Little Ida
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister of Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
One of the joys of a suburban ministry is that inevitably there are a significant number of school teachers among members of the congregation.
At the Cheltenham Church of Christ when I arrived there were quite a number of schoolteachers, male and female, both high school and primary school levels. These teachers were a great encouragement to me. I was attempting to put intellectual content into my sermons and spent a great deal of time in developing adult study programs. The teachers responded with enthusiasm and became leaders in many areas of this kind of work.
However, not long after I became minister I was able to help settle into Melbourne a young couple from the country whom I knew during my Ararat country parson days. He had applied for an appointment at a public school to be built near us and I helped organise housing. So Rex and Denise Wythe came into our midst. Rex was a bundle of energy and fun but also of a very astute intellect. He had risen rapidly on the promotions ladder of the Education Department. In fact, when I was a country parson in Ararat I interviewed him and wrote up an article about him in the Ararat Advertiser, indicating that he was the Headmaster of the State School at Dunkeld. That was a glorified title really because Dunkeld was a one-teacher school. Of course he was the Headmaster!
Rex and Denise quickly settled into the life of the church, became Sunday School leaders, and teachers of Adult Study Group. Through him another young headmaster in the area was introduced and Gary O’Marney and his very attractive wife, who was also called Denise, started to attend our church. It was my joy to welcome them into the faith, to baptise them and to see them grow within the life of our congregations. The Wythes and the O’Marneys were on the cutting edge of the educational revolution which was taking place in our area. They were principals of two newly established demonstration schools to which teachers were brought from all over the State to see the finest of new curricula and school architecture. These teachers soon had equipment and facilities beyond that I had ever seen in a school before, and were willing to share them in the life of the church. But more than that, they were on the cutting edge of new thinking and gave a great deal of encouragement to me as I undertook new programs to develop the life of the church, and in particular the adult education programs which soon had hundreds of people attending weekly.
There was a big gulf between these new school principals on the cutting edge of the educational revolution and some of our older teachers, especially those who had retired, who had spent a lifetime of service with the Education Department and who had been repeating the same lessons decade after decade.
Some of our teachers of that older generation were quality people. They taught the history of the kings of England, and the latin verbs, and taught children to write in ink with steel nibs and inkwells. Children learned their mathematics by rote, and spelling bees were important parts of the teaching program. The three Rs were the main features of education in those days and those older teachers represent that era well.
There was one of these older teachers who had long since retired – tall and thin and very angular. But she had a heart of gold. I loved Ida White. I enjoyed visiting her and listening to the tales of how she was an early teacher in one-teacher bush schools under conditions that were incredibly primitive.
I remember her telling me that in a school she taught up in the Mallee her bed consisted of two saplings with a hessian bag stretched between them, and her mattress consisted of some folded woolsacks. There was a dirt floor in the teacher’s hut beside the one-teacher bush school, and of how one night she stood up on the bed all night because in the dark on the dirt floor underneath her bed there was a large black snake. But Ida White told me one day after I had been there ten or twelve years, and interestingly enough just before she died, of her early life.
She had been born in the Cheltenham area in the 1880s when it was a primitive market garden community. She never knew her mother and her father had either died or deserted her mother before Ida was born. She was an orphan and a very kindly lady attached to the Cheltenham Methodist Church temporarily took Ida into her home until Mrs. Varcoe of the Methodist Church in the inner suburb of Carlton arranged for her to live in a Methodist Orphanage. A new Methodist Orphanage was being built by the Ladies’ Committee, under the leadership of the indomitable Mrs. Varcoe. The work eventually came under the oversight of the Methodist Home Mission Society of Victoria and they built an Orphans’ Home in Cheltenham, just on the block of land opposite the Cheltenham Church of Christ.
Over the years Ida, who was one of the first residents of the Methodist Children’s Home, saw the home develop and expand and a fine two-storey residents erected. There were some fifty acres of land attached to the Orphanage, and on that land vegetables were grown with the gardens attended by the children. Cows were milked and horses were ridden. Ducks, and a few sheep, and a pig or two were kept.
There were up to a hundred boys and girls cared for in this Home and in that day and age, during the first half of the twentieth century and the decade before, it had a reputation as being a fine centre of care. Ida spoke very proudly of the Orphan’s Home which was eventually called Livingstone Home, marking the memory of a great African explorer and missionary, David Livingstone.
Ida was proud of her long association with the Livingstone Home. It was then that she told me of the beginnings of the Livingstone Home and of her own life.
Incidentally, the Methodist Church was great when it came to caring for children and certainly demonstrated the care in the finest ways acceptable to society in those days. For years the church supported the upkeep of a hundred orphans in the Orphanage and home, and it was only in recent years, prior to my coming, that the Methodist Church decided that orphanages were not the best way to bring up children. In the late fifties they had sold the fifty acres together with the orphanage to the Roman Catholic church – to the Brothers of St. John of God.
St. John of God had no money with which to purchase the property and so the fifty acres and double-storey orphanage was passed over to them for a peppercorn cost because they intended to continue a work among children on that site. The Methodist church had invested heavily in the development of the site over the years but felt the call of God to allow the Catholic Church to continue on the same site that had been dedicated to God for the care of children. However, St. John of God did not make a go of it and shortly afterwards sold it for multiple millions of dollars to the Myer Emporium Limited, to build Southland, one of the first huge regional shopping complexes. The Methodist Church was great on the care of children; the Roman Catholic Church had the better business head.
Ida told me that when she went to Livingstone House in the 1890s, all the orphans looked alike. Most of them had come from the inner streets of Melbourne, were skinny and scraggly with long unkempt hair, with the boys wearing big boots and trousers held up with pieces of string, and the girls had outgrown their skirts and always seemed to wear long bloomers. But when they came into the care of the Methodist Church in the children’s home they all had to learn the mysteries of bathing, of daily washing, of early morning showers in cold water, and cleaning the ears with a flannel. The children were all dressed alike – the girls in long dresses and pinafores with puffed sleeves at the shoulders, and the boys wore white shirts, ties and waistcoats with trousers and braces. They had two sets of clothes, one for weekdays and one for Sundays. The Methodist Church ran a school at the orphanage itself, and the children all attended the school. In the community they were all known as orphans and rarely went off the property. Time after school was spent helping in the vegetable gardens, or helping with the laundering. The girls wore pinafores over their dresses all day every day and the only time they didn’t wear their pinafores was when they all went to the Methodist Church on Sunday morning.
Ida told me that each Sunday morning they would be up, showered, thoroughly dressed, long hair brushed a hundred times on each side, and two by two holding hands would march off down the Nepean Highway, around into Chesterville Road, and down to the Methodist Church. They sat in the front rows of the church for the Morning Service.
The great highlight that occurred once every week or so was when a family came to adopt an orphan.
Ida was an orphan and she was eligible for adoption. She was told by the very kindly Matron always to be good and one day she would be adopted. It was always a very exciting moment when, usually on a Sunday afternoon, a horse and carriage would trot up the long drive and a couple would get out. The children in the home knew that this couple was coming for one purpose only. They would view the children and select someone to be adopted. The child was then told to pack her belongings – because it usually was a girl that was selected – usually a girl with blond hair and blue eyes – into one of the small suitcases Livingstone Homes provided for their leaving. All of their possessions, including toys and clothes, would fit easily into the small suitcase. After some papers were signed down in the Matron’s office the child would then get into the carriage and snuggled between the new mother and father would clop, clop up the path, probably never to see the other children left back in the home. Ida said to me “There was always excitement when a horse and carriage drew up because this might be your day. Matron had told us to be good and one day we would be chosen and then adopted. It was a most wonderful thought and I hoped more than anything else the day would come when I would be adopted.”
The trouble with Ida was that she didn’t have blue eyes or blond hair. Furthermore she was one of those young girls who grew very rapidly and even at the age of six was taller and more awkward than the other girls.
On many Sunday afternoons a couple would walk through the grounds, stopping and talking to this child or that, or being taken by a member of staff to see this very cute little two-year-old, and Ida would see other children, children who had not been in the home as long as her, often only new arrivals, being picked while she was always left out. The years went by. Ida became the oldest girls in the orphanage and the tallest.
With that strange reverse humour that some people have when they call people with red hair “Blue”, and tall people “Shorty” – tall, gangly Ida was known as “Little Ida”. In her early teenage years she apparently was very awkward and very plain. Ida gave away any thought that she would ever be adopted.
One Sunday afternoon a motorcar drove up the long drive. All the children gathered around. Motorcars were very rare in those days and those who possessed them were extraordinarily wealthy. A man was sitting behind the high steering wheel dressed in an overcoat with a big fur collar and a homburg hat upon his head. The lady seated next to him was also dressed in a big fur coat. They had a little dog on a lead in the back seat. The car was quite long and had curtains and blinds on the back windows and a big silver horn on top of the spare wheel that was outside the bonnet of the car.
All the children gathered around the car. They had never seen anything like it. It was absolutely splendid. The Matron met the older couple and took them into Livingstone Home. Ida and the other children continued to play outside. Ida, by this time, had the responsibility of looking after some of the little children. A short time later the Matron came out and beckoned her and told her to get a suitcase and put all her clothes in it, together with any of her belongings and toys and to put her best dress on. This couple had chosen her to be their daughter. Ida could not believe it. She ran upstairs to her room, packed all her belongings, put on her best dress and Sunday shoes and a lovely pinafore that she had cleaned and ironed, said goodbye to some of the kids and running down the stairs went to meet her new family. She was taken into the Matron’s office. She had seen inside the office many times, but she had never been in it in all the years she had been at the Livingstone Home.
She stood at the door of the office with her suitcase in one hand and her only toy, a teddy bear, in the other. “Ida, I would like you to meet Mr. & Mrs. Morrison. Mr. & Mrs. Morrison are very important people in the Methodist Church. Mr. Morrison is the head of a big tea and coffee company and he has many factories and shops. Mr. & Mrs. Morrison have always wanted to have a child of their own, but have never been able to have children. Now they have decided they would like to have a child and want to adopt you. Ida, I would like you to meet your new mother and father.” Ida knew what to do. It is strange how children have a self-preservation concept and Ida knew she had to make a good impression. She put down her bag and teddy and ran over to the older lady in the fur coat and threw her arms around her. The older lady was taken aback but appreciated the affection that Ida had shown her. The gentleman placed an arm upon her shoulder and said “Ida, welcome to the Morrison family. I am sure you are going to be very happy with Mrs. Morrison and myself.”
With that the deed was done. Mr. Morrison picked up the suitcase, Ida picked up her teddy bear and holding arms with Mrs. Morrison walked out to the big car with the silver horn and the curtains on the rear window. Mrs. Morrison put her in the front seat between Mr. Morrison and herself and all the kids gathered around. They shouted and waved goodbye. Never had there been such a splendid car and how lucky Ida was.
The car travelled up the highway to Brighton, a very wealthy area with large two-storey homes. When the car drove through the iron gates and up the driveway to the large two-storey house Ida could not believe her good fortune. After all these years she was adopted. She had a new family and a new home. She always remembered the words of Matron “Ida, be a good girl and one day you will be adopted.” Ida was good.
They took her upstairs and showed her a room of her own. There were several dolls on the bed waiting for her and within a day she had more clothes than any thirteen year old girl ever had. They took her to a new school, a private school, just nearby and there she began the very difficult task of setting in with other children. It was not a happy experience. All the other children knew each other and they knew she was an orphan. One of the girls, on the very first day, said “Don’t talk to her – she’s adopted!” Ida felt as if she had been stabbed with a cold blade of ice.
But she had it in mind that one day the other girls would like her. That night when Mr. Morrison came home she ran down the path as his car drove up and jumped on the running board of the car, leant in through the open window and put her arms round him and gave him a kiss. He really enjoyed her. The meals were happy times. Mrs. Morrison always dressed up in finer clothes than Ida had ever seen in her life. She often wore her hat inside as well as outside. She had never seen a lady so fine. It didn’t matter to Ida that her parents were old, so much older than the other parents of the girls at her school. One day when the Morrisons attended the school for some function, some of the girls laughed about them later, and told Ida that her mother and father were older than their grandparents.
Sometimes Mr. Morrison would call at the school when the school was getting out at half past three. He would just be at the gate in his car. Always Ida ran over and stepping up onto the running board, reached through and gave him a hug and a kiss.
After she had been at the school a couple of months, coming out one late autumn afternoon, she saw outside the school gates, the big black car with the silver horn and the curtains on the windows. She ran to the car, jumped to the running board and threw her arms through the side windows to hug Mr. Morrison. And then she saw on the front seat beside him her case, her best dress, all the dolls and toys that had been given to her and her other school possessions.
Sitting in her Cheltenham home eighty years after the event, tears trickled from Ida White’s eyes as she looked at me and said simply “I knew he was there to take me back.” She got into the front seat beside the driver, and Mr. Morrison started to drive in the opposite direction to her home. “I’m sorry Ida” he said. “I’m very sorry indeed. Mrs. Morrison and I thought that if we got an older girl then it wouldn’t be too much but I’m sorry. You’re a very good girl and we have loved having you in our house, but really looking after a girl is just too much for Mrs. Morrison. I’m sorry but we can’t care for you any longer. I will have to take you back. Maybe there will be another family who can look after your. We never completed the paperwork Ida because this was really only a trial but it hasn’t worked out and I’m sorry – I’m very sorry.”
Ida went back to the Livingstone Homes. She went back to school on the property. She was allowed to keep her toys and her clothes and her previous school uniform but somehow or other it didn’t seem much. The Matron, however, understood the great shock and immediately asked Ida if she would take some extra responsibility in helping to care for the little ones and she would be paid by the Homes for the work that she did. And so as a thirteen year old Ida, the oldest girl in the Livingstone Homes and the youngest member of staff, started to earn her living. She cared for some of the younger children. She wasn’t treated as a member of staff, but she wasn’t treated either as one of the children. She was just a big, gangly, awkward thirteen-year-old girl who had been in the homes longer than any other child and who every other child knew had not been accepted for adoption.
Several years went by and Ida got into the habit both of doing her lessons in the school and also of caring for the younger children.
One Sunday after the children had marched two by two down to the Methodist Church in long procession, when Ida always marched in the front with the youngest children, and helped them cross the road, and then later in church sat with them in church in the pews in order to keep them still, she heard something which was to change her life. The Methodist preacher, dressed in black – black suit, black stock, white collar and black gown – was preaching from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Ida was sitting in the midst of very young children and they were all sitting quiet and still as he was preaching. The minister, without realising that what he was saying was being heard in a different way to that which he intended, leaned forward and said “God has adopted you into his family through Christ Jesus.”
For the first time Ida heard something that grabbed her attention – “God has adopted you into his family through Christ Jesus”. Light dawned into her mind. She belonged. She had a family. She belonged to God’s family, and God would never grow too old to care for her.
Ida that year was confirmed in the Faith, took Holy Communion, and became a member of the Methodist Church in Cheltenham. It was that year that she completed her schooling and became a full time member of the Livingstone Homes. The Homes were good to her and because she was so good with children arranged for her to go to the Victorian Primary School Teachers College in Melbourne where she graduated as a teacher. Ida worked through the 1920s and 1930s and the war years in remote rural schools. They were always country schools and always small. She became a legend in the Education Department for her teaching and for the love she had for small children.
During the second World War Ida came back to Cheltenham. There was a shortage of staff to teach at the Livingstone Homes school and she became the main teacher back in the home for orphans where she had grown up.
Then a miracle occurred. She fell in love with a male member of staff who was a widower and late in life she was married. She and her husband had great joy living together before his death.
She was an honoured school teacher in the Church at Cheltenham and I loved to visit with her and speak of her early days. When Ida died all the teachers in the area made a Guard of Honour up the path to the Cheltenham Cemetery. Ironically, the coffin was in one of the old vehicles of W.D. Rose & Sons, the Funeral Undertakers, and the back windows had curtains with baubles on them, very much the same as the car which had driven her from the Livingstone Homes.
When the Roman Catholic Church sold the Homes and the fifty acres they had enough money to build many fine facilities and a great regional shopping complex grew on the site. But I never went past that site without thinking of Little Ida. She was part of our family because she discovered she had been adopted into the family of God through her faith in Christ Jesus.
The night after her funeral in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.
GORDON MOYES