An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence Part 3

Cowan, was a great talker, and a good one, but he scarcely allowed me a fair share. He was also an admirable correspondent.

One predominant talker I met at Mr. Edwin Hill's--William Ellis, a special friend of the Hills, and a noteworthy man. One needs to look back 60 years to become conscious of how much English education was in the hands of the church. Not only the public schools and the university were overshadowed by the Established Church, but what schools were accessible to the poor were a sort of appanage to the rectory, and the teachers were bound to work for the good of the church and the convenience of the inc.u.mbent. The commercial schools, which were independent of the church, to which Non-conformists sent their boys, were satirised by d.i.c.kens, and they deserved the satire. The masters were generally incompetent, and the a.s.sistant teachers or ushers were the most miserable in regard to payment and status. William Ellis expended large sums of money, and almost all his leisure, in establis.h.i.+ng secular schools that were good for something. He called them Birkbeck schools, thus doing honour to the founder of mechanics'

inst.i.tutes, and perhaps the founder of the first of these schools; and he taught what he called social science in them himself. He was the Senor Ferrer of England; and, though he escaped martyrdom in the more enlightened country he was looked on suspiciously by those who considered education that was not founded on revealed religion and permeated by its doctrines as dangerous and revolutionary.

But there was one great personage who saw the value of those teachings on things that make for human happiness and intellectual freedom, and that was the Prince Consort. He asked William Ellis to give some lessons to the eldest of the Royal children--the Princess Victoria, Prince Edward (our present King), and Prince Alfred, afterwards Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Mr. Ellis said all three were intelligent, and Princess Victoria exceptionally so. What a tragedy it was--more so than that of many an epic or drama--that the Princess Royal and the husband of her choice, who had educated themselves and each other to take the reins of the German Empire, and had drawn up so many Plans for the betterment of the general conditions of the people, should, on their accession to power, have met death standing on the steps of the throne; and that only a powerless widow should have been left without much authority over her masterful son. But my firm belief is that in many of the excellent things that the Kaiser William has done for his people, he is working on the plans that had been committed to writing by the Crown Prince and Princess. Her father's memory was so dear to the Crown Princess that anything he had suggested to her was cherished all her life; and I do not doubt that these early lessons on the right relation of human beings to each other--the social science which regards human happiness as depending on justice and toleration--is even now bearing fruit in the Fatherland. Shortsighted mortals see the immediate failures, but in the larger eye of the Infinite and the Eternal there is always progress towards better things from every honest attempt to remedy injustice, and to increase knowledge.

I arranged for a week in Paris with my young friends, Rosa and Symonds Clark, of Hazelwood, and we travelled as far as Paris with the Hare family, who went on to the Tyrol. We enjoyed the week. Louis Napoleon appeared then to be quite secure on his throne, and we saw the fetes and illuminations for his birthday. What a day and night of rain it was! But the thousands of people, joyful and good-humoured under umbrellas or without them--gave us a favourable impression of Parisian crowds. In London I had been with Mr. Cowan in the crush to the theatre. It was contrary to his principles to book seats, and I never was so frightened in my life. I thought a London crowd rough and merciless. I was the only one of the party who could speak any French, and I spoke it badly, and had great difficulty in following French conversations; but we got into a hotel where no English was spoken, and managed to pull through. But we did not know a soul, and I think we did not learn so much from our week's sightseeing as we should have done if Miss Katie Hare had stayed the week with us.

I then paid a visit to Birmingham, and spent a week at the sittings of the British a.s.sociation. By subscribing a guinea I was made an a.s.sociate, and some of the sessions were very interesting, but much too deep for me. I sat out a lecture on the Higher Mathematics, by Professor Henry Smith, to whom Professor Pearson gave me an introduction, in hopes that I might visit Oxford; but he was going abroad, and I could not go to Oxford if I knew n.o.body--especially alone. I went, however, to Carr's Lane Chapel, where a humble friend had begged me to go, because there she had been converted, and there the Rev. R. W. Dale happened to preach on "Where prayer was wont to be made." He said that consecration was not due to a Bishop or to any ecclesiastical ceremony, but to the devout prayers and praise of the faithful souls within it--that thousands over Scotland and England, and others in America, Australia, and New Zealand, look back to words which they had heard and praises and prayers in which they had joined as the holiest times in their lives. I thought of my good Mrs. Ludlow, and thanked G.o.d for her. When Mr. Cowan took me to the church in Ess.e.x place where he and his friend Wren used to hear Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, preach, a stranger, a young American, was there. I found out afterwards he was Moncure Conway, and he gave us a most striking discourse. There was going on in Birmingham at this time a controversy between the old Unitarians and the new. In the Church of the Messiah the old ministers gave a series of sermons on the absolute truth of the New Testament miracles. The Old Testament he was quite willing to give up, but he pinned his faith on those wrought by Christ and His apostles. Some of the congregation told me they had never thought of doubting them before, but the more Mr. B. defended them as the bulwarks of Christianity, the more they felt that our religion rested on other foundations. I saw a good deal of the industrial life of Birmingham, and had a sight of the Black Country by day and by night. Joseph Chamberlain was then a young man; I believe he was a Sunday school teacher. The Unitarian Sunday Schools taught writing and arithmetic as well as reading. In the terrible lack of national day schools many of the poor had no teaching at all but what was given on Sundays, and no time on other days of the week to learn anything. I could not help contrasting the provision made by the parish schools of Scotland out of the beggarly funds or t.i.thes given for church and schools out of the spoils of the Ancient Church by the Lords of the Congregation.

Education was not free, but it was cheap, and it was general. Scotchmen made their way all over the world better than Englishmen mainly because they were better educated. The Sunday school was not so much needed, and was much later in establis.h.i.+ng itself in Scotland. Good Hannah More taught girls to read the Bible under a spreading tree in her garden because no church would give her a place to teach in. "If girls were taught to read where would we get servants?" It was an early cry.

CHAPTER IX.

MEETING WITH J. S. MILL AND GEORGE ELIOT.

I leave to the last of my experiences in the old world in 1865-6 my interviews with John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. Stuart Mill's wife was the sister of Arthur and of Alfred Hardy, of Adelaide, and the former had given to me a copy of the first edition of Mill's "Political Economy," with the original dedication to Mrs. John Taylor, who afterwards became Mill's wife, which did not appear in subsequent editions; but, as he had two gift copies of the same edition, Mr. Hardy sent it on to me with his almost illegible handwriting:--"To Miss Spence from the author, not, indeed, directly, but in the confidence felt by the presenter that in so doing he is fulfilling the wish of the author--viz., circulating his opinions, more especially in such quarters as the present, where they will be accurately considered and tested." I had also seen the dedication to Harriet Mill's beloved memory of the n.o.ble book on "Liberty." Of her own individual work there was only one specimen extant--an article on the "Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women," included in Mill's collected essays--very good, certainly, but not so overpoweringly excellent as I expected. Of course, it was an early advocacy of the rights of women, or rather a revival of Mary Wollstoneeraft's grand vindication of the rights of the s.e.x; and this was a reform which Mill himself took up more warmly than proportional representation, and advocated for years before Mr. Hare's revelation.

For myself, I considered electoral reform on the Hare system of more value than the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women, and was not eager for the doubling of the electors in number, especially as the new voters would probably be more ignorant and more apathetic than the old. I was accounted a weak-kneed sister by those who worked primarily for woman suffrage, although I was as much convinced as they were that I was ent.i.tled to a vote, and hoped that I might be able to exercise it before I was too feeble to hobble to the poll. I have unfortunately lost the letter Mr. Mill wrote to me about my letters to The Register, and my "Plea for Pure Democracy," but it gave him great pleasure to see that a new idea both of the theory and practice of politics had been taken up and expanded by a woman, and one from that Australian colony, of which he had watched and aided the beginnings, as is seen by the name of Mill terrace, North Adelaide, to-day. Indeed, both Hare and Mill told me their first converts were women; and I felt that the absolute disinterestedness of my "Plea," which was not for myself, but only that the men who were supposed to represent me at the polling booth should be equitably represented themselves, lent weight to my arguments. I have no axe to grind--no political party to serve; so that it was not until the movement for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women grew too strong to be neglected that I took hold of it at all; and I do not claim any credit for its success in South Australia and the Commonwealth, further than this--that by my writings and my spoken addresses I showed that one woman had a steady grasp on politics and on sociology. In 1865, when I was in England, Mr. Mill was permanently resident at Avignon, where his wife died, but he had to come to England to canva.s.s for a seat in Parliament for Westminster as an Independent member, believed at that time to be an advanced Radical, but known to be a philosopher, and an economist of the highest rank in English literature. I had only one opportunity of seeing him personally, and I did not get so much out of him as I expected--he was so eager to know how the colony and colonial people were developing. He asked me about property in land and taxation, and the relations between employers and employes, and I was a little amused and a little alarmed when he said he was glad to get information from such a good authority. I had to disclaim such knowledge; but he said he knew I was observant and thoughtful, and what I had seen I had seen well. He was particularly earnest about woman's suffrage, and Miss Taylor, his stepdaughter, said she thought he had made a mistake in asking for the vote for single women only and widows with property and wives who had a separate estate; it would have been more logical to have asked for the vote on the same terms as were extended to men. The great man said meekly--"Well, perhaps I have made a mistake, but I thought with a property qualification the beginning would awake less antagonism." He said to me that if I was not to return to London till January we were not likely to meet again. He walked with me bareheaded to the gate, and it was farewell for both.

Wise man as Mill was he did not foresee that his greatest object, the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women, would be carried at the antipodes long before there was victory either in England or America. When I received, in 1869 from the publisher, Mr. Mill's last book, "The Subjection of Women," I wrote thanking him for the gift. The reply was as follows:--"Avignon, November 28, 1869--Dear Madam--Your letter of August 16 has been sent to me here. The copy of my little book was intended for you, and I had much pleasure in offering it. The movement against women's disabilities generally, and for the suffrage in particular, has made great progress in England since you were last there. It is likely, I think, to be successful in the colonies later than in England, because the want of equality in social advantages between women and men is less felt in the colonies owing, perhaps, to women's having less need of other occupations than those of married life--I am, dear Madam, yours very truly, J. S. Mill." I have always held that, though the Pilgrim Fathers ignored the right of the Pilgrim Mothers to the credit of founding the American States--although these women had to take their full share of the toils and hards.h.i.+ps and perils of pioneer and frontier life, and had in addition to put up with the Pilgrim Fathers themselves--Australian colonization was carried out by men who were conscious of the service of their helpmates, and grateful for it. In New Zealand and South Australia, founded on the Wakefield system, where the s.e.xes were almost equal in number, and the immigration was mainly that of families, the first great triumphs for the political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women were won, and through South Australia the women of the Commonwealth obtained the Federal vote for both Houses: whereas even in the spa.r.s.ely inhabited western states in the United States which have obtained the State vote the Federal vote is withheld from them. But Mill died in 1873, 20 years before New Zealand or Colorado obtained woman's suffrage.

In treating of my one interview with Mr. Mill I have carried the narrative down to 1869. With regard to my single meeting with George Eliot, I have to begin in 1865, and conclude even later. Before I left England Mr. Williams, of Smith, Elder, & Co., offered me an introduction to George Henry Lewes, and I expressed the hope that it might also include an introduction to George Eliot, whose works I so admired. Mr. Lewes being away from home when I called, I requested that the introductory letter of Mr. Williams should be taken to George Eliot herself. She received me in the big Priory drawing room, with the grand piano, where she held her receptions and musical evenings; but she asked me if I had any business relating to the article which Mr.

Williams had mentioned, and I had to confess that I had none. For once I felt myself at fault. I did not get on with George Eliot. She said she was not well, and she did not look well. That strong pale face, where the features were those of Dante or Savanarola, did not soften as Mill's had done. The voice, which was singularly musical and impressive, touched me--I am more susceptible to voices than to features or complexion--but no subject that I started seemed to fall in with her ideas, and she started none in which I could follow her lead pleasantly. It was a short interview, and it was a failure. I felt I had been looked on as an inquisitive Australian desiring an interview upon any pretext; and indeed, next day I had a letter from Mr.

Williams, in which he told me that, but for the idea that I had some business arrangement to speak of, she would not have seen me at all. So I wrote to Mr. Williams that, as I had been received by mistake, I should never mention the interview; but that impertinent curiosity was not at all my motive in going that unlucky day to The Priory.

Years pa.s.sed by. I read everything, poetry and prose, that came from George Eliot's pen, and was so strong an admirer of her that Mr. W. L.

Whitham, who took charge of the Unitarian Church while our pastor (Mr.

Woods) had a long furlough in England, asked me to lecture on her works to his Mutual Improvement Society, and I undertook the task with joy.

Mr. H. G. Turner asked for the MS. to publish in the second number of The Melbourne Review, a very promising quarterly for politics and literature. I thought that, if I sent the review to George Eliot with a note it might clear me from the suspicion of being a mere vulgar lionhunter. Her answer was as follows:--"The Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park, September 4, 1876. Dear Madam--Owing to an absence of some months, it was only the other day that I read your kind letter of April 17; and, although I have long been obliged to give up answering the majority of letters addressed to me, I felt much pleased that you had given me an opportunity of answering one from you; for I have always remembered your visit with a regretful feeling that I had probably caused you some pain by a rather unwise effort to give you a reception which the state of my health at the moment made altogether blundering and infelicitous. The mistake was all on my side, and you were not in the least to blame. I also remember that your studies have been of a serious kind, such as were likely to render a judgment on fiction and poetry, or, as the Germans, with better cla.s.sification, say, in 'DICHTUNG' in general, quite other than the superficial haphazard remarks of which reviews are generally made. You will all the better understand that I have made it a rule not to read writing about myself. I am exceptionally sensitive and liable to discouragement; and to read much remark about my doings would have as depressing an effect on me as staring in a mirror--perhaps, I may say, of defective gla.s.s.

But my husband looks at all the numerous articles that are forwarded to me, and kindly keeps them out of my way--only on rare occasions reading to me a pa.s.sage which he thinks will comfort me by its evidence of unusual insight or sympathy. Yesterday he read your article in The Melbourne Review, and said at the end--'This is an excellently written article, which would do credit to any English periodical' adding the very uncommon testimony, 'I shall keep this.' Then he told me of some pa.s.sages in it which gratified me by that comprehension of my meaning--that laying of the finger on the right spot--which is more precious than praise, and forthwith he went to lay The Melbourne Review in the drawer he a.s.signs to any writing about me that gives him pleasure. For he feels on my behalf more than I feel on my own, at least in matters of this kind. If you come to England again when I happen to be in town I hope that you will give me the pleasure of seeing you under happier auspices than those of your former visit.--I am, dear madam, yours sincerely, M. G. Lewes." The receipt of this kind and candid letter gave me much pleasure; and, although on the strength of that, I cannot boast of being a correspendent of that great woman, I was able to say that I had seen and talked with her, and that she considered me a competent critic of her work. Mrs. Oliphant says that George Eliot's life impelled her to make an involuntary confession--"How have I been handicapped in life? Should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a mental green-house and taken care of? I have always had to think of other people and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them. To bring up the boys--my own and Frank's--for the service of G.o.d was better than to write a fine novel, if it had been in my power to do so." The heart knows its own bitterness. There might have been some points in which George Eliot might have envied Mrs. Oliphant.

CHAPTER X.

RETURN FROM THE OLD COUNTRY.

Before leaving Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had let it alone very badly, and that the overstocking of stations during the preceding good seasons had led to enormous losses. Sheepfarmers made such large profits in good seasons that they were apt to calculate that it was worth while to run the risk of drought; but experience has shown that overstocking does not really pay. The making of dams, the private and public provision of water in the underground reservoirs by artesian bores, and the facilities for travelling stock by such ways have all lessened the risks which the pioneer pastoralists ran bravely in the old days. An Australian drought can never be as disastrous in the twentieth century as it was in 1866; and South Australia, the Central State, has from the first been a pioneer in development as well as in exploration. The hum of the reaping machine first awoke the echoes in our wheatfields. The stump-jumping plough and the mullenicer which beats down the scrub or low bush so that it can be burnt, were South Australian inventions, copied elsewhere, which have turned land accounted worthless into prolific wheat fields.

If South Australia was the first of the States to exhaust her agricultural soil, she was the first to restore it by means of fertilizers and the seed drill. When I see the drilled wheat fields I recollect my grandfather's two silver salvers--the Prizes from the Highland Society for having the largest area of drilled wheat in Scotland--and when I see the grand crops on the Adelaide Plains I recall the opinion that, with anything like a decent rainfall, that soil could grow anything. In 1866 the northern areas had not been opened. The farmers were continuing the process of exhausting the land by growing wheat--wheat--wheat, with the only variety wheaten hay. I recollect James Burnet's amazement when I said that our horses were fed on wheaten hay. "What a waste of the great possibilities of a grain harvest!" He was doubtful when I said that with plenty of wheaten hay the horses needed no corn. South Australia, except about Mount Gambier, does not grow oats, though Victoria depends on oaten hay. The British agriculturist thinks that meadow hay is the natural forage for horses and cattle, and for winter turnips are the standby. It was a little amusing to me that I could speak with some authority to skilled and experienced agriculturists, who felt our rivalry at Mark lane, but who did not dream that with the third great move of Australia towards the markets of the world through cold storage we could send beef, mutton, lamb, poultry, eggs, and all kinds of fruit to the consumers of Europe, and especially of England and its metropolis. I did not see it, any more than the people to whom I talked. I still thought that for meat and all perishable commodities the distance was an insuperable obstacle, and that, except for live stock from America, or canned meat from Australia, the United Kingdom would continue self-supporting on these lines.

I returned to Australia, when this island continent was in the grip of one of the most severe and protracted droughts in its history. The war between Prussia and Austria had begun and ended; the failure of Overend and Gurney and others brought commercial disaster; and my brother, with other bankers, had anxious days and sleepless nights. Some rich men became richer; many poor men went down altogether. Our recovery was slow but sure. In the meantime I found life at home very dull after my interesting experiences abroad. There was nothing to do for proportional representation except to write an occasional letter to the press. So I started another novel, which was published serially in The Observer. Mr. George Bentley, who published it subsequently in book form, changed its t.i.tle from "Hugh Lindsay's Guest" to "The Author's Daughter." But my development as a public speaker was more important than the publication of a fourth novel. Much had been written on the subject of public speaking by men, but so far nothing concerning the capacities of women in that direction. And yet I think all teachers will agree that girls in the aggregate excel boys in their powers of expression, whether in writing, or in speech, though boys may surpa.s.s them in such studies as arithmetic and mathematics. Yet law and custom have put a bridle on the tongue of women, and of the innumerable proverbs relating to the s.e.x, the most cynical are those relating to her use of language. Her only qualification for public speaking in old days was that she could scold, and our ancestors imposed a salutary cheek on this by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for marital correction in private. The writer of the Proverbs alludes to the perpetual dropping of a woman's tongue as an intolerable nuisance, and declares that it is better to live on the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. A later writer, describing the virtuous woman, said that on her lips is the law of kindness, and after all this is the real feminine characteristic. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother--what does not the world owe to the gracious words, the loving counsel, the ready sympathy which she expresses? Until recent years, however, these feminine Rifts have been strictly kept for home consumption, and only exercised for the woman's family and a limited circle of friends. In 1825, when I first opened my eyes on the world, there were indeed women who displayed an interest in public affairs. My own mother not only felt the keenest solicitude regarding the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill, but she took up her pen, and with two letters to the local press, under the signature of "Grizel Plowter," showed the advantages of the proposed measure. But public speaking was absolutely out of the question for women, and though I was the most ambitious of girls, my desire was to write a great book--not at all to sway an audience. When I returned from my first visit to England in 1866, I was asked by the committee of the South Australian Inst.i.tute to write a lecture on my impressions of England, different from the article which had appeared in The Cornhill Magazine under that t.i.tle, but neither the committee nor myself thought of the possibility of my delivering it. My good friend, the late Mr. John Howard Clark, Editor of The Register, kindly offered to read it. I did not go to hear it, but I was told that he had difficulty in reading my ma.n.u.script, and that, though he was a beautiful reader, it was not very satisfactory.

So I mentally resolved that if I was again asked I should offer to read my own MS. Five years afterwards I was asked for two literary lectures by the same committee, and I chose as my subjects the works of Elizabeth Browning and those of her husband, Robert Browning. Now, I consider that the main thing for a lecturer is to be heard, and a rising young lawyer (now our Chief Justice) kindly offered to take the back seat, and promised to raise his hand if he could not hear. It was not raised once, so I felt satisfied. I began by saying that I undertook the work for two reasons--first, to make my audience more familiar with the writings of two poets very dear to me; and second, to make easier henceforward for any woman who felt she had something to say to stand up and say it. I felt very nervous, and as if my knees were giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not--first requisite, action; second, action; third, action--I am sure that English word does not express the requisite for women. I should rather call it earnestness--a conviction that what you say is worth saying, and worth saying to the audience before you. I had a lesson on the danger of overaction from hearing a gentleman recite in public "The dream of Eugene Aram," in which he went through all the movements of killing and burying the murdered man. When a tale is crystallized into a poem it does not require the action of a drama. However little action I may use I never speak in public with gloves on. They interfere with the natural eloquence of the hand. After these lectures I occasionally was asked to give others on literary subjects.

At this time I began to study Latin with my nephew, a boy of 14. He was then an orphan, my youngest and beloved sister Mary having recently died and left her two children to my care. My teacher thought me the more apt pupil, but it was really due more to my command of English than to my knowledge of Latin that I was able to get at the meaning of Virgil and Horace. When it came to Latin composition I was no better than the boy of 14. Before the death of my sister the family invested in land in Trinity street, College Town, and built a house. Mother had planned the house she moved into when I was six months old, and she delighted in the task, though she said it seemed absurd to build a house in her seventy-ninth year. But she lived in it from January, 1870, till December, 1887, and her youngest daughter lived in it for only ten months. Before that time I had embarked with my friend, Miss Clark, on one of the greatest enterprises of my life--one which led to so much that my friends are apt to say that, if I am recollected at all, it will be in connection with the children of the State and not with electoral reform. But I maintain now, as I maintained then, that the main object of my life is proportional representation, or, to use my brother John's term, effective voting.

CHAPTER XI

WARDS OF THE STATE.

In a little book which the State Children's Council requested me to write as a memorial of the great work of Miss C. E. Clark on her retirement at the age of 80, I have given an account of the movement from the beginning down to 1907, which had its origin in South Australia under the leaders.h.i.+p of Miss Clark. When I was on my way cut from England, Miss Clark wrote a letter to The Register, suggesting that the dest.i.tute, neglected, or orphaned children should be removed from the Dest.i.tute Asylum and placed in natural homes with respectable people; but the great wave which came over England about that time for building industrial schools and reformatories affected South Australia also, and the idea was that, though the children should be removed from the older inmates, it should be to an inst.i.tution. Land was bought and plans were drawn up for an industrial school at Magill, five miles from Adelaide, when Miss Clark came to me and asked me to help her to take a different course. She enlisted Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Colton and Mrs.

(afterwards Lady) Davenport in the cause, and we arranged for a deputation to the Minister; Howard Clark, Neville Blyth, and Mr. C. B.

Young joined us. We offered to find country homes and provide lady visitors, but our request was simply scouted. As we did not offer to bear any of the cost it would be absurd to give us any share in the administration. Children would only be given homes for the sake of the money paid, and Oliver Twist's was held up as the sort of apprentices.h.i.+p likely to be secured for pauper children. So we had to play the waiting game. The school built to accommodate 230 children was on four floors, though there was 40 acres of good land. It was so popular that, though only 130 went in at first, in two years it was so full that there was talk of adding a wing. This was our opportunity, and the same men and women went on another deputation, and this time we prevailed, and were allowed to place out the overflow as an experiment; and not only the Boarding-out Committee, but the official heads of the Dest.i.tute Department, were surprised and delighted with the good homes we secured for 5/ a week, and with the improvement in health, in intelligence, and in happiness that resulted from putting children into natural homes. What distinguishes work for children in Australia from what is done elsewhere is that it is national, and not philanthropic.

The State is in loco-parentis, and sees that what the child needs are a home and a mother--that, if the home and the mother are good, the child shall be kept there; but that vigilant inspection is needed, voluntary or official--better to have both. Gradually the Magill School was emptied, and the children were scattered. Up to the age of 13 the home was subsidized, but when by the education law the child was free from school attendance, and went to service, the supervision continued until the age of 18 was reached. For nearly 14 years, from 1872 to 1886, the Boarding-out Society pursued its modest labours as auxiliary to the Dest.i.tute Board. Our volunteer visitors reported in duplicate--one copy for the official board, and one for the unofficial committee. When the method was inaugurated, Mr. T. S. Reed. Chairman of the Board, was completely won over. We had nothing to do with the reformatories, except that our visitors went to see those placed out at service in their neighbourhood.

Our success attracted attention elsewhere. The late Dr. Andrew Garran, who was on The Register when I went to England, had moved to Sydney in my absence, and was on the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald. When Miss Clark went to England in 1877, after her mother's death, Dr.

Garran wrote to me for some account of our methods, and of their success, physical, moral, and financial. Dr. Garran came out with Mr.

G. F. Angas and the Australian Const.i.tution in 1851 in search of health and work, both of which he found here. The first pages of my four volumes of newspaper cuttings are filled with two long articles, "The Children of the State," and this started the movement in New South Wales, led by Mrs. Garran, nee Sabine, and Mrs. Jefferis wife of the leading Congregational minister, moved from Adelaide to Sydney.

Professor Henry Pearson asked me a year or two later to give similar information to The Melbourne Age. Subsequently I wrote on this subject, by request, to Queensland, New Zealand, and I think also Tasmania, where we were imitated first, but where there are still to be found children of the State in inst.i.tutions. In Victoria and New South Wales a vigorous policy emptied these buildings, which were used for other public purposes, and the children were dispersed. The innovation which at first was scouted as utopian, next suspected as leading to neglect, or even unkindness--for people would only take these children for what they could make out of them--was found to be so beneficial that n.o.body in Australia would like to return to the barrack home or the barrack school. If the inspection had been from the first merely official, public opinion would have been suspicious and sceptical, but when ladies saw the children in these homes, and watched how the dull faces brightened, and the languid limbs became alert after a few weeks of ordinary life--when the cheeks became rosier, and the eyes had new light in them; when they saw that the foster parents took pride in their progress at school, and made them handy about the house, as they could never be at an inst.i.tution, where everything is done at the sound of a bell or the stroke of a clock--these ladies testified to what they knew, and the public believed in them. In other English-speaking countries boarding-out in families is sometimes permitted; but here, under the Southern Cross, it is the law of the land that children shall not be brought up in inst.i.tutions, but in homes: that the child whose parent is the State shall have as good schooling as the child who has parents and guardians; that every child shall have, not the discipline of routine and redtape, but free and cheerful environment of ordinary life, preferably in the country--going to school with other young fellow citizens, going to church with the family in which he is placed, having the ordinary ditties, the ordinary difficulties, the ordinary pleasures of common life; but guarded from injustice, neglect, and cruelty by effective and kindly supervision. This movement, originated in South Australia, and with all its far-reaching developments and expansions, is due to the initiative of one woman of whom the State is justly proud--Miss Caroline Emily Clark.

Even while we were only a Boarding-out Committee, it was found necessary to have one paid inspector; but there was great dissatisfaction with the Boys' Reformatory which had been located in an old leaky hulk, where the boys could learn neither seamans.h.i.+p nor anything else--and with some other details of the management of the dest.i.tute poor, and a commission with the Chief Justice as Chairman, was appointed to make enquiries and suggest reforms. The result was the separation of the young from the old absolutely; and a new body, the State Children's Council, of 12 men and women of nearly equal proportions, had authority over the reformatories, as well as what was called the industrial school, which was to be reduced to a mere receiving home, and all the children placed out, either on subsidy or at service. Most of the old committee were appointed; but, to my great joy, Dr. Edward C. Stirling and Mr. James Smith, the most enlightened man on the Dest.i.tute Board, were among the new members. We had a paid stall, with a most able secretary--Mr. J. B. Whiting.

Dr. Stirling was unanimously voted in as President, and we felt we began our new duties under the most promising auspices. But, alas, in two years there was so much friction between the council and the Ministry that we all resigned in a body, except Mrs. Colton (who was in England) and Mrs. Farr. We were fighting the battle of the unpaid boards, and we were so strong in the public estimation that we might have won the victory. The Government had relieved children on the pet.i.tion of parents, contrary to the strong recommendation of the council. Although the commission had declared that the reformatory boys should be removed at once from the hulk Fitzjames, they were still kept there, and the only offer of accommodation given was to share the Magill Industrial School with the reformatory girls. Now, this the council would not hear of, for we felt that the Government plans for separate entrances and separate staircases were absolutely futile and ridiculous for keeping apart these two dangerous cla.s.ses in a single building. The Government gave way on the point of providing a separate building for the reformatory girls; and the committee, with the exception of Dr. Stirling and Mr. James Smith--our two strongest members--were reappointed. The official staff was increased by the appointment of clerks and inspectors, many of them women, who have always given every satisfaction, and who justify the claim made that women's work is conscientious and thorough.

More departments were gradually added to our sphere of action. The separate trial of juvenile delinquents was strongly advocated by the council. Miss Clark and Mr. C. H. Goode were particularly keen on the introduction of Children's Courts. In this reform South Australia led the world, and in the new Act of 1896, after six years of tentative work, it became compulsory to try offenders under 18 at the Children's Court in the city and suburbs, and in the Magistrate's room in the country. The methods of organization and control vary in the different States of the Commonwealth, but on one point the six are all agreed--that dependent and delinquent children are a national a.s.set and a national responsibility, and any forward step anywhere has every chance of being copied. The result of Children's Courts and probation has been that, while the population of the State has greatly increased, the committals to the Gaol and for penal servitude have steadily decreased, and the Boys' Reformatory has been reduced to one-third of the number in earlier days. There are, of course, many factors in all directions of social betterment, but the subst.i.tution of homes for inst.i.tutions, and of probation carefully watched for summary punishment, are, in my opinion, the largest factors in, this State. The affection between children and their foster parents is often lifelong; and we see thousands who were taken from bad parents and evil environments taking their place in the industrial world, and filling it well. The movement in South Australia initiated by Miss Clark spread from State to State, and the happy thought of the President and Secretary of the Council that I should write an account of "Boarding-out and its Developments" as a memorial of her great work bore fruit in the legislation of the United Kingdom itself. A letter I received from Mr. Herbert Samuel, then Under-Secretary of State in the British Government, was gratifying, both to the council and to me:--"Home Office, Whitehall, S.W., August 5, 1907. Dear Madam--I have just read your little book on 'State Children in Australia;' and, although a stranger to you, would venture to write to thank you for the very valuable contribution you have made to the literature on the subject. The present Government in England are already engaged in promoting the more kindly and more effective methods of dealing with dest.i.tute, neglected, or delinquent children, which are already so widely adopted in South Australia. We are pa.s.sing through Parliament this year a Bill to enable a system of probation officers, both paid and voluntary, to be established throughout the country, for dealing not indeed with child offenders alone, but with adult offenders also, who may be properly amenable to that treatment. And next year we propose to introduce a comprehensive Children's Bill, which has been entrusted to my charge, in which we hope to be able to include some of the reforms you have at heart. In the preparation of that Bill the experience of your colony and the account of it which you have published will be of no small a.s.sistance. Yours sincerely, Herbert Samuel."

Another department of our work for the protection of infant life, and this we took over from the Dest.i.tute Board, where some unique provisions had been initiated by Mr. James Smith. The Dest.i.tute Asylum was the last refuge of the old and incapacitated poor, but it never opened its doors to the able bodied. In the Union Workhouse in England room is always found for friendless and penniless to come there for confinement, who leave as soon as they are physically strong enough to take their burden--their little baby--in their arms and face the world again. In Adelaide these women were in 1868 divided into two cla.s.ses, one for girls who had made their first slip--girls weak, but very rarely wicked--so as to separate them, from women who came for a second or third time, who were cared for with their infants in the general asylum. Mr. James Smith obtained in 1881 legislation to empower the Dest.i.tute Board to make every woman sign an agreement to remain with her infant, giving it the natural nourishment, for six months. This has saved many infant lives, and has encouraged maternal affection. The Dest.i.tute Board kept in its hands the issuing of licences, and appointed a lady to visit the babies till they were two years old, and did good work; but when that department was properly turned over to the State Children's Council there was even more vigilance exercised, and the death rate among these babies, often handicapped before birth, and always artificially fed after, was reduced to something less than the average of all babies. We have been fortunate in our chief inspectress of babies. Her character has uplifted the licensed foster mothers, and the two combined have raised the real mothers. It is surprising how few such babies are thrown on the State. The department does not pay any board or find any clothing for these infants. It, however, pays for supervision and pays for a lady doctor, so that there need be no excuse for not calling in medical a.s.sistance if it is felt to be needed.

Occasionally a visitor from other States or from England is allowed as a great favour to see, not picked cases, but the ordinary run, of the homes of foster mothers, and the question, "Where and how do you get such women?" is asked. We have weeded out the inferiors, and our instructions with regard to feeding and care are so definite, and found to be so sound, that the women take a pride in the health and the beauty of the little ones; and besides they keep up the love of the real mother by the care they give them. A recent Act has raised the age of supervision of illegitimate babies from two to seven years, and this has necessitated the appointment of an additional inspectress. In South Australia baby farming has been extinguished, and in the other States legislation on similar lines has been won, and they are in process of gradually weeding out bad and doubtful foster mothers. And the foster fathers are often as fond of the babies as their wives--and as softhearted. "Did you see that the poor girl had on broken boots this weather?" said he. "Yes, it's a Pity; but we are poor folks ourselves--we can't help it," said she. "Let her off the 6/ for a fortnight, so as she can get a pair of sound boots for her feet, we'll worry through without it." And they did. The extreme solicitude of the State Children's Department, as carried out by its zealous officers, for the life and the wellbeing of their babies serves them in Public extenuation, and the children are often so pretty and engaging that they win love all round. A grown-up son in the home was very fond of little Lily. "Mother will you get Lily a cream coat, such as I see other babies wearing, and I will pay for it."

A most pathetic story I can tell of a girl respectably connected in the country, who had been cast off in disgrace, and came to town to take a place, committing her infant to a good foster mother. When he was old enough to move about, and was just trying to walk, the mother was taken dangerously ill to the Adelaide Hospital. The foster mother thought the girl's father should be sent for, and wrote to him giving her own address, but not disclosing her connection with the patient. The father of the girl came, and was told that he had better be accompanied by his informant, who could prepare the sick woman for the interview. The little boy was running about, and the old man took him on his knee while the woman got ready to go out. "You must come with us, Sonny,"

said she. "I can't leave you alone in the house." "A very fine little chap. Your youngest, I suppose. I can see he is a great pet." "No,"

said the woman slowly, "he is not my son, he is your grandson." "Good G.o.d, my grandson," Then, clasping the little fellow to his heart, he said, "I'll never part with him!" The mother recovered, and was taken home with her child and forgiven. Such is often the work of the good foster mother. In all the successes of the irresponsible committee and of the responsible State Children's Council the greatest factor has been the character of the good women who have been mothers to the little ones. The fears that only self-interest could induce them to take on the neglected and uncontrollable children were not borne out by experience, and in the ease of these babies not really illegitimate--it is the parents who deserve that t.i.tle, no infant can--the mother's instinct came out very strong. At a conference of workers among dependent children, held in Adelaide in May, 1909, when all six States were represented, a Western Australian representative said that the average family home was not so good for its natural circle that it could be depended on for strangers; but our answer was that, both for the children of the State and for the babies who were not State children, we insisted on something better than the average home, and through our inspection we sought to improve it still further. We have not reached perfection by any means. When we begin to think we have, we are sure to fall back. Another good office the State Children's Department fills is that of advice gratis. One of the most striking chapters in Gen. Booth's "Darkest England" dealt with the helplessness of the poor and the ignorant in the face of difficulties, of injustice, and of extortion. When I was in Chicago in 1893 I saw that the first university settlement, that of Hull House, presided over by Miss Jane Addams (St. Jane some of her friends call her) was the centre to is which the poor American, German, Italian, or other alien went for advice as well as practical help. A word in season was often of more value than dollars. To be told what to do or what not to do at a crisis when decision is so important may be salvation for the pocket or for the character.

CHAPTER XII.

PREACHING, FRIENDS, AND WRITING.

My life now became more interesting and varied. A wider field for my journalistic capabilities was open to me, and I also took part in the growth of education, both spiritual and secular. The main promoters of the ambitious literary periodical The Melbourne Review, to which I became a contributor, were Mr. Henry Gyles Turner (the banker), Mr.

Alexander Sutherland, M.A. (author of "The History of Australia" and several other books), and A. Patchett Martin (the litterateur). It lived for nine years, and produced a good deal of creditable writing, but it never was able to pay its contributors, because it never attained such a circulation as would attract advertis.e.m.e.nts. The reviews and magazines of the present day depend on advertis.e.m.e.nts. They cheapen the price so as to gain a circulation, which advertisers cater for. I think my second article was on the death of Sir Richard Hanson (one of the original South Australian Literary Society, which met in London before South Australia existed). At the time of his death he was Chief Justice. He was the author of two books of Biblical criticism--"The Jesus of History" and "Paul and the Primitive Church"--and I undertook to deal with his life and work. About that time there was one of those periodic outbursts of Imperialism in the Australian colonies--not popular or general, but among politicians--on the question of how the colonies could obtain practical recognition in the Legislature of the United Kingdom. Each of the colonies felt that Downing street inadequately represented its claims and its aspirations, and there were several articles in "The Melbourne Review" suggesting that these colonies should be allowed to send members to the House of Commons. This, I felt, would be inadmissible; for, unless we were prepared to bear our share of the burdens, we had no right to sit in the taxing a.s.sembly of the United Kingdom. The only House in which the colonies, small or great, could be represented was the House of Lords; and it appeared to me that, with a reformed House of Lords, this would be quite practicable. An article in Fraser's Magazine, "Why not the Lords, too?" had struck me much, and the lines on which it ran greatly resemble those laid down by Lord Rosebery for lessening in number and improving in character the unwieldy hereditary House of Peers; but neither that writer nor Lord Rosebery grasped the idea that I made prominent in an article I wrote for The Review, which was that the reduction of the peers to 200, or any other number ought to be made on the principle of proportional representation, because otherwise the majority of the peers, being Conservative, an election on ordinary lines would result in a selection of the most extreme Conservatives in the body. My mother had pointed out to me that the 16 representative Scottish peers elected by those who have not a seat as British peers, for the duration of each Parliament, were the most Tory of the Tories, and that the same could be said of the 28 representative peers for Ireland elected for life. So, though the House of Lords contains a respectable minority of Liberals, under no system of exclusively majority representation could any of them be chosen among the 200. I had the same idea of life peers to be added from the ranks of the professions, of science, and of literature, unburdened by the weight and cost of an hereditary t.i.tle, that Lord Rosebery has; and into such a body I thought that representatives of the great self-governing colonies could enter, so that information about our resources, our politics, and our sociology might be available, and might permeate the press. But, greatly to my surprise, my article was sent back, but was afterwards accepted by Fraser's Magazine. This was better for me, for what would have been published for nothing in The Melbourne Review brought me 8/15/0 from a good English magazine. I continued to write for this review, until it ceased to exist, in 1885, literary and political articles. The former included a second one on "George Eliot's Life and Work," and one on "Honore de Balzac," which many of my friends thought my best literary effort.

It was through Miss Martha Turner that I was introduced to her brother and to The Melbourne Review. She was at that time pastor of the Unitarian Church in Melbourne. She had during the long illness of the Rev. Mr. Higginson helped her brother with the services. At first she wrote sermons for him to deliver, but on some occasions when he was indisposed she read her own compositions. Fine reader as Mr. H. G.

Turner is he did not come up to her, and especially he could not equal her in the presentment of her own thoughts. The congregation on the death of Mr. Higginson asked Miss Turner to accept the pastorate. She said she could conduct the services, but she absolutely declined to do the pastoral duties--visiting especially. She was licensed to conduct marriage services and baptized (or, as we call it, consecrated) children to the service of Almighty G.o.d and to the service of man.

During the absence of our pastor for a long holiday in England Mr. C.

L. Whitham afterwards an education inspector, took his place for two years, and he arranged for an exchange of three weeks with Miss Turner.

She is the first woman I ever heard in the pulpit. I was thrilled by her exquisite voice, by her earnestness, and by her reverence. I felt as I had never felt before that if women are excluded from the Christian pulpit you shut out more than half of the devoutness that is in the world. Reading George Eliot's description of Dinah Morris preaching Methodisim on the green at Hayslope had prepared me in a measure, but when I heard a highly educated and exceptionally able woman conducting the services all through, and especially reading the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments with so much intelligence that they seemed to take on new meaning, I felt how much the world had been losing for so many centuries. She twice exchanged with Adelaide--the second time when Mr. Woods had returned--and it was the beginning to me of a close friends.h.i.+p.