A SENSE OF COMMITMENT

IN HER EARLY Seventies, Augusta Bates, the youngest daughter of Walter and Betty Medhurst, set down what she knew of her parents’ early life. She wrote:

Married to Walter Medhurst for just under forty years, Betty bore him ten children (four died in infancy) and out-lived him by seventeen years. Their daughter, Eliza, bore her husband, Charles Hillier, seven children (two died in infancy) and survived him by thirty years, re-marrying when she was thirtysix, and having two more children. Her younger sister, Martha, married a Shanghai merchant, Powell Saul, and bore him four children during their pitiably short life together, and survived him by fifty years.

Augusta's memoir is part of a collection of family papers, which, together with the LMS and other records, enable us to capture the empire lives of these three women, whose husbands’ careers have formed the focus of the previous chapters. Having seen how they mediated Britain's imperial presence in their public lives, this chapter will explore the lives of these women to see how intimacy also provided an important mediating mechanism. It did so primarily by Westernising and domesticating the British presence, providing exemplars of Western customs and practices and forging networks and connections across this emerging British world. However, whilst commitment to family was, as G.M. Young said, ‘one of the two vital articles’ of the Victorian faith, in the context of empire, that commitment was often subjected to extraordinary challenges. To meet those challenges, these women needed to be not only good but also strong wives.

‘A GOOD SERVANT TO THE CAUSE’

By the time Walter Medhurst arrived at the Loveless’ household in 1817, the twenty three year-old Betty Braune had already endured more than her fair share of personal misfortune. Widowed and with a young son to support, she had been taken in by the family as a governess to their two children.