Christobel Mattingley discovers that the personality of the compiler and a wider history are demonstrated in some handmade albums in the Library’s collections The old adage ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’ is intriguingly borne out by some unique albums of botanical specimens in the National Library. One example was compiled in the 1800s by an anonymous convict, while an eight-volume set was created in the last century by Ida McComish (1885–1978), naturalist and accomplished watercolour artist. The former reveals much about conditions in a penal colony, of the Chaplain’s inspired attempt to prove that an object of beauty and learning could be produced by those confined to gaol, and to make a case for more humane treatment. A century later, Ida McComish documented the flora of Lord Howe Island, her exquisite albums a forerunner to the later recognition of that island’s value as a World Heritage Area. Who nowadays could imagine that a slim book in a tooled maroon leather binding lettered in gold ‘Souvenir de Cockatoo Island’, could have emanated from a convict colony? It opens to reveal neither sonnets nor engravings, nor even a religious or philosophical treatise. But, as the handwritten titlepage announces, ‘The Weeds, Grasses and Ferns Collected at Cockatoo Island, Sydney, N.S.W. ... as a Souvenir of That Place, Dec. 24th, 1863’ contains 15 common but unidentified plants gathered and mounted by an unnamed convict in 1863.
Of even more interest than these 140-year-old faded sprays of pressed buttercups, clover, couch grass, goosefoot, ferns, wattle and other specimens is the story behind them. The bookplates, letters and newspaper cuttings pasted inside the book reveal its origin and throw sharp light on the colony’s penal system. On Christmas Eve 1863, the popular English actress Ellen Tree, on tour in Australia with her husband, well-known actor Charles Kean, visited Cockatoo Island. The Government Chaplain, the Reverend P.P. Agnew, conceived the idea of the book as a memento, and set an island prisoner to collect the specimens, with another at Darlinghurst Gaol to bind and emboss it with a botanical border and lettering. Agnew’s inscription ‘Most respectfully’ written in sloping backhand, dated 29 December 1863, to ‘Dear Mrs Kean’, reads in part: ‘I have had much pleasure in attending to my promise and I hope the result will be acceptable.’ The Keans moved among the upper strata of Sydney society and perhaps Agnew also hoped that the lady, after seeing the wretched conditions of the prisoners, might exert some influence with Governor Sir John Young who often entertained her. Agnew himself had written strongly on the subject to Governor Sir William Denison in 1860:
A newspaper cutting quotes a prisoner describing Cockatoo Island as ‘The Hell of Australia, a college of infamy, the worst governed spot on the face of the earth.’ Agnew, who clearly had the welfare and betterment of his charges at heart, had earlier in the year written to a Sydney citizen requesting books for the use of prisoners. ‘No subject can be out of place except religious or political controversy, and no book can be too old and ragged, as we have the means of repairing and binding in the Gaol.’
But Agnew’s zeal and concern seems not to have been reciprocated in high places. In 1864, when the Keans left Australia, Ellen reputedly remarking ‘I never left any place with so little regret’, Agnew received a letter of dismissal from the Colonial Secretary. Despite her scorn for the colony, Ellen nevertheless must have taken the touching little memento back to England. It eventually found its way into the collection of Thomas Parkin of High Wickham, Hastings, Sussex, from whence it was acquired by the bibliophile Rex Nan Kivell, eventually to form part of the National Library’s Nan Kivell Collection. We can only imagine what thoughts and feelings may have engaged that unknown prisoner set to the unlikely task of gathering plants one summer day long ago on Cockatoo Island. But, almost 70 years later in 1932, when Ida McComish FRGS began compiling another remarkable set of botanical specimens, there is no doubt that hers was a labour of love. Eight identical chunky handmade albums, each now carefully stored in its own box, have most ingenious and unusual textured brown covers which appear at first glance to be crocodile skin. But the annotation inside each, in Ida’s careful script, tells us that it is a ‘Cover of Norfolk Island pinetree (Araucaria excelsa) which I gathered from dead tree trunk, varnishing it with methylated spirit and shellac.’ Ida McComish, observant and painstaking, was the ideal partner and helpmeet for intrepid Captain J.D. McComish FLS, FRGS, a dedicated botanist. They lived on Sydney’s North Shore and perhaps Ida sometimes even looked across to Cockatoo Island as she roamed the foreshore bush, collecting orchids and observing the birds she also loved to paint. She painted butterflies too, bred from eggs from 1943 to 1949 at ‘Weeroona’, Wahroonga, where she also frequented the bush in search of subjects for her brush. From 1932 until Captain J.D.’s death in 1950, the McComishes travelled together in Australia and the Pacific, collecting and recording. Islands seemed to have a special fascination for them and their destinations included Tasmania, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. The plants of Norfolk Island and nearby Phillip Island became the subject of Ida’s first album, probably inspiring the cover she later adopted for all her compilations.
But it was beautiful Lord Howe Island with its towering twin peaks, Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower, its unique bird and plant life, its tropical coral reef—the world’s southernmost—and the Admiralty Islands with their rich seabird population ‘a mile offshore’ to the north, which captured their hearts. Between 1936 and 1962, Ida McComish made 13 visits to Lord Howe, staying for considerable periods with local residents, usually the Whiting family at Palm Haven, renowned on the island for its excellent table. Ida accompanied Captain J.D., whom she referred to as Mac, on his expeditions investigating the amazing variety of endemic plant life. ‘The two mountains are the most difficult to climb of any we have yet encountered’, she wrote to her parents in 1937. But the isolated summits, often shrouded in cloud, had developed rare mist forests, irresistible to a botanist. Described by locals as ‘a very big man’, on camping trips up the mountains Mac carried the gear and the food, which was stored in a kerosene box to be hung high in a tree away from ants. Ida, remembered as short and old-fashioned, always wore sturdy walking shoes and a hat, and carried the hurricane lamp. Haversack on back and camera ready, she recorded many scenes of this ‘island Paradise’, now a World Heritage Area, one of which appeared on the first page of The Times, London, in June 1937. She assiduously collected not only flowers and foliage but also seeds and bark, which she later painted. She then pressed the specimens and mounted them beside the meticulous paintings, with detailed annotations in her second album. Ida’s presses are remembered also, always ranged along the Whitings’ verandah. In another album with photographs describing their stay in 1937, made for her parents and now in the Lord Howe Island Museum, Ida mentioned that they sent 170 different botanical specimens to various museums throughout the world. Altogether, J.D. McComish discovered six new plant species on the island. Two were named after him. Rapanea McComishii, a woody plant with dark-green, long rounded leaves and small round purple fruit collected in February 1937, November 1938 and July 1941, was sent to the Herbarium at Kew Gardens, London, and recorded in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London’s 155th Session in 1943. The other, a small white daisy flower, Olearia McComishii, was discovered at an altitude of 1500 feet on the eastern side of Mount Lidgbird in December 1938. Ida devoted two more volumes to Lord Howe Island treasures. Volume six contains exquisite paintings of the many fungi and lichens which fascinated her. One particular luminous fungus, colourless in the daytime, ‘at night peeps out on all the decayed tree trunks and shines forth a lovely pale green light, which I used for a torch many times to find the bush tracks, and have even been able to read a book by it’. A regular beachcomber, Ida delighted in the wealth of shells and seaweeds along the magnificent island beaches and reef at low tide. She sent a collection to the Auckland Museum in New Zealand and compiled another album, volume eight, with 180 specimens, collected from 1936 to 1961, seaweeds and sponges, named in green ink and artistically arranged on 30 pages. Five pages feature deep-sea specimens found after a cyclone in 1937. Many of the seaweeds still retain their striking colours—coral, pink, ruby, ochres, browns, greens and purples—and the carefully constructed book, its pages interleaved with greaseproof paper, still gives off a faint smell of the sea. In addition to her work, Ida made time to join in island life, even climbing the unique Kentia palm trees to harvest their seeds, which were Lord Howe’s economic mainstay. She is fondly remembered for her kindness and gentleness, her wonderful handwork and her artistic talent by a number of the older island ladies, who were once in the school of 21 children she loved to visit. She showed them how to press seaweeds and use them to decorate greeting cards. She also introduced them to the art of weaving, using fronds from the endemic pandani or ‘forky trees’ which thrive on the island. She taught them how to make crosses for Palm Sunday at Easter, and to dye the pandanus fibres for inserts in woven bags and mats. A photo in volume two, taken by her husband, shows ‘The Lord Howe Island Pandanus Shop’. Built by Ida like an open-fronted doll’s house and covered with her favourite Norfolk Island pine bark, it was stocked with miniature articles she had woven from the local pandanus leaves: mats, bags, purses, boxes, serviette rings, baskets, hats, notebooks, trays, note cases and writing cases. Happily, this little gem of her skill and imagination is also a treasured item in the museum on Lord Howe Island. Small wonder that those who were fortunate enough as children to have known her all exclaim, ‘Ida McComish! She was a fascinating lady.’ What treasures from such different collectors and such contrasting island sources our National Library holds as part of our larger island heritage! CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY would like to acknowledge the help of Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island residents who shared their information and memories, and provided the photocopy of Ida’s book made for ‘My Dearest Mother and Dad’. Thanks also to the State Library of NSW, Royal Botanic Gardens Library, Sydney, Ku-ring-gai Library and Hornsby Library
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