BENCHLEY      

 

When, in the year 2000, my office proposed that I represent the firm at a gathering of international taxation practitioners I was not the least bit reluctant – especially since, for once, I was not expected to present a paper or to have any organisational involvement.  And who would resent a few days in Brussels?  And, given the shape of the planet, one might as well continue onward after the conference, and do a bit of client stroking in London and New York. 

 

My New York sojourn was pivoted around a visit to the headquarters of First Boston Corporation, the (at the time) pre-eminent merchant banker.  First Boston had its Australian operations based in Melbourne, and was a client of my office.  The First Boston people arranged for me to speak to “the whole team” at corporate headquarters in Manhattan, which I duly did; but before that there was a gathering with about a dozen or so vice-presidents on the floor below.  These senior executives were a much more formidable challenge than the full team that assembled later, not least because their typical age would have been no more than 30.  My short presentation was soon taken over by rapid-fire questioning about Australia’s taxation system.  My interlocutors were mostly intrigued by a peculiar feature of Australian taxation law – a provision now long since repealed.   At the time Australian residents were exempt from tax on foreign income that was taxable in its source country.  This is in contrast to the present system and to the system that then applied in the USA, namely the aggregating and taxing of worldwide income, with credit then given for tax already paid on foreign income in the country of source.  

 

The First Boston people I visited that day occupied the 99^th and 100^th floors of the World Trade Center.  A short while later First Boston relocated……..that is, before the obscenity of nine-eleven 2001; but the memory of my visit will forever be overlaid by what happened so soon after the visit, and the annihilation of the then occupants of those two floors.

 

While the ostensible reason for my New York mission was client service, myunderlying focus was a couple of days of sight-seeing, and a bit of Big Apple immersion; and, specifically, staying at The Algonquin Hotel.    

By the way, The Algonquin is on West 44^th Street, mid-town Manhattan, and in the twilight of my morning visit to the First Boston offices I walked the four miles to the World Trade Center, soaking it all in. 

 

 So why The Algonquin?  Well, The Algonquin was renowned for the so-called Algonquin Round Table, the literary group that gathered there through the years, roughly 1919 to 1929.  The group met in he Rose Room for lunch, daily!  Members of the Round Table were a disparate group of actors, writers, critics, and New York people about town.  Attendance was fluid.  So-called “charter members” included Alexander Woollcott (drama critic, and – subsequently - the inspiration for the leading character in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner), George S. Kaufman (himself), Harold Ross (editor of The New Yorker), Dorothy Parker (critic and writer), and Robert Benchley. 

A couple of quotes from Wikipedia: “At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.” “The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker [and] had its own poker club…….which met at the hotel on Saturday nights…….The group also played charades……and the ‘I give you a sentence’ game, which spawned Dorothy Parker’s memorable sentence using the word horticulture: ‘You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.’”  

 

There are those who have regarded the members of the Algonquin Round Table as unserious, indeed frivolous; nevertheless, their ethos has endured.  There’s much to be said for an outlook that’s light-hearted rather than serious.  As much as any of the Round Table members, Robert Benchley typified this attitude.

 

My early acquaintance with and admiration for Robert Benchley I attribute to my uncle, Bill Warren, who cultivated in me similar admiration for the aforementioned Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott.  And for Stephen Leacock.  And James Thurber.   Humorous writers all.  My recent re-acquaintance with Benchley has been triggered by a gift from my son-in-law: Pluck and Luck, a volume of Benchley essays rescued from an op shop – the volume not the son-in-law!  Martin has no desire to be rescued. 

 

Robert Benchley lived from 1889 to 1945, a modest span terminated, according to one source, by lung cancer and to another source by cirrhosis of the liver.  Choose your vice!  He is described as a newspaper columnist, as an American humourist, and as an actor.  There was much overlapping of his disparate careers.

Benchley’s paternal grandfather had been Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, later jailed in Texas for his active role in the “underground railroad”, the clandestine movement that provided the wherewithal for Negro slaves to escape to the North.  Later, Benchley’s father had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and spent four years in the American Navy before returning to Worcester (Massachusetts), later becoming Town Clerk.  Benchley’s older brother, Edmund, trained at West Point, served in the Spanish-American War, and was killed in the Battle of San Juan Hill – when Robert Benchley was nine years only.  Absent from Benchley’s biographical background are the stereotypical tropes of success through failure, or triumph through adversity.

 

One source notes that “Benchley was the pampered son of prosperous parents, groomed for corporate boardrooms.  He declined such a fate.”  He embraced humour: he wrote his senior school literature thesis on How to Embalm a Corpse.  At Harvard, his fraternity after-dinner speeches were acclaimed for their pseudo-serious nonsense.  After Harvard he worked as a copywriter, meanwhile submitting humorous essays to magazines.  He wrote a book review of the phone book: “It is the opinion of the reviewer that the weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages.”  He was, for a time, managing editor of Vanity Fair.  The anecdotes are endless.  One time he cabled the office from Venice: “Streets full of water.  Please advise.”

 

Benchley’s published output was prodigious.  Over his career he was drama critic for Life magazine and, additionally, wrote for Life’s The Wayward Press column (1920 to 1929).  He was a long-time contributor to The New Yorker.  There were twelve collections of his essays during his lifetime, and ten posthumous collections.  I have read my recent acquisition, and re-read a volume pulled from my shelf.  ThePluck and Luck compilation was published in 1925, and the author acknowledges prior publication of the 50 “articles” in Life, The Detroit Athletic Club News, The Bookman, College Humour and Theatre Guild Program.   The other volume, Benchley – or Else!, was published posthumously in 1948 as “a collection of Benchley’s articles”.  There are 70 of them.  The publishers do not indicate where first published, or provide a chronology.  It matters little……22 lifetime collections of essays, all told more than 600, made Benchley a busy beaver indeed.

But, that’s not the half of it.  Benchley wrote/ featured in/wrote titles for or narrated 50 feature films.  And played in 51 short non-feature films, nearly all of which he wrote!  Much of this output might be consigned to the inconsequential basket, nevertheless it does indicate that Benchley and his humour was taken very seriously in the day, and that he had a huge persona in the eyes of the American public.   His on-screen mien was typically droll, verging on lugubrious, invariably accepting of his hapless predicament; the average Joe in a pickle. 

 

Now, I don’t expect that Robert Benchley has much of a following these days.  Not so long ago his writings were accessible only on library shelves or from op shop bins, so scarcity was an issue.  But these days much is available through book dealers on line.  And, I see that three Benchley volumes are available (complete, and gratis) for download through Project Gutenberg.  As to the uncollected writings in magazine archives, well good luck sourcing them.  

 

With the films:  these have long since faded from public screening, but the internet provides hope.  Numerous short-subject Benchley films can be accessed - simply Google “Robert Benchley Movies”.  

 

The question is whether there is anything in the Benchley catalogue that is a must read or a must-see?  I’d suggest “yes” - so long as you undertake your search with a mindset like “sly”, “amusing”, “interesting”, “droll”.  A dedicated rainy afternoon might reveal two or three readers or viewers who find Robert Benchley’s humour to be fine-tuned to their wavelength.  Or a whole new generation!

 

And The Algonquin?  I read somewhere that prestigious hotels aim to “refresh” their rooms every five to seven years, and to effect major renovations every ten to fifteen years.  I suspect that, when I visited in 2000, The Algonquin people hadn’t read this.  Or that they were exponents of the tired but comfortable school – and, what the heck, no amount of shazam can convert a room from smallish to palatial. Anyway, the intervening 25 years have, I see, achieved major improvement and generated some spruce…..such that, today, the single room rack rate is $A909.  The many on-line photographs illustrate a very affable establishment indeed.  181 rooms, by the way, should you wish to take the family.  No amount of history or nostalgia, however, was able to save the Rose Room - which had been re-modelled out of existence in 1998.  

 

Sadly, among The Algonquin’s voluminous web-site content there is no reference to the Round Table, past or present.  But scroll carefully through the numerous photographs on the Bookings.com site, and at #14/57 you will see Robert Benchley, above the sideboard, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, amused and contented.  

By way of postscript:  The famous quotes of famous people tend to be somewhat corrupted over time and through the constant re-telling but, for what it’s worth, here are some bons mots attributed to Robert Benchley:

 

#   The only real cure for a hangover is death.

#   If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get out of these wet things and into a dry martini.

#.  Even nowadays a man can’t step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.

#   I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry.

#   Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

#.  If Mr. Einstein doesn’t like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.

#.  The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

#.  The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

#.  There is a fairly prevalent notion that if you have been behind the scenes where the chorus girls are, you ought to go to confession right away, but that it is worth it.

#   Bear-hunting has never been the same since the supply of bears ran out.

 

Gary Andrews

 

 

 

 

 

SHOW AND TELL NUMBER 2

       

A little over a year ago I posted a blog with the name Show and Tell.  Now for the follow-up.  Like its predecessor, Number 2 has the same origins in a lifetime accumulation of odds and ends, gathered together for no reason other than their lack of present-day utility, and their appeal to the curious.  These items have been appreciated by groups of older folk at the nearby Senior Citizens’ Centre.  The flash of recognition of some item remembered from long ago but not seen for years has a special sweetness.

 

Shoe Stretcher 

 

I had thought that this item might be covered by the description “shoe softener”, but a search under those words produces references to numerous preparations and unguents for application to stiff leather to unstiffen it, not to primitive mechanical devices such as this.  And I had recollected seeing this type of device in retail shoe establishments, where a rather-too-tightly fitting shoe was subjected to a softening up by the sales assistant as an alternative to the shrinking of the customer’s foot. That process may sometimes have occurred; but, apparently, the preferred use for this contraption was for the softening of shoes to make space for bunions.  So not so much of a commercial application, but a household one.  

 

This particular implement has no branding or maker’s attribution, so it may well be a product of the blacksmith’s art.  If so, the craftsmanship far exceeds the importance of such a mundane item.  It’s easy to see how this leather softening device functions but, although it’s a whopper of a tool, I’m guessing that it’s for shoes only - the throat is not long enough for the device to be used on calf-height boots, even where the boot leg is scrunched up.  Equestrians with bunions may simply have had to suck it up.

 

Boot Lacer 

It’s not a bad idea to avoid double negatives.  Indeed, it’s likely a good idea.  Yet a double negative can hold separate meaning from the opposite.  For instance, I wouldn’t claim that over all I had a good time when I was enlisted for National Service Training in the Australian Army, but then the experience was not bad either.  This is really a silly oversimplification, anyway, because the experience comprised a multitude of experiences spread over months.  And here I’m about to reduce all of that to one aspect only –  the boots.

 

But, before the boots hit the ground, a bit of background.   It is January 1958.  The Korean War is sufficiently in the past for Australian people and Governments to be tiring of National Service for young men, and tiring of the compulsory system that had pertained since the Korean War.  The system had been bastardised from “all 18-years old men” to the “birthday ballot” (roughly one in three).  The Navy and the Air Force were no longer involved.   So, my time of service might be described as the dying days, but it was serious nonetheless, at least there no choice but to take it seriously.  For those desperate to know, compulsory National Service Training was abolished a little later, in 1959……..only to be revived in 1962, for 20-years old men, in response to the Vietnam War…….then finally abolished in December 1972 when the Whitlam Government came to power.  

 

Memory hasn’t failed, but it has gone through the blender:  I know we travelled one time to camp at Puckapunyal in army trucks (direct from the depot alongside the Yarra near Yarra Park – long gone), but I equally know that we trained from the then Spencer Street Station to Dysart Siding south of Seymour, thence to be transferred to army trucks for the short run to Puckapunyal.  Or maybe it was to the Army's Site 17 on the other side of Seymour.

 

That day of first arrival at Puckapunyal each recruit was issued with two pairs of boots.  Mine are with me still.  I am not anti-army and, (pun alert!) in defensive mode over the years, I have remarked that the Army often got things right; and issuing footwear that was likely to outlast the next war was one such instance.  Another, was separating the some hundreds of each intake into recruits of roughly similar backgrounds and levels of education.  Consistent with this approach, was the identification of men who were illiterate or of very limited education [yes, in Australia in 1956, there were about 30 of these in that summer intake] and the separating of these men from much of their regular training, and intensively educating them during their time in camp.  For that the Army can be forgiven a lot of its foibles.

 

And, before I’m completely lost in nostalgia, I must revert to the boot lacer.  The name is comprehensively descriptive, but that’s not enough.  One needs to know that the boots of its day – at least the boots for which this gadget was the accompaniment – did not have eyelets through which laces were threaded; the boots had hooks.  The laces were pulled around the hooks rather than through holes, a much faster process for execution during surprise attack when one was caught in one’s bunk.  And the little lacer is just the ticket. 

 

 An interesting feature: embossed on the handle is the maker’s mark: Wm. LEEMING, Nth. MELB. & PRAHRAN.  And in the tiniest of lettering:  USA.  Since when did a Melbourne firm have its products manufactured in the USA?  Well….if you Google Wm. LEEMING the first entry to appear is an item from the collection of Museums Victoria, an 1885 commemorative ceramic plate from Leemings Boot Stores, 109 Swanston Street.   Leemings is described as “arguably Victoria’s most advertised bootery”.

 

Butter Paddle (Antique) 

 

Check out “butter paddle” on the internet, and you’ll see plenty of examples, and they all have similar features.  They have grooves, for controlling the pats of butter while being shaped and squeezed, and for allowing the buttermilk to drain away.  They are paddle shaped, and they come in pairs.  So, what’s with this item?  The lack of a mate might be attributed to bad luck, or even carelessness, but the lack of grooves seems to be an impediment too far.  Moreover, the small face would drive the typical milkmaid bananas.  And yet it is a butter paddle, the internet identifies it as such.  By adding the search word “antique” an array of shapes appears before you; and by “asking about” the image an even more curated bunch of butter paddle images appears.  They are varied beyond belief, but an extensive image crawl reveals not one like my (by now becoming extremely valuable) artifact – a rustic dairy tool, no less.  Hand crafted, for sure; born from the rarest of river-rescued huon pine, undoubtedly.  Who knows the death toll of intrepid timber getters?  Do not think cheap when you submit your offer.

 

“Silvermoth” Box 

 

“Protects your Clothes from Moths and Silverfish”, so says the slogan on the packet.  Unlike its rival products, the contents of this box were powder rather than mothballs.  Whether or not the product was effective, there was undoubtedly a marketing flaw: since the little box was placed in a darkened spot, where the pests were presumed to loiter, it tended to be forgotten.  So, the lethal contents might well evaporate before the householder realised that a replacement was needed – the very antithesis of planned obsolescence.  This box, empty and odourless, was found in the back of a built-in attic wardrobe when we moved the family home in 1975. The telephone number numbering system comprising two numerals and four digits [MU 3829] was discontinued in 1960, and who knows how many years prior to 1960 the packet had done its work? 

 

Snake Bite Kit 

 

I don’t recall whether these little snake bite kits were part of each Boy Scout’s necessary accoutrements, probably not.  But they would have been included in the gear kept at the scout hall, and would definitely have been taken to every camp and outdoor excursion.  I see an identical item on eBay, comprehensively described thus: 1910s Vintage Antique Cylinder Cutter Lance Snake Bite First Aid Kit.  The illustration shows how there is a lance at one end of the gadget, customarily kept safe in its capped compartment.  The other end has a hollow compartment too – also capped, for storing Condy’s Crystals [aka potassium permanganate], a popular antiseptic and disinfectant.   The conventional first aid response to being bitten by a snake was: (1) to wipe away from the fang punctures any venom remaining on the skin, (2) using the lance, to excise the bite, (3) to suck the venom from the wound, (4) if the bite is on a limb, to apply pressure to the bite area, and apply a tourniquet “above” the bite.  In recent times most of this routine has been deleted from the recommended procedure: no excising of the bite area, no sucking of the wound, no tourniquet.  In short: bandage, immobilise the limb, anti-venene as soon as possible, and hospitalisation.

 

I see that a little short of 600 Australians are hospitalised each year with snake bite, so it’s a frequent enough occurrence for all schoolchildren to be taught snake bite first aid.  There’s plenty of information available on the net, but that’s not much use if you’re foolish enough to be bitten beyond telephonic reception.

 

Tyre Tube Repair Kit Tin 

 

This kit is for bicycles not for automobiles.  And it’s a bit of a puzzle, because the tin is empty.  So, use your imagination, and picture the missing pieces of tiny sandpaper, the supply of rubber patches, the tube of glue, a scraper, a wax crayon, a piece of chalk, and a couple of small tyre levers.  Absent is the tub of water for locating the leak in the tube - inconvenient to organise at home, and rarely waiting handy by the roadside.  

 

Cigar Case 

 

Just as in the movies of old, where the cowboys with black hats were the villains (baddies) and those with the white hats were the heroes (goodies), so too with the dispensing of cigars.  There was a code.  If the film character offered his guest a cigar from the box or the humidor he was okay, but if he helped himself to a cigar without proffering one to his guest then he was most decidedly on the nose.  This vignette is part of a large mythology about cigars, including about humidors themselves.  “A humidor’s primary function is to maintain a steady, desirable moisture level inside……A humidor is the only tool that creates the perfect stable environment to protect your cigars…..Using the wrong type of water (that is, not distilled) can introduce mould, leave unsightly mineral deposits and, worst of all, compromise the flavour and longevity of your cigars.”

 

The pictured case is clearly not a humidor, and one can but hope that in its real life its contents hadn’t been breast-pocketed around for days or weeks but, rather, had been lovingly transferred from a humidor this very morning on the way to the owner’s city club.

 

Draft Horse Bit

 

This is a brute of a thing and, given that the bit is the focal point of contact between horse and rider or driver, first reaction is to pity the horse that had to mouth it.  Sure, a horseman or horsewoman might be unsparing with the whip, but careless or thoughtless or sadistic deployment of an ill-fitting bit must represent the ultimate agony for the horse.    But that’s not the sense one gets from the literature; and the numerous on-line illustrations of multi-shaped and multi-sized bits suggest that horse people were and are very particular about the choice of bit for their horse.  The pictured bit is somewhat on the large size, and was likely for a draft horse.

 

My acquaintance with horses is less than intimate, but not unfriendly.  There was one time when my cousin Graeme. and I were venturing from his family farm at Chinkapook, riding bareback together on faithful Jewel.  I had not buttoned my holster, and after a bit of a jolt my six-shooter cap gun dropped to the track below.  No problem, you would think, but after some very serious deliberation we concluded that if I dismounted to collect the gun we wouldn’t be able to get me back on to Jewel's rump – Jewel  was a very wide-arsed mare, somewhat pregnant at the time.  So, with some reluctance (and with some imprecation heaped on me – it was my cousin’s six-shooter!) we continued the several miles home.  When my uncle took us back to retrieve the revolver next morning, inevitably the laws of a malevolent universe had turned a cog, and on this remote bush track the revolver had been crushed by a passing vehicle.  

 

My other horse anecdote is equally ignominious.  In my early office years one of my colleagues, Adrian Seymour, commuted each morning to the Melbourne CBD from Lilydale, some 35 kms distant.  His folks were serious horse people, and so was he, and they had a substantial rural property to indulge their passion.  The influence on Adrian’s workmates was enormous: over the early years of our careers we had numerous days out at the farm, and numerous horse-riding excursions.  One such is the trigger for my second horse anecdote.  There were more than a dozen of us, and we assembled at a riding school in the Dandenongs to be allocated our horses for the day, and to be saddled up.  Some time into the excursion we were proceeding along a country road at a fairly brisk canter, me more optimistic than skilful, when the road took a sweeping corner.  So did my horse.  My willingness to play along was somewhat stymied by the fact that the saddle strap under the horse’s girth had not been properly tightened, and the saddle - and I - did a 180 degrees rotation.  The horse was somewhat disconcerted by the sudden appearance of saddlery and rider under its belly, but it didn’t bolt.  It was pulled up safely by one of our group and, unbelievably, no harm was done to man or beast.  With a seriously tightened cinch, we were soon on our way again.

 

Reverting to the pictured bit, it should be mentioned for the benefit of the unaware, that in her wisdom Mother Nature had equipped horses with gaps between the teeth to the rear of their lower jawline – the so-called interdental space - gaps that allow bits of appropriate size to be inserted.  So, the symbiosis between man and horse was pretty much engineered from the start.

 

Adjustable Date Stamp

 

In the business offices of my memory the sorting of the morning mail used to be something of a ritual, and part of that ritual was the stamping of each item of mail with today’s date.  This date-stamping represented permanent (and incontrovertible) evidence of receipt; and I expect that, tucked in the corporate consciousness somewhere, was the atavistic belief that there was a sound reason why such a process was for “legal” purposes, or was at least prudent practice just in case.  The Date Stamp has four rubber rings, each one with numerals or letters embossed – day/day/month/year. The rings, and hence the embossed specifics, are rotated each day using a simple finger or thumb action.  In these electronic days one presumes that there is some less old-fashioned process for achieving the same comfort re the incoming mail.  Regardless, items similar to this device remain available from every stationer, and on line.  Time has not rendered them redundant. 

 

So, how come this Adjustable Date Stamp has a place in a “show and tell” line-up?  Simply because this specific date stamp has been superseded, and is indeed unusable.  Its available dates range from 1 January 1979 to 31 December 1990.  More so than every other item in this Show and Tell compilation this Adjustable Date Stamp has no function whatever.

 

 

Gary Andrews

 

 

 

BRITAIN IN PICTURES - NUMBER 13

 #29  English Women by Edith Sitwell

 

When seeking an explanation for the accomplishments of a high achiever we search between genetics and environment, and frequently find it impossible to allocate between the two.  Nature or nurture.  But how much more perplexing is the question when one family generation has three (or more) high achievers?  Have they been driven by driven parents? Is it due to the outworkings of their particular version of sibling rivalry? Is it simply genetic?

 

The Sitwells were a remarkable family, from parents notable but not necessarily remarkable.  Certainly solid though, with origins in sixteenth century iron-making (nails, saws) culminating in the “Gothic pile”, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, and a baronetcy. The father, Sir George Sitwell, fourth baronet, is described as eccentric and reclusive; and he wrote unpublishable books.  The mother, Lady Ida, in addition to treating daughter Edith badly, also spent time in prison for fraud. How then was each of the three children of Sir George and Lady Ida a high achiever?

 

The middle of the Sitwell offspring, Osbert Sitwell, fifth baronet [1892 to 1969], was an accomplished writer – although eccentric enough to post a Who’s Who entry: “Educated during the holidays from Eton”.  He wrote numerous volumes of fiction and poetry, plus five volumes of autobiography.  He suffered from Parkinson’s Disease from his mid-‘60s, and had to abandon writing in his later years.  He never married.  By the way, the (one volume) 1999 biography of Osbert Sitwell by Philip Ziegler is very fine.

 

The youngest of the Sitwell offspring, Sacheverell Sitwell, sixth baronet [1897 to 1988] was also a writer – more than 50 volumes on art, music, and architecture, and 50 volumes of poetry.

 

And Edith, the older sister [1887 to 1964]?  Her angular physique and her curved spine (attributed to Marfan Syndrome) were but parts of her eccentricity.  In adult life she spoke in a declamatory style, and habitually dressed in black and wore turbans or toques.  Yet she was sufficiently mainstream to be created a DBE in 1954. “She remains forever as a true British one-off.” Apart from simply being famous for being famous, Edith Sitwell is best remembered for writing the verses for Façade, and for reciting those verses (from behind a curtain) at the first performance. With music by William Walton, Façade was a cause celebre in 1922; and remains, today, one of the masterpieces of British music/verse/whimsy.

 

Having digressed to look at the Sitwells, now to see what Edith made of English Women.  The book is a surprise: it is not, as the title might suggest, a survey of English womankind, the racial origins and admixture, the heroinism, the stoicism, the manifest virtues on display in wartime (this was 1942).  No, Sitwell has taken English Women to mean a survey of some 20 individual women.  As a project, I think that 20 potted biographies is an inferior endeavour to a broader survey but, perhaps, this was the area of Sitwell’s comfort or competence.  Or an indication of her eccentricity.  My copy of this volume is sans dust jacket, hence it’s without the publisher’s note that might explain the background.  It is what it is, though; and Sitwell has some incisive comments. 

 

The first chapter is nominally about Catherine Blake, wife to William Blake, painter and poet.  But the one-line reference to Catherine Blake – “the most wonderful wife who has ever supported and comforted a man of genius” - serves simply as an example of the unrecorded English women to whom our author might have paid tribute had there been more space: “those women who have never found fame, but whose daily example has helped to civilise our race.”

 

Then follow the thumb-nail sketches.  Here's a sample.

 

In less than one page of text Elizabeth Tudor (Queen Elizabeth 1^st) [1533 to 1603] receives unstinting homage: “This strange contradiction of a woman whose life, seen from one aspect, was barren, seen from another, infinitely fertile, was consistent only in her greatness.”

 

Sarah Jennings, the Duchess of Marlborough [1660 to 1744], did not mince words, and this trait – notwithstanding her position as wife of the Duke and her prominence at Court – eventually alienated her to Queen Anne.  “She had a soldierly courage and honesty, a character incapable of lying or of condescending to use tact, which appeared to her a minor form of lying.  With this unbending character she had a violent temper which she made no effort to control.”  She was prone to contradict, and would not allow the Queen an unwarranted last word.  When the final estrangement came the Queen, even when challenged, offered no explanation.  Sarah Jennings remained feisty to the end.  As Sitwell puts it: “One by one the lights were put out in the house of the woman who had played so great a part in the social history of her age.  But still she remained.  She was eighty-four when the last light of all was extinguished and she was at peace.”

 

The mise-en-scene for the story of Lady Esther Stanhope [1776 to 1839] was extraordinary; and of her creation.  Daughter of the Earl of Stanhope, Lady Esther “glittered angrily for a while in the society of London, then, having seen its true worth, left it forever……”.  After the death of her fiancé in battle she retired to Wales, then six years later (in 1810) left Britain accompanied by her doctor, her maid, and her footman.  She never returned, and after years of adventures settled at Djoun near the top of Mount Lebanon.  In the meantime, her travels endeared her to the tribespeople of the Middle-East.  “Her progress had been that of a queen”, and she wrote from Damascus that she was “the darling of all the troops, who seem to think that I am a deity because I can ride, and because I bear arms; and the fanatics all bow before me because the Dervishes think me a wonder.”  In June 1813 she wrote: “I have been crowned Queen of the Desert……If I please, I can now go to Mecca alone.  I have nothing to fear.” 

 

Elizabeth Fry [1780 to 1845] made the time not only to be the “wise and loving” mother to her sixteen children but also to spend a lifetime doing great work for humanity.  That work comprised the reform of the English prison system.  Her first visit to Newgate – “this man-created hell, in which God must have appeared to the prisoners in the guise of a devil” – led to Fry founding a school in the prison, with a governess selected from among the prisoners!  And to an enquiry by the House of Commons, at which Fry appeared.  And to the formation of a committee for the assistance of prisoners.  Soon, Sitwell asserts, “visitors to the prison saw no more an assemblage of abandoned and shameless creatures, half-naked and half-drunk…….the prison no longer resounded with obscenity and imprecations and licentious songs”.  In time, Fry’s reach was trans-national, with influence in France and Germany; and (we are told) the Czar, under Fry’s influence, freed souls from debtors’ prison.  Moreover, Fry was instrumental in stopping the persecution of Lutherans in Russia.  “So deeply was she loved that her journeys resembled royal progresses, great crowds assembling and clamouring to touch her hand.”

 

At four o’clock in the morning of 8^th September, 1838, the great paddlesteamer, Forfarshire, foundered in a severe storm on Harker’s Rock, a rocky island nearby to Brownsman Island and its lighthouse, the Longstone Light.  Aware of the tragedy were lightkeeper, William Darling, and his twenty-two-years-old daughter, Grace.  Through the gloom Darling and daughter could perceive the wreck, but could see no survivors.  Yet there might be people clinging to the wreck.  The Darling sons were away on the mainland, and it was up to father, who knew it was hopeless to try to row across, and daughter, who knew it was the right thing to try.  The lifeboat could not handle the fierce sea, but the smaller 21-feet cobble was designed for local conditions......but ordinarily it took three men to handle the cobble!  Grace made it clear that if her father would not go she would go alone.  So, they went. The wild conditions determined that they take a roundabout route, some 1.5 km – and there were survivors!  Four men (all seamen) and a woman were brought back to the lighthouse; and then those men and William Darling returned to the wreck and rescued four more – all told, nine survivors from the complement of 62.  Grace Darling became a national heroine, a role that did not rest easily.  A benefit fund was established.  The Queen contributed.  Artists vied to paint Grace’s image.  In 1842 Grace Darling was diagnosed with consumption, and she died in October of that year, aged 26.

 

Does Edith Sitwell think that there is nothing left to say about Emily Bronte [1818 to 1848], or is she content merely to include Bronte in her list knowing that Bronte has already spoken eloquently for herself?  We are given barely more than 400 words. The issue is Bronte’s lack of an external life: “The life of this woman of genius is like that of the wind and the rain, knowing no incidents and but few landmarks.”  “There were incidents, but apart from these that wild life was lived in the heart and the mind.”  The publication of the volume of poetry by the three Bronte sisters, and “the infinitely more important appearance of Wuthering Heights in 1847, these were the events of her life".

 

Sitwell concludes with a lovely tribute to Virginia Woolf, the only one of her profiles that is of her generation and known to her.  Woolf [1882 to 1941] had died a year earlier.  “She was allied to many things in nature; she had the profundity of a deep well of water.  But when she was talking, and listening to the talk of others, you felt she was like a happy child chasing butterflies over the fields of an undying summer.”  “In conversation with her everything became exciting.  She made thoughts fly to and fro more quickly.”  “Equally enchanting as talker and listener, she encouraged the conversation of her friends, she teased them gently, clapping her hands with pleasure and excitement when they scored some point.”  “Her beauty was great and she had the kind of unconscious elegance of some tall thin bird, with its long legs and delicate feet, and wondering turn of the head.  With this she had a charm which had occasionally an innocent mischievous character, like that of a child.”  Wow!

 

Gary Andrews

 

THE EBENEZER MISSION

 

It was so disappointing to arrive at the Ebenezer Mission to find it was high fenced and inaccessible.  Sure, it has had no function for many years, but it is an important historical site, and has long been open to the curious and to those wanting a palpable sense of what once was.  Today’s “no go zone” status was doubly irritating given that over the years funds have been expended on preservation works, one presumes in acknowledgement of the Mission’s importance and in recognition of ongoing interest in the Ebenezer story.

 

I had discovered Ebenezer some 50 years ago on the way to a camping trip atWyperfeld National Park in the central-western part of Victoria.  Leave the Western Highway (the main route from Melbourne to Adelaide - or vice-versa) near Dimboola and head due north to Jeparit, a little way along reaching Antwerp.  Antwerp, nominal population of 63, is more a location than a town, distinguishable mainly by the cemetery alongside the main road.  Nearby is the turn-off to Ebenezer, a few kilometres to the west and close by the notherly-flowing Wimmera River.

 

The focal point of the Ebenezer Mission is the high-pitched church, stone built to last, and easily accommodating a hundred worshippers and those of not-so-certain belief.  Re-whitewashed not so long ago, and ostensibly optimistic, it stands as a symbol of the missionary endeavour; but it stands alone, and is locked and bolted, and many metres behind the “do not trespass” fence.  

The remainder of the former mission complex, also inaccessible, is a tumble of derelict buildings and an overgrown graveyard.  As I recall, there are fallen-down residential quarters, and a one-time kitchen cum dining-room, with baker’s oven.  And not much else.  At its height Ebenezer had had 100 residents and some 20 buildings. 

Despite the decline, the sense of place and of history is pervasive; and the story of Ebenezer should be more widely known.

 

I have no memory of how I obtained it, but I possess a document titled Aborigines of the Wimmera River System.  Forty-five pages, typewritten and roneoed, written and copyrighted in 1974 by one Terri G Allen of Hopetoun.  A very comprehensive dissertation on the aboriginal peoples of the north-westerly part of Victoria…….and, specifically, the connection of the Aboriginal peoples to the Ebenezer Mission.  Forgive me if I bang on a bit with extracts from that document:

 

#.  As the settlers moved further north taking up more and more land, the initial amiable relationship with the natives altered.  The settlers usurped the best positions for homesteads, commandeered all available water resources, shot the native fauna which competed with their stock for grassland, and desecrated tribal grounds.  This led to bloodshed and fierce skirmishes as the Aborigines retaliated, killing sheep and cattle to replace their depleted food stocks.  Squatters soon chastised such raiders, ambushing and killing whole hoards: “We gave them what they will not forget in a hurry.”

 

#.  Many settlers were heedless of the plight of the Aborigines, exterminating them like wild animals while proclaiming that [I hesitate to reproduce the following] “the only good Aborigines are dead ones”, and “it is the design of providence that the inferior races should pass away before the superior races……Since we have occupied the country the Aborigines must cease to occupy it”.  Aboriginal numbers rapidly decreased, so that by the mid 1850s whole groups were extinct…..[Remember, the first European settlers arrived in Victoria as recently as 1835, so the demise of the Aborigines was rapid indeed.]

 

#.  The introduction of European diseases such as measles and venereal disease quickly took toll of the native population…….[The incidence of fatal venereal diseases among Aboriginal women – contracted from white men – was much greater than among Aboriginal men.  This led to a significant disproportion between gender numbers.  Moreover, half-cast children were often killed at birth and, counting these as non-births, the birthrate dropped drastically.]   In 1851 the population of Victoria’s Aborigines had been 2690, but this decreased by a thousand to 1694 in 1861…….There was an excessive masculinity, 52% being adult male, double the number of females, and only 19% being children, which [the author asserts] graphically illustrated that infanticide had been practised.

 

Much of this was before the establishment of Ebenezer Mission.  The Ebenezer story is both a noble attempt to do good, and a foolhardy attempt to stem the flow of history.  That flow overwhelmed the Mission in about 45 years, and early into the twentieth century it was no more.  It closed in 1904.  The Divine intervention that has preserved its memory and its bits and pieces for the most recent 120 years will need to work overtime to save it for the next 120!

 

A small mission to the Aborigines had been established under Pastors Hagenauer and Spieseke at Lake Boga (on the Murray, south of Swan Hill) in 1850.  The missionaries were adherents of the Moravian Church, a Christian denomination from Bohemia, a denomination which today has fewer than a million followers.  The Moravians are likely the oldest Protestant denomination: the sect dates from the 15^th Century.  Its founder, Jan Hus, was a priest who opposed many aspects of the Catholic Church, and who, for his pains and to add to them, was burned at the stake by his former Catholic chums.

 

The missionaries had a four-point plan, namely: (1) to preach the gospel, (2) to start a school for the children, (3) to settle the Aborigines from their nomadic ways, and (4) to teach and educate the Aborigines……put more simply, to civilise and to Christianise the Aboriginal people. Following upon the failure of their Lake Boga endeavour the pastors were promised an allocation of land for a mission station near Antwerp.  This promise was not honoured immediately, but the missionaries nevertheless went ahead, selected the site, and established Ebenezer Mission in 1858.

The Mission near Antwerp prospered.  A strange word, perhaps, but over time the Mission fulfilled all its objectives……..although one wonders about both the quantitative and qualitative ambit of the word “civilise”.  And one has to speculate about the potential clashes between strict Moravian Protestantism, and the nomadic and other proclivities of the potential converts.  Instance the requirement that as a pre-condition for receiving rations Mission residents had to attend three church services each Sunday, with children and women attending Sunday school subsequent to each service.  After the construction of boys’ and girls’ dormitories in 1873 children were separated from parents, and disciplined without parental assent.

The power and the reach of Ebenezer was much diminished by the 1886 so-called Aboriginal Protection Act - widely known as the “Half-Caste Act”, in full: An Act to Provide for the Protection and Management of the Aboriginal Natives of Victoria.  The Act defined “Aboriginal” to exclude people of mixed descent, that is, with one indigenous parent only.  This statute effectively expelled half-caste Aboriginal “children” from missions, and allowed children to be “stolen” from their parents.  In this context “children” meant from age 8 to age 34!  In the wake of the Act the number of Aboriginal Ebenezer residents reduced to 30 only.  

 

By 1904 Ebenezer Mission was gone.  Whether the perceived need had gone, or whether the zeal had gone, the effect was the same.  But, even after 120 years of neglect and decay Ebenezer’s ghosts have not been exorcised.

 

Although time doesn’t run backwards we are nevertheless able to look backwards and to evaluate the aftermath; and because time runs forwards we are not - notwithstanding the writers of science fiction - able to see and to evaluate the consequences of what happens after now.  So, when Ebenezer was transferred to the ownership and custodianship of local Aboriginal peoples, part of it in 1991 and part in 2013, nobody could foresee what would then happen.  To my mind, what has eventuated is the withdrawal of the Ebenezer site from public access and from public gaze; and the likely further deterioration of its built environment.  I appreciate the problems of remoteness, of vandals, of disrespect, but surely there are funds, or potential funds, at least for preventative maintenance going forward.  Ebenezer could be accessible, say, once a week or once a month, there could be a small admission charge (given that there is now a fence!), there could be fund-raising.  There could be engagement with the wider Wimmera community.  But not if Ebenezer has been disappeared!

 

The National Trust proudly proclaims that it has been involved with the salvation of Ebenezer Mission from as early as 1961, that is from the time the then local committee of management asked the National Trust for assistance.  The condition of the buildings surviving as at 1961 was described as “ruinous” – sixty years ago, mind you.  A decade on, in 1971, part of the freehold [kitchen, dormitory, toilet block] was gifted to the National Trust; and more in 1980 [the church and the cemetery].  The church was re-roofed and renovated by the Trust; and in 1991 the church site was sold to the local Aboriginal health and welfare co-operative.  Finally - I say “finally” with some misgiving - in 2013 “after extensive conservation and repair works to a dozen headstones and burial plots of both Aboriginal persons and Moravian missionaries in preparation for the handover”, the remaining Ebenezer Mission property was handed over by the National Trust to Barengi Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation – where it languishes today.  

 

The National Trust’s on-line Fact Sheet is not short of self-congratulation at what it “achieved” over its 52 years of stewardship, but buried shallow in those puffed-out chests I sense elements of both Pontius Pilate hand-washing, and pass-the-poisoned-pill.

 

Gary Andrews