EMPIRE SELF-RAISING F LOUR The West AUSTRALIAN
elf
Rises Above an Others.
RECORD
PERTH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27. 1913
Woman of the Hour in Western Australia!
The
And Her Life's Work of 60 Years ! WHAT THE DIAMOND JUBILEE OF (BY
It is said, and truly said, that the
hand that rooks the cradle rules the world, for, that the community at large takes its tone from the family and the family from the mother, is a postulate that appeals to all reason, and that, incidentally let me say, found frequent expression from the lips of that maker and unmaker of peoples, Napoleon Buonaparte. Necessarily, of course, the individual mother's influence is a restricted one, hut there are mothers other than those given by nature, mothers whose influence can be so far-reaching as to be practically illimitable and it is with the career of one of these "Lathers of nations" that this notice is concerned. bet us, as a preliminary, take a glimpse, a hurried one, ;
THE
21st
NOVEMBER,
1:43,
J. F. WHITELY.)
secret of her marvellous success as a teacher, and again of her dutiful obedience as a nun for, Disciplinarian by Instinct, rigid as steel in exacting it of her pupils in school, insisting at all times on obedience absolute and unfailing, no member of the Community at Victoria Square could ever lay claim to-could I .say a more exact?-observence of the rule (the conventual, moneatic rule) than fig.. now venerable nun. But let us hark hack to the time when the title venerable was less appropriate to her. At the convent school we left her, and as, since that time, beyond her convent home and its ideals never has she wandered in mind during her ;
chastity, and obedience, mental arithmetic that day performto our ed by her seventh class, some twenty Blessed Lord as her Spouse -elect for or more young ladies. 'the "Brunsall time. For th tt, in itself, viga" calculating machine in my (Alike, with which (so impressive is its Grand Uplifting Lesson,
of poverty,
moleinn dedication of her life
power of ready and accurate reckoning) I have been tempted to associate some occult and sinister psychical influence, would he lost hopelessly in the race by those clever adepts, among whom, after a brilliant contest, pride of place was awarded to Miss Annie Spencer (of Bunhury, I believe), and with it the right to wear a wreath of flowers with which Mrs. (afterwards Ladg) Weld then decked her brow ; but from that day to this my admiration of the woman whose portentous power es a teacher thus profoundly impressed me, has continued unimpaired. No wonder, especially in those and earlier days when schools were few and colleges fewer still, that many of
lovers of the pure and beautiful, of ennobling selfeterifice, pay grateful homage to -day to this betrothed of ('hrist. Now, indeed, bad commenced the great work to which she had consecrated her life, the religious and secular education of the girls of Wes-
tern Australia, but particularly its metropolitan area ; for with the exception of a few months spent in Geraldton, a year in Toodyay, and some months in '12-3, during which she was absent with 11other Aloysius in Ireland. Perth has been through-
at
The Foundations of her Home. Western Australia was still in her 'teens (a maiden people verging on "sweet seventeen"), her population but 4,410, when, on the 8th January, 1146, the world -established Order of the Sisters of Mercy added the city of Perth to the number of its houses, with Ursula Frayne as Rev. Mother in charge-three schools, a ladies', a primary, and a native girls', being established straightway. Reinforced from the Old Country in '48, and again in '51, the new house prospered beyond the hopes of its founders, though now of those three contingents of helpers Mother Mary de Sales remains the only survivor. The lists planed at my disposal of the nuns constituting these pioneer bands are reminiscent of sonic of the most interesting Pages of Catholic history- in the West dear old Sister Catherine (Strahan), whom it was an education in benignity and Christian simplicity and cheerfulness to know Ignatia (de la I loyd), worshipped of the poor as an instructress and benefactress ; Mary Francis (Gould ), cousin of an Archbishop of Melbourne, and herself long associated e ith the management of the Victoria Square Ladies' College ; Baptist (O'Donnell), who succeeded Crsela Frayne as Rev. Mother, and eon a place in the veneration of the people which has never been eclipsed; Aloysius (Kelly), sister of the distinguished Jesuit Fathers, end Evangelist (O'Reilly), both in turn honoured as superiors of the Order in this Colony. The new house had its trials (one of its earliest being the loss of Mother Frayne, who was called away to the East, founding in Melbourne the first convent of Mercy)
the
First Ladies in the Land Protestant as well as Catholic, Jew and Gentile, deemed it a privilege to he taueht of Sister Mary de Sales But from January, '72, our primary !
schools came under the operation of
;
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:
!
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but the storms of its first five years had been weathered before Miss Essie Byrne, the subject of this memoir, had yet seen Australia, the theatre of her life's work. When Mother Ursula landed on our shores in '46, Essie was but a girl of 14, still at a convent school in her native city by the Liffey for she first saw the light world in Dublin in 1132. .of this Above and beyond this world, however, was her heart set, and set immovably, for, once Essie'e heart was fixed in its affections, fixed it remained. Essie had indeed An Iron Will of her own, has yet this a-ill of her own, has had, thank (leaven, through her long career this %ill of her own, which, once she has satisfied herself that its object is right, JUDGED BY THE ETERNAL STANDARDS, is inflexible as lire of Med.) or Persian ; and, thus censored by herself, it has ever been in accori with the will of her superiors in religion. This iron will has been humanly speaking the ;
the Elementary Education Act, 1871, which gave a subvention to them on secular results and, as of "the best teacher on the hill," Sister de Sales' transfer to St. Joseph's primary girls' school ininiediately followed ; where she remained till the later nineties (when she again took over the Ladies' College) this arch-builder of the fortunes of the Victoria Square primary schools system. Palinam quae meruit ferat! Let her who has won the palm bear it Thousands of young girls of every rank in life have sat at the feet of this Gatnaliel among women during the six long decades of her career, drinking in the wisdom that fell from her lips and inhaling the odour of virtue that distilled before God and men from the example of her beautiful life. Far-reaching then -who shall tell us its hounds ?-bas been her influence upon the present and past generations of the people ; and not only thus directly, but indirectly, as energising through these mothers of two generations of our colonists. May we not, then, since character makes the man or woman and so the nation, justly vote her, in her sphere of action, A Moulder of the Destinies of the Australian People, aid without compeer in the task on this western border of our continent? But under every aspect Mother de Sales' daily life has shown her just conception of the Sister of Mercy's calling. Arduous as her school work has been-it has left her blind in her old age, for now this lifelong student and reader (who by the way established the first Catholic lending library in Perth) is dependent on the charity of her sister nuns to read for her-arduous though the teacher's life, four o'clock every afternoon saw her out on a two hours' round of Visits to the Poor and Sick. Indeed her devotion -to heIspital work passed into a proverb among those who have known her best :-at every bedside (let it be told to her memory) this woman of faith, with characteristic disregard of considerations of human respect, would kneel and fervently recite aloud prayers for the sick or dying, for whom for the time being she lived. Till recently, too, when under obedience she had to desist on account of failing health, she rose with the Community winter and summer at 5.30 a.m., and even now
.110THER MARY GERTRUDE DE SALES, Convent of Mercy, Victoria Square, who celebrates her Diamond Jubilee on November 21st. Arrived in Perth in March, 1857 ; professed by Bishop Serra on Nov. 21, 1853.
out the scene of her labours. As a teacher how supremely capable she sisterhood ro ed herself ! My acquaintance with Perth goes back to 1870, and Singularly Innocent of Worldly Wisdom ? among my recollections of '71 was While yet in her 'teens we find her a the privilege of being present at the postulant-a "pleader" for the con- annual examination of Sister Mary ventual habit-in the Slerey Convent de Sales' Ladies' School? Personally at Dundalk. Mother Ursula happen- I knew-I am speaking of knowle3e. ing to be in Ireland at this time as intellectual equipnient-incomparhunting for helpers in the mission en - ably more then at 13 than I do now punted to her, came providentially at 65 ! Certainly I was not the dullto Dundalk. At once Essie Byrne est lad at the Perth Boys' School, of offered herself to the mission, and in which I was dux in 'fl, but from the the March of 1881 found herself in slumber into which my schoolboy Perth, where she received tie habit, vanity and my petty class triumphs and, bad lulled me, rev first rude awakening came from what I felt a-as the Bur)irg for ay her Name of Essie Byrne, Marvellous Exhibition of Mental took that of Sister Mary Gertrude Dexterity de Sales. Two years later, on the given by Sister de Sales' pupils on 21st Xi:tee:0er, 1853, in the old that occasion. Yen), vidi, but, unlike church (now the Children of Mary's Caesar, victus Caine, I saw, Chapel in Victoria Avenue), she was I was conquered!"-for as I sat and professed by Dr. Serra, Administra- listened in silent awe I felt myself tor of the Diocese, makine oa that crashed in spirit-vanquisl NI, uttermomentous occasionery her three vowo ly! Never shall I forget the feats of now four score of years, what wonder that to -day she is voted by the