It is useless, my good friend, to add fuel to the fire that has been blazing too long already.
ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO CAPTAIN PIPER, ‘THURSDAY AFTERNOON’ C. 1801
The duke of Portland’s response to John Macarthur’s letter arrived in 1798, nearly a year after John had sent it, and it was not, as far as Hunter was concerned, the least bit heartening. His Grace was so sure of Hunter’s ‘penetration and judgment’ as to have no doubt that he would surely avail himself ‘of every suggestion contained in Captain Macarthur’s letter.’1
Later letters chastised Hunter further, and continued to harp on the subject of costs, trading monopolies and rum. Anonymous sources made allegations of gross profiteering and trading in liquor by the officers. This much was old news. Of particular concern to the duke, though, were new allegations that ‘this sort of traffic is not confined to the officers, but is carried on in the Government House’. Hunter was not implicated directly, but his staff was. By April 1800 it was all over for Hunter. Phillip Gidley King, who had sailed on the First Fleet as a lieutenant, subordinate to Hunter, was back in the colony with his wife—Elizabeth’s friend Anna Josepha—and carrying Hunter’s sternly worded recall to England.
Elizabeth’s coterie was brilliant again. Mrs Paterson and her newly promoted husband had returned with the Kings, and now the Macarthurs often stayed with the Patersons in Sydney. Embarrassingly, King was not only a messenger but also Hunter’s replacement and Hunter treated him with a cold indifference that soon descended into overt hostility. John Macarthur’s sense of his own importance and influence, always strong, was firmly bolstered by this political coup but, always mercurial, he did not spend long basking in the glow of his victory over Hunter. Enough was enough, it seems, and it was time to return to England.
In a move that shocked the colony John Macarthur put Elizabeth Farm up for sale: lock, stock and barrel. Macarthur offered the farm to the only purchaser who could afford it—the crown. He set the price at £4000, which included all the livestock, buildings and more than 500 hectares of land (of which 160 were cleared). Newly appointed Governor King thought buying it would be a good idea but needed to wait for permission from the colonial office. The duke of Portland, in his eventual reply, vetoed the purchase of Elizabeth Farm and, highly disapprovingly, agreed only that King could buy the cattle and the sheep. Ignoring every positive thing that had been written about Captain Macarthur’s farming efforts since 1793, Portland could ‘by no means account for his being a farmer to the extent he appears to be,’ because he already had a job, as a serving regimental officer.2 It seems not to have occurred to the duke that the extent of the Macarthurs’ farming activities may have been just as much the result of Elizabeth’s efforts as of John’s.
It is entirely possible that Elizabeth was unaware, at least initially, of John’s offer to sell the farm. She certainly had enough on her plate at home. Young Edward had left for school in England but Elizabeth was, in 1800, caring for four children—Elizabeth (aged eight), John (six), Mary (five) and James (two)—and she was pregnant with another (William, who would be born on 15 December, the same birthdate as his living brother James). Or perhaps Elizabeth was aware, and had had enough of New South Wales, too, and fully supported the sale. Ideally she and John could sell up, with enough profit to move back to a comfortable life in England, and raise their children in proximity to family and friends. Either way the reasons for deciding to sell remain obscure. But by 1801, before Governor King had received the duke of Portland’s reply, the Macarthurs had decided not to sell after all. There are no records explaining the change of heart, but it is hard to believe that Elizabeth’s views weren’t being expressed, perhaps vehemently so, when she learned of the intended sale.
As if Elizabeth didn’t already have enough to worry about, in June 1801, when baby William was only six months old, John Macarthur was involved in yet another fracas. A visiting naval lieutenant, Marshall, allegedly stole from the effects of a young man who had been lost overboard. Captain Macarthur, acting commandant of the troops at the time, investigated the claims, and Marshall eventually confessed. Governor King issued Marshall with a severe reprimand and booked him an ignominious passage home. Marshall focused his embarrassed rage entirely on John Macarthur, accosting him in the parade ground, the hub of Sydney Town. After a brief exchange of insults, John Macarthur challenged Marshall to a duel.
This time it is certain that Elizabeth had no idea. The combatants were both in Sydney, well over an hour’s ride from Parramatta, but although they were scheduled to meet later that same afternoon, technical points of honour meant the duel did not take place. Feverish negotiations continued all afternoon but an appropriately senior second for Marshall could not be found or agreed on. Marshall turned up anyway and was incensed when Captain Macarthur and his second, Captain Abbott, did not. Marshall had all night to stew on it. The following day just before noon, again at the parade ground, a furious and shouting Marshall struck Abbott on the shoulder with a bludgeon before looking set to use it on John Macarthur’s head. John drew his sword and threatened to run the young naval lieutenant through. Marshall lowered his own crude weapon, and was taken to the guard house.3
Did John Macarthur manage to keep this escapade from his wife? In the small world of New South Wales society, it seems unlikely. Just as she had in the wake of John’s first duel, on the wharves of Plymouth over a decade before, Elizabeth once again faced losing her husband—and her family’s financial future—as a direct result of his impulsive behaviour. At the subsequent trial Marshall escaped the noose, although his naval career was over. On the charge of attacking Abbott, Marshall was fined £50 and ordered to be gaoled for twelve months, in England. Given that Macarthur had received no actual blow, Marshall’s attack on him was referred to London.
The court was presided over by Atkins, but otherwise made up of officers from the New South Wales Corps and a solitary naval lieutenant. Not one to take life’s blows quietly, Marshall strongly protested that the military make-up of the bench rendered it impossibly biased against him. Governor King, a navy man, prevaricated and called on Judge-Advocate Atkins to reconvene the court, but the officers of the corps were incensed: King’s request constituted an insult of the highest order. How dare the governor imply that the military men did not act impartially? Macarthur threatened to write to the authorities in England and any friendly goodwill between the King and the Macarthur families evaporated. Almost a decade later King would write that there was no society where the clashing of duty and interest between the governor and the governed was more violent than in New South Wales, and more particularly so if the governor did his duty.4
No matter what Elizabeth thought of her husband’s views, her hard-won friendships with Anna King and Elizabeth Paterson were affected by them. Among the ladies’ friends was a young Lieutenant Matthew Flinders, who had, in 1798–99, circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land and proved it to be an island. He then sailed back to England, married, and in 1802 was again in New South Wales. He wrote regretfully to his wife in England about how much she might have enjoyed Sydney, if only he’d been allowed to bring her. Flinders was friends with all the ladies in Elizabeth’s circle but clearly had his favourites. ‘Two better or more agreeable women than Mrs King and Mrs Paterson are not easily found; these would have been thy choicest friends,’ he wrote to his wife, although he also noted that the other ladies, including Elizabeth Macarthur, would be perfectly fine as ‘visiting acquaintances’ and, he conceded, ‘very agreeable for short periods’.5
As it happened, Elizabeth Paterson and Anna King were close friends. A decade earlier the Patersons and the Kings spent fifteen months living on Norfolk Island. Together Mrs Paterson and Mrs King were instrumental in establishing Sydney’s first home for orphans, and the children of ‘undesirable’ parents. One or both of the ladies visited every day to ‘ensure the cleanliness, the instruction and the good quality of the food’, and visitors were impressed by their ‘solicitude and touching care’.6 Elizabeth was never involved with the orphanage and perhaps this further accelerated her family’s falling out with the Kings. Elizabeth Macarthur was not the sort of woman, nor did she have the time, to indulge in the public performance of good works, particularly when friends closer to home needed her more. In August 1801 Elizabeth’s friend and neighbour Betsy Marsden had a terrible accident. Not twenty metres from the Marsden farm gate her carriage overturned, spilling out a pregnant Betsy and her three-year-old son, Charles, who died in his mother’s arms. Two months later Betsy gave birth to another boy, John, but this didn’t cure her heartbreak and depression, and she didn’t write to friends in England for more than a year.
Betsy Marsden wasn’t alone in her grief. Almost all of Elizabeth’s friends had lost, or would lose, a child. Mrs King’s daughter Utricia, the third of her five children, was about two when she died in 1797.7 And now the King’s older children, Phillip and Maria, rather than returning to Sydney with their parents, remained in England, safe from colonial mishaps. Louisa Abbott’s third child, Harriet, daughter of John Macarthur’s friend and colleague Captain Edward Abbott, died aged about two.8 Elizabeth Paterson had no children, or at least none that survived long enough to be recorded, and it would be a rare woman who didn’t grieve for what she couldn’t have. And a rare woman too who, like Elizabeth Macarthur, didn’t share her friends’ hurts and sorrows.
But Elizabeth’s friendship woes continued apace. After falling out with Anna King, it was almost inevitable that Elizabeth’s friendship with Elizabeth Paterson would not endure. During the Marshall affair, John’s commanding officer, William Paterson, at first provided his full support. (Paterson was in fact one of the five who had passed judgment on Marshall and he joined Macarthur in writing to the authorities at home to complain about Governor King.) But John pushed the friendship too far when he tried to induce Paterson to end his social relationship with the governor. King and Paterson were both protégés of the redoubtable Sir Joseph Banks, and they shared a keen interest in the natural sciences. But even without King and Paterson’s shared interests, John should also have known that the relationship between Paterson’s wife and King’s made any rift impossible
Then somehow, amidst all the bickering, Colonel Paterson came to believe that a private friendly letter, written by his wife to Elizabeth Macarthur, had been made public by John, who ‘in communicating its contents, misconstrued it’.9 If only we knew what the letter said! The offence caused was enough to have Paterson challenge John Macarthur to a duel. It was an extraordinary move for a colonel to make against his second-in-command, and hardly conducive to regimental discipline. Surely for any other offence Paterson could, or should, have invoked military regulations and reprimanded or punished Macarthur accordingly. Paterson’s challenge was issued on 10 September 1801, for a rendezvous the following day, but rain prevented the contest for another four days. Again, it is unlikely that either wife was told of, or knew of, her husband’s impending folly, although the letter must also have been a source of friction between them. For the women though, their only recourse was to cut each other dead socially, rather than to shoot each other dead literally. In the event, it was Anna King who proved herself to be quite the social duellist.
On 13 September 1801, the day before the duel eventually took place, Elizabeth Macarthur received a shocking social slight. Governor and Mrs King sent out invitations to celebrate the anniversary of King George III’s coronation to every officer of the NSW Corps—except to John and Elizabeth Macarthur. In a demonstration of solidarity, Macarthur’s closest allies, known usually to be the most peaceable of men, declined their own invitations: Captain Abbott (who had known the Macarthurs since he shared a cabin with them on the Scarborough); Ensign Minchin (whose descendants would make sparkling wine at Minchinbury, the family estate); and brothers Captain John Piper (who would become a good friend to Elizabeth and who named his Sydney property Point Piper) and Ensign Hugh Piper.
The following day, at one in the afternoon, William Paterson and John Macarthur met near Parramatta. Surgeon Harris, who had acted as John Macarthur’s second ten years before at the Plymouth wharves oversaw the proceedings. It wasn’t the first duel to be fought in the colony and it was far from the last, but it turned out to be one of the most unusual: against the odds, Macarthur hit his target. Paterson took a ball through his right shoulder and fell. Macarthur stood his ground while Paterson was assisted, waiting for Paterson to shoot in return, as was the protocol, but was soon informed that he should leave. Macarthur subsequently sent a note saying that he would be ready for Captain Paterson at any time. Paterson’s second interpreted the note to be ‘exulting in victory’, infuriating Macarthur, who never spoke to the man again.10
Governor King arrived in Parramatta that same afternoon, unaware of the incident, and found himself in the midst of a public furore. Perhaps John Macarthur, on arrival at home, found himself in the midst of a private one. Surely Elizabeth was fed up with John’s foolish and dangerous bravado. Paterson received medical care, and although for the first few days his situation was touch and go, he recovered. Macarthur and the two seconds were placed under ‘close arrest’, an arrangement which in practice meant the men merely stayed within the confines of their properties. Although Paterson had clearly erred in calling out his subordinate officer, King glossed over this and laid most of the blame, and all of his fury, squarely on Macarthur.
If John was berated at home by his wife, his subsequent correspondence shows nothing of it and instead shimmers with all the gleeful happiness of a man intent on needling his enemies. John was a man riding high on adrenalin and audacity and nothing anyone said could bring him back to earth. At first King threatened to send Macarthur to Norfolk Island; Macarthur, all innocent good faith, enquired whether his proposed exile was ‘intended as a punishment for some supposed offence, or whether it is considered as in the ordinary course of duty?’11 If it was a punishment, John demanded a copy of the charge and permission to answer it immediately before a general court martial. If it was the latter then John was forced, with all due respect, to point out to His Excellency that actually it was Captain Abbott’s duty, as Macarthur’s junior, to go to Norfolk Island. Here, for once, John’s impeccable logic saved Elizabeth from exile to the tiny Pacific island.
King could legally only keep Macarthur, and the seconds, under close arrest for eight days. So, in lieu of confining him to the common gaol, King offered bail if Macarthur would be bound under civil law to keep the peace. Macarthur was affronted by the implication that he intended to break the peace and yet again made a stand. He declined to come out of close arrest, but said that in the interests of the service he was willing to perform his duties if it remained understood that he was still under arrest. Further, John again demanded to be brought before a court martial so that:
I may have an opportunity of clearly proving that I have betrayed no private correspondence, no private conversations, that I have displayed no exultation over a wounded opponent, or in any way behaved unlike a gentleman, but that, on the contrary, I am the person who has been betrayed, who has been exulted over and who has been treated with the basest ingratitude and the blackest treachery.12
Governor King, besieged by the many who wished Macarthur ill and completely fed up himself, decided to grant John’s request. King ordered him to stand trial—in England.
If the decision seemed extreme to the colonists, it did not to those in England to whom King had been sending his formal dispatches, which were full of his frustrations with John Macarthur and the rest of the New South Wales Corps. Indeed, King was almost hysterical in his hatred of John Macarthur—though within a year he would confess that he pitied and esteemed Elizabeth.13 In these sentiments he was not alone. The senior men of the colony invariably liked Elizabeth Macarthur, even as she fell in and out of their wives’ good graces. While John was written about by many as a devious villain, it is impossible to find even the merest hint of dislike for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, however, had many reasons not to love Governor King. How hurtful that a former friend would deliberately send her husband into exile. By ordering John Macarthur to England for trial, King rid himself of a constant irritant and freed himself from any claims of an unfair judicial process. The only thing souring his plans was John himself, who, while waiting for an appropriate ship to England, remained in high spirits. John purchased 1200 sheep and a farm at Toongabbie from Colonel Foveaux, who was posted to Norfolk Island (where he proved himself a sadist of the highest order). Some have suggested that Macarthur bought Foveaux’s sheep just to vex King, who was on the verge of buying them for the colony. John dashed off genial farewell notes to his friends, and enhanced his popularity with his soldiers by treating each of them to a pound each of meat and wheat, and a gill of spirits to wash it down.
While John was saying his jolly farewells, Elizabeth was worrying about the details. She had mere weeks to prepare the household and enterprises for John’s absence. At the same time, everything had to be prepared in haste for the voyage: clothes, food, travelling trunks and baggage. There was linen to be washed and mended, before being carefully folded and packed away. And there were dozens of decisions to be made about the farms (including the new one just purchased), the finances and, most important of all, the children. Should the older ones stay home with their mother, or travel with their father?
England had been at war with France and her allies, off and on, for nearly a decade so the usual dangers of a sea voyage were exacerbated by the possibility of an encounter with an enemy warship. Elizabeth had long been a soldier’s wife, but she’d never before sent her husband, let alone her children, off towards a conflict. A mere two months after his duel with Paterson, on 15 November 1801, John sailed for England, leaving Elizabeth to manage without him. No one was quite sure when, or if, he would come home. With John so buoyant and all the children’s spirits to be kept up, if Elizabeth wept she did so in private.