, was—apart from being the inadvertent accomplice of the parish in her destruction—one of the very best of husbands and of men.

Only the other day I attended a gathering of the friends of a lady to whose loved memory it was desired to raise some public monument. She, lately dead, had been our bishop's wife, and so the meeting was appropriately presided over by dignitaries of the Church. They stood up, one after another, to air their views. "I propose," said a worthy canon, with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "that every clergyman's wife be a collector for the fund"—of course. I heard a sigh and a sotto-voce ejaculation behind me—"the poor clergymen's wives!"—and the incident exactly shows how their male belongings treat them.

I, however, have not been a victim. Before I was willing myself to lighten the double strain, I was compelled to do so, and the parish—as well as all succeeding parishes—had to put up with it. But very early in the day I evolved opinions of my own as to the right of parishes to exact tributes of service from private individuals in no way bound to give them. And I came to a conclusion, which I have never since seen reason to alter, that the less a clergyman's wife meddles with her husband's business (except between themselves) the better, not only for her but for all parties. After I could plead the claims of a profession of my own, my position in the scheme of things was finally and comfortably defined. Parishes, like clerical husbands, when they tyrannise, do it unconsciously, from want of thought, and not from want of heart. At any rate, my parish, for the time being, never, so far as I can see, bears me any malice for my desertion of the female-curate's post, but quite the contrary. For whereas we should be sure to chafe each other if forced into an unnatural and uncongenial relationship, we are now the best of neighbours and mutually-respecting friends.

Having been a fervid young churchwoman at home, where I district-visited in the most exemplary manner, with tracts and soup-tickets and all the rest of it, for my own pleasure, parish work, when it became my business, was not at all irksome as such. And there was one part of it which was a source of great enjoyment during the three years that we lived in Y——.

It was the training of the choir. At first, with much nervousness and diffidence, I taught hymns and chants for an hour a week, and played them at the Sunday services in the midst of my little band, which had never conceived of higher flights. But ambition was generated in us as we warmed to our work. Recruits arrived from far and near, some of whom could read music, and we spread ourselves in an occasional anthem. There have been, and are, many thousands of choirs as pleased with themselves as we were, but never was there one more harmonious, in every sense of the word. To the best of my recollection we never had a tiff, and such was the attraction of our meetings that no weather—rain, storm, mud, darkness—could keep away the men (some of them quite elderly), who had to tramp miles through the Bush, after a hard day's work, to attend them. Especially in the winter.