Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Introduction
ing, and paying our own expenses”.’ Her impatience arose Jeanne Young considered,
from the fact that, ‘feeling herself to be “something worthwhile” to the world …
there need be no attempt to veil her knowledge of, and belief in, herself.’ 46 Her absorption
in her own concerns sometimes made her unperceptive and tactless. At tea
tables in Adelaide one can still hear an account of her taking a seat on a tram beside
the daughter of one of her acquaintances, and embarrassing the child by relating anecdotes
about her family loudly enough for all the passengers to hear. 47 Jeanne Young
recounted a story about taking Miss Spence to afternoon tea at Lady Bonython’s:
there were already several callers present. Among them was the mother of
one of the girls who had belonged to the Girls’ Literary society of which
Miss Spence had been president. This girl had recently made an excellent
marriage. ‘Oh, how is So-and-So?”’ Miss Spence asked the mother in her
cheerful way. She is perfectly well, and radiantly happy’, was the prompt
response. ‘Well, there is no accounting for tastes’, rejoined Miss Spence
laconically.
A rather deep silence fell upon the assembly at this remark. With sudden
inspiration, and knowing well Miss Spence’s remoteness from social life,
Lady Bonython rose to the occasion: ‘Perhaps, Miss Spence’, she said,
‘you did not know that So-and-So is married?’
‘Good Heavens, no’, said the astonished lady, ‘I thought she was still
training to be a nurse, and I never could understand the craving so many
young people have to take up nursing. I should hate it.’ 48
Spence was, by her own account, ‘out of society’ and undoubtedly glad to be so. As
Jeanne Young remarked, ‘Like most intellectual people, nothing annoyed her more
than to be called upon to talk mere “persiflage”’. Among people who shared her conversational
inclinations she could be delightful. Kerr Grant, later professor of physics
at the University of Adelaide, wrote, ‘I still recall vividly the impression of keen
intelligence and intellectual vigor made by her vivacious and attractive personality.’ 49
She could relax: she liked a glass of wine or a little whisky at bedtime, and she always
enjoyed card games. 50 Young remembered, ‘on those very informal occasions at my
home we learned to love her, for it was then that she became so joyously youthful, so
aggressively human in her intolerance, but so divinely merciful in her never-failing
expressions of love for humanity.’ 51 One of her greatest charms was her sense of hu-
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