Aspects of the Career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong
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Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873 Barry John Bridges University of Wollongong
Bridges, Barry John, Aspects of the career of Alexander Berry, 1781-1873, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Department of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, 1992. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1432
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Chapter 1
BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION
Alexander Berry, the future squire of Crows Nest and laird of the Shoalhaven, was born in Hilltarvit farmhouse overlooking Cupar, the county town of Fife, Scotland, on St Andrew's day 30 November 1781. He was the first child of thirty-one year-old tenant farmer James Berrie and twenty- five year-old Isabel (Bell) Tod-'^.
The Berry family in its most extended form was numerous in the north-eastern parishes of Fife and particularly strong in the parish of Leuchars, where the name was perhaps more common than any other.^ It is from this parish that the Berries or Berrys with whom we are concerned derive. Alexander's father and forebears used the name Berrie, he invariably signed Berry, his brothers and sisters were not consistent.^ The Berries of Alexander's line of descent were ancestral tenants of Lucklaw farm, just inside the boundary of Leuchars parish but geographically part of the adjoining parish of Logie- Murdoch.^ The latter was about two and a half miles in lenCfthr east to west and one mile in breadth north to south, consisting of one mountain, Lucklaw Hill, and rolling hills wedged between Cupar and Dundee Ferry, each about three
Cupar Parish Register Bapt:|.^)nas/Marriages/Deaths 1778- 1819 (SRO OPR 420/3). Parish registers for Leuchars and adjacent parishes; John Fowler Mitchell and Sheila Mitchell, Monumental Inscriptions (pre 1855) in East Fife, n.p. 1971. For example, David signed himself 'Berry' in a letter published in the Empire, 4 Sep. 1855 but 'Berry' in his will of 1886. Newspaper reports from the Shoalhaven used both spellings.
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^ Rev. Robert Bogie, 'Parish of Logie', in Sir John Sinclair, ed. , The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791-1799, vX, Fife, East Ardley, Wakefield 2nd edn 1978, 616-619; A.H.Millar, Fife: Pictorial and Historical; its People, Burghs, Castles and Mansions, Cupar - Fife 1895, vl, 177-178, 180; Personal observation.
^ Logie Parish Register (SRO OPR 446/1).
^ Leuchars Parish Register of Mortcloth Money 1720-1765 (SRO OPR 445/2). Hire of the mortcloth or pall was a James, was tenant for the next thirty-five years. James, the eldest son, reached maturity while his father was still in possession and was probably assisted by him to become tenant of Hilltarvit.
Tarvit or Wemysshall Hill is a prominence one and three quarter miles south of Cupar," the peak of which affords a magnificent view of the whole Howe of Fife." The extent of Hilltarvit farm has not been ascertained. Farms in the Cupar district ranged from about a hundred to three hundred acres.^^ From generally being mentioned in accounts of the district Hilltarvit appears to have been one of the larger holdings.
Isabel Tod was born on 26 April 1756, the third daughter and fifth child of Alexander Tod, tenant of Claremont-'^-'^ in the parish of St Andrews and St Leonards, and his wife Janet Armit.-'^^ When Isabel was about six years old the family moved,^ becoming tenants of Cowbakie in Leuchars parish. Alexander Tod was still tenant there at
means of raising funds for the relief of the poor. Social distinctions were preserved and receipts increased by having one cloth more elaborate and a good deal more expensive than the other.
8 Francis H.Groome, ed., Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Graphic and Accurate Description of Every Place in Scotland, Edinburgh 1901 edn, 329.
John M. Leighton, History of the County of Fife, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Glasgow 1840, vll, 4; George Innes, Historical Notes and Reminiscences of Cupar, Cupar-Fife 1884,27. 10 Rev.George Campbell, 'Parish of Cupar of Fife', in Sinclair, ed.. The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791-1797, vX, 225; Leighton, op.cit., vll, 44.
^^ Sometimes rendered 'Clearmount' in old records
12 St Andrews and St Leonards Parish Register Births (SRO OPR 453/3). 13 Alexander, born Nov. 1761, was the last child born at 10 o eg r-co
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his death on 14 May 1780.^^ Two of Isabel's older siblings and four younger ones certainly did not marry- It was this family of bachelor uncles and spinster aunts whom Isabel's children would have known best and from whom they acquired a view of their Tod relatives as lazy, slovenly and all 'a little crazy'-^^
Alexander was followed by five other sons and three daughters born at Hilltarvit between 1783 and 1800 and by another daughter born either there or at Errol, Perthshire in 1802: a total of ten children over a span of twenty-one years. The second and fourth sons, and third daughter, died in infancy.^" The Berry children who lived to maturity were a strong, healthy breed. All four sons stood six feet^' in an age when such a stature was still unusual. In 1853, when John was already dead, Alexander explained to David and William that he was unable to buy them ready-made coats in Sydney because 'you are both so gigantic - except Henry Osborne who is a brute beast there are no such men in the Colony'.^" He must himself have been of a like size for when it was necessary to have clothes made for them he had himself measured.^^ Apart from John, killed in an accident when aged sixty-two, the siblings lived to ages ranging from the Biblical limit of seventy to ninety-four years.
A review of Alexander Berry's family background and
Claremont. John, died April 1763, was buried at Leuchars.
14 Tod family tombstone, Leuchars Churchyard.
^^ Berry to David Berry 25/9/1863, BP. Alexander was given to berating his siblings and asking whether they were content to be like the Tods.
16 See diagram of James Berrie's family. 17 St Andrews Citizen, 16 Nov 1889, 5. 18 Berry to David Berry 6/6/1853, BP.
19 Berry to David Berry 23/10/1851, BP. 12
upbringing provides valuable insight into his character and personality and the origins of the ruling concerns of his Australian career. Here will be found the seeds of his desire for wealth and status and particularly his lust for land. His regard for science emd his progressive approach to farming arose as naturally out of his upbringing as did opposition to change in political and social matters. There are clues to the development of his sometimes boorish and often domineering manner, to a contrasting hesitation to act on his own judgement and propensity for procrastination, to his affection for members of the family and paternalistic kindliness to tenants and retainers, and to his uneasy personal relationships outside the family circle. Scotland experienced severe economic difficulties following Union in 1707 and was left to find its own way out of them. In 1723 three hundred men formed the Honourable Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture and the gentry, both inspired and shamed by comparing their poor estates with those of England, took the initiative in introducing changes- Two developments were of particular importance. In 1716 turnips were first grown for the table but their value as cattle feed was soon realised and a reduction in the traditional Martinmas slaughter of stock was made possible. Secondly, the potato was cultivated on the Stirling plain in 1739 and by the end of the century every tenant and cottar had his potato patch and the potato had become a staple of the poor and a second standby with oatmeal against threat of famine.^^ James Berrie's life coincided roughly with the Scottish agricultural revolution which has been dated as beginning around 1760. From then on fields were enclosed, rigs broken down, strips consolidated, bogs drained, commons absorbed, crops changed and rotation introduced. Hand-to-mouth subsistence farming gave way to scientific cash farming to produce food for growing industrial towns.
2° T.C.Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830. Glasgow 1972 edn, 252. 13
The farming system in many parts of Scotland became a model for Europe. From about 1780 the landlord, while demanding increased productivity, was generally willing to leave judgements concerning details to his tenants. Henry Brougham pointed out in 1803 that in England gentlemen alone took the Farmers Magazine but in Scotland 'it is circulated amongst the farmers fully as much as the landlords' ."'^ Rents began to rise markedly from 1763, doubled from 1783 to 1793 and doubled again from 1794 to 1815.^2 According to the Corn Laws Report, by 1814 rents in the more fertile parts of Scotland were higher than in the best districts in England although profits were only about half the rent whereas in England they were equal to the rent.^^ In these circumstances families experienced in superior cultivation and holding secure leases were in a position to increase profits and accumulate capital more effectively than newcomers. ^ The combination of higher rents and fewer farms owing to increases in size forced many to look elsewhere and reduced unprogressive tenants and the cottars to the ranks of farm labourers. That Alexander's brothers resisted his constant pressure on them to migrate is some measure of the family's prosperity at home. By the mid 1790s improvement was much in evidence in the Cupar district. During the last fifteen years newcomers from the Carse of Gowrie had introduced new methods with the result that
the landowners and farmers have adopted and prosecuted every plan of modern improvement, with a degree of eagerness, persevercuice, and success, not surpassed in any corner of the island.
21 Ibid., 21%,1%1,'l^'3> quoted 22 Robert Wilson, An Enquiry into the Causes of the High Prices of Corn and Labour, Edinburgh 1815, 47-49, cited Smout, op.cit., 289. 2-^ David S.Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788-1850: Emigration, Commerce and Investment, Oxford 1967, 80. 2^ Smout, op.cit., 289. 14
A certain set rotation of crops had been introduced, varying according to the nature of the soil. Although the number of livestock was not great the district had long been famous for its excellent breed of black cattle and horsebreeding then underwent great improvement so that the 'farmer seldom yokes a pair in his plough, or in his cart, for which he would not draw, in the market, 501'.^ At the onset of the agricultural revolution the typical home of the gudeman or tenant was the centre of a row of undetached farm buildings flanked by barns and cattle houses, the whole low in the walls and thatched with straw interlaid with thin sods. The house itself was perhaps thirty feet long by fourteen feet wide, divided into two rooms: the 'but' and the 'ben'. The but was used as the kitchen and dining room for the whole of the inhabitants and as sleeping quarters for maidservants and the gudeman's own daughters. Menservants and grown sons of the farmer sometimes slept in a loft above the ben but more often in the stable. The but was typically earth floored, unceiled and with unplastered walls. The only window was about a foot and a half wide and a little taller. The but was the social centre of the farm - a warm, smokefilled, crowded, busy room ruled over by the gudewife, where everyone living at the farm was equally welcome and where boys and menservants would sit around the fire of an evening, with any stray traveller looking for hospitality for the night. The ben was the private apartment of the gudeman and his wife. It had a deal floor and frequently a timber ceiling, its walls were plastered and the furniture was better. Any visitors regarded by the gudeman and his wife as social equals or superiors were received in the ben. By the end of the century farmers were generally living in slate-roofed, stone houses of the modern kind with separate rooms for separate functions and division in accommodation of the family and household servants. There
25 Campbell, loc.cit.. 22^-'2.T1, quoted 227; Leighton, op.cit., V II, 43. 15
was now imported mahogany furniture and a range of the cheap household products of the industrial revolution. Similarly clothes made by travelling tailors from homespun cloth were by the seventeen nineties supplemented by purchased linen and cotton textiles- Important social changes accompanied the agricultural revolution and increased material wellbeing. Social distinctions were in evidence in the but-and-ben farmhouse but there were also very close bonds. Gudeman and servant worked side by side at the same jobs in the field, ate at the same table and relaxed in each other's company in front of the same fire of an evening. The farmer's adolescent children shared the servants' primitive quarters. Religious beliefs and literary tastes were shared with family prayers, attendance on the same preachers, and readings from the farmer's little stock of books. Scottish rural life involved cooperative activity on the part of what was very like an extended family. This changed. In 1796 Thomas Robertson was recommending to landowners that each tenant should have sufficient land to be fully occupied in management. A generous portion of his profits should be drawn off as rent but enough left to allow him to accumulate capital and improve his own standard of living. As a result of such a policy the progressive tenant was transformed into a middle-class gentleman farmer, increased in prosperity and identified himself with the 'landed interest'. A social gulf opened between him and the labourers in his employ.2" Standard English was the medium of genteel and intellectual communication and of trade. As the richer peasants became capitalist farmers they moved more freely in English and genteel Scottish society and assimilated to the class which viewed English speech as a
26 Smout, op.cit., 282-293. Smout concentrates his descriptions on the Lothians, the most progressive part of Scotland, but other sources indicate that Fife was little if anything behind the Lothians. 16
97 symbol of status."^ James Berrie was reared in a but-and-ben farmhouse at Lucklaw but lived from early manhood until his fifties in a superior house at Hilltarvit.2° Window tax receipts show that he lived during his remaining years in similar multi-roomed houses.29 A full inventory of his household effects following his death put their total worth at £65 10s 4d. Frequent use was made of the words 'old' and 'old-fashioned' in describing items. His moveable estate otherwise was valued at £3,595 7s lO^d of which £1,999 3s 3d was money deposited in a bank.^^ He also possessed a small plot of land in St Andrews. •^•'- James had made the transition to gentleman capitalist farmer. James's sons were reared in a time when prosperity, if not survival itself, was conditional upon a progressive outlook. One of Alexander's claims to remembrance is his part in founding the Agricultural Society of New South Wales. He was amongst the first New South Wales subscribers to The British Farmer's Magazine,-^^ was asked by the Governor for advice on agricultural matters,-^^ and by the late eighteen twenties had, with the assistance of his partner, made their estate at Shoalhaven a model of progressive farming.-^^ In the case of James's family the 2' John Prebble, The Lion in the North: a personal view of Scotland's History, London 1974, 309,313; Smout, op.cit., 464. 28 Painting of this house. Berry Museum. 29 Receipts, espec. No.5, Letter to Alexander Berry (ML Ab 192/10); receipts to John Berry for year 1833-1834, BP.
30 Inventories of Estate of James Berry 10/3/1828, Sheriff Court of Perth (SRO SC 49/31/8), 187-205.
^1 Letters to Alexander Berry (ML Ab 192/10), Nos 3 & 6.
32 SG, 1 Aug. 1827 ^^ E.g. Sir Thomas Brisbane to W.Horton 15/4/1825, Sir Thomas Brisbane's Letter Book No.3 (ML A1559~3), 473.
34 SG, 29 Aug. 1828. 17
sense of social superiority which went with belonging to the employing class was softened to some extent by continuance of much of the old 'family' attitude to servants which was part of his own upbringing and which was still enjoined by the Church of Scotland as part of a broader insistence on social duties accompanying possession of wealth and power. ^^ As none of the sons other than Alexander left home when they reached manhood they must themselves have laboured beside their father's servants. The ability of Alexander and his brothers to retain servants in apparently contented service, for thirty or forty years in some cases, is testimoney to their adherence to the kindly paternalism of their forbears. In the later eighteenth century the Scottish gentry regarded towns as sinks of iniquity and espoused the idea of settling population surplus to requirement for working the land in villages on their estates. By this means advantages of the agricultural revolution would be preserved, the non-agricultural poor spared the slum conditions, poverty and crime of the towns, and paternalistic control by laird and minister could continue.-^" Alexander Berry held to this view that towns were dehumanising and undesirable. Ironically, for the last forty years of his life he was himself a towndweller.
Berry mentions that during a voyage from London to Cape Town in 1806-1807 he read certain books on law and commercial affairs 'the constant study of which, unfortunately made me "Conservative"'.-^^ This explanation
•^5 Ian D.L.Clarke, 'From Protest to Reaction: The Moderate Regime in the Church of Scotland, 1752-1805', in N.T. Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison, eds. Scotland in the Age of Improvement: Essays in Scottish History in the Eighteenth Century, Edinburgh 1970, 207.
36 T.C.Smout,'The Landowner and the Planned Village in Scotland, 1730-1830', ibid. ^^ Alexander Berry, Passages in the Life of a Nonagenarian. Being a Series of Autobiographical Notices Written by the Late Mr Alexander Berry when he 18
of the origin of his views is too glib and superficial and set too late. For the long period 1775 to 1827 Henry Dundas (later Viscount Melville), a member of Scotland's leading legal family, his son after him and their clients and supporters held Scottish society in a vice-like grip under what was known as 'The System'. Dundas's power was based on influence gained within the governing Tory party through holding the Scottish parliamentary seats in a block in the interest of that party and within Scotland by the exercise of patronage through control of the key administrative office of Lord Advocate. The Dundas 'System' has frequently been represented as the tyranny of a political mafia. There was that side to it but it also had a basis in public support. During the eighteenth century as Scotland's great landowners became Anglicised they came increasingly to be absentees spending their rent income outside Scotland, imposing a drain on its economy. Then they set about creating dummy voters, enabling themselves by this means to alter Scotland's representation in Parliament. These developments alarmed the middling and small landowners and merchants, the natural elite of resident Scots, who believed that it was the social function of great landowners to consume the produce of the countryside and ensure that any surplus was returned in one form or another to the community. Any landowner who did not do this but instead drained money out of the country was dysfunctional. Dundas's power was based
was upwards of Ninety Years of Age, Chap. I, published serially in St Andrews Citizen 1874, (taken from a book of clippings in the St Andrews Collection, St Andrews University Library).
-'^ The Dundas clique is better compared with the Afrikaner Broederbond in that it consisted of individuals in most respects personally honorable , law-abiding and religious, acting for the protection of the interests of a small and threatened nation but benefiting personally from manipulation of the political, economic and class systems. 19
on taking hold of the discontented resident elite and welding it into a landed interest with the clear goal of maintaining its traditional dominance in Scottish society and controlling the direction of change. He masterminded the movement for electoral reform in the seventeen seventies which permitted consolidation of the power of his following.-^9 T^e Scottish franchise was utterly unrepresentative- In 1782, just after Berry's birth, only 2,600 Scottish freeholders had the vote: an average of about eighty per county."*^ In 1821, the year in which he last set foot in his native land, the forty-five Scottish members of the House of Commons were elected by 4,327 men out of a population of more than two million.^1 Of county voters registered in 1790 more than half were estimated to be fictitious. 42 Freeholders knew that any vote given against the Dundas nominee in an open election would be noted and retribution would follow. There were no juries in civil cases and it was generally accepted that judges, all Dundas appointees, were unlikely to find for anyone who employed a lawyer considered a Whig or reformer.In 1801 Dundas boasted that every professor entering on duty at the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews in the past twenty years had been appointed 'either actually by myself or upon my recommendation'.4^ Support for his clique was necessary even for obtaining such lesser favours as a post in the
oq -"^ John Dwyer and Alexander Murdoch. 'Paradigms and Politics: Manners, Morals and the Rise of Henry Dundas, 1770-1784', in John Dwyer, Roger A.Mason and Alexander Murdoch, eds. New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland, Edinburgh n.d. 40 John Ritchie, Lachlan Macquarie: a biography, Melbourne 1986, 5. 41 Brian Fitzpatrick, British Imperialism and Australia 1783-1833: An Economic History of Australasia, Sydney 2nd impression 1971, 39-40, n3.
42 Macmillan, op.cit., 7. 43 Clark, loc.cit., 203. 20
customs service or a place under the East India Company.^^ D.S. Macmillan surveyed Colonial Office correspondence for the eighteen twenties and found that Melvillite backing for Scots seeking colonial appointments, land grants and other favours was more common than political support for English and Irish applicants.^^^ The Church of Scotland was under control because the Patronage Act of 1712 gave appointment of ministers to landowner heritors. Some parishes the Government controlled directly through Royal patronage. In the last twenty years of the eighteenth century the Moderate party, which had a majority in the General Assembly, was 'little more than the Dundas interest at prayer, with nepotism and pluralism the main order of worship'.'*" The lay factor was largely neutralised by 'managing' the election of elders. The Church was a powerful adjunct to the regime. Scottish Calvinism had always laid great stress in its teaching on a primary duty to maintain social unity and harmony, which agitation for change would disturb. The two great ecclesiastical parties were as one in insisting that all ministers adhere rigidly to doctrine as laid down in the Westminster Confession, holding that the possibility of preserving doctrinal error was a lesser evil than allowing questioning of established propositions, thereby encouraging both doubt and pressure for change. Contradictory forces were also at work. This was the period of the great flowering of Scottish genius in the Enlightenment and rapid scientific and technological change which would lead to destruction of the old premises of Scottish society.
44 Dwyer and Murdoch, loc.cit., 210- 45 Macmillan, op.cit., 5-7, 117-118, 120- 46 William Fergus son, Scotland, 1689 to the Present, 121. quoted Wendy Scott Wilson, 'Religion and Society in the Early Nineteenth Century [etc-]', M Litt thesis. University of Aberdeen, 1969, 45- No copy of Fergusson's work was located in NSW. 21
The French Revolution strengthened the Dundas party. In 1792 the Edinburgh mob celebrated the King's birthday by burning the Dundases in effigy during a riot lasting three days. The following month a Society of the Friends of the People was formed. One of the leaders, Thomas Muir, was arrested and after a travesty of a trial in 1793 transported to Botany Bay for fourteen years. Repression of radicalism received unqualified support from the landed gentry and most of the middle class. Following threat of invasion in 1797 there was an outbreak of 'loyalism'. Even moderate Whig demands for burgh reform receded for twenty years. 48° The Dundas System was dedicated to preservation of the 'natural' rights and privileges of owners of land. In every age to the mid nineteenth century Scottish society was dominated by landowners. In some ages Crown and Church challenged the power of the aristocracy but in the country side where most Scots lived the power of the lord who gave the lease and took the rent was as little questioned as the power of God. Public statements and private papers alike of eighteenth century landowners reveal that they gloried above all else in exercising paternal rule over those beneath them. Possession of land was so intimately bound up with freedom of action, social position, and political rights that anyone who could bought land even if doing so involved economic sacrifice-^^ Moveable wealth did not confer the same advantages. The philosophy of the Dundas party was expressed by Lord Braxfield at the trial of Muir:
A government in every country should be just like a corporation, and in this country it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented. As for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has it on them? What
47 Prebble, op.cit., 314, 316.
48 Macmillan, op.cit., 7.
49 Smout, op.cit., 261 quoted, 263 22
security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all the property on their backs and leave the country in the twinkling of an eye. But landed property cannot be removed. ~*^ It will be seen that to the end of his life Alexander Berry was to argue in very similar terms. The tendency of the period was for the production of individuals indoctrinated in unquestioning, if not always happy, submission to the dictates of constituted authority. James Berrie and his sons fitted this mould.
The Protestant-Presbyterian tradition was particularly strong in the parishes of East Fife. St Andrews had been the intellectual centre of the Scottish Reformation and the county a stronghold of the Covenanters. The power of the Established Church was at its peak during James Berrie's youth and young manhood. Its ecclesiastical courts formed part of the fabric for administration of justice, it possessed authority to enforce strict sabbath observance and punish breaches of morality, exercised control over education and provided such relief of the poor as there was. The approval of his minister was important for a man's respectability and credit. Scottish rural society was strongly patriarchal. Calvinism viewed families as building blocks for the godly community and enjoined strict and unquestioned parental authority. Parents were to inculcate a strong sense of sin, including original sin, to repress any sign of vanity, pride, self-conceit, self-indulgence or other moral failings and in particular to exercise persistent vigilance to crush rising urges of the flesh. The patriarchal home often manifested a deep parental love for offspring but kept them in a state of thraldom, commonly into their adult years, offering neither opportunities for, nor experience in, autonomy.-'^ Very little can be said with certainty about James
50 Quoted Prebble, op.cit., 316. Charles Camic, Experience and Enlightenment. Socialization for Cultural Change in Eighteenth- Century Scotland, Edinburgh 1983, 127-130. 23
Berrie, but hints here and there support an impression of him as an affectionate but stern, narrow and perhaps somewhat oppressive pater familias. Alexander could at times be quite overbearing and his image is that of 'one of the ... most ruthlesssly domineering men' in New South Wales, 52 but when he was on his last visit to his parents in 1821 he meekly declined a request to deliver a letter when his father said 'I will not allow you to take charge of a letter to a convict!'^3 Alexander was at the time of this incident in his fortieth year, a citizen of the world and already a man of some consequence in Sydney. James's domination seems the most obvious explanation for marked tendencies to indecisiveness and procrastination in his sons. These characteristics in Alexander's conduct infuriated his partner Edward Wollstonecraft but they were less marked in him than in his brothers and he alone was capable of effective command. James's children were reared God-fearing Calvinists of the Church of Scotland.^^ Alexander, who was to marry an Anglican and end a worshipper in the Church of England, adopted a broad, ecumenical approach to religion but remained emotionally attached to the Church of his fathers throughout life. He read a portion of the scriptures daily.55 The key place of the Bible in his socialisation is constantly evidenced by Biblical reference and allusion in his speeches and writings and his capacity to engage in discussion of theology with ministers of religion more or
52 Geoffrey Scott, Sydney's Highways of History, Melbourne 1958, 114.
53 Berry to Rev. G.Walker 28/8/1868, The Late Mr. Berry. The Career of a Remarkable Fife Man in Australia, newspaper clippings. University of St Andrews Library.
54 This seemingly owed most to James's influence. Their minister at Cupar, the Rev. Dr George Campbell, was no Evangelical zealot but a thoroughgoing Moderate place man: Innes, op.cit., 18-19. 55 Berry to Charles Robinson [c Dec. 1858], BP. 24
less on equal terms.5° Ministers who knew David Berry reported him to be most devoutly religious and that few men had studied the Bible more or knew it better than he did-5^ In the later eighteenth century sexual transgressors, and through them their families, were humiliated by being seated on a 'cutty' stool in front of the congregation while the minister rebuked them or preached on their sins- Scottish society was, therefore, unusually puritanical and sexual lly repressive; but in few other cases can the natural urges have been so completely repressed as they apparently were in the case of James Berrie's children. It is very doubtful whether any one of the four strapping sons and three daughters who grew to adulthood can be said to have exhibited a healthy attitude to the opposite sex. Alexander lived for years in the same house as the woman he eventually married. Barbara, the second daughter, did not marry until after her father's death and she was in her forties.5o The other children may have lived celibate lives. The family's stern attitude towards sexual propriety carried over into their actions and attitudes towards others. Alexander refused his necessary permission for a convict servant to marry his pregnant sweetheart lest he 'might be considered as giving countenance to irregular conduct'.59 A similar abhorrence of irregularity was shown by David.6° James's children were stunted and warped in other aspects of their social and emotional development. With the
56 See for example Berry to Rev.W.B,Clarke 26/1/1857, Rev. W.B. Clarke Correspondence (ML MSS 139), v 3, 367-370.
5^ Quoted C. J.B.Watson, An Early History of the Shoalhaven District, n.p., n.d., 6. 5^ The date of Barbara's marriage has not been ascertained but she was still single in 1828, when she was forty, and married before her brothers and sisters migrated in 1836.
59 Berry to J.Maclean 29/8/1839 39/8129, CSIL, Presbyterian Clergy 1839 (NSWA 4/2346.98).
60 Empire, 4 Sep. 1855, letter from David Berry. 25
exception of Alexander (and possibly Barbara) they did not mix easily and became increasingly withdrawn as they grew older. Alexander, who went out into the world at an early age, was gregarious and a delightful companion. However, in his early thirties he said that he 'had never sung a song in my life'"l and at eighty-six wrote that at no time in his life had he any taste for participation in public gaiety." He stood aloof from neighbours he considered his social inferiors and was exceedingly formal in his customary address of even those nearest to him."3 This must have made it difficult to develop a feeling of being close to him and contributed to the loneliness which one senses in his writings throughout his life. The Berry family did not celebrate the usual festivals. Even after a quarter of a century in New South Wales Alexander's siblings had not adopted the 'pagan' English practice of celebrating Christmas and as late as the time of the 1861 New South Wales census, when in his eightieth year, Alexander did not know his age or date of birth,°4
In his later years in New South Wales Berry was looked upon as an eccentric, cranky and shamelessly selfish reactionary. Viewed against his background what stikes one is not his alleged idiosyncrasies but the fact that he was
61 Berry, op.cit.. Chap. IX. 62 Berry to Walker 20/4/1868, Letters from Alexander Berry, Esq. to Rev. George Walker D.D., [carbon typescript, ML] 29.
63 Even though he lived in an age of greater formality Berry was probably unusual in that for years he shared accommodation with his friend and, later, partner Edward Wollstonecraft and the latter's sister Elizabeth, yet when addressing Wollstonecraft invariably referred to Elizabeth as 'Miss Wollstonecraft' until he married her and thereafter as 'Mrs Berry'. For thirty years he was neighbour and close friend of the Rev. W.B.Clarke yet always addressed him as 'Mr Clarke'.
64 Berry to David Berry 8/4/1861, Berry to Mrs Methven 20/5/1865, BP. 26
such a rigid conformist. He held firmly through a very long life to the essential beliefs and values of the dominant landowner class in the Scotland of his upbringing over the last twenty years of the eighteenth century when 'The System' was at its peak. Berry saw in the political, social and economic relationships of Scotland at this time expression of eternal verities. Landowners rightly wielded power because they alone had a fixed stake in the country and would inevitably suffer from misgovernment. Consequently he lusted after the ownership of land and like Scottish landowners of his youth delighted in exercising the control over others which it gave him. He expected to direct dependents, tenants and employees in the exercise of their political rights and acted on a strongly-held belief in a responsibility for the happiness and well-being of members of these groups in particular and of other classes in general. Berry believed intensely in the sanctity of property, and especially of landed property. He referred with approval to a Sydney Morning Herald editorial which stated with respect to free land grants in early New South Wales that
However valuable the lands may be, and however partial their distribution, still all property must be held sacred unless dealt with on revolutional principles. A gift once bestowed cannot be made void."5 This social aind political philosophy included a hatred and fear of 'democracy' as an engine for social and economic levelling through confiscation of wealth by taxation- Berry scorned the principle of decision-making by majorities because the proper bases for decision-making are wisdom, intelligence and knowledge: qualities not possessed by 'the mob' - After interviewing him in 1843 a correspondent of the Sydney Weekly Register wrote that Berry prided himself on his 'singularly antiquated ideas', firmly believing
that there was common sense in the world before the birth of the present century, and that all knowledge
65 11 Jan. 1864. 27
and talents are not exclusively confined to the Radicals of the present day."" Berry believed devoutly in the Tory principle of remedying evils but otherwise 'to let well alone'. Whigs were anathema to him for in his view they considered all changes improvements"' whereas 'all sudden changes are dangerous'-"" His tragedy was that 'in a world of flux Alexander Berry remained unchanged'"9 becoming ever more alienated from the evolving society of New South Wales as his beliefs became increasingly anachronistic-
Alexander, who passed his school days at Cupar Grammar School,^ early developed that love of books and learning which marked his whole life- He recalled that he persuaded his father to buy him a copy of Salmon's The Universal Geographical Grammar seen on a hawker's stall in the market place-^1 This work, first published in 1749 and copiously illustrated with well-printed maps in colour, went through a ntimber of editions-'^ Probably it was Salmon's book which aroused in the boy a fascination with distant places and contributed to turning his thoughts to a career at sea. In the autumn of 1796, when not quite fifteen. Berry entered the University of St Andrews, nine miles from
66 SMH, 18 Dec. 1843, reprinting Weekly Register. 67 Ibid., 14 April 1843, letter from Berry, Cf Denison to Lady Hornby 8/12/1855, in Sir William Denison, Varieties of Vice-Regal Life, London 1870, v I, 302. 68 Berry to Wollstonecraft 26/1/1826, BP. 69 James Jervis, 'Alexander Berry, the Laird of Shoalhaven', JRAHS, v 27, pt 1, 1941, 18.
70 Berry, op.cit., Chap. I. "^1 Berry to Rev.G.Walker 29/1/1868 & 20/4/1868, Letters to Rev. George Walker, 7, 29. ^2 j.B.Salmond, 'After Many Days', The Alumnus Chronicle of The University of St Andrews, No 42, Jtine 1954, 6. The title given above for Salmon's book is that of the 1778 edition. 2Z
Cupar, to begin an Arts course at United College. In many respects the Scottish universities of the time were little more than glorified high schools. As late as 1830 the average age on entry was still only about fourteen years.'^ Despite students' willingness to endure a sparse and monotonous diet, poor quarters and scant clothing if necessary to secure an education it has been estimated that in the eighteenth century only about one Scot in a thousand reached a university. Although all of James Berrie's sons were of good intelligence and David and William omnivorous readers of scholarly bent, only Alexander went to a university. The principle of primogeniture associated with preservation of large estates diffused downwards to a general tendency for privileged treatment of the eldest son where a family's financial resources were limited; with that son overseeing the welfare of his siblings later in life. The Berry family conformed to this pattern. The Catholic Church alone had made St Andrews important and with its eclipse at the Reformation the burgh went into decline. Continuance of the university was threatened. Student numbers stagnated at a low level, the institution had difficulty maintaining existing professorships and buildings and was in no position to finance new chairs or better facilities- For almost two centuries it lived under threat of relocation or suppression. 7-^5 The implication of Berry's recollections is that his time at St Andrews was as happy a period as any in his life. In old age he thought to leave his great wealth to his alma mater, after the deaths of his brothers and sisters, for the founding of a new college.'" He died
'3 Smout, op.cit., 449
74 Camic, op.cit., 165 ^5 Ronald Gordon Cant, The University of St Andrews Short History, Edinburgh 2nd edn, 1970. 76 Berry to David Berry 4/6/1867, BP. The University of St Andrews is formed on the collegiate model, having formerly three but then two constituent colleges. 29
before changing his will, but his brother and heir David was prevailed upon by lobbyists for the University to leave it £100,000: a bequest which very likely saved it from suppression and which is credited with inspiring other substantial legacies resulting in its restoration as a respected seat of learning.'" In his native Fife Berry's life and achievements are remembered with pride and gratitude and commemorated principally in the Berry Professorship of English Literature in the University of St Andrews. Berry's library borrowing record shows that he took out thirty-eight titles, while at St Andrews. Books on travel, particularly on voyages of exploration to far away places, figure most prominently, with works on history 7Q making up the bulk of the remainder.'^ This preference in reading matter is obviously significant in light of young Berry's later decision to bring university studies to a close in order to go to sea.
While at St Andrews Berry decided that his future lay in the practice of medicine."" Apart from any intrinsic rewards he may have expected from devotion to healing there were social and economic advantages for an able youth from
^^ Will of David Berry of Coolangatta 15/2/1886, Norton Smith Papers (ML A5373~2), No.80b. The fascinating story of the University's moves to persuade David Berry to honour Alexander's wish through agents in New South Wales, and holding out honorary doctorates as rewards for valuable addistance, can be traced in fourteen letters to Edward Pierson Ramsay. The originals are among Ramsay's papers in ML and typescript copies are in UStA mimiments.
78 Sir James Donaldson, Addresses delivered in the University of St Andrews From 1886 to 1910, St Andrews 1911, 509; D.A.B[ullough], 'A New Scholarship and the Australian Connection' , University of St Andrews Alumnus Chronicle, no.79, June 1988, 12. 79 Student Borrowing Register 1795-1900 (St Andrews University Library Archives), 147.
80 Berry, op.cit.. Chap. I. 30
an upwardly mobile family. A doctor rated as a gentleman in a society which, although a good deal more open than England's, was class-conscious. A doctor was a man of importance in a small community and could expect to command a good income anywhere."^ On the debit side the achievements of medical science were severely limited. The physician was unable to help a large percentage of those who looked to him for a cure. Even the most able surgeons frequently lost patients on the operating table.°2 During the seventeenth century the surgeon-apothecary had emerged as the community health worker in parts of Scotland. The craft was entered only by apprenticeship, usually of five years duration - although a practitioner wishing to stand well in the profession would normally, as a young man, attend lectures at one of the universities or at some medical school on the Continent. Increasingly young men sought a degree or licence, although there was no need to do so except for practice within the jurisdiction of one or other of the Scottish medical corporations. By Berry's time the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow were the principal institutions for training doctors for the British Isles and amongst the most respected in the world, but the output of graduates was small. Only the University of Edinburgh followed its teaching by serious examination.°3 Berry began his medical training in the usual way by serving during university long vacations as apprentice to Dr John Gowan,"^ the principal physician of
81 Anand C. Chitmis, The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History, London 1976, 33. 82 Smout, op.cit., 257. "3 Ibid., 256; John D.Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine to 1860, London 1927, 94-95, 289. 84 Gowan (pronounced Guv'n) was a student at St Andrews 1758 to 1769, the final session in Divinity. He then turned from the Church to medicine and took his MD from Edinburgh in 1772. He practised in Cupar throughout his working life and died there 7 Oct. 1819: R.N.Smart, Fasti of the University of St Andrews (in progress). 31
Cupar"5 and possessor of an interest in an apothecary's shop. From Gowan he 'acquired some knowledge of pharmacy, chemistry and anatomy'."" In the autumn of 1798 Berry moved to Edinburgh to begin university studies in medicine. The only degree in Medicine was the MD, awarded after a course of four years culminating in a printed thesis embodying original research and written in Latin. Few students, and in particular few Scots, took the full course."' Berry attended for three years."" Until after his time the Faculty of Medicine developed chiefly as a school of medicine. James Gregory, Professor of Medicine from 1790, taught that disease was to be attacked vigorously by free letting of blood, vomiting induced by tartar emetic, brisk purging and use of cold affusions and frequent blisters. As Gregory's students came from all quarters of the British Isles and the British colonies his methods came to rule medical practice for many years all over the world."9 They are in evidence in Berry's early medical journals and in his frequent medical advice in letters written up to half a century or more later.90 To Berry's established interest in the sea, exploration and history-making events there was added delight at accounts of recent naval victories by Nelson, Duncan and others. He decided that his future lay in the Royal Navy and that he should take the short route into that service by qualifying as a surgeon.91 On 5 May 1801 Berry submitted himself to the Royal College of Surgeons of
85 There were five medical practitioners in Cupar: Campbell, loc.cit., 231. 86 Berry, op.cit.. Chap. I. 87 Smout, op.cit., 256; D.B.Horn, A Short History of the University of Edinburgh 1556-1889, Edinburgh 1967, 46. 88 Majorie Robertson, Edinburgh University Library, to B.Bridges 24/10/1979.
89 Comrie, op.cit., 235. 90 BP, passim.
91 Berry, op.cit.. Chap- I- 32
the City of Edinburgh for examination and was awarded its diploma: a respectable credential for entry to the medical profession.92 At his request the examiners also gave him a certificate stating that he was qualified to hold the position of first surgeon's mate in a first-rate ship of the line in the Royal Navy.93 Berry went home to find that his parents were appalled by his intention to abandon a secure and respectable career at home for the dangers of life on a fighting ship. The Peace of Amiens seemed to put an end to the war with France. Alexander 'then renounced for ever my intention of entering the navy'.94 James moved to find his son employment in the service of the East India Company by calling on the good offices of friends related to Thomas Spears, chief mate of the twelve hundred ton East Indiaman David Scott to secure his appointment as surgeon's mate on that vessel.95 Success in achieving this indicates that James Berrie stood well with manipulators of 'The System'-
92 In 1838 Berry was a member of a select committee of the New South Wales Legislative Council which recommended that diplomates of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and similar British colleges of physicians and surgeons, be admitted to registration as legally qualified medical practioners in New South Wales: Report from the Committee on the Medical Practice Bill.
93 M-Robertson to B.Bridges 24/10/1979 : includes information supplied by librarian of Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; Berry, op.cit.. Chap- I
94 Ibid. 95 Berry, op.cit.. Chap- I; Charles Hardy, revised by Horatio Charles Hardy, A Register of Ships, Employed in the Service of the Honorable The United East India Company, From the Year 1760 to 1812, London 1813, 217.