23/11/2008 - THE LIFE HISTORY OF MELINDA KENDALL THROUGH HER WRITINGS: PART 3

Amidst the luxurious abodes described in the property advertisements in the Herald, in Sussex Street, for instance, there were only (?) dwellings, most of them [description] that the McNallys would have been more likely to occupy. [A person such as Melinda’s future husband Basil – the son of a Reverend and a member of a family of extensive landholders such as the Kendalls, would have been more likely to have lived in one of the better properties.]

In [date] 1830, Melinda’s future husband Basil Kendall’s name appears on a subscription list in the Sydney Herald for his father’s New Zealand language book, and in the New South Wales Directory of 1835, he is listed as working at Brisbane Mills in Parramatta Road.

[Law’s notes, vol 56, p74 – sighted at Grafton. Whether before or after his marriage to be ascertained]. [Stuff here, or perhaps a little later, about Basil’s trial for extorting money from Barker’s Mill, where he looked after the books – relate this to his later imprisonment for a similar offence. Also relate these goings on to Barker’s return from England to save his Mill from financial ruin.]

In the August 1, 1831 edition of the Sydney Herald, this advertisement appears:

For sale – the cutter Brisbane, fifteen tons burthen, and well adapted for the coasting trade. For further particulars, apply to Mr. Thomas Barker, Steam Engine Flour Warehouse, Bathurst-Street, Sydney.

This is the ship that, while under the ownership of Basil Kendall (probably in name only), sank in July 1832 near the entrance to Jervis Bay, while taking a shipment of cedar from Nulladolla Beach (the early name for Ulladulla) to Sydney. Basil’s father, the Reverend Thomas Kendall, was drowned, and papers relating to his children’s inheritance were taken from the ship and have never been recovered. Thomas Barker, on hearing of the tragedy, advised Thomas’s widow Jane to try to recover the missing papers from a Mr. Morris’s men, who had apparently plundered the wreck of the ship. The papers were never recovered, however, and Basil’s brother, Thomas Surfleet Kendall, as heir-at-law of the Reverend Thomas, inherited the majority of the Kendall estate (Marjorie Kendall, 32).

Articles from the Sydney Gazette set the sinking of the Reverend Kendall’s ship in a context of intrigue. Two years earlier, on December 9, 1830, under the heading ‘Providential Escape’, this news item appeared:

The Rev. Mr. Kendall and his boat’s crew had a miraculous escape, on Tuesday night, from a watery grave. They were sailing, with a stiff breeze, from Illawarra to Sydney; about 10 o’clock a sudden gust blew the boat completely over, and being eight miles from land, the unfortunate passengers gave themselves up for lost; the men contrived to get upon the keel, but Mr. K. was entangled in the boat, and could only just keep his head out of the water. After remaining in this perilous position for some time, inevitable death staring them in the face, the boat suddenly righted, and all hands were providentially saved.

In May 1832, the ‘Mr Morris’s men’ referred to in Barker’s letter to Jane Kendall were involved in illegal activities. In court proceedings reported in the Sydney Gazette of November 17, 1832 (page 3), four men describing themselves as ‘Mr. Morris’s men’ were indicted on a charge of burglary in the area then known as Congo. South of Jervis Bay. The incident also involved a wrecked boat from which the accused had taken articles, and which seemed to be used as a decoy. On July 15, 1832 (close to the time of the sinking of the Brisbane), the Gazette article reports, the victim of the burglary encountered Mr Morris’s men in the area again, in possession of muskets they had stolen during the burglary. Mr Morris’s men, it appeared from evidence presented, had committed a similar burglary at another property nearby, also using a supposedly wrecked boat as a decoy. The victim of the second burglary described the incident thus:

Believing their story, I entertained them, and proceeded after some cattle into the bush; I was met on my return home by the blacks, who informed me that my place had been plundered; I hastened to the beach, and saw the boat standing of to the Southward under sail; Mr. Morris’s boat was drifting in shore at the time; the oars and rudder were gone, and there was some sugar scattered about.

Three of the accused were found guilty of the burglary and associated assaults, etc, while the fourth was acquitted but then charged with ‘piracy on the high seas’. The fact that Thomas Barker knew about Mr Morris’s men and their involvement in the scavenging of the Brisbane, so soon after its sinking, adds to the intrigue. How might Melinda Kendall’s life have been, if the Reverend Thomas Kendall’s will had been recovered, and her future husband Basil had received a share of the estate?

On August 1st, 1835, Melinda McNally became Mrs Basil O Kendall, after supposedly meeting her future husband at a dance [McReagh, quoting his father, says it was a ‘party’] in Sussex Street Sydney the night before (though the marriage certificate shows ‘banns’, which would have added some weeks to that time frame). In the1830s Sussex Street was dominated by Thomas Barker’s Steam Engine Flour Mill and Warehouse, with most of the land and many of the dwellings in the street belonging to Barker and housing his numerous employees. In the Sydney Herald of July 25, 1831, this advertisement appeared:

Building allotments, in one of the most desirable parts of Sydney. Mr Barker offers some eligible allotments of ground, in Sussex-Street, also in Bathurst-Street, on building leases, for the term of fourteen years; the size of each is 45 feet frontage, by 100 feet in depth; the yearly rental fifteen pounds, to be paid quarterly; the cottage to be built according to a plan given, which cottage, at the expiration of the lease, will be purchased by Mr Barker, at a valuation to be fixed by two competent architects, one for each party. Further particulars known on application, Steam Engine Flour Warehouse’. (p1)

Basil Kendall’s brothers John and Lawrence worked at Barker’s Mill [Marj.Kendall book], and many of the Kendall family letters held at the University of Wollongong Library are addressed to Thomas Surfleet Kendall (Basil’s brother) and Reverend Thomas Kendall (Basil’s father) care of Mr Thomas Barker, Sussex Street. [list letters in footnote]. Patrick McNally is listed in the Government Census of 1828 as working for Thomas Barker as a Carter, [something about Carters’ Barracks here?] while residing in Kent Street.

An advertisement in the Sydney Herald of August 1, 1831 illustrates the high-profile presence of the Kendall family in the environs of the McNally residence at this time:

Union Brewery, 35, Pitt-Street, Sydney, Bones & Kendall have on sale colonial porter, in bottles, at 8s. per dozen, or 6s. and empty bottles. (p1)

If Basil and Melinda did indeed meet at a dance or party in Sussex Street, the chances that the social event was connected with Barker’s Mill are good. The McNallys and Kendalls would certainly have had much opportunity to meet, and the likelihood that Melinda and Basil were at least acquainted for some time before their marriage and official romantic meeting is high.

The statement on the marriage certificate ‘I, Basil Kendall (inserted by hand), do hereby declare that I am a Member of, or hold Communion with, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland’ (and signed by Basil), has had phrases struck through by hand so that it reads ‘I Basil Kendall do hereby declare that I am Presbyterian’. The same full statement reserved for the bride’s name and signature has no name inserted and the place where Melinda’s signature should be is left as a blank line. The string of fictitious names that appear in the Minister’s statement regarding the bride – Melinda Olivia Leonora MacAllan – has created confusion ever since, and her reasons for doing so are open to conjecture.

The ‘Istorietta Amorosa fra Leonora de Bardie e Ippolito Buondelmonte’ is an anonymous fifteenth-century novella which offers numerous precedental plot elements for Shakespeare’s later Romeo and Juliet. Both stories include two youthful lovers, each belonging to rival feuding families, who fall in love when they meet at a fete. They then meet secretly and exchange vows of fidelity in an unofficial ‘marriage’. The secret affair is accepted by sympathetic clergy (in the case of the earlier tale, the Mother Superior), and after much drama, eventually the feuding families make peace. The earlier tale ends with the lovers still alive, and the parallels with a colonial marriage between two people of different faiths, one the son of a Protestant missionary, the other the daughter of an Irish Catholic convict (herself baptised a Catholic, though brought up as a servant in the household of an Anglican minister and proclaimed a Protestant in a number of censuses), are hard to ignore. The female protagonist in the earlier tale is, of course, Leonora.

Similarly, the importance of disguise and deception concerning the character Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (itself taken from earlier Italian stories) cannot be overlooked in relation to Melinda and Basil’s marriage and Melinda’s use of a false name on the certificate. Again, in Twelfth Night a secret marriage – blessed by the clergy – takes place between Olivia and Sebastian (Act 4, Scene 3). Sebastian’s role as a sailor, freshly returned from the sea as a survivor of a shipwreck, into Olivia’s loving / infatuated arms cannot be discounted as a parallel to Basil Kendall’s recent return from lengthy sea adventures with his father Thomas who died in a shipwreck only three years before the marriage. The phrase ‘Nothing that is so is so,’ spoken by the clown Feste in Twelfth Night (Act 4, Scene 1) can be aptly applied as a description of the marriage certificate of Basil Kendall and Melinda McNally. A poem by someone calling themselves ‘M. M.’ appeared on page 4 of the Sydney Herald of May 16, 1831, titled ‘Cupid on Bread and Water.’ Though ‘M. M.’ cannot with certainty be connected to Melinda McNally (though she sometimes used her married initials ‘M. K.’ for later poems), and the narrative viewpoint is decidedly male, ‘Cupid on Bread and Water’ offers, through its epigraph, another connection to the name Leonora:

‘Day by day he fed on the sighs and tears of Leonora, sad cheer! But the food of the heart notwithstanding.’ Anon

I.
I tell thee plain, my Stella dear,
That work like this will never do;
I loathe good English beef and beer,
And fricassee, and French ragout;
All cake and custard without you,
My night’s cheroot, - my noon’s rappee
Engender only spirits blue,
Unlike the spirit dwells in thee.

II.
Thy form divine no more in view, -
‘Wildered no more by beauty’s eyes,
I picture scenes Apelles drew
And quite forget corporeal ties.
My craving soul her duty flies;
No Cossacks ranked in fell platoon,
Can force what recreant will denies;
And this I feel at night and noon.

III.
‘Tis said the God that gives relief
From love is blind, I own it true,
But what is more he must be deaf,
And worse than all is speechless too;
I’ll vouch the truth, for when he threw
His mantle o’er my sickening soul,
I deaf and blind and speechless grew,
Nor longed for daily food or bowl.

IV.
A single tear from Stella’s eye
Will end the longest love disputes;
A tender glance, or heaving sigh,
My heart prefers to richest fruits.
Such pleasing work my fancy suits;
A blameless task! Thy lovers cry,
Who own thy gracious smile recruits
The hearts of better men than I.

V.
Though doomed for life to dungeon vile,
If Stella’s hand supplied the cheer,
On captives fare, I’d live and smile
At falsest hope, and foulest fear;
Let others shake the head and sneer,
And point to hollow heart or brain
I still maintain the sigh and tear
Are food for heart of loving swain.

[‘Stella’ significance?]

Melinda’s choice of a false surname may have less romantic and literary connections. The MacAllan distillery, in the Speyside region of Scotland, began making a single malt Scotch whiskey in 1824, eleven years before the marriage and two years before the Reverend John McGarvie – the priest who married the Kendalls – left Scotland to come to Australia.