Elsearina Vian was born in the Basque country between France and Spain on 28 July, 1849. She entered the Sisters of Mercy in Buenos Aires in 1871, was Professed in that Community in 1873 taking the Religious Name Evangelist, and 7 years later she came to Adelaide with the rest of the Sisters of Mercy from Buenos Aires.
Carmel Bourke former boarder and later St Aloysius College Principal (1945-1953) knew her well and wrote about her:
Sister Evangelist Vian was a quite unique member of the pioneer group of Sisters. She was a Basque by birth, born there in 1849, and went with her parents, while still a child, to migrate to Argentina. Being Basque, she was half-French, half-Spanish, and spoke both languages fluently, but with a peculiar accent. English was not her strong point, and her speech remained ‘broken’ to the end of her life.
Sister Evangelist was a member of the teaching staff at St Aloysius College where she taught sewing and advanced needle-work, as well as teaching French to the Senior Public and Higher Public examination students.
According to Carmel Bourke:
She was elderly when I knew her, but still an active, if idiosyncratic member of staff. She continued teaching until near the end of her life in 1928, at the age of 79. For many reasons, Sister Evangelist was probably more of an exile than any other of her pioneer companions and found it hard to adjust to Australian girls, but ‘Vange’ held a special place in our affectionate regard.
Other students’ memories are mentioned by McLay (ed. 1996, p. 111)
She was not a conventional teacher and many of her pupils labelled her ‘a darling’. Very gifted and very eccentric, her uncertain English did not lead to good discipline, and she found it hard to adjust to Australian girls. To her pupils she had a brown, foreign complexion and beady eyes. They were very near-sighted eyes, and she would bring the article of sewing right up to her nose. She would say: ‘I have not the sight, but I have the hearing’ (or ‘the nose’). She could hear, she would claim, the grass grow in Flanders’, or she could smell the orange or the quince being passed around the class. At times, while she took sewing classes, another sister would sit on the rostrum and read to the class in an effort to maintain good order.
Her death notice described her as ‘a polished lady in mien and manner, artless yet highly cultured, natural yet possessing the graces of one trained to move in high society… she was ‘a dear little French nun whom we all loved.’
Sister Evangelist Vian died on 26 April 1928 aged 78 and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.
By Sr Mary-Anne Duigan and edited by Jacqui Jury, 2024
References
(ed.) 1996, Women on the move: Mercy’s Triple Spiral, Sisters of Mercy, Adelaide.