ELIZABETH MARSDEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21473, 22 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

ELIZABETH MARSDEN

BY M.A.It

WIFE AND COMRADE

Wives of great men oftenK remain in the shadowy background of the picture presented to us by their biographers. The wife of Samuel Marsden is 110 exception to this rule; yet a sufficient portrait of her emerges from the " Life and Journals " to show her a woman tried, strong and true—well worthy of a place in our gallery of pioneer women. For more than forty years sho was " the sympathetic comrade and most valued counsellor " of a man whose robust energies and unswerving principles brought him into continual conflicts. Without that sure and sympathetic background of home to turn to from tho hostilities and struggles of his life even his powers might not have accomplished so much. She was born Elizabeth Fristan, the only daughter of Thomas Fristan, of Hull, about one hundred and sixty years ago, in July, 1772. Sho was a great-grand-niece of tho famous admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was drowned off the Scilly Isles in 1707. During their residence in Australia Mr. Marsden made a claim on his wile's behalf to some property of Sir Cloudesloy's, but apparently without success. She was twenty-one and Samuel Marsden twenty-eight when he received his appointment as chaplain at New South Wales, and wrote to her in the following terms: Dear Betsy,— Sinco my lot is now seemingly cast and God appears to be opening my way to carry the Gospel of his Son to distant lands, the time is now come for me to lay open my thoughts to you, which have been long hid in my own breast. I shall venture to submit to your consideration tho following important question (praying at the same time that the Lord will enable you to answer it agreeable to His own will, and in such a way as may conduce to your own happiness and mine). Tho question is this: Will you go along with me? Jf, upon considering the subject, you can answer in the affirmative and say, " I am willing," then my heart (as far as it is proper I should give it to the creature) and all I have are yours. I believe if it be for my good and His glory He will provide mo with a helpmate, and if not He will give me a mind resigned to His will. I persuade myself I should be happy in the enjoyment of you more than any other; yet I do not wish to purchase my own peace at the expense of your comfort, but only if you think you would be happy. . . Then I cheerfully offer you my hand and my heart whenever you please. I remain, Dear Betsy, Yours most affectionately, Samuel Marsden. A Trying Voyage Letters proposing marriage do not usually repay perusal by any eyes except those for whom they wero written. Perhaps the language of this one seems to ns a little stilted for a lover, but it is a straightforward and manly letter, and its writer was rewarded. The couple were married almost at onco and three months afterward, on July 1, 1793, they sailed for Sydney, arriving there in March, 1794, after a tedious voyage of eight months. The ship was a convict vessel, but for this trip carrying provisions to the colony. The crew were coarse and drunken. A convict girl assigned to Mrs. Marsden as a maid took herself off to the captain's cabin in open defiance. The weary weeks dragged on without their reaching port, and they had urgent reason for wishing to bo there. A week off Port Jackson, on a wild and stormy morning, with no company or help but that of her husband, Mrs. Marsden gave birth to a daughter whom they named Anne. A great wave washed over the quarterdeck and came into the cabin through the porthole, but both husband and wife got through tho trying day with calmness and courage. He writes: " Mrs. Marsden, notwithstanding bad weather, damp linen, wet cabin and no assistance but such as I could give, yet she hath had a good day, her spirits have never been down, her mind seeins easy, and she appears in a very fair way. to do well. Having got the child dressed and our little place put to rights, I kneeled down to return God "thanks." These two were of the true pioneer stamp. From Sydney they went into the Barracks at Parramatta, when Marsden notes, " This was the first day we had been settled sinco we were married or could say we had got into an house of our own." Mrs. Marsden must have been even more thankful than he. As his busy life opened out before him ever more active, more varied and more controversial, so her cares and duties increased. They had eight children, five daughters, Anno, Elizabeth, Mary, Jane and Martha, and three sons. The eldest son, Charles Simeon, was accidentally killed when about three years old. Bereavement This is his mother's own account of the tragedy, convoyed in a letter to a friend in England: "We were ftoing to tho farm. A servant was with tho boy and me in a single-horso chaise. Mr. Marsden was on horseback when a man twenty yards from our house carelessly ran a wheelbarrow directly under the wheel of the chaise and overturned it and my dear child never stirred more. Picture to yourself my feelings, to have him in health and spirits and the next moment to behold him in the arms of death. This is tho first time I have taken tip my pen to write to England since I* lost him though it is now fifteen months."

Her cup of grief was not full. It must have been a cruel blow when two years later another little son, John, who was just beginning to walk, lost his life through being scalded by tho overturning of a dish of boiling water. Tho third son, another Charles Simeon, born in 18011, went home to study medicine in 1819. His father had great hopes of him, and fervently desired that he should qualify for either medicine or the Church, and ultimately devoto himself to tho Maori mission, but he returned to take up farming. In 1815 Mrs. Marsden had a paralytic stroke from which she nover wholly recovered, although sho lived for twenty years. Sho died in 1835 when she was sixty-three years old and her husband seven years older and feeling tho infirmities of age. Ho felt her loss most sorely. A Crowning Sorrow

Indeed, there is no aspect of Marsden's life as revealed in the " Life and Journals " of such moving human appeal as that last visit of his to New Zealand in his old age when the loss of his wife had come as a crowning sorrow in a life of many struggles and cares that she had softened. Everyone who reads the book will long remember the scene when the Maoris gathered round him and lingered, loth to part, saying, " We wish to take a very long, steadfast look at the old man, for wo know that he will not live to visit us again." Ho described her death in a letter to the l?ev. Henry Williams in November, 1885. "It is with the most painful feelings I now sit down to write to you. My affectionate wife departed this life on 2nd Oct. Inst. This lias been the heaviest affliction I have ever met with. The wound it has inflicted will never heal on this side of the grave. We have travelled together between forty and fifty years through many btorms both by sea and land with mutual happiness and comfort."