DAILY LIFE IN MIDDLE AGES ENGLAND

Back in my schooldays the sort of history that was taught in junior high school concerned monarchs and battles and dates; and power and politics and changing borders.  Not at all uninteresting but, really, what was the relevance to an Australian schoolboy of some war or other that the British fought with the Dutch?  By the time I studied history at senior high school the course subject was known as British History but, by some mangling of the mother tongue, the curriculum covered Australian history in one year alternating with English history the next.  I was fortunate to be in my matriculation year when the British History bill of fare was Australian - so at least there was some relevance.  Twofold fortunate, I believe, because the history of Australia has little to do with kings and princes (and their surrogate colonial state and national governors), and the focus of history in my matriculation course was mainly social and economic: white settlement of the continent, the rise of the wool industry, the impact of gold discoveries, the federation of the Commonwealth, economic growth.  Then, at university, I was able to study "economic history" - which was taught as something useful to know, somewhat the antithesis of "political history" I suppose.  While the princes and the potentates created the nations and changed the map, they were able to do so only within the constraints of their economic resources.  The pharaohs built the pyramids (with a bit of poetic licence), but only because the Egyptian economy allowed them to do so.  And what of the lives of those who actually did the building?

All of this is to explain why years later (in August 2005) I enrolled for a Council of Adult Education course on Daily Life in the Middle Ages, tutor Dr. Katrina Burge.  What follows is both a distillation of Dr. Burge's material and some subsequent reading, and an expansion of the notes I made during Dr. Burge's eloquent presentation.

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If, as L.P.Hartley would have it, "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there", then the task of the historian is to describe and understand those differences.  And, not only must the historian contend with the vertical slices of time, but also with the horizontal slices of society at different times.  The "daily life" of the title clearly doesn't imply the daily life of the kings or the bishops enthralling though that may be, an area well traversed by the historical novelists.  No, "daily life" refers to the ordinary people, the horizontal slices of society well below the upper levels of power.  Political history cannot be ignored, but here the focus will be on what it was like to live and die - and be underprivileged - in the Middle Ages.  Moreover, while the scope of the CAE course covered all of Europe, readers here will have to be content with some slices of English daily life only.  But be not concerned, there's no scarcity of story to tell; there are countless publications devoted to English social history.  The challenge (without delving into myriad sources) is to extract some of the more significant bits, and to make them interesting to the general reader.  I guess I've just set myself up!

At the outset it's important to get a sense of what is meant by the Middle Ages.  Look at it this way.  There have been roughly 2000 years of what these days is known as the common era, formerly anno domini, A.D., since the birth of Christ.  Think of four tranches of roughly 500 years each........and the Middle Ages occupied the two central tranches, 1000 years approximately.  If, looking back from the 21st Century, we contemplate the most recent 500 years we are in no doubt that an enormous amount has happened: 500 years ago Henry VIII was on the English throne, science and technology as we know them barely existed, and to the people of that time today's world would have been incomprehensible. We accept, today, that change is occurring at an ever-increasing rate, and we like to think that in earlier times, the Middle Ages, say, things were pretty much unchanging.  Is that really so? and can it really have been so for 1000 years?!

The historians' definition of the Middle Ages, by pretty general agreement, extends from the fall of the Roman Empire in the west in 476 C.E., to 1453 when Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Turks (although neither bookend is a moment in English history) - almost exactly the 1000 years mentioned above.  And, not surprisingly given the huge time span, historians for convenience sub-divide the 1000 years, specifically into three: the 500 Anglo-Saxon years up to the year 1000 (or 1066) are known as the Dark Ages; the years from 1000 to 1300 are the Early Middle Ages; the years from 1300 to1453 (or a bit later) are the Late Middle Ages.  (And, further confusion:  the Middle Ages are also known as Mediaeval times - as opposed to the Renaissance, which followed.)

So what was English life like during this 1000 years?  Earlier historians tended to regard the Middle Ages as a period of unbroken barbarism and superstition, and a cultural chasm.  But in the late nineteenth century, influenced by the ideas of Darwin, historians came to view historical development as evolutionary: the Mediaeval period could not have been a period of no progress – because “history does not take leaps”.  So there must have been social evolution; and even incremental adjustments must have produced some substantial changes over such a long time - inevitable change and inevitable growth, cannot be ignored.   Nevertheless, the Middle Ages was an era without striking evidence of dramatic change, and not being able to provide an album of before and after pictures the best we can manage is a “typical” snapshot of the times.

*          Population

It has been estimated that the population of the British Isles (not simply England) grew from half a million to three million souls over the 1000 years of the Middle Ages.

*          Social Organization

There was a unified kingdom from the time of the Norman Conquest, but prior to 1066, in Anglo-Saxon times, there had been smaller kingdoms.  In those earlier times there was significant peasant ownership of farmland, but the peasantry did not enjoy the independence and freedom of action that freehold implies – typically there were obligations to perform tasks for the local lord as demanded: cutting wood, repairing roads, cultivating the lord’s land (in addition to the peasant’s own); and, moreover, there was an obligation, for instance, to use and pay for the use of the lord’s mill, and bread oven.  In practice, this system amounted to the feudalism that came to be the social structure after the arrival of the Normans, where land was no longer owned by the peasantry.

Feudalism was the social organization of that part of the Middle Ages subsequent to the Dark Ages, characterized by the manor and the attendant mutual social obligations.   The land was occupied by, but no longer owned by, the serfs, and the serfs had obligations to the lord of the manor, who in turn was a vassal of a higher noble, in turn beholden to the king.  The so-called “hierarchy of reciprocal obligations” imposed obligations on the serfs in the form of produce and labour; the return obligations were protection, and the right to share in the communal interests.  The feudal system existed basically unchanged during the second half of the Middle Ages, although latterly breaking down somewhat through the growth of non-manorial villages, and trade outside the manor.  The magna carta, flowing from the 1215 revolt of the barons against the king, re-balanced the obligations of the social order, but essentially feudalism remained.

The Catholic church was also a pervasive feature of Mediaeval times, in particular the rise of monastic institutions which led, in turn, to the consolidation of doctrine, the growth of power, and also to the Crusades (approx. 1100 to 1300) – to reclaim Christian holy sites from the Turks.  The principal thrust of the Church was orthodoxy, and heretics were vigorously persecuted.  The serfs did not stray far from that orthodoxy.  The recognition of the Church as such an integral part of the social order leads to the so-called tripartite view of Middle Ages society as “work, fight and pray” (clearly a masculine concept).  Additionally, there is a bold theory that regards the stirrup as the defining feature of the Middle Ages: the stirrup facilitated mounted conflict; and led to the class of knights, and to the concept of chivalry.

*          Religion

England was a Catholic nation through the Middle Ages, and remained so until Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1534 Act of Supremacy, and established the Church of England.  By the end of the era there were perhaps 900 religious houses - monasteries, nunneries, friaries etc. - most established during a wave of monastic enthusiasm in the 11th and 12th Centuries.  There were three categories of holy men: the local clergy, the mendicant friars, and the monks. Prayer was seen as "work", so to be a monk was a useful occupation; and it followed that it was entirely appropriate to pay a monk to pray for you.  Having a local community of monks was seen as building up a fund of holy goodwill.  Monasteries were also important because they provided succour and sustenance for others (and were retirement homes as well).

*          Villages

Villages were established for safety and to facilitate trade.  They spawned fairs and pageants, and community life generally.  Villages led to the formalisation of job specialisation, division of labour.  And to the establishment of churches, and the strengthening of religious practice.

*          Built Environment

We tend to picture the past by the structures that we can see:  the castles and the manor houses and the churches (but only those made of stone), and - despite Henry - some monasteries.  The humble structures have not survived, but between the archaeologists and the historians we can reconstruct the simplest houses: two rooms, timber and clay construction, earthen floor.  A “squalid, unhealthy hovel”, hot in summer, cold and damp in winter, and always smelly.  Shuttered, unglazed windows, smoke struggling to escape through the thatch.  Any upper storey reached by outside ladder.

*          London and other major centres

It is estimated that in the Middle Ages, aside from London, there were in England four centres only with more than 1000 houses – Bristol, Coventry, Norwich and York.  This is a startling proposition but, exaggerated or not, it gives an idea of the rural nature of the English economy.  London had perhaps 50000 residents……..and possibly 100 churches – which gives a sense of the importance of the Church in the lives of the people.  The streets of London were foul, not always paved, but where they were the cobbles sloped to the centre to create a sort of drain.  There were no footpaths.  Householders were expected to put out rubbish from the downstairs only, but frequently ejected slops from the upper windows.  Domestic refuse was mingled with offal and blood from butchering done in the streets.  The tide of filth eventually found its way to the Thames.  The city authorities did what they could, with numerous ordinances and prosecutions, and by employing officials to supervise street cleaning, and carts and boats were commissioned, but recalcitrant citizens could not be deterred.  London remained primed for epidemics throughout the Middle Ages.

*          Time

The sun was the main regulator of time; and even where clocks were available they had no minute hands.  The peasantry had no sense of historical time: the people did not picture the present as being so many years from the birth of Christ.

*          Sounds

Human sounds and the sounds of farm animals were dominant.  There were no farm machines.  The most pervasive mechanical sound was the bell - the church bells from nearby and distant villages, and the bells from the local flocks and herds.

*          Smells

When Alan Bennett describes the filthy living conditions of Miss Shepherd, "the lady in the van", it is not so much the chaos and disorder of her existence that arrests our sensibilities, but the imagined odours - the cast-off and decaying food scraps, the sanitary napkins (used for heaven knows what purpose) drying over the electric element, the plastic bags of daily excrement.  So too in the Middle Ages - the body odour of the universally unwashed was part of the background to life.  And the smells of human excrement.  And animal manure.  And cooking fires.

*          Families

Big families equated to more workers and hence to more affluence, not the reverse – the mindset was to have more children, not fewer.  Infertility was a great personal problem, because it denied the children to look after parents in old age.  Marriages for affection were possible.  Peasants typically married post-pregnancy, after the demonstration of fertility!  The nobility usually had arranged marriages, and insisted on virginity (in the female only!).

*          Health

While stone-ground flour contained the grit that tended to grind down teeth as well, there was generally no dental decay..........because there was no refined sugar.  Women's health was reasonable, but worsened in later times when mobile doctors spread postpartum infection (puerperal fever remained a major fatal disease worldwide until it was identified by Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, in 1847, and "cured" by cleanliness).  Women living in cities, away from the sunshine of rural life, tended to develop rickets, leading in turn to pelvises that succumbed to the first childbirth, and death.  A curiosity: the practice of wet-nursing among the affluent resulted in less healthy babies - because the milk of longer-term wet-nurses was not so nutritious as that of the natural mother.

As to life expectancy: always excepting death before adulthood and accidents, people seemed to live into their 60s.  There was also bubonic plague, the Black Death.  Arriving in England in 1348, with recurrences over the succeeding twenty years, the plague probably slashed the population by one-third.

*        Diet

The many historical references to bakers and the price of loaves suggest that home baking was not so prevalent as we might imagine, doubtless because of the absence of home ovens.  Meat was an important part of the average diet.  Cattle likely provided a substantial percentage: the fattened beasts typically went to market, while the farm folk consumed the worn-out farm oxen.  Because the supply of winter feed was limited many animals had to be slaughtered in the autumn.  The absence of refrigeration meant that the surplus autumn kill was smoked or salted - smoking of pork for ham and bacon was the norm anyway; beef and mutton were usually salted.  The harvesting of sea salt was a major industry.  Pig-raising was widespread, because the pigs could forage in nearby woodlands requiring less husbandry; and, in addition to their meat, their fat was utilized as lard for the making of candles and soap.  Dairy produce was an important part of diet.  The low fat yield of cows’ milk led to supplementation with goat and sheep milk.  Chickens, ducks and geese were year-round food (as well as the eggs); pigeons too.  (Where ducks and geese were sent "on the hoof" to market they were first driven through wet pitch or tar, then through sand to crust their feet for the journey ahead - a precaution against lame ducks!).  If rabbits, hares and deer were fair game they would be on the table, but - for instance - the poaching of deer from a royal forest usually incurred the death penalty, so venison was never a staple.  The consumption of fish was commonplace - and, near the sea, crustaceans and shellfish.  Historical references to root vegetables are rare, and they may not have been commonly eaten.  The pickling of cabbages, and the drying of peas and beans, made them year-round fare.  Onions and leeks and garlic feature a lot in contemporary accounts, as do herbs, something perhaps to do with the less than fresh meats.  Tropical fruits were unknown, and oranges rare, but otherwise the range of home-grown fruits was as today, although mulberries and quinces were much more prevalent.  Ale was the universal drink; cider and imported wine lagged well behind.  (Tea didn't reach England until the mid-1600s; coffee a little earlier, in the 1630s.)

Wrap

After the end of the Roman occupation there came the era of the Anglo-Saxon kings.  What we know to-day as England comprised a number of separate kingdoms through to the Norman Conquest; then the Norman/French kings – from William in 1066 – reigned over the unified kingdom until succeeded by the Plantagenet Henry III in 1216.  And before the Middle Ages were over the Plantagenets, the Lancasters and the Yorks had all come and gone.  Henry Tudor took the throne in 1485 after defeating Richard III in the final War of the Roses.  That vast period after the Romans saw the set-backs of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War; but it also saw the invention of spectacles, of gunpowder, of the astrolabe, and of printing (triggering the demise of the monopoly on learning held by the clergy).  It saw Chaucer, and the building of the great cathedrals.  It saw the establishment of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.  It saw some political evolution, notably the emergence of a form of representative assembly, and some limitation on the powers of the monarch.  It saw the rise in the importance of the towns, and the spread of trade.  But England remained a pre-feudal or feudal society throughout, and “daily life” remained much the same.  The last word, perhaps, to historian, Sir John Clapham:  “Conquests are not always of great significance in economic history.”

Gary Andrews

FROM GORE VIDAL TO THE MAYAS, BY WAY OF PHILLIP ADAMS

I have been reading Gore Vidal’s autobiographical Palimpsest.  The book was written in 1995 when Vidal was 70.  As Vidal explains early on, the word “palimpsest” means the over-writing in old parchments, the substitution of the original text by words superimposed later.  In an autobiographical sense, Vidal allows himself to recall part of his life, and then to re-recollect as with a palimpsest.  And Vidal has a lot to remember, much of it controversial at the time.  He was from a line of politically active Democrats, had liberal (democratic) values, and once himself stood for Congress.  His connections were “impeccable”, being related to the Auchincloss influence and money through his mother’s second marriage, and to Jacky Bouvier (Kennedy etc.) by the same route.  [To keep it simple, Vidal’s mother’s second husband was Hugh D. Auchincloss, whose third wife was Jackie Bouvier’s mother.]  And despite all this – maybe because – he became one of the USA’s leading writers; hugely prolific - many novels, plays and screenplays and, more important, many volumes of essays and social commentary.  Vidal was never a puller of punches.  He died at 86 in 2012, a curmudgeon to the end, and equally revered (for his brilliance and his outspokenness) and reviled (for his accumulated disdain for the American way, and his outspokenness).

I have memory of Vidal in conversation with Phillip Adams on Adams’ Late Night Live radio programme, more than once I think.  Erudition, insight and good humour on both parts; as with all Adams “interviews”, Adams asking questions that draw out the guest into a thoughtful answer, then Adams ad-libbing just the right response to keep the conversation alive.  There seemed a closeness in each other’s telephonic company, and I’d presumed that they were of long acquaintance, but I see no reference to Vidal in Bedtime Stories, Adams’ “tales from my 21 years at Radio National’s Late Night Live”, and no conversation with Vidal in the 100 Late Night Live transcripts on the ABC’s Radio National website.

Phillip Adams has had an extraordinary career, and is one of the few public celebrities worthy of being celebrated, not just famous.  Robert Manne says that Phillip is “perhaps the most remarkable broadcaster in the history of this country”.  Drop the perhaps.  Phillip has remained visible – and relevant – for nearly 60 years, and to people of my vintage he has always been on the radar.  For me, though, the connection is more personal……because we were schoolboys together.

Phillip is a master of reminiscence, and in his newspaper columns he has often over the years talked of his school days at Eltham High School; and I’m aware of a couple of references to his earlier time at Hawthorn West Central School.  There used to be a number of secondary high schools in Melbourne that taught years nine to twelve only (there still are); and complementing them were central schools that terminated at year eight.  Hawthorn West was one of these - curious admixtures that covered the standard primary schooling (years one to six) plus years seven and eight, the “central” school part.  The central schools were regional rather than local, and the students who enrolled in years seven and eight were predominantly from more distant localities rather than the students who had moved up from the accompanying primary school.  Hawthorn West was where I encountered Phillip.

I had come to Hawthorn West from North Richmond, and now I had a short tram ride instead of a walk to school.  Phillip had come to Hawthorn West from Yarra Park (located on the corner of Punt Road and Wellington Parade, East Melbourne), and now had a rather shorter tram ride than formerly.  I was at Hawthorn West in 1951 and 1952 and, while I know Phillip was there in 1951, I can’t be sure about the later year.  Phillip has written of his troubles with the headmaster, Mr. Norman.  Norman was a sadist in the guise of rectitude.  Those were the days when corporal punishment was still legal – and thought appropriate.  I remember Norman so intent on punishing some miscreant (could it have been Phillip?), that he couldn’t wait to deal with the culprit down in his office, and started flaying the legs as he dragged the lad down the stairs.  Norman was apoplectic, clearly out of control; and it’s a wonder that the other teachers didn’t protest.  I imagine they had no stomach for brutal punishment; leaving the principal unchallenged helped nobody.  By his own admission Phillip was a difficult and non-conforming student, but he wasn’t “bad” as some of the boys were.  There was a small group, the members of which were not only delinquent, but quite malevolent.  One, I recall, went on to a criminal career, finally blowing himself up in his attempt to rob a safe.

Phillip and I were good chums at Hawthorn West.  I suppose this was the time of his life when he was living in East Kew being raised by grandparents; he certainly had an uncommon amount of freedom.  One result was that he was a devotee of “midnight horror shows”. 

While today there’s quite a deal of affection for the uncomplicated 1950s, let it not be forgotten that, as an era, the 1950s were just as restrictive as the decades before.  (This goes some of the way to explaining the rise of the youth sub-culture of “bodgies and widgies”, and the explosion of “rebellious” popular music - Rock and Roll, typified by Bill Haley and the Comets, and the later rise of The Beatles from 1960.)  Notably we had “Sunday observance”: the statutory allocation of Sunday as the day for Christian worship; not particularly vexatious of itself, but there was a corresponding embargo on non-religious activities.  The only shops allowed to open were milk bars.  And there were no organised sporting events.   And the movie theatres were closed.  Thus the midnight horror show was spawned.  Cinemas couldn’t open on Sundays, but they could open at one minute past Sunday midnight, on Monday morning.  And when and why might they choose to do so?  Why, on the holiday Monday of a long weekend.   But this wasn’t to be simply a late-night screening of the latest feature, the cinemas needed an angle.  So several times each year selected theatres made a specialty of screening so-called horror films; and Phillip was an enthusiastic patron.

One venue dedicated to these screenings was the Cinema Theatre in Bridge Road, Richmond, and I expect that’s where Phillip cut his fangs.  The Cinema was almost directly opposite where my family lived, and I knew it well – although not after midnight.  In earlier days it had been a roller skating rink, but in my time it was a cinema (the building survives, and today is a Barbecues Galore outlet).  It was a massive theatre, having more than 2000 seats, possibly the largest cinema in the suburbs of Melbourne after the Palais in St. Kilda.  It could never have been described as a picture “palace”.  It was bereft of decoration, and its barrel ceiling was simply an open latticework of metal bands.  There was no insulation between the lattice ceiling and the corrugated iron roof above so when it was hailing or raining heavily the film soundtrack could not be heard.  Notwithstanding its size I remember, after the arrival of wide-screen Cinemascope in 1955, looking out our upstairs windows and seeing the Saturday night queues stretching along the block – the new format was so popular (novel?) that even such a large house couldn’t provide enough seats.

The curious thing about the midnight horror shows of the 1950s is that they didn’t screen recently-made films, they were stuck in a time warp of the 1930s and 1940s.  The films that were still getting regular airings were likely Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932) and The Wolfman (1941), and their numerous sequels, all products of Universal Studios.  Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jnr. made their careers out of these productions.

I’m aware of two results of Phillip’s exposure to the horror movies.  First, it prompted him, on occasion, to stagger around the school-ground, with arms outthrust, pretending to be the Frankenstein monster.  Second, it caused him to think that he had skill as a hypnotist.  On occasion he tried out this skill on me while we were visiting the nearby Glenferrie State School for our regular sloyd classes.  Glenferrie had a free-standing woodworking classroom, and off went the Hawthorn West boys for half a day once a fortnight for elementary carpentry training.  During the breaks Phillip and I hung out, and sometimes my role was as his compliant subject.  It never seemed to worry Phillip that he was quite unsuccessful (ah, but would I remember if I had been successfully hypnotised?).

After schooldays, my next encounters with Phillip were at the New Theatre, during my university years.  The New Theatre was different from all others.  It was a small venue in Flinders Street, Melbourne, between Russell and Exhibition Streets, and it accommodated both live theatre and movies.  In 1953 it was the launch pad for Reedy River, a theatrical re-telling of the shearers’ strike of 1891 and the ensuing nastiness behind the shearing shed – all accompanied by the “original” bush band and re-worked folk songs; indeed, some truly splendid bush ballads, as the “original cast” 10” LP confirms.  Reedy River ran for months, then moved to the sister New Theatre in Sydney; and has been revived often.  It has also sometimes been banned in country centres – for its left political leaning, and once for blasphemy – the lagerphone too much resembled a cross.  But Reedy River wasn’t the New Theatre’s main claim to notoriety:  the place was “well-known” for being associated with Communists!

It’s difficult to convey a sense of the Australian political scene in the 1950s.  The end of the world conflict in 1945 had led immediately to the Cold War, and to the two armed camps – the “free world” versus “international Communism”.  By War’s end the Soviet Union had its foot firmly on Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and part of Germany, and had gathered up the vassal states of the Baltic; and China fell to revolutionary Communist forces in 1949.  There was no a la carte option: Communism spread across the whole landscape of every conquered territory.  The “Red menace” became an expression that entered the lexicon.  If the atlas publishers hadn’t already allocated the colour red to the British Empire, they would logically have used it for Communist countries – and should then have ordered small print runs in anticipation of having to add more red next edition [as it is, this would have been good advice anyway because of the disintegration in the 1950s of the nineteenth century colonial empires and the re-colouration of the former colonial nations of Africa and Asia].  The non-Communist world was afraid.

Australia had had a Communist movement from the outset, certainly as early as the 1920s.  I remember my father talking of groups of Communists travelling the country in trucks during the economic depression of the 1930s, but I never learnt whether they were on the road specifically seeking recruits to the cause, or whether they were just unemployed and angry.  They were certainly disparaged, but I don’t think they were feared.  (I’m not sure, but they may have been connected with the International Workers of the World, nicknamed the “wobblies”, but probably not.  That organization, although it still survives as a rump, reached its Australian zenith early in the Twentieth Century, but was declared an illegal organization by the militarily frustrated Hughes Government in 1916 and, after the jailing of a number of its members, the salt lost its savour.)  I also recall hearing that the itinerant Communists wore red scarves, and why not?  But one of the long-standing overhangs of the widespread fear of Communism in the Australian community was the fact – which I well remember from the late 1940s and the 1950s – that any man wearing a red tie was “suspected” – at least at the schoolyard level.  If a boy wore a red tie to school in that era he would be ragged about being a Commie.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was at the New Theatre – with its Communist associations – that I again encountered Phillip.  Remember, picture theatres could not open on Sundays; but movies were shown at the New Theatre on Sunday nights, courtesy of the Realist Film Association.  Phillip was a projectionist, and I saw him often on Sunday nights. The name “Realist” itself conveys a message, I suppose.  The members were exposed to great and classic films, sometimes silent, and the fact that the films were often selected for their “message” – e.g. Soviet “tractor” movies – took nothing from their merit.   Phillip was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from age 16 to 18, somewhat overlapping my Realist Film Association years.  He does not seem to have suffered irreversible harm.  Nor do I – although I recall, at the time, being continually alert to the possibility of being importuned by a rain-coated emissary from the Soviet Embassy!  [I should add, to inject some reality here, that the Realist Film Association was a ground-breaker in the film society movement in Victoria.  Founded in 1948 it aimed to “develop the use of film as a force for social progress”, and in that regard not only made films but provided resources – projecting equipment and technical assistance – to film-focussed organizations.  Of more significance to me was its screening policy: it “ran a kind of de facto film education program by organizing many hundreds of screenings of classic European and Russian cinema, along with the work of avant-garde American, British and Canadian filmmakers, influenced by the work of the Italian neo-realists” (quote from the February 2014 doctoral thesis of Dorothy Mavis Jenkins, History of Victorian Film Societies as Exemplified by the Camberwell Film Society, submitted to Monash University).  Nothing too sinister there.]

No recollection of my limited exposure to Communist influences is complete without reference to countervailing activities.  The obvious antidote to Communism, or at least the perceived threat of Communism, was provided by the burgeoning Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and its predilection for keeping files on suspects and sympathisers (they had/have a file on Phillip).  National security is a paranoid business, and the approach that ASIO would have described as thorough and in the national interest certainly had overtones of that paranoia: the “Red under the bed” scare, for instance.  One outcome was the 1951 Federal referendum to ban the Communist Party.  Prime Minister Menzies was generally a good reader of public sentiment, but on this issue his tea leaves were wrong.  With great common sense the Australian electorate declined to proscribe the Communist Party; the Party survived the plebiscite, the Government, ASIO, and the jackboots…………….and quietly faded away anyway, rendered irrelevant as much as anything by Australia’s affluence (and indifference to burning causes). 

A more endearing opponent of Communism was Arnold Paine.  In my youth I habitually visited the “Yarra Bank” on Sunday afternoons.  The Yarra Bank was a section of parkland with a number of raised podiums, near the north bank of the Yarra River.   On Sunday afternoons speakers were free to spruik a cause, gather a crowd, talk drivel, whatever – an echo of Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London.   Blasphemy and profanity were allowed and, while there were police in attendance, they were there to keep the peace rather than to monitor the speakers.  ASIO representatives would undoubtedly have mingled.  The Communist Party faithful were always on the Yarra Bank, broadcasting their message from the back of a van.  In direct competition was Arnold Paine.  A self-appointed guardian of freedom, Paine was undoubtedly the most colourful and popular speaker in the park.  I don’t recall his background or personal story, but through the week he had a newsstand in Bourke Street.  His eyes didn’t exactly function in tandem, and this gave a wildness to his already flamboyant oratory.  He ranted the same stuff week after week, but his most abiding anecdote was of the time the mob – incited by the Communists – threw Arnold into the Yarra.  So every Sunday there would come a point when Arnold’s crowd would start chanting “to the river”.  It was all in good fun so far as I could see, but Arnold Paine was seriously obsessed, believing a dunking was imminent.  

While Phillip was politically active from an early age, I never was.  But I developed an interest in the Fabian movement, what might be described as the “intellectual” soul-mate of socialism, espousing social change without violence.  This arose from my earlier interest in the writer George Bernard Shaw.   Shaw was much admired, and quoted, by my uncle Bill Warren, who lent me – among other volumes – the hagiographical Thirty Years with GBS by Shaw’s long-time secretary Blanche Patch, and the less fulsome but comprehensive biography by Hesketh Pearson.  Shaw was a notable figure of the first half of the twentieth century and earlier.  He was Irish and irascible, a successful playwright, a music critic, a man who not only had profound ideas on everything but published them.  He was an obsessive letter writer (and card writer, see Blanche Patch), a lifelong socialist, and an early member of the British Fabian Society.  Shaw said that the first Fabians were “missionaries among the savages” who spent their lives trying to convert the British to Socialism.  [As an aside:  when I was growing up in the pre-television era of the 1950s. there were – as in any era - figures who were passing famous on the moving stage of the newspapers and radio – some who even hung around for years.  But there were others, more consequential, who were always hovering front and centre.  Great achievers all, but in truth they were by then – like Shaw - famous for being famous:  Charlie Chaplin, Albert Schweitzer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso, Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Arturo Toscanini, Bertrand Russell. The extent of their fame is indicated by how many were and are typically referred to by their surnames alone.  (These days the super famous seem to be popularly known by their given names.)  Living to a great age also helps to keep you in the public consciousness – and most of them did.  I search my memory for an equally famous female, and can think of no-one with sufficient public recognition at the time – maybe Agatha Christie; but Christie doesn’t really cut it.  Christie was famous, and her incessant publications kept her name in the public’s consciousness, but her persona was a blank.]

Fellow Fabians with Shaw were the historians Sydney and Beatrice Webb, writer H.G. Wells, and novelist E.M. Forster.   Echoing their English precursors the Fabian Society in Australia has always had strong links with the Australian Labor Party, and several Labor Prime Ministers have been Fabians.  To check on the origins of the Fabians I have referred to Edward R. Pease’s The History of the Fabian Society (1916).  Pease was writing when the Fabian movement was at its zenith.  I expect there has been a decline in grassroots interest, both in Britain and in Australia, but in the 1960s the movement was reasonably active, active enough in Melbourne to sponsor public lectures, and to attract the interest of young Andrews.  And young Adams.  A look at the Australian Fabians’ website shows the NSW branch scheduling two public lectures in February, with the Victorian branch posting a mind-blowingly-long survey on how they can become more attractive and relevant to members!  Forgoing such surveys might work.

I recall, a few years ago, an appearance by Phillip on the ABC’s The Collectors, not surprisingly focussing on Phillip’s love of ancient history and of archaeology, and of his extensive collection of artefacts and ancient items.  The segment was brief, and did not include a home visit, so Phillip’s collection wasn’t on display; but his passion certainly was.  I wonder whether an early interest in Egyptology might have been triggered by The Mummy films, those increasingly third rate (and hardly authentic) schlockers from Phillip’s 1950s midnight horror days.

From my teens I had also had an intense interest in the ancient Egyptians.  I reckon the grandeur and the mystery of the pyramids, and the civilization of ancient Egypt, has likely caught as many schoolboy imaginations as have rocket ships – these days more so, I think, because space travel no longer has the mystery, whereas the Egyptians always will have.  But while the Egyptians fired the initial interest, I was fascinated by all ancient peoples.  I remember, in the black and white days, the programmes of the UK archaeologist and television presenter, Glyn Daniel, with Daniel clambering through the archaeological features of Skara Brae on Orkney (and, after more than 50 years, in recent times I was able to see Skara Brae for myself; and also to marvel at the dozens of standing stones in fields of Brittany, near Carnac).  And there was Leonard Cottrell.   Cottrell worked for the BBC, and was the author of numerous books of archaeology for the general reader - books on Egypt, Roman Britain, the Minoans, China, the Sumerians, everywhere! 

Cottrell gave us the histories of ancient civilisations in separate books, but the German historian C.W. Ceram lumped them all together in 1949 into his encyclopaedic Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology.   This wonderful compendium on antiquity inspired in me an interest in the pre-Columbian peoples of South and Central America, in particular the Mayas of the Yucatan peninsula, today’s Honduras. 

With so much of archaeology, there is as much “romance” in the re-discovery as there is in the subsequent “excavation”; never more so than with the Mayans.   The Mayan cities truly were “lost”, thanks both to the march of the jungle and to the absence of a written tradition – more correctly, the written tradition was evidenced only on the stile, statues, and temples that the jungle had overwhelmed.  One of the more remarkable stories in the history of archaeology is the story of John Lloyd Stephens (1805 to 1852) and Frederick Catherwood (1799 to 1854), and their re-discovery of the Mayas.  

Stephens was raised in New York, and trained as a lawyer.  He practiced for eight years then, on medical advice, went travelling – through Europe and all around the Mediterranean, returning home in 1836.  He subsequently published two books of his travels,  Incidents of Travel in Egypt etc. (1837), and Incidents of Travel in Greece etc. (1838).  Meanwhile Catherwood, English architect and artist, made frequent trips to the Mediterranean region (from 1824 to 1833), specifically to draw and paint the surviving stone heritage of Egypt, Greece, Palestine, Turkey, and elsewhere.  Stephens and Catherwood met in London in 1836 and, being aware of a recent account of exploration of the ruined cities of Central America, decided to travel there together.  They did so in 1839 and 1840.   As a result of their journey and discoveries Stephens and Catherwood in 1841 published their monumental Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan.   Then, as always, there was a lot of general interest in archaeological findings, and the Americans in particular were fascinated to read of such unexpected and momentous discoveries in their hemisphere.  The book was a sensation.  It contains dozens of the most exquisite Catherwood engraving of the Mayan “ruins”, and Stephens’ recounting of the extended journey and what it had revealed.  I paid 2 pounds 15 shillings ($5.50) for my copy of the book in 1960.  It’s a bit battered, but after more than 150 years that’s okay too.  It’s still a treasure.

The thought processes are like the six degrees of separation.  One thought leads to another, and apparently unconnected things have the spaces between them filled as one’s mind rambles.  So it has been with this essay.  I am reading randomly, and come upon the names Stephens and Catherwood.  They are in England in 1836, before they journeyed to Yucatan, but after having travelled extensively in the Near East; and if ever I knew of their earlier association I had certainly forgotten.  But my mind flicks back to my Mayan readings of 50 years ago.  Almost simultaneously, Phillip Adams re-appears on my radar, and with him his love of archaeology.   I work backwards to our brief school times together, and the dots have been joined.

Gary Andrews

23 January, 2017

References:

Palimpsest: A Memoir by Gore Vidal (1995)  Abacus edition 1996 (limp)

Bedtime Stories by Phillip Adams (2012)  Harper Collins [ABC Books] (limp)

Thirty Years With G.B.S. by Blanche Patch (1951)  Victor Gollancz/Dymock’s Book Arcade

Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality by Hesketh Pearson (1942) 1961 edition  Methuen & Co

The History of the Fabian Society by Edward R. Pease (1916) 1925 revised edition  Fabian Society

Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology by C.W. Ceram (1949) 1971 revised edition  Book Club Associates

Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan by John Lloyd Stephens [with numerous engravings by Frederick Catherwood] (1841) 1854 revised edition  Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co