At the age of 22, and in the middle trimester of unmarried pregnancy, a genteel young woman sailed with her older brother from England to Australia, where they hoped to make their fortune… or at least have an adventure.
Although their father was a well-off clergyman, he was consistently in debt, and his six children would therefore need to find their own means of support.
If Fred thought to try his luck at making it rich with a considerable haul of gold, Ellen may have had slightly different ideas. As a young woman with a genteel feminine education in the language arts, she would write a book about her experiences, with the aim of selling it in London. At the time, there was a great thirst for stories on the gold-fields.
So she did just that, and her book was published before the end of the year of her return.
Next question: How much of this book is true, and how much is either secondhand, plagiarised or… could it be entirely fabricated, with Ellen making use entirely of secondary sources?
That’s for the reader to decide.
Here’s what we do know: Ellen had a baby girl on board the return journey to England. She named her daughter after herself–Ellen Louise–and this little Ellen grew up to be an accomplished watercolour artist.
We know that Ellen the elder married an engineer by the name of Clacy, and went on to publish a wide variety of works, including serialised novels and articles for magazines–for Christian juvenile fiction to the sensation novel. These were published under the pseudonym of ‘Cycla’. She also wrote a religious tract.
In the 1881 census, Ellen Clacy declared herself widowed, but we know her husband was still alive at this point. We might deduce abandonment, in an era where this was both shameful and precarious for a woman.
Ellen herself died in 1901 aged 70 or 71.
