Mrs Macquarie’s Pen

In Her Own Words: The Writings of Elizabeth Macquarie, transcribed and edited by Robin Walsh. Exisle Publishing in association with Macquarie University, 2011, 264 pages, $59.95 

Fittingly, Lachlan Macquarie received a great deal of attention during the 2010 bicentenary of his governorship of New South Wales. Now, Robin Walsh has allowed Macquarie’s loyal and supportive wife Elizabeth to tell her story, and no one could be better qualified for the task. Walsh is the curator of the Lachlan Macquarie room at Macquarie University Library and is responsible for the vast Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie digital archive (LEMA, at www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema).

In Her Own Words is a visual joy, from the endpapers printed with nineteenth-century maps of the Inner Hebrides to the detail of tiny motifs (flower, ship, bird or butterfly) beside the page numbers. It is lavishly illustrated with evocative engravings by William Daniell, who toured Scotland between 1815 and 1823, and Walsh’s own photographs of the Macquaries’ Scottish home Gruline House and its surrounds. Perhaps we might have expected a few more scenes of New South Wales, although Walsh includes Joseph Lycett’s aquatint of the Female Orphan School at Parramatta, said to have been modelled on Elizabeth’s childhood home, Airds House, and a view of St John’s Church, Parramatta, with its twin towers designed by Elizabeth.

Born Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell at Appin, Argyll, in 1778, Elizabeth married the widowed army officer Lachlan Macquarie in 1807. He was seventeen years her senior. Walsh begins with a series of short essays covering her life. The fact that the pieces are thematic does lead to some chronological confusion, with for example Grief, Loss and Widowhood appearing before Nurture, Care and Motherhood. In the essay Health and Pregnancy, Walsh explores the delicate issue of Elizabeth’s miscarriages (at least six), which occurred between the infant death of her first child in 1808 and the birth of Lachlan Jnr in 1814. He discusses the theory that it was the result of Macquarie having contracted syphilis following the death of his first wife, but also suggests that the couple may have had a blood group incompatibility.

The first and longest piece of writing by Elizabeth is a travel journal, reproduced here in its entirety. In April 1809 Macquarie was appointed Governor of New South Wales and shortly afterwards the couple set sail for the colony aboard the HMS Dromedary. Elizabeth’s account of the voyage is engaging and self-revelatory. Walsh discerns a certain insecurity in her relationship with her husband, commenting: “She seeks at all times to prove ‘worthy’ of his approval. At this early stage in her marriage there is not a sense of equality. This, however, would emerge as one of the principal outcomes of their shared activities in Australia.” Elizabeth worked for the welfare of women, children and ex-convicts. She also left her mark on the colony through her interest in architecture and landscape gardening.

The book includes forty of Elizabeth’s letters, spanning the years 1801 to 1835. One of the most personal is that written to her niece Mary Maclaine from Sydney in 1817. Full of warmth and humour, it reveals her intense love for Lachlan Jnr, the child born after so many dashed hopes. In the same year she writes to a friend, James Drummond, strongly criticising her husband’s growing band of detractors. Elizabeth continued to defend her husband’s reputation after the couple returned to Scotland in February 1822 in the wake of Commissioner John Bigge’s damaging report. But without doubt the longest and most significant letter was that written to her friends in New South Wales following Macquarie’s death in 1824. As Walsh explains, “she was on the cusp of her responsibilities as a parent and mother, and was commencing her final decade as a widow and custodian of her husband’s historical legacy”.

Detailed annotations and references are an integral part of a work such as this and happily for the reader they are instantly available; displayed in wide, lightly shaded columns beside each page of text.

There is a satisfying symmetry in that the final example of Elizabeth’s handwriting reproduced by Walsh comprises her own annotations, made during the last lonely years of her widowhood on the pages of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Here the story turns almost full circle, as the volumes were a gift to the Macquaries from the Rev. Owen Meyrick, who married them in 1807.

In Her Own Words makes a valuable contribution to Australian colonial history and Walsh is to be congratulated for his meticulous research and insightful interpretation. However, the book will also appeal to those, including myself, who enjoy the intimate pleasure of reading personal letters and diaries, especially when written by a remarkable woman who led an equally remarkable life. 

Pauline Conolly has written articles on the Macquaries in past issues of Quadrant.