"DEAREST BETSY"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22592, 8 June 1935, Page 5

"DEAREST BETSY"

MRS MARSDEN'S CENTENARY LIFE OF FAITHFUL SERVICE By Eric Ramsden. The centenary falls this year of the' death of Mrs Marsden. wife of the famous missionary, and a woman who, though little known beyond her own circle, played no insignificant part in the early history of New Zealand. From the birth of her youngest child. Martha, in 1811, until her own death on October 2, 1835, she was more •or less a permanent invalid. For more than 40 years she had been Mr Marsden's companion, encouraging him, and sympathising in his work. At times the political tide that swirled about his head was so devastating that Samuel Marsden considered leaving Australia for good. The precious Hassall correspondence in the Mitchell Library in Sydney shows that he even thought of settling in New Zealand at one time. Referring to Mrs Marsden's death in a letter to the Rev. Henry Williams, he said: "The wound it has inflicted will never heal on this side of the grave." THE HASSALL LETTERS. In the course of sifting these letters, a task that took many weeks, I came across new material relating to Mrs Marsden, and fresh information, too, concerning her family. A letter written by her son-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Hassall, shortly after her passing shows that Mr Marsden, Anne (Mrs Hassall), and

the writer were present at her -death bed. " When we arrived she was very weak and hardly able to talk to- us," wrote Mr Hassall to his children at Denbigh, their country home near Camden, "but at the same time she was sensible and knew us all.'' Mrs Hassall, her eldest daughter, alarmed in the change in her mother's appearance some time later, called her husband. He in turn called Mr Marsden. Describing the scene, lie wrote: "We all knelt- round her dying bed, and,your dear grandpa prayed to God for Christ's sake to take her soul to that happy place prepared for all His dear children, and God has .taken her to Hiniself. ..'.' .

And now, my dears, ought we not to be thankful to God for giving us one who loved and served Him?" Samuel Marsden married Elizabeth Fristan, his " dearest Betsy," a month before his ordination as a priest, on April 21, 1793. Elizabeth Fristan came of gentle stock. The Marsden family today trace with pride their descent through her to the famous Admiral, Sir Cloudesley Shovell. Mrs Marsden wae born on July 12, 1772. Less than three months after their marriage the young couple sailed for New South Wales. Anne, the daughter who stood at her mother's death bed, was born ■ at sea, under particularly, distressing circumstances, before the transport * William reached Sydney. There was no one to help the young mother but her husband. It is well known how Samuel Marsden dried the infant's clothes on his own body. Outside, the seas ragod and the storm howled, as the minister knelt to render thanks for his wife's safe deliverance.

New South Wales society was most repugnant to this delicately reared girl. But what she missed more than all, she confided to her London friend, Mrs Stokes, was the " good, religious conversation," to which she had been accustomed. Soon she had a small native boy to wait on table. As time went on and the Marsden menage was increased, the next problem she had to face was that of educating her children. It was decided that little Anne should go to England to school. The only other Marsden child to cross the seas for that purpose was Charles Simeon, flip surviving son. Great hopes were placed on Charles. Naturally, he was the apple of the eye of his invalid mother, and she indulged him as much as she was able. His father, bowover, was determined that he should be cither a missionary or a medical man; he wanted him to serve in the New Zealand mission. "DETESTED NEW ZEALAND." Samuel Otto Hassall. a contemporary, says in the Hassall letters that Charles detested the very name of New Zealand. He had not the slightest intention of going there. Nevertheless, he was sent off to England, as his sister Anne had been years before. Charles went to Lampeter College, in Wales, where his future brother-in-law (Thomas Hassall) was instructed to keep a vigilant eye on him. But Charles Marsden was determined to become a farmer; his mothet was disappointed, and his father nnnoyed. More than annoyed—he vas downright angry when his son returned to New South Wales without having passed a single examination.

Charles Marsden inherited the model estate of " Mamre." which his father, in the strength of his young manhood, had hewn from the bush. But Charles had no head for business. Eventually " Mamre " and all that it meant slfpped through his fingers. Fortunately, however, his mother was spared that knowledge.

T think it can bo generally agreed flint Mrs Mnrsdon's death hastened that of the old missionary. TTe was never again the same man. Then came the most bitter blow of all—the dismissal of one of his most trusted workers in the New Zealand field, the Rev. William Yate. That story has yet to be told in full. Tt has no place In an article of this description. Except to say this —that when Fate dealt the old man this blow Mrs Marsdon was no lontrer there to turn to for comfort. Neither was she there to, farewell him when he set, out on his last journey, almost a century ago, to ascertain precisely what damage Yate had done. Sad at heart, his eyesight almost gone, hroken in spirit, some thought Samuel Marsden would never live to see Sydney Heads again. Yet he lived to return, and gallantly declared that he would he "off again in six weeks or so. . . ." When one takes into consideration the difficulties and dangers of the time, one can well understand the anxiety of Mra

Marsden in earlier years when her husband left for New Zealand. On the occasion that Charles sailed for England she was bereft of both Mr Marsden and her son. " I need not say how Mrs M. feels at parting with him for England and me to New Zealand at the same time," the missionary confided (in one of the Hassall letters) to Mrs Stokes. "The promise is. 'As thy day thy strength shall be. . . .'" These new letters will give Mrs Marsden her proper place in history. . We catch glimpses of. her, despite her. infirmity, calling on the wife of the new Governor, the lady of Governor Darling. We see her, too, taking tea in the home of her daughter, Mrs Anne Hassall, now proudly ensconced in her first home in Parrarnatta. There is more than one sight of her as she drives past in the chaise that Mr Marsden had specially imported from London for her—a gentle, ailing little lady,, yet one possessed of spirit, of indomitable courage. Naturally, her long illness prevented her taking much part in household affairs. That duty fell to Elizabeth (later Mrs Bobart), her "second daughter. Miss Marsden (Anne) was so long in England that she never occupied the place in the house that should have been hers: besides, she soon married and had an establishment of her own. Mrs Marsden took a hand in Anne's romance with her husband's ambitious young curate. The letters show that she actually handed the letter that Thomas Hassall had penned, after many destroyed attempts, to the awe-inspiring Mr Marsden. But Mrs Marsden had first read it, and expressed approval. To her dying day Anne Hassall preserved the letter her husband had written asking for her hand and the reply that her father had forwarded to the young man he designated " a young Timothy," one to stand in his i lace when he had gone. SISTERS' LOVE OF GOSfcir. The letters prove, too, that the Marsdens, despite the awe they felt in the presence of their father, were a happy family. The sisters loved to gossip. Nothing appealed to them, of course, as did their own love affairs. There were times, likewise, when they complained of their father's use of them as secretaries. On occasion, before the departure of mails for England, he would have them up half the night copying. But Marsden at that time was fighting with his back to the wall, and the girls probably did not realise the good service they performed for him. Until at last came the day when the gentle spirit that mothered the household in the old red brick parsonage on the hill went to her rest after long years of suffering. The old missionary, lib own journey through life almost ended, was inconsolable. Mrs Marsden was placed in a little burial plot in Parrarnatta cemetery, in the plot in which Frances Bobart, the first wife

of her husband's curate, had been laid not long before. The Rev. H. H. Bobart, another missionary from the New Zealand field, subsequently succeeded Mr Marsden at St. John's and became the husband of his second daughter, Elizabeth. < Just across the pathway is the grave of Mrs Leigh, wife of the Rev. Samuel Leigh, who founded the ill-fated Wesleyan mission at Whangaroa. Friends in life, these wives of the two most famous missionaries ever associated with New Zealand are not separated in death. Their life stories are but pages from the book o' New Zealand history hidden between the four brick walls of this old graveyard.