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
