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Invitation on card, 1901

 

 

 

 

 

 

G.B.H.Austin
Invitation on card, 1901
T.G. Watson Papers
Manuscript Collection
MS 609/2/8

Drawing the New Nation

Elizabeth Willis discusses the iconography of nationhood, as depicted in the Library’s Watson Papers

Early in 1901, it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York would visit Melbourne as part of a nine-month goodwill tour of the British Empire. The Duke’s main task was to open the first Australian Federal Parliament on 9 May, but a number of other events were to be organised during the royal couple’s 10-day stay in Melbourne.

The arrangements for the Victorian celebrations were in the hands of a Victorian Cabinet Sub-Committee, chaired by Mr McCulloch, Minister of Public Works. Its Secretary was Thomas Greenlees Watson, later to become the first Australian-born Clerk of the Victorian Parliament. The National Library holds five volumes of documents generated by the Committee, presented to the Library by T.G. Watson’s daughter in 1959 (MS 609). They contain a wealth of material about the arrangements for the royal tour: printed invitations, menus and programs, entrée cards, maps of the routes of the royal processions, and handbills advising members of the public how to behave, and warning against possible pickpockets in the crowds.

Invitation; lithograph, 1901

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) and
John Longstaff (1861–1941)
Invitation; lithograph, 1901
T.G. Watson Papers
Manuscript Collection MS 609/2/7

 

The Committee, which first met at Parliament House on 18 January 1901, had a vast range of business to attend to. The new Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, wanted the opening of Parliament to be a ‘very great function’ involving as many participants as possible, so the Committee booked Melbourne’s largest building, the Exhibition Building, for the 9 May event. It planned illuminations and decorations within the city, organised several processions through the centre of Melbourne, gave permission for a demonstration of welcome by 30 000 Sunday School children and a State Schools display involving 10 000 children, and also organised a military review, several receptions, and visits by the royal couple to Ballarat and Sale. There were hundreds of details to oversee, and complicated questions of protocol and precedence to decide.

The Committee was also initially responsible for organising invitations for guests of the Victorian Government, and to the opening of Parliament. At its first meeting members discussed what form the invitations should take. They asked the Victorian Government Printer to design ‘a preliminary invitation card’, expected to be a large document printed on cardboard which would also serve as a souvenir of the great events. At their meeting on 12 February they recognised that more than one type of invitation would be needed, and invited other printing firms to submit designs ‘at their own risk’.

The Watson folios contain the originals of several of these submitted designs, including a number that were rejected by the Committee. (Another rejected design came to the State Library of Victoria via the then Government Printer in 1935.) The work was done in a hurry, and the last commissions were not finalised until the end of March, six weeks before the royal couple arrived. Some of the submitted designs were contentious, and some were downright ugly. The artists drew upon a range of well-understood symbols to represent the hopes and aspirations of the new nation, and their work gives insight into the iconography of nationhood at the time.

Most of the graphic artists shaped their presentations around the idea of youth. They depicted Australia, the young nation, as a virginal young woman. A design submitted by established Melbourne artists John Longstaff and Norman Lindsay was selected for the Victorian Government’s main invitation to attend Melbourne for the celebrations. When their design was reproduced in the press in March 1901, it met with general approval. Australia is shown as a classically-dressed young woman, holding the new constitution, and standing with confidence ready to make her mark on the world. She is placed opposite a figure of Britannia, representing the Empire, and watched by a representation of Justice. This was perhaps a reference to the continuing role of the Privy Council as the court of final appeal, and indicated that ‘the Monarch will always acquiesce in the laws passed by the Australian Parliament, provided they are just’. The Weekly Times of 16 March 1901 described the design as ‘severely classical’ and suggested that it conveyed ‘a due sense of the greatness and dignity of this historic event’.

The Watson folios in the Library include four designs that were rejected by the Committee. One shows Australia as a triumphant young woman, being pulled into the future by six classically draped women representing the States. In another, Australia is represented as a group of six classical maidens, reclining rather lethargically in a Grecian temple. A third is crowded with images of the Duke and Duchess and symbols of Britain, with scarcely a hint that the event was an Australian occasion as well as a royal visit. The theme of youth was also used by another artist whose design is now in the State Library of Victoria: young Australia is depicted as two white, blond children, pulling aside a stage curtain to reveal the future.

Invitation design, 1901

(above and below)
Unknown artists
Invitation designs, 1901
T.G. Watson Papers
Manuscript Collection MS 609/2/12 & MS 609/2/5

Invitation design, 1901

One other rejected design in the Watson Papers depicts Australia, again dressed as a classical maiden, perched rather precariously on the top of a globe. She is watched admiringly by a group of men who represent a range of occupations: an Indigenous Australian with a captured kangaroo, a stockman, a squatter and a miner, among others. The design reflects the idea that prompted the Trade Unions’ float in Sydney’s Federation procession on 1 January 1901, when the unionists placed a young girl, a figure of Australia, in a pavilion surrounded by miners, shearers and sailors who were there to protect her from danger.

G.B.H. Austin, an architect in Victoria’s Public Works Department, submitted a design which was chosen for the invitation to an evening reception in the Exhibition Building on 7 May. His original watercolour is in the Watson Papers. Austin avoided any figurative representation of the new nation. His drawing shows the Exhibition Building with sketches of each State capital and a border of Australian flora. Austin also designed four of the ceremonial arches, including the Chinese Arch and the King’s Arch, that decorated the streets of central Melbourne during May. He received a bonus of £50 for his work.

Most controversy was reserved for the design by Melbourne cartoonist Tom Carrington, which was accepted by the Committee and used for the invitation to the actual opening of Parliament at noon on 9 May. As the Leader explained, the ‘conception was suggested to the artist by Rudyard Kipling’s poetic idea of the Young Queen (Australia) coming reverently to the Old Queen (Britannia) to be crowned—the opening of the Commonwealth being taken as the crowning act that raises Australia to the dignity of a nation amongst equals’.

The invitation is built around the first lines of Kipling’s ‘Commonwealth Ode’ (the poem is sometimes also known as ‘The Young Queen’):

Her hand was still on her sword hilt, the spur was still on her heel— She had not cast her armour of grey war-dinted steel; High on her red-splashed charger, beautiful, bold and browned, Bright-eyed out of the battle, the young Queen rode to be crowned.

As described by the Leader of 30 March 1901, Carrington showed the ‘regal and beautiful figure of the young Queen symbolising United Australia’ riding—sidesaddle of course—into the presence of Britannia, who stands on a dais in the Romanesque ‘Hall of a Thousand Years’ mentioned in Kipling’s poem. Britannia is ready to crown Australia with a circlet of gold. Standing in the background are six young women, representing the States. The artist used subdued colours like shell pink, beige and dull purple to produce a ‘dim holy light’ suitable for the mythic event he was depicting.

Kipling’s poem, and Carrington’s interpretation of it, were inspired by the exploits of Australian soldiers who were fighting alongside the British in South Africa. Not everyone approved of their depiction of the new nation as a blood-stained warrior. A journalist in the Tocsin complained: ‘The spirit of blatant jingoism … has burst out in full vulgar virulence … It is a clumsy, tawdry picture, over-balanced with heavy decorative stage effect, and inspired by Kipling’s drivel on the Old Queen and the Young Queen.’ On 4 April the paper also published a letter by ‘G.D.’ expressing his disgust: ‘Have we indeed waded through blood on chargers to the consummation of our Federation? … Surely to heaven we could get an illustration which would suit all requirements … from some of our own poets instead of having recourse to imported “gutter literature”.’ The completed invitation was made even stranger because someone, probably at the printer, added another two lines of Kipling’s verse and left the quotation in mid-sentence.

Tom Carrington (1843–1918). Invitation on card, 1901

Tom Carrington (1843–1918)
Invitation on card, 1901
T.G. Watson Papers
Manuscript Collection MS 609/2/9

 

An important element of most of the designs presented to the Cabinet Sub-Committee was the depiction of Australia as a virginal young woman, unspoiled and hopeful and with a bright future before her. This motif had been common during the Sydney celebrations for Federation on 1 January and was a well-established iconographical form. Historian John Hirst has written about the mood of Australia at the approach of Federation. In his book The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, he suggests that a militaristic ‘Young Queen’ warrior replaced the virginal young woman as the prevailing iconography representing Australia: ‘as for the virgin, she went into a decline’. However, contemporary press comment about the chosen designs suggests that virginal Australia was an acceptable and appropriate motif. In contrast, Carrington’s war-like representation of Australia was less popular and aroused some disquiet. The designs which were eventually accepted by the Cabinet Sub-Committee were the most-competently rendered, and they may have simply been chosen because of their artistic quality. But the overwhelming popularity of ‘Young Australia’ as a motif suggests that, far from declining away, the young, unspoiled virgin had life in her yet!

ELIZABETH WILLIS is a senior curator at Museum Victoria.  She discovered the resources of the Watson folios when researching for ‘A Nation’s Ceremony’, part of the Museum’s programs for the Centenary of Federation in 2001

The Minutes of the Cabinet Sub-Committee for the Victorian celebrations are held in the Victorian Public Records Office, at VPRS 5734. Thomas Carrington’s original watercolour design is held by the Wordsworth Collection, Perth

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