^ 820 .S7 Z3 I 969 ^^ 3 4067 031 98 4064 '^:J •'•,"1 ^~\ •• C^ i •"^ i *••• Lr- •^^"' -r •!.! -^'^ 7o•^^> JAMES BRUNTON STEPHENS JAMES BRUNTON STEPHENS CECIL HADGRAFT UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND PRESS © University ofQueensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1969 Set in Monotype Baskerville 11/12 and printed on Burnie Featherweight Book 85 gsm Printed and bound by Watson Ferguson & Co. Ltd., Brisbane Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a book National Library of Australia registry number AUS69-2069 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publishers. '.. V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS MY DEBT is most obviously owed to the officers of the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), the National Library (Canberra), the Mitchell Library (Sydney), the Oxley Library (Brisbane), the Fryer Library (University of Queensland), to the Queensland State Librarian, Mr. J. Stapleton, and to the Queensland Archivist, Mr. R. Sharman. I should like to express my thanks to Mrs. G. Bonnin of the Fryer Library, Mr. Spencer Routh of the Queensland University Library, my colleagues Miss E. Hanger and Mr. David Rowbotham, the Director-General of Education, Mr. G. K. D. Murphy, and Miss Ruth Fiddes, who drew my attention to the Francis Baily letters. I am especially grateful to the Rev. R. Maurice King of Bo'ness, who made the Kirk Session records available to me, and to the late Sir John Ferguson for his generous loan of the Stephens letters in his possession. I have to acknowledge gratefully the provision of funds by the Senate of the University of Queensland to aid in the research on this project. It is a point of interest that the printing of this book has been done by Watson Ferguson and Company, originally Watson and Co., the firm which between 1873 ^^^ i^^*^ published for Stephens The Godolphin Arabian, Mute Discourse, and Miscellaneous Poems; and it was James Ferguson, a mem­ ber of the firm in the second half of last century and a close friend of Stephens, who was the recipient of the most self- revealing letters that Stephens ever wrote. CONTENTS The Background Travel i ^ Greenock 27 Brisbane and the Bush 39 The School Teacher 67 The Public Servant 89 The Man and His Work 105 Selective Bibliography 123 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS facing page James Brunton Stephens, 1871. Courtesy Oxley Library. 54 A page from Stephens' diary, from the entry dated 8 January 1857. Reproduced by permission of Mrs. J. P. Andrews. 55 The bachelors' quarters on Tamrookum, where Stephens lived as tutor to the family of William Barker. The figure on the right is reputed to be Stephens. Courtesy Telegraph {Brisbane). 70 Brisbane, 1864. The fire in Queen Street. Courtesy Oxley Library. 70 Brisbane, 1866. The old Lands Office, centre left. The old Hospital, now the Supreme Court site, centre. The first bridge, centre right. Turbot Street at bottom right. Courtesy Oxley Library. 71 "Wyuna", Water Street, Highgate Hill, Brisbane, where Stephens lived for the last twenty years of his life. Courtesy Telegraph [Brisbane). 71 THE BACKGROUND HE GRAVEYARD on the hillside at Bo'ness, a small T port some twenty miles from Edinburgh, is split by a roadway into upper and lower sections. In the latter stands a tombstone, erected in 1847 by his family to the memory of John Stephens, "schoolmaster of this parish who after forty- seven years faithful and dihgent services died 13th December 1844". He was sixty-six years old, and had fathered eleven children, three by his first wife (two dying in infancy) and eight by his second, Jane. The latter (nde Brunton), of Muirkirk, he married on 25 December 1820, two years after the death of his first wife. Jane, it is believed, traced her ancestry back to George Buchanan, the Scottish poet of the sixteenth century. Like many other parish schoolmasters of that time, John Stephens must have found the rearing of a large family a task sometimes bordering on the impossible. He was one member of the partly devoted, partly constrained, and wholly admir­ able band of teachers who, since John Knox's vision of a literate nation, had made the parish schools of Scotland a uniquely eflfective instrument of elementary education. A school in every parish—it was for its time a dream, of course, an aspiration not attained even by 1800, nearly two centuries and a half later; but its partial fulfilment had made a poor and small country a subject for European admiration. In these schools were taught reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, religion (the Catechism), and sometimes Latin. Standards varied greatly, though even the least eflfective schools provided enough of a basic education to build on, [I] THE BACKGROUND while the best were hardly to be distinguished from the lower classes in secondary schools. Scots could point to it all with pride. But it was bought at a price, and the price was paid by those who taught in the schools. The parish schoolteacher was appointed by the heritors and the parish minister and had to be a member of the Church of Scotland. Normally he became ex officio, or was almost automatically appointed. Session-clerk as well. A small dwelling, which did not need to have more than two rooms, was generally part of his emolument, together with a few fees that varied with the number of pupils. The average salary until 1803 was 400 merks (about f,2'f). All in all, he might expect as much as •£^0 per annum. To such a position in Bo'ness John Stephens had been appointed. The Kirk Sessions record for 27 May 1799 reads: The session considering that Mr. John Stephens is elected Parochial Schoolmaster resolved and agreed to choose him as their Clerk. They did, and hereby do so accordingly. Mr. Stephens being sent for, compeared, and the oath de fidelis being administered the Session records were committed to him. If the forty-seven years' service commemorated by his tomb­ stone is to be accepted, he was probably in the Session's employ a year or so earlier than this. The little Bo'ness school in 1799 held no more than half a dozen "schoUars", of diflferent ages and abilities, and then and later no doubt might serve as the original of the picture sketched in A Practical Essay on the Manner of Studying and Teaching in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1823)— One boy is saying a lesson; two or three are waiting to see if their sums are right; and half a dozen are asking each a diflferent word . —a busy little Eden removed from the towns and the uni­ versities where sexual indulgence, the same Essay admonishes us, was a scandal to the godly: [2] THE BACKGROUND Stupidity, blindness, madness, convulsions, and above all, consumption, are a few of the punishments de­ nounced against eady and habitual lewdness; and should none of these occur, debility is always an atten­ dant of this disgusting vice. Less like Eden is another scene briefly described in an early piece of writing by James, son of John Stephens: Presently Virtue became aware, from the confused din of many voices, that they were approaching the seat of learning. As the school was situated outside the town they were not under the necessity of climbing over any roofs in order to reach it. The din seemed to increase as they approached, so that at length Virtue was fain to cling to her aunt's gown in a state of considerable apprehension as to whether the sounds were proceeding from human children or from a collection of wild animals. In Bo'ness John Stephens lived for the rest of his life. There he educated and reared his children. There he died and was buried. The Session record for 23 December 1844—an entry no longer in John Stephen's flowing and slightly ornate hand­ writing—officially notes that Mr. Stephens having died on the 13th inst the Session authorize the Moderator to act as interim Session Clerk, and to draw the usual dues, returning the usual propor­ tion for the Poor, and giving in the mean time the Session Clerk's proportion to Mr. Stephens' family. No doubt the customary condolences were sent and the customary expressions exchanged; but it reads as a rather chill comment on the good and faithful servant. He had made his will on 24 April of the same year. That it had not been made until then, and that it was then made— this suggests some memento mori, in all probability a "stroke", for he died of paralysis. So he set his affairs in order and, one may fear, waited. [3] THE BACKGROUND What provision was made for his family we do not know, but it is Hkely enough that they benefited from the School­ masters' Widows' Fund, constituted by Act of Parhament in 1802. To it all burgh and parochial teachers, if appointed after that date, were obliged to contribute, the amount depending on the size of annuity desired. When the father died, the tenth of his eleven children was nine years old, being born 17 June 1835. This was James Brunton Stephens, the only member of the family to attain eminence. Many years later he was to make mention of the fact that he received his first education at his father's school. It seems to have been a good foundation, and he built on it until he was nineteen. He wrote that after the death of his father he spent five years in a "hospital" in Scotland.