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NLA News - home June 2005 Volume XV Number 9

Edgeworth David: Keeping in Touch (e)

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David aboard his homemade coracle on the Blue Lake at Kosciuszko, January 1907. He was the first to make depth measurements of the lake, and to recognise the Kosciuszko lakes as being glacial in origin
Photograph by E.B. Docker;
courtesy Sydney University Archives

David Branagan previews publication of the Library’s biography of the great geologist T.W. Edgeworth David—and notes the sometime serendipity of research

You can learn a lot in working through family papers—even about things that didn’t happen. Sometimes these are as important as the things that did happen, and can be a warning to the researcher. A little of this came my way when researching the life of the great Australian geologist, Antarctic pioneer and World War I soldier, Sir T.W. Edgeworth David.

About to be published by the National Library, the book, T.W. Edgeworth David, A Life, will be the most substantial title in the National Library’s new biography publishing program. It draws in particular from the David Family papers, MS 8890 in the Library’s Manuscript Collection.

There is quite a history concerning attempts to write David’s extraordinary life. Shortly after David died in 1934, his wife Cara wrote a biography of her then famous husband—Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David, KBE, CMG, DSO, FRS, MA, DSc, LLD (1858–1934)—but the work never saw the light of day beyond the close inner-circle of the family and a reviewer for Angus & Robertson, who turned the manuscript down. It had all been a heart-rending but strangely soothing exercise for Cara to write it, during a period of mourning, but she accepted that she was much too close to her subject to do him justice, and had also been overwhelmed by the enormous quantity of material that faced her in documenting the scientific part of David’s life, in which she had only a peripheral interest.

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David, Cara and young family, c.1903 (Molly, Madge and Billy, from left to right)
David Family papers
Manuscripts Collection, MS 8890

Cara David thus passed the manuscript on to her younger daughter Mary (Molly) to continue the task. Molly felt she had to start afresh to produce a readable book, and she succeeded brilliantly. In 1937, Professor David, by M.E. David, was published in London to good reviews. The same publisher, Edward Arnold, had been waiting for some years for the completion of Edgeworth David’s proposed Geology of the Commonwealth of Australia to publish it, and possibly regarded the biography as a useful ‘filler’ to keep David’s name before the public until the large scientific text emerged from the hands of an editor who had taken over the necessary extensive revision of the text following David’s death. We learn all these things from the David family correspondence.

Molly David was well placed to write her father’s biography. She had the advantage of close ties to her subject, but was a less emotional personality than her mother or older sister Margaret (Madge). She had studied some geology, had a good memory and was somewhat more pragmatic. By the time she undertook the task, some sifting of David’s material had taken place. The essentially geological material (mostly remaining in David’s room at the University of Sydney, where he was Professor of Geology from 1891, and retained rooms from his 1924 retirement up to the time of his death) had been taken over by W.R. Browne, to complete David’s monumental geology book. The scientific material included a considerable amount of correspondence with geologists, both in Australia and abroad, David’s many field notebooks, maps and geological sections in various drafts—in sum, a veritable treasure-trove for the geological historian. David’s ‘almost completed’ Geology of the Commonwealth book however, proved anything but, and its editor W.R. Browne faced a daunting task to complete it. The intervention of World War II didn’t help matters, and completion of the Geology of the Commonwealth of Australia took a further 14 years. Edward Arnold finally published the book in 1950.

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Mary (Molly) Edgeworth David, who wrote her father’s first biography in 1937. Seen here with master swordsmith Kotoken Kajihara in the late 1970s, holding the 17th Samurai sword which the Japanese Antarctic expedition of 1911 presented David with in gratitude for his help while the expedition was delayed in Sydney
Reproduced courtesy University of Sydney Gazette (vol 11/23)

In her father’s biography, Professor David, Molly David sets out the main events of his extraordinarily varied life. This includes his birth and education in Wales and England, his appointment to the Geological Survey of New South Wales in 1882 (he served it for nine years, including locating the Greta Seam of coal in the South Maitland–Cessnock region), his appointment as Professor of Geology at the University of Sydney, and his many subsequent adventures. These include his leading a drilling expedition to the Pacific coral atoll of Funafuti in 1897, his travels through India, the United States of America and Mexico (1906), his association with Ernest Shackleton’s 1907–09 Antarctic expedition, where he led the first ascent of Mt Erebus, and (with his student Douglas Mawson, and Scotsman A.F. Mackay) his march to the vicinity of the South Magnetic Pole. It includes the story of his joint founding of, and serving (for a time) with, the Australian Tunnellers Corps in Flanders in World War I, and his heroically determined search for Precambrian fossils in rocks near Adelaide, conducted in ill health in his twilight years. Molly also mentioned some lighter moments of his life.

After she published the biography in 1937, the David family retained the bulk of correspondence and various other family records, photographs and much material that possibly fitted ‘in between’ David’s family affairs and more specific scientific matters. In the early 1940s, Cara David tried to clear much of this ‘in-between’ material by donating it to a Girl Guides wartime Waste Paper collection, though the sharp eyes of a friend rescued at least one item—a copy of the Tunneller O.H. Woodward’s story of his World War I adventures, now held by the War Museum in London.

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Setting out to conquer Mt Erebus, with Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition, 1907–09. David is in the brimmed hat at the group’s right rear
Reproduced from E.H. Shackleton, Heart of the Antarctic (London: William Heinemann, 1909)

In her book, Molly had concentrated, as she says, on ‘the man’ rather than ‘the scientist’—though not omitting some discussion of the latter. She used the correspondence and various published works and the memories of those close to David to tell the main events of a very eventful life. However her publisher was somewhat niggardly on the illustrations which Molly could include, so one glorious facet of the story of David’s life—the extensive photographic record, many made by his own hand—remained largely forgotten.

Towards the end of his tenure as head of the Department of Geology at Sydney University, Professor Leo Cotton, David’s controversial choice to succeed him in 1924, outlined David’s life in the Macrossan Lectures which he gave at the University of Queensland in 1947–48. Some years later, he shaped this material into a fulllength biography of David, concentrating more or less on David’s geological work. This manuscript was never published, but remains a useful guide to some aspects of David’s work—though Cotton does not seem to have had access to, or used, family correspondence. In another biographical effort, in 1969 the then Sydney University Archivist, David MacMillan, wrote a brief booklet on David for Oxford’s ‘Great Australians’ series. Then, in 1990, S. Warren Carey—another David admirer, who had got to know him during his last years as Emeritus Professor at Sydney University, and on whom, it is said, Carey based some of his own oratorical skills—spoke on David. Another small booklet ensued, this time enhanced by more illustrations.

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David touring the Front, just after Armistice. With (from left) the driver, Professor Charles Barrois of the University of Lille, and David’s military colleague W.B.R. King. At 58 years of age, David was one of the oldest volunteers to serve in Flanders
David Papers, SU Archives

In the 1980s my colleague at Sydney University, Tom Vallance (d.1992) proposed to write a fuller biography of David, but sadly was not able to get far before his untimely death. In a letter written to historian Ann Moyal, David’s grandson, Professor Archie McIntyre, expressed the hope that Vallance would have the writing skills to do justice not only to ‘the science’, but also to David’s life. If Vallance had been able to complete his task it would, I feel, have been the defining work. In some manner taking Vallance’s project over, I extended research, and completed the biography which the National Library is now publishing.

All of this raises the following question: in 2005, is Edgeworth David’s life worth remembering and celebrating? My answer, of course, is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Society’s memory, as a whole, is short, and many who have made important contributions to Australia are soon relegated to the memory scrapheap, or at least to the attic. David’s name continues to crop up in odd newspaper articles, in the name of a roadway, or building or memorial, but few today really know of his great exploits, or are able to get hold of Molly David’s 1937 book, to see what an astonishing life David had, and appreciate the great work he performed for Australia.

The rich sources which Molly David had at her disposal when writing seven decades ago, still fortunately remain available.

More fortunately still, they have since been largely sorted and catalogued, so that the aspiring researcher can more readily get to what interests them. While the geological material, including many maps and drawings, remain in the Archives of the University of Sydney, there are two main sources for researching David the ‘man’, his family, and his other lives—for they were numerous. Some of the material linking David and Cara personally during two important phases of their lives (Antarctica, 1907–09, and World War I) is held by the Mitchell Library, Sydney, donated by Cara probably in the late 1940s. However, the real treasures are in the family letters which were placed in the National Library of Australia in 1976, through David’s granddaughter Anne Edgeworth. These letters cover almost the whole of David’s and Cara’s lives—and therein lies a problem: how to deal with two lives which intertwine in so many ways? My choice for this biography has been to tell David’s story, with Cara remaining peripheral but of course not entirely ignored. It remains for someone else to undertake the story of Cara’s own important and influential life.

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The geology tea room at the University of Sydney, c.1910. David (standing, left) was mentor to a generation of brilliant students, including Griff Taylor and Raymond Priestley (both to his immediate left)
David Papers, SU Archives

Apart from the family records, a presentday biographer has numerous other sources unavailable to Molly David 70 years ago. These include the Douglas Mawson papers in Adelaide, revealing something of the occasionally thorny relation between teacher and ex-student; and, in the National Library, the papers of other famous David students such as T.G. (Griff) Taylor (MS 1003), W.G. (Wally) Woolnough (MS 4667), Marcel Aurousseau (MS 7070), and Sir Harold Raggatt (MS 4854). A bit of a surprise packet in the Library’s Manuscript holdings is the relatively neglected archive of the Australian National Research Council, or ANRC (MS 482), forerunner of the Australian Academy of Sciences, with which David was closely linked. In fact, in examining the ANRC material I was struck by how David’s influence in Australian Science went far beyond his own chosen field of Geology. As first president, he guided the infant body as it found its feet during the 1920s, encouraging the establishment of essential scientific and technical units to research solar radiation, seismology, and agriculture, and using the media and his contacts with politicians of all persuasions to great effect. His coolness and advice also proved effective in the early 1930s, when the Council was challenged by the attempted establishment of a rival ‘Royal Society of Australia’. Something of his trust in his fellow man (in this case, unfortunately rather misplaced) is also shown in these papers, in his genuine thanks to H.G. Chapman for his Council work, while, sadly, Chapman was ‘milking’ the Council’s finances along with those of several other scientific societies with which he was associated.

One other important source for the David life which I have written is also held in the National Library, among the David Family papers—and the story of this new material emphasises the part which serendipity can play in research. Some 10 years ago my colleague, Julian Holland (of Sydney University’s Macleay Museum) remarked to me that a colleague in Scotland had a friend there named John Edgeworth David Touche. He wondered what the connection with ‘my David’ might be. I was intrigued too, as no ‘Touche’ had rated mention in Molly’s biography, and he didn’t seem to feature in the family papers which I had examined. Correspondence with Scotland put me in touch with one Dr M. Touche (J.E.D. Touche’s son). It turned out that J.E.D. Touche was one of David’s numerous godsons. David and J.E.D. Touche’s father, Ned, had first met in shared digs in Sydney in 1884. (At that time Ned spelt his name ‘Touch’; changing the spelling about 1906 to fit with his preferred pronunciation.) The contact had been maintained throughout David’s (and Cara’s) lives. What was even more exciting however was that Ned Touche had kept the whole of the extensive correspondence between the families—more than 50 years’ worth. For a biographer this was almost too good to be true. Dr Touche generously passed the material on to me, and in time I was able to persuade the National Library to put it in with the David Family papers, despite some archivists’ beliefs that it deserved status as a separate collection of Touche Papers. On this I had the support of the Touche family themselves: the correspondence was to be in the David Family papers or not there at all!

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Ned Touche, David’s lifelong friend, dressed up for the 1890s. Touche’s correspondence with the Davids is now held with the David family papers in the Library’s Manuscripts Collection
Manuscripts Collection, MS 8890

Will my new biography of David say anything new about the man? I certainly hope so. As a much larger book (though hopefully not too large!) it allows the insertion of more of David’s own wonderful prose, including for example his delight as a young man in describing his new life in the Australian bush, and also to show something of his always impish humour. Today we can name names which had to be discreetly left blank in the 1930s, and can discuss matters which might have caused embarrassment at that time. The new, larger work also allows aspects of David’s geology to be expanded a little, particularly on the matters of continental drift theory, the search for oil in Australia, and of his research into ancient ice ages. David’s great part in the practical and theoretical organisation of science (the exploration of the Pacific, of Antarctica—the Scott, Mawson, and Japanese expeditions, as well as Shackleton’s 1914, and even Mawson’s late-1920s expedition for which David gave direction and assistance)—can be seen on a wider historical canvas. With this, the new book is brimming with photographs, illustrations, and sketches from his own fieldbooks —over 80 images in total—representing most facets, both personal and public, of his extraordinarily active life.

Is there still more to be written about David? Almost certainly. The wide range of photographs, maps and drawings among David’s papers, and the links with his famous students such as Douglas Mawson, Griff Taylor and women like Fanny Cohen and Marie Bentivoglio, might lend themselves well to books, and particularly to CDs and DVDs. A published collected correspondence would be fascinating. Enticing projects for others in the future.

DR DAVID BRANAGAN’S T.W. Edgeworth David: A Life—Geologist, Adventurer, Soldier, is being published by the National Library in July

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