Jessie McLaren (1883‐1968)
[From a PDF file at the National Library of Australia]
Jessie was born in Hobart,
Tasmania, the second daughter of Charles and Annie Reeve. She was one
of seven children. Her father, Charles Frederick Reeve (1859-1941),
founded the Poona and Indian Village Mission in 1892. Reeve remained as
a missionary in western India for most of his life, only returning
permanentlyto Australia in 1936-37 (Whittall. Charles p. 62). Annie
Reeve (1856-1941), whose maiden name was Pirani, converted from the
Jewish faith to Christianity before marrying Charles in 1880. She and
the children did not stay long in India. In 1893 her daughter Alice
died aged four months, while Annie and some of her remaining children
suffered serious ill health. They moved back to Australia in 1895, to
Tasmania, then Geelong and finally St Kilda in Melbourne. Reeve visited
the family periodically. Jessie said that as a child she 'always seemed
to be bidding her father farewell.'
Jessie attended Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne from 1899 to
1901,and in her final year gained First Class Honours in English and
history (PLC Archives). She majored in philosophy at the University of
Melbourne, where she also studied English and classical languages. She
obtained her Bachelor of Arts in 1911 and her Master of Arts in 1913.
In the words of her daughter Rachel 'she had a deep love of literature,
especially poetry, and was interested in languages having studied Greek
and Latin amongst others.'
As they completed school, Jessie and her four sisters each spent
protracted periods in India with their father. Jessie was there from
late 1902. During 1904 she also accompanied her father on one of his
fundraising and recruiting visits to Glasgow, Manchester and
London. Charles Inglis McLaren was 'a distinguished medical man
and a member of a noted family.' He had been born in Japan, son of the
Presbyterian missionary and educationalist, Samuel Gilfillan McLaren
(1840-1914). Jessie and Charles married in Melbourne on 22 August 1911.
In September, as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria,
they sailed to Korea. The McLarens lived in Korea from 1911 to 1941.
From 1911 to 1923 Charles McLaren worked at Paton Memorial Hospital,
Chinju, in the far south of Korea. Charles and Jessie's daughter,
Rachel Reeve McLaren, was born in February 1923. Later in 1923 Charles,
Jessie, their adopted Korean daughters and baby Rachel moved to Seoul,
the Korean capital. Charles became professor of neurology and
psychological medicine at Severance Union Medical College, which was to
become the medical faculty at Yonsei University. As the Pacific War
approached, the two women left for Australia in March 1941. After Pearl
Harbor in December that year, Charles McLaren was imprisoned by the
Japanese first in Korea, then moved to Japan and finally repatriated
via neutral Portuguese East Africa late in 1942.
Jessie McLaren took a particular interest in advancing the status of
Korean women. Rachel Human wrote of her mother, 'In her very early days
in Korea she had established a kindergarten and a night school in order
to offer opportunities to women nd children.' After they moved to
Seoul, Jessie taught at Ewha College, now one of Asia's most
prestigious women's universities. Having studied history and philosophy
at school and university, she lectured there in history as well as
Bible studies. When Ewha moved to a new campus in 1935, she took
responsibility for the layout of the grounds, its flowerbeds, trees and
lawns. As her husband wrote in a letter to his sister Mary, dated 18
October 1936, 'Jessie has been very busy out at the women's college,
laying out their site and landscape gardening there. She is so happy
and enthusiastic about it.' He also mentioned in a letter of 13
April 1939 that Jessie sat on the Board of Management at Ewha.
Jessie herself wrote in a letter to her husband's sisters, dated 28
April 1940, 'I have a few outside jobs to keep me busy --
librarian of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society…but my more
strenuous job is the landscaping at Ewha College and the work on the
college executive… Her love of gardening is obvious from her book
collection, especially the many Japanese titles on Korean and other
East Asian botany. 'Books and gardening were two of her major hobbies',
her daughter Rachel recalled.
During her second decade in Korea, Jessie became seriously ill with a
heart condition. She remained house-bound for a long period. 'It was
characteristic of her that instead of fretting over what could have
been regarded as an imprisonment, she used the time to dig deep into
Korean history and culture,' her daughter recalled. She improved her
knowledge of Chinese, the written language of educated Koreans up to
the 20th century. Her translation from Chinese of the 'Tonggyong
chapki', an historical miscellany about Korea's ancient capital,
Kyongju, was published by Rachel in 1986. In its introduction, dated 29
January 1931, Jessie wrote modestly 'as fitness for the task [of
translation] I can only plead enforced leisure from more strenuous
duties and a certain acquaintance with my native tongue, small Korean
and less Chinese.'. She also translated Chinese Confucian texts and
Korean poetry. Korea was the source and inspiration of her
private collection of old and rare Korean books. In 1984 her daughter
Rachel Human donated 136 of these titles to the National Library of
Australia, as the McLaren-Human Collection. The earliest missionaries
in Korea included the Americans, Horace Allen and Horace Grant
Underwood; as well as the Canadian, James Scarth Gale. Underwood and
Gale became prominent scholars. Several of their works on Korean
history and language are to be found in Jessie McLaren's collection.
Faith Norris says that in 1930 Jessie gave Joan Grigsby copies of her
translations of poems by Gisaeng (female entertainers). These poems
form a separate section at the end of The Orchid Door.
Jessie's family have recently identified four notebooks containing
translations of poetry among the papers of Jessie McLaren still in
their possession.
[From a PDF file at the National Library of Australia]