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NLA News - home April 2002 Volume XII Number 7

Manning Clark House-A Legacy

Manning Clark House

Loui Seselja (b.1948)
South view of Manning Clark House taken from the top of the driveway, Canberra 2001
Pictorial Collection PIC NL38911

 

Coinciding with the publication of the Library’s Guide to the Papers of Manning Clark in the National Library of Australia, Roslyn Russell introduces Manning Clark House

Manning Clark House, the former home of historian Manning Clark and editor and translator Dymphna Clark, is located in the genteel Canberra suburb of Forrest, within sight of the Parliament House flagpole. Designed by Robin Boyd in his Peninsula style in the early 1950s, and occupied by the family from October 1953, the house and grounds now function as a cultural centre, in line with Dymphna Clark’s wish that their home should continue to be a focus of Australian cultural life.

For that has been its role in the nearly 50 years of its existence. A family home to the Clarks and their six children—Sebastian, Katerina, Axel, Andrew, Rowland and Benedict—and numerous grandchildren, it has also been a well-loved magnet for a host of friends and admirers of both of the Clarks. A list of visitors to the Clark’s home at 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, reads as a roll call of key contributors to ideas about Australia: Patrick White, Sidney Nolan, Geoffrey and Ninette Dutton, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, Ken and Amirah Inglis, Don Baker, Humphrey McQueen, David Campbell, Barry Humphries, Helen Garner, and Bill Gammage are but a few of those who enjoyed the generous hospitality offered to all who visited the Clark’s home throughout their lives.

But Manning Clark House was not just a convivial centre for moulders of Australian cultural life from the 1950s to the 1990s. It was the scene of Manning’s great labour in Australian history, a key element of its historical significance. My knowledge of Manning and Dymphna Clark and their home dates from January 1982, when I became the last in a long line of Manning’s research assistants.

View of study, Manning Clark House, Canberra

Loui Seselja (b.1948)
View of study, Manning Clark House, Canberra 2001
Pictorial Collection PIC NL38911

 

I had been appointed by the Australian National University (ANU) to work on Volume 6 of Manning’s monumental work, A History of Australia, and to assist him generally with other work, such as typing the seemingly endless parade of prefaces and forewords to books, speeches to organisations large and small across the country, references for grant applications, and book reviews that came to the best-known Australian historian of his time. Manning refused no reasonable request for any of these, although each of them was a distraction from his goal of completing his magnum opus, just as he never levied a fee for making a speech. His rationale for this was that, as he had gained such an enormous amount from Australia, it was his way of giving something back.

The daily routine for a Manning Clark research assistant began at the house itself. At nine o’clock on most weekdays I arrived at the unlocked front door (the Clarks as ‘old Canberrans’ never locked their doors unless they were going away) and climbed up the narrow wooden stairway to Manning’s elevated study, a specially commissioned feature of the house. Canberra myths had accumulated around this—for the period—controversial architectural element. I was asked more than once if I gained access to Manning’s study via a rope ladder. He was rumoured to haul up the rope ladder once he had arrived in his eyrie, to cut himself off from the rest of the household. Needless to say, this was not and never had been the case.

Once invited into the study, I would sit down on a chair beside Manning’s desk, strewn with papers and the nib pen and bottle of fountain pen ink that he favoured for writing. Another myth—that Manning wrote with a quill pen—was demonstrably untrue. Then I would receive my tasks for the day: research into an event or personality from the years between 1915 and 1935 in Australia, the time range of Volume 6. Manning would often ask me to access a range of accounts from newspapers and journals, across the political spectrum from the conservative metropolitan press to the Bulletin, and left-wing journals such as the Australian Worker or the Socialist; or prepare a chronology for a particular key year; conduct wider research into a personality or an incident using a number of sources, including manuscripts; or type up one of the many items for which he had accepted requests. Once the orders for the day had been given, he would ask me to go downstairs and put the jug on for a cup of tea, often shared with Dymphna as well, who would then produce a slice of one of her famous homemade cakes.

Manning Clark (1915-1991)
Speech on Australia Day 1982
Manning Clark Papers
Manuscript Collection MS 7550/27/40

 

Manning Clark in his study

Ted Richards
Manning Clark in his study c.1988
gelatin silver photograph
Pictorial Collection P1088/53 Album 886

 

On Fridays I would usually be presented with a bundle of manuscript for Volume 6, for typing up in a room on the ANU campus—first the room Manning was allotted in the Chifley Library as Library Fellow, and then one in the Haydon–Allen Building when he was Visiting Fellow in the History Department of the Faculties. The bundle of manuscript I bore away from the house to the university (always with the strict injunction to ‘not lose it’) was usually about 10 pages, amounting to roughly 3000 words, to be typed on an electric typewriter, not a word processor. (The move to word processing did not come until after Volume 6 had been completed. His later works were produced in this way, although Manning was always nervous of computers.)

Manning claimed that he had slowed down, and that his writing output had been much greater in earlier years. There was a reason for this: his health all the time I worked for him was poor. He suffered from angina, and a coronary bypass operation was required a few years into the work on Volume 6. An aortic aneurysm was later detected, which was to cause his death in the house on 23 May 1991. Certainly for much of the time he was in great pain, but he persevered with his massive self-imposed task.

Although a typing speed of a minimum of 35 words per minute was required by the ANU, no typist could maintain much speed when typing from Manning’s writing. Small and spidery, it was difficult enough to decipher when it was written straight across the page. But this was far from the case for most pages of the manuscript. There were frequent emendations, crossings out, arrows to the back of the page where interpolations in scrawled boxes were numbered so that they could be typed consecutively. Pages often had to be turned upside down or sideways, and pored over to make out their meaning. This of course became easier with time, but typing the manuscript of Volume 6 was never a swift process.

Working for Manning as a researcher meant an initiation into the National Library of Australia, where his research assistants traditionally occupied a desk in the Petherick Room when it occupied part of the first floor before it was relocated next to the Main Reading Room. There I joined researchers from a number of other projects, including the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and the Australian National Dictionary. The leader of what was dubbed by its members the ‘Petherick Club’ was the late Jim Gibbney, veteran ADB researcher and author of one of the volumes of Canberra history published for the 1988 Bicentenary. The ever-helpful librarians—Margaret Brennan, Jean James, Kate Elphick among others—who staffed the ‘old’ Petherick Room were indefatigable in their searches for the most obscure items.

Manning and Dymphna Clark with (back) Sebastian, Katerina,

Unknown photographer
Manning and Dymphna Clark with (back) Sebastian, Katerina,
(front) Andrew and Axel, February 1954
gelatin silver photograph
Pictorial Collection P1088/27 Album 886

 

The Newspaper Microcopy Reading Room, under the leadership of Bill Tully, was also a frequent site for research, with hours spent scanning newspapers on the microform readers. In those days the printouts came on thermal paper, and focusing on more than a small area of the page was difficult. The print would blur and sometimes smear, necessitating several pages of copy to obtain all the desired material. For ease of reading, I would take the pages home, cut out the articles and paste them in correct order on sheets of plain paper. This meant that the margins could also be annotated where necessary.

Research in the letters and papers of prominent Australians of the period under consideration—Billy Hughes, S.M. Bruce, Joe Lyons, John Latham were just a few—was another engrossing task. I spent many hours in the scholarly calm of the Manuscript Reading Room, under Mathieu Matégot’s colourful tapestry of Ayers Rock. Axel Clark, Manning and Dymphna’s second son, would sometimes be there as well, researching his biography of Henry Handel Richardson, the second volume of which was published just weeks before his death in October 2001.

Sometimes I went further afield to carry out research tasks. I travelled to Melbourne to work in the fascinating Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, and in the La Trobe Library of the State Library of Victoria; and to Sydney to work in the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales. Other libraries and archives in Canberra were also on my research map—the Australian War Memorial was a particular resort for the chapters of Volume 6 dealing with World War I.

A typical day of work for Manning would conclude with a return visit to the house to deliver the research material accumulated during the day, and a chat and maybe a cool drink in summer or a cup of tea in the colder months, provided by Dymphna. Life as a research assistant for Manning Clark was not just a job—it was a privileged entry to the life of a family of great warmth and charm, as well as a memorable learning experience in the craft of history.

Roslyn Russell is a partner in Marsden Russell Historians, history, heritage and museum consultants based in Canberra

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