Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Introduction
South Australian Company. The eldest, Lucy, married, had five children and, in
1861, died; the five children, three of whom were quite young, were apparently left
almost friendless. Spence had gone to nurse Lucy on her deathbed, and took upon
herself the task of finding help for the young Duvals, a function she performed
intermittently for the rest of her life. Letters from an uncle in England constituted
her their guardian, and, at least initially undertook to remit £100 a year for their
support. One of these children, Rose, returned to Miss Spence for help, about two
decades later, when she was herself a mother of three small children. She had been
widowed, and needed someone to care for the children when she took a job as a clerk
in a government department, so she moved to a house near Spence’s. Later, she and
the children lived for a time with Spence and Ellen Gregory in the ‘little community’
in East Adelaide. And when Rose died, Spence took her young daughter, Kitty, to
live with her, a move which ended tragically in 1904 when Kitty cut her throat in
the bath and died. 66
At the same time as she made friends with Lucy Beare, Spence also made friends
with the Stirlings, the Bakewells, and the Taylors – all families with substantial pastoral
and mercantile interests in the colony – the first two with numerous children in
whom Spence took, she said, much interest. In one household she was ‘Miss Spence
the storyteller’, in the other ‘Miss Spence, the teller of tales.’ 67 Those families found
ways of offering Miss Spence material evidence of their esteem for her. The Stirlings
gave her a fare to England and back in 1865, and the Bakewells took her to stay with
them when she first arrived in London. John Taylor provided her with the £200
spending money that she took with her on that trip. He was the model for Charles
Reginald, the hero of her first novel, and he had taken that novel to England for her
in search of a publisher in 1853. 68
Emily Clark sought an introduction to Spence to congratulate her on her novel;
introduced her to the Unitarian congregation in Adelaide; gave her letters of introduction
to friends and relatives in England; and drew her into 30 years’ work on the
welfare of destitute children. 69 Edith Cook shared her opinion about the necessity of
secondary education for girls, and as headmistress of the Advanced School for Girls,
often invited Miss Spence to give lessons to her students. 70 John Anderson Hartley,
Inspector-General of Education in South Australia from 1878 until 1895, became a
good friend when Spence offered to help with his work; he supported her campaigns
for electoral reform. 71 Alfred Cridge, the American who commented on her dress,
with whom she said she felt as at home as with her brother David, was an ardent sup-
19