Elizabeth & John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm by Alan Atkinson

Author:Alan Atkinson [Atkinson, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
Published: 2022-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

And yet, failure was never far away. On the point of leaving Gibraltar for Sicily, ‘[t]he prospect of removing so soon renders me uneasy; my mind is like troubled water, in irregular motion. I feel a desire to do something without knowing what.’14

John gave back a steady flow of advice, plus all the physical paraphernalia his son, as a junior officer, could possibly need. Besides books, he loaded him with financial credit, on tap wherever he was, military accoutrements and an excellent watch, ‘which,’ Edward told him, ‘far exceeds any thing I could have desired or could have expected’.15 John had unbounded faith in all his children, but he admired Edward – handsome, cheerful, polite – even to idolatry. ‘[H]e is everything that can give pleasure to the breast of a parent,’ he told Elizabeth, ‘sober, discreet, sensible, active, intelligent, brave.’ Men in authority who dealt with Edward seemed to think so too, as John proudly reported. The Duke of Northumberland did what he could for him. Hugh Elliot took to him straight away. James Brogden, busy though he was, wrote to Edward often, ‘with as much warmth of affection as if he were his son’.16

In Sicily, Edward was introduced to a 19-year-old Englishman, Lord Malpas, who was travelling with his tutor, and the two discovered a shared love of ‘polite literature’. Malpas came often to Edward’s quarters to read his books. They spent a good deal of time together and the viscount’s taste, according to Edward, was an education in itself. ‘I assure [you] my dear father that until I heard him read I was unacquainted with the force and harmony of Shakespeare’s language. Nothing can be more fortunate than my acquaintance with him.’ In England, however, among his relations, Malpas was a disappointment. He was called ‘effeminate’ and he gave clear indications of wanting to turn Roman Catholic – he settled on Methodism – but of these unmanly propensities Edward said nothing.17

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