June 2015

Volume 7 Number 2

On the cover

Thomas Martyn (c. 1760–c. 1816)
Sun Trochus
figure 30 in The Universal Conchologist: Exhibiting the Figure of Every Known Shell, Accurately Drawn, and Painted After Nature, with a New Systematic Arrangement
(London: Thomas Martyn, 1784)
Rex Nan Kivell Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn137348

Exquisitely illustrated, Thomas Martyn’s eighteenth-century publication The Universal Conchologist is perhaps the greatest of all shell books. It drew on shells brought back from Captain Cook’s final voyage, as well as those in celebrated private British collections. The Library’s Rex Nan Kivell Collection copy is a rare first edition, one of only 70 in existence.

Copyright and credits

The aim of the quarterly The National Library of Australia Magazine is to inform the Australian community about the National Library of Australia’s collections and services, and its role as the information resource for the nation. Copies are distributed through the Australian library network to state, public and community libraries and most libraries within tertiary-education institutions. Copies are also made available to the Library’s international associates, and state and federal government departments and parliamentarians. Additional copies of the magazine may be obtained by libraries, public institutions and educational authorities. Individuals may receive copies by mail by becoming a member of the Friends of the National Library of Australia.

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© 2015 National Library of Australia and individual contributors

ISSN 1836-6147

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The views expressed in The National Library of Australia Magazine are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the publisher. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders for illustrative material in this magazine. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher.

Contents

Finding Park Ridge: Walter Burley Griffin’s Final American Town Plan

medieval manuscripts
An Unassuming Treasure

Magna Carta Turns 800

Sidney William Jackson: Collector and Tree-climber

Collections Feature
‘This Laborious, Expensive, and Arduous Undertaking’: Thomas Martyn’s The Universal Conchologist

Anzac Panorama, August 7th 1915

In the Frame:
‘Off to the Great War’: Woolloomooloo, 1915

Kate Kelly in Story and Song

The Continuance of Friendship: Alec Bolton’s Photographs of Writers

Finding Park Ridge: Walter Burley Griffin’s Final American Town Plan

Christopher Vernon’s long-held interest in an elusive town plan culminates in a remarkable find

In January 1927, the Chicago Daily News transported readers to the ‘land down under’. In ‘A Monument to City Planning in the Wilds of Australia’, journalist Harry M. Beardsley lauded Canberra’s co-designers, Walter and Marion Griffin. Of Walter, he wrote:

the Chicagoan, whose greatest local achievement perhaps has been the formulation of a city plan for the suburb of Park Ridge [in Chicago], was called to the other side of the world and commissioned with the task of turning his dreams and the pretty water-color sketches of his wife into realities.

Beardsley’s incidental reference to Griffin’s Park Ridge plan was, for decades, scholars’ only knowledge of that project.

My quest to document Griffin’s Park Ridge began in 1997. Beardsley inferred that Griffin made the plan prior to his 1914 departure for Australia. Yet media accounts about the Griffins’ 1912 Canberra competition victory and 1914 Chicago farewell contained no mention of Park Ridge. Surely the Griffins, whose Canberra success attracted many new landscape architecture commissions, would have promoted such a substantial project as laying out Park Ridge. Moreover, around 1912–14, Park Ridge was more a sleepy hamlet than a developing suburb in need of a plan.

The internet provided me with my first clue. In the 1920s real estate magazine Greater Chicago, landscape architect F.A. Cushing Smith reported that Park Ridge, which had a booming population, appointed a ‘City Plan Commission in 1924’ and ‘employed Mr Walter Burley Griffin … to prepare a city plan’. Cushing Smith proclaimed it to be ‘a work of great promise and brilliant conception’.

Cushing Smith’s own papers revealed nothing more. Thinking laterally, I searched the records of Barry Byrne—Griffin’s former employee (1908) and partner (1914–17) and, in 1925, one of his few remaining local professional contacts. Did the pair communicate on the project? Therein, I discovered a typescript Byrne made in 1963 of a notice in the AIA [American Institute of Architects] Memo—‘Australia Honors US Architect’—and posted to sculptor, graphic artist and designer Alfonso Iannelli, then living at none other than Park Ridge.

The AIA reported that Australia would commemorate Canberra’s fiftieth anniversary by issuing a postage stamp featuring Griffin, and naming its new lake after the architect. After receiving Byrne’s typescript, Iannelli, it appears, contextualised Griffin—long forgotten since his accidental death in India in 1937—for fellow Park Ridge residents. He wrote: ‘Walter Burley Griffin was engaged to make the first City Plan of the City of Park Ridge … in 1925’. ‘Since Mr Griffin later lived in Australia,’ Iannelli explained, ‘he could not follow the developments in Park Ridge and Mr F. Cushing Smith, a city planner of Chicago, was engaged to follow him.’

Iannelli was Byrne’s friend and collaborator of nearly 50 years. He most famously contributed sculptural ornament to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midway Gardens, Chicago (1914). Iannelli had been practising from Park Ridge for 40 years and served on its inaugural City Plan Commission. Unfortunately, neither Park Ridge newspapers of the day nor records of the commission survived.

My trail went cold. It wasn’t until 2013, with the publication of new monographs on Byrne and Iannelli, that I resumed my search.

The scale and complexity of a plan for Park Ridge would have required Griffin’s on-site presence, even if he intended to finalise the layout in Australia. Scholars have long known that the Griffins visited the United States in 1925, through two letters Griffin wrote to colleague William Purcell. In a letter dated 7 January, Griffin reported he had ‘reached home after 11 years if only for four weeks’ and would be sailing from Vancouver on 6 February. On 16 February, he wrote again that, ‘[o]ur plans having been changed’, the couple would be departing Chicago for Australia on the eighteenth. He gave no reason for the shift.

Six weeks in America seemed too little time to win a commission and lay out a suburb. Griffin made no mention of Park Ridge in his letters to Purcell. On a whim, I entered ‘Park Ridge’ and ‘Griffin’ for 1925 in the National Library’s Trove search engine (unavailable in 1997). Here was a revelation: on 1 June 1925, an Australian newspaper reported that Griffin had ‘returned to Melbourne after having been absent in the United States for six months’. The couple’s four-week visit had morphed into nearly half a year!

The article revealed that, while in America, Griffin ‘designed the new city of Park Ridge on the northern boundary of Chicago’ and ‘was appointed by the President of the United States to a committee to advise on the permanent development of Washington’. Why would Griffin seemingly afford equal status to Park Ridge and the prestigious presidential appointment? The article’s final sentence was telling: ‘Mr Griffin has been in Canberra consulting with the Commissioners’.

Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937)
Canberra: Federal Capital of Australia—Preliminary Plan 1913
map; 33 x 33 cm nla.gov.au/nla.map-gmod34

In 1924, Australia established a Federal Capital Commission (FCC) to oversee Canberra’s development. The commission was to replace its Federal Capital Advisory Committee (FCAC). The FCAC had become Griffin’s nemesis. In 1921, its controversial formation had usurped his executive authority and effectively forced his exit from Canberra. The FCAC then proceeded to disassemble the Griffins’ original plan throughout the next three years. When the couple sailed from Sydney on 4 December 1924, the FCC’s takeover date was unknown. A fortnight later, the government fixed it at 1 January 1925. Shortly after his return, learning that the FCC was now in control, perhaps Griffin sought to ‘win back’ an official position and finally realise his vision for Australia’s capital. He was ‘consulting’ with the new commissioners within days. His mention of both Park Ridge and his presidential appointment would have demonstrated that his expertise was still in demand. He had been absent from Canberra for nearly five years.

I now knew that Griffin’s Park Ridge commission was awarded after he wrote to Purcell in February 1925. Working remotely on American projects was problematic; Park Ridge must have been important enough to the Griffins for them to extend their time in Chicago, even though this might hinder their Australian practice. Perhaps the Griffins saw Park Ridge as their American coda. When the couple left Chicago in 1914, they believed their absence would be temporary; it was more than a decade before they returned.

Jorma Pohjanpalon (1905–1991)
Portrait of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Castlecrag, Sydney, 27 July 1930
b&w negative; 11.2 x 6.9 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3113700

How did Griffin win this commission? While he had enjoyed international fame at the time of his Canberra win, he was now comparatively invisible within the Chicago professional scene. He had apparently eluded press attention. I could only glean that he gave an informal talk (about Australian cities and Canberra’s layout) to his Chicago colleagues on 13 January. Might there be, I then speculated, a link between Iannelli’s membership of the Park Ridge plan commission and Griffin?

Alfonso Iannelli temporarily relocated from Los Angeles to Chicago in February 1914 (until July), to work with Frank Lloyd Wright on Midway Gardens. The Griffins, however, were in Europe, returning to Chicago around 6 April. They left for Australia a week later for a planned three-year absence. It is unlikely the couple’s path crossed Iannelli’s before their Chicago departure.

However, the annual exhibition of the Chicago Architectural Club, of which the Griffins were members and past event contributors, opened on 9 April 1914. If they did attend, they would not have missed the Midway Gardens drawings and models which Wright (the employer of both Walter and Marion in the previous decade) featured in his extensive contribution to the display. The models included ones of the Figures Decorating [Midway Gardens’] Winter Garden by ‘A. Ian[n]elli, Sculptor’.

In June 1915, Iannelli returned to Chicago permanently, and began sharing a studio with the Griffins’ partner, Barry Byrne, practising from the Griffins’ American office.

When contemplating a Griffins–Iannelli connection, I recalled that the National Library’s ‘Papers of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony collected by Eric Nicholls, 1900–1947’ contained 11 undated photographs of Midway Gardens. Annotations on the back of the photographs identify neither Wright nor Iannelli, nor is the script from Walter’s or Marion’s hand. Curiously, seven of the images focus upon Iannelli’s sculptures and abstract, geometric friezes, not the building itself. When were the images made and by whom? As automobiles are visible in three images, I forwarded them to the Benson Ford Research Center. There, a specialist concluded the photographs were probably taken between 1922 and 1929. Although the Griffins may have made the images, the handwritten annotations suggested otherwise.

left A Terminal Figure at the Midway Gardens, Chicago between 1900 and 1930
b&w photograph; 8.6 x 6.5 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3603884-s730

right One of the End Pylons, Midway Gardens, Chicago between 1900 and 1930
b&w photograph; 6.3 x 8.8 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3603884-s738

In June 1924, six months before the Griffins departed for America, they farewelled their Australian ‘right-hand man’, Henry Pynor, from Sydney. Pynor reached Chicago in August, seeking new professional opportunities, well in advance of his employers. On a hunch, I compared his handwriting to the Midway Gardens photograph inscriptions. Pynor, it seems, took the photographs and posted them to the Griffins.

Although Midway Gardens opened in June 1914, months after the couple’s Chicago departure, the Griffins were certainly aware of Frank Lloyd Wright’s newest tour de force. Wright had landed the job in 1913; undoubtedly, word of this quickly spread within Chicago’s professional circles, followed by reports in the local building trade press and Chicago newspapers.

In 1915, Midway Gardens photographs even appeared in Sydney-based magazine Building. Its publisher, George Taylor, wrote an accompanying article calling Wright’s ‘wonderful architectural scheme … so daringly original that, at times, it verges on the eccentric’. Iannelli’s sculptures captured his imagination, as they later did Pynor’s. Taylor even featured what he termed the building’s ‘square-hacked Cubist statuary’. Although he did not name Iannelli, his sculptures elicited Taylor’s mixed critique:

grouped life-sized figures in cement … have all their features angular. There are no curves. They have the appearance of being hacked out by a mad sculptor with an axe.

The Griffins would have taken a special interest in Midway Gardens as it resonated with their own earlier proposal for a pleasure garden ensemble or, to use their term, ‘casino’, to be one of Canberra’s focal points.

Did Pynor’s photographs of Iannelli’s ornamentation in Midway Gardens motivate Griffin to seek out the artist at his Park Ridge studio during his Chicago stay? If they did, he would have arrived at the precise moment that plan commissioner Iannelli required an expert. Did Griffin secure the Park Ridge job through Byrne recommending his former partner to Iannelli? After all, city planning, or, more accurately, landscape architecture, was beyond Byrne’s abilities. Although Griffin and Byrne’s partnership had ended somewhat less than amicably in 1917, no ongoing animosity was evident.

Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937)
Blueprint for an Extension to Park Ridge, Illinois, 1925
architectural drawing; 101 x 147.5 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6540061

After reconstructing the likely circumstances surrounding Griffin’s elusive Park Ridge commission, I had a final question: did his drawing survive? I learned of a privately held Alfonso Iannelli archive. Convinced that the sculptor and city plan commissioner actively participated in the decision to award the job to Griffin, I recounted my Park Ridge quest to the collection’s owner. Yes, he had a blueprint of Griffin’s plan. I inquired whether it might be possible to obtain a photograph. Instead, as the print was cumbersome and in poor condition, he generously offered to give it to me if I funded the shipping. I went to the bank that very afternoon and obtained a draft in American dollars. Weeks later, the carton arrived. I carefully unrolled the print, revealing its title: Park Ridge, Illinois. Extension Plan, General Arrangement. Scale 1” – 400’. W. B. Griffin, Landscape Architect. 11/5/25. This was Griffin’s final professional act in his native Chicago. Concerned for the blueprint’s conservation and preservation, I gifted and hand-delivered it to the National Library of Australia in August 2013. At last, Park Ridge was recovered.

Christopher Vernon is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, University of Western Australia. He was the curator, in 2013, of the Library’s exhibition The Dream of a Century: The Griffins in Australia’s Capital

medieval manuscripts: 
An Unassuming Treasure

By Karen Johnson

Through the generous support of donors, the Library’s 2014 Tax Time Appeal is funding a special project to enhance access to our medieval manuscripts. The program of preservation, digitisation and description is making these intriguing items available online for the first time, inviting new interpretations from medieval ‘detectives’ around the world.

With its worn monastic binding of sheepskin over board, this rather humble looking fourteenth-century psalter (a collection of psalms for liturgical or devotional use) does not, at first glance, seem to be a volume that would have an exciting story to tell. Yet appearances can be deceptive, as we found out when the item was examined by visiting British medieval manuscript expert Professor Michelle Brown in 2013.

The script and decoration are indicative of a southern English origin. Leafing through the pages, the first clue that this item has an unusual history is an annotation added in the late fifteenth century, comprising a list of names. On closer examination it was found that the text was in Welsh. It is extremely rare to find an English volume with evidence of Welsh ownership. Initially Professor Brown thought the text might be a record of an important legal transaction; it was not uncommon for such transactions to be recorded in a significant volume such as this as a show of good faith on the part of the people concerned. However, additional text found at the back led to the conclusion that the script was added by a schoolboy named Thomas. Psalters were commonly used for learning to read; it seems this one may have been used as a school text.

Illuminated Psalterium 1300s
manuscript material; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2002511

As well as the psalms, psalters often included a calendar which set out when feast days, including celebrations of saints, were to be observed. The content of the calendar was, in many cases, customised to be of relevance to the monastery or private patron. These can be a clue as to where the text was used and by whom. The calendar in this volume proved to be of great interest. Professor Brown noted the inclusion of old-fashioned saints with a very specific Somerset–Devon association. This supports the theory that the volume was produced in East Anglia for a particular client. A fifteenth-century addition to the list of saints may have been of significance to the Welsh owner and could provide a clue as to its Welsh connections.

We were intrigued to discover the similarity between the names of saints in the calendar of this volume and those in another volume in our collection, which is of unrelated provenance. This suggests they were both customised for the same region.

There is clearly much still to be learned about this unassuming little gem.

Explore this and other enticing mysteries at our Medieval Manuscripts blog.

Magna Carta Turns 800

Barry York examines the history and significance of this important document

In 1952, the Australian Government made a great addition to the nation’s library collection when it acquired an issue of Magna Carta that dated back to 1297. At the time, the National Library did not exist separately from Australia’s Parliamentary Library; this would happen eight years later when the National Library was formally established by an Act of Parliament. It would be another eight years before the opening of the Library’s magnificent building on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin. Magna Carta was displayed in the main Foyer of the Library from August 1968 until its return to King’s Hall, Parliament House, in February 1969, where it had been on display occasionally since 1952 and permanently since 1961.

King John Granting the Magna Charta
(London: W.D. & H.O. Wills, 1900s)
picture card; 6.5 x 3.5 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3891193

The first Magna Carta, or Great Charter, was sealed by King John 800 years ago, in June 1215, as a way of ending a rebellion by his barons. It changed the world by setting in motion profound and fundamental changes to government and liberty. The 1215 Magna Carta did not last long—it was annulled by Pope Innocent III just ten weeks after it was sealed—but it was reissued, in amended form, during the reign of Henry III in 1216, 1217 and 1225 and then added to the Statutes of the Realm in 1297 by Edward I. Thus, the Magna Carta of 1297, known as the Inspeximus, is the enduring, definitive, version. ‘Inspeximus’ means that, after inspection, it confirms a charter made by a former king.

There are 16 surviving copies of the Great Charter in its various thirteenth-century issues and only four of these are the 1297 issue. The other three copies of the Inspeximus are held at The National Archives in the United Kingdom, the Guildhall of the City of London and the National Archives in Washington DC, where it is on public display. The latter was purchased in 1984 by billionaire Texan Ross Perot for US$1.5 million and then at auction, in 2007, by David Rubenstein for US$21.3 million. In 1952, Australia paid £12,500 ($25,000) for Magna Carta; this was considered a high price at the time. It was then the only one to be held outside the United Kingdom.

King Edward I (1272–1307)
Inspeximus Issue of Magna Carta 1297
Parliament House Art Collection; Department of Parliamentary Services, Canberra, ACT

There are four copies of the first Magna Carta, of 1215, in existence: two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral. All four were brought together, for the first time, by the British Library in February this year to mark the octocentenary.

The charter’s 63 provisions are mostly concerned with feudal grievances, but three remain on the statute book of the United Kingdom today. Two relate to the freedom of the English Church and City of London, but the most important is drawn from clauses 39 and 40, which sowed the seeds for due process:

No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised (dispossessed) or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land

and ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice’.

The story behind Australia’s acquisition of the 1297 issue is remarkable. After 639 years, in 1936, it was discovered by a schoolmaster in a desk at King’s School in Somerset. It was displayed for the school’s 400th anniversary in 1950 and, the following year, the governors of the school decided to sell it to raise funds. They wanted it to go to a British dominion, which gave Australia an advantage over American interests. According to Harold White, our first National Librarian and a strong supporter of the purchase, it was offered to the Library’s London office via Sotheby’s. It was certainly a coup, as the British Museum also showed initial interest but could not meet the asking price.

Prime minister Robert Menzies supported the proposed purchase and, at one point, agreed to seek funds from influential friends of the Library in London, such as Howard Florey and Lord Baillieu, via Sir Leslie Boyce, the Australian-born lord mayor of London. There was another problem, though: the Library had to exercise its option to purchase quickly. Time pressure resulted in Menzies deciding to provide government funding. On 19 August, Menzies told parliament that it was ‘the most important [purchase] yet made by an Australian library’. Opposition Leader H.V. Evatt congratulated the National Library Committee on the acquisition, describing Magna Carta as a priceless possession ‘which means, and must always mean in our democracies, first the rule of liberty’.

The 1297 Magna Carta was shipped to Australia on the Orcades, under the personal care of the ship’s master, then transported to Canberra by train under guard of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch and placed in a vault at the provisional Parliament House. It was first displayed in the building’s Parliamentary Library on 1 December 1952 in a white cardboard mount against a red velvet background in a large glass case. Mrs Menzies—later Dame Pattie—was among the first to inspect it.

It was soon moved to King’s Hall, where it attracted thousands of visitors. Concerns about conservation led to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) developing a new container for it in 1961, using argon gas rather than helium for preservation. A special metalised plated glass had been made in the United States for the outer case. Press reports described it as ‘a triumph for Australian scientists and technicians’.

The historic document was eventually moved to the new Parliament House, which opened in 1988. It has been seen by several million people since 1952. In 2001, a Magna Carta monument was unveiled near Old Parliament House. The site, Magna Carta Place, was dedicated in 1997 to mark the 700th anniversary of the Inspeximus issue. After 35 years’ absence from the National Library, in 2004 Magna Carta was formally transferred by the National Library Council to the Australian Parliament.

Magna Carta, 1215 June 15 (facsimile) 1965
manuscript material
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1142936

Misconceptions abound as to what Magna Carta stood for. These range from the belief that it was a Bill of Rights to the equally erroneous notion that it sought parliamentary democracy or a republic. Essentially, Magna Carta changed the relationship between the ruler and the ruled by overturning arbitrary governance and obliging the monarch to be subject to the law. The barons were frustrated at being taxed at the king’s whim, particularly if it was to support failed wars abroad. They demanded a greater say. In this sense, it was a revolutionary break with the past: the first time a king had been compelled, by armed rebellion, to compromise his authority to such an extent.

In the early seventeenth century, Sir Edward Coke, the great English jurist and parliamentarian, declared that ‘Magna Carta is such a fine fellow that he has no sovereign’. This was a very serious affront to the king, and Coke was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The spirit of Magna Carta, mythologised by Coke as representing ‘ancient liberties’, inspired the English revolutionaries of the mid-seventeenth century. They asserted that monarchs were not ‘divine’ and proved the point by beheading Charles I. They achieved the sovereignty of parliament, albeit with some bumps along the way (a revolution, after all, is not a dinner party).

The great revolutions in America and France in the late eighteenth century were also influenced by the charter. Thomas Jefferson justified the American uprising on the grounds that George III had violated Magna Carta. A century and a half later, Eleanor Roosevelt, speaking before the General Assembly of the United Nations in support of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which she had helped draft, said:

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.

More recently, in 2008, British Member of Parliament Tony Benn remarked during debates in the British Parliament on aspects of anti-terror laws that ‘I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on the day Magna Carta was repealed’. In Australia, Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, linked Magna Carta to the rights of asylum seekers following a High Court ruling in 2014.

Magna Charta cum statutis tum antiquis tum recentibus, maximopere animo tenendis, nunc demum ad vnum, tpis aedita, per Richardum Tottell (London: Richard Tottel, 1576)
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2183249

The National Library holds many books and booklets about Magna Carta. There are gems in the Rare Books Collection, such as Magna Charta cum statutis (1576), A Vindication of Magna Charta, as the Summary of English Rights and Liberties (1704), William Blackstone’s The Great Charter (1759) and Clifford’s Phantascopic Entertainment: Magna Carta, published in Melbourne in the 1880s. The Manuscripts Collection has a beautiful facsimile of the document. It is also possible to peruse online copies of many more original items, including all issues of Magna Carta and works that kept it alive, such as Edward Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England, published between 1628 and 1644, which is regarded as a foundation document of the common law.

The rebellious barons, who had seized London to force the king’s hand, had no idea that they were unleashing a document and a principle and, ultimately, a myth and a symbol, that would remain relevant and inspirational, and the measure of all laws, eight centuries later.

Barry York is a historian at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra. His email address is: barry.york@moadoph.gov.au

Sidney William Jackson: Collector and Tree-climber

Penny Olsen finds much of interest among the field notebooks and diaries of Sid Jackson

Though little known today, Sidney (Sid) William Jackson (1873–1946) was one of the great characters of early twentieth-century ornithology in Australia. To fellow ornithologist and journalist Alec Chisholm, Sid was:

a quaint fellow—alternately serious minded and playful, full of idiosyncrasies and odd little vanities, generous, impractical and, above all, a versatile and highly competent field-naturalist.

Abundant evidence of these qualities can be found among the extensive collection of Jacksonian material in the National Library, which includes correspondence, newspaper cuttings, drawings and nearly 900 glass plate negatives of natural history subjects, Indigenous people, field camps, family and friends.

Sidney William Jackson (1873–1946)
H.L. White at ‘Belltrees’, Scone, NSW, 18 September 1922
b&w photograph; 11.9 x 16.2 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3799210

A draper’s son, Sid was born in Brisbane and spent his youth in Toowoomba, Queensland, and Grafton, New South Wales. He started an egg collection in 1883 when he was just ten years old and took a clutch of four eggs from a Red-backed Button-quail, nesting, conveniently, on the ground. Bird-egging was a common pastime for boys and, with the help of Frank, his fearless younger brother, Sid took to it with unusual gusto.

Initially the brothers climbed without aids, later adding boot spikes to their growing arsenal. The year that Frank turned 13 and Sid 18, Nimbol Jack, a Clarence River Indigenous man, taught them to scale forest giants using a tomahawk to cut notches for their feet and a strong vine to loop around the trunk. Later still, Sid designed a sturdy rope ladder—hauled into place with a string shot over a high branch using a catapult—to reach all but the most inaccessible of nests. A scoop or wad of linen coated in sticky birdlime might be carried up to reach the eggs. Sid was justly proud of their tree-climbing feats: we ‘never let any tree conquer us’, he boasted in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald. Even when, in his own words, he was ‘50 years of age, and over 16 stone [101 kilograms]’, he could still shimmy up a slender trunk and could easily be jollied into doing so for a crowd.

Henry Luke White (1860–1927)
Sid W. Jackson, R.A.O.U., at Nest of Mistletoe-Bird
plate LXV in The Emu: Official Organ of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, vol. 21
(Melbourne: The Union, 1921–1922)
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn756499

On leaving school, Sid was employed as a clerk at Grafton and then as a commercial traveller. In 1899, the Jackson family moved from Grafton to Sydney and Sid was soon trying to sell his egg collection, via Government House, to universities and the Australian Museum; he even offered it to the visiting Duke of Cornwall and Kent (later King George V). Eventually, in 1906, he sold it to H.L. (Henry Luke) White, a wealthy grazier and gentleman ornithologist from Scone. The next year Sid published a catalogue, grandly and cumbersomely titled: Egg Collecting and Bird Life of Australia: Catalogue and Data of the ‘Jacksonian Oological Collection’, Illustrated with Numerous Photographs Depicting Various Incidents and Items in Connection with This Interesting Study, Which Has Been the Life Work of the Author. With some judicious swapping, the collection had grown to 679 clutches, representing 526 bird species. In the introduction to his catalogue, Sid lamented that ‘I can no longer pore over the treasures it contains’. However, he was soon employed to curate and add to White’s already extensive collection of bird eggs and skins.

White sent Sid on several major excursions, including to Dorrigo, in north-east New South Wales, in 1910, where previously Sid had found the first nest and eggs known to science of the Rufous Scrub-bird. White tasked Sid with collecting a specimen of the then unknown female of the species, but he would not be successful in securing the wary, mouse-like bird until 1919, and nor would anyone else. In 1911–1912, Sid was sent to Cambo Cambo, in north-west New South Wales, for the eggs of the Spotted Bowerbird and, the next year, to south-western Australia in search of another elusive species, the Noisy Scrub-bird.

Ebenezer Edward Gostelow (1866–1944)
The Rufous Scrub Bird (Atrichornis rufescens) (detail) 1933
watercolour; 25.4 x 38.8 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an3829429

Sid’s marriage to Martha Mary Potter, in April 1914, at Lipson, South Australia, was over by October 1915, when he was off to Tasmania on a fruitless quest for the eggs of the Blue-billed Duck. A couple of years later, a trip to ‘Davenport Downs’ on the Diamantina River, Queensland, in search of the rare Letter-winged Kite, was a great success and Sid published his observations and photographs in The Emu, the scientific journal of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union. These remain a primary source of information on the kite, one of Australia’s most difficult to find birds.

On his travels, Sid kept an eye out for unusual botanical specimens and added to his own collection of mollusc shells. White teasingly admonished him for these distractions:

now just a last word of advice, I don’t wish you to go messing about after snails, beetles, grubs, botanical specimens or any such vermin, just stick to the birds and eggs, remember we want a good haul!

A tall Western Australian gum, discovered by Jackson on the collecting trip to south-west Australia, was identified as a new species by Joseph Maiden, Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Gardens, New South Wales, and named the Red Tingle, Eucalyptus jacksonii. Two species and one subspecies of birds were named for Sid, but they are no longer recognised as distinct.

Sid’s diaries chronicle these and other field trips in neat copperplate handwriting, transcribed in camp in the evening from his pencilled notebooks. Detailed descriptions of his ornithological discoveries and keen observations are interspersed with many banalities, such as the restless night he spent on the Atherton Tablelands on 5 December 1908, trials with leeches and food poisoning and, on several occasions, the ‘torture’ of developing photographic plates in the field, kneeling under a small, blanket-covered table for hours, with insects (‘vermin’) working their way over his sweating, aching body. Although the diaries can be seen as self indulgent, even self congratulatory, they record, perhaps unusually, the realities of fieldwork—the patience and perseverance necessary, as well as the challenges, especially at a time when transport and equipment were quite basic and the behaviour of wild birds was little understood.

Sid W. Jackson Kneeling Down in the Small Blanket-covered Frame Work Where He Developed His Photographic Plates in Great Heat at Night
plate 220 in Sidney William Jackson, Bush Photographer 1873 to 1946 by Judy White
(Scone: Seven Press, 1991)
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn3015693

White donated his magnificent collections to the National Museum of Victoria (thumbing his nose at the curator of birds at the Australian Museum in Sydney) and, in 1917, Jackson accompanied the 8,850 bird study-skins in their custom-made cabinets on their transfer by train and horse-drawn wagon to Melbourne. White, who did not like fuss, advised the curator, A.J. (Archibald James) Campbell, that Sid would deal with any civilities: ‘Jackson loves publicity and attention. I hate both’.

White retained his egg collection and his various collectors continued to add to it. After White’s death in 1927, Sid also shepherded that collection south. Numbering 4,200 clutches, it was housed in a beautifully decorated, drawered cabinet of Queensland Maple.

White had been the perfect employer for Jackson. He nicknamed Jackson ‘The Professor’, enjoyed his boyish pranks, gently mocked his hypochondria (the ‘Pro is laid up, with imaginitis I think’), tolerated his ‘little conceits’ and appreciated his strengths. He warned intending visitors to field camps that while Sid may not look like a bushman, his appearance being ‘between that of an actor and an Italian count’, he was extremely capable.

With White’s passing, Sid was unable to find suitable work. He sold soft goods for a time and wrote occasional articles for The Sydney Morning Herald and The World’s News, describing his bush experiences and various natural history subjects, often illustrated by his photographs or his minutely detailed zoological drawings. It was an unhappy and financially strained time for him. Not long before he died in 1946, he sold his collection of several thousand land shells to the National Museum of Victoria.

Papers of Sidney William Jackson, 1899–1939
manuscript material
nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms466

After Sid’s death, John S.P. (Jack) Ramsay, who owned a photographic business and was Sid’s confidant and supporter during those last sad years, donated the photographic plates and six archive boxes of memorabilia to the National Library. As well as its scientific information, the collection reveals much of the collector. It includes copies of loving letters home that end ‘Your fond Son and Bro’, and a page of book titles and jokes that must have tickled Sid—among them, ‘What coloured letters do we eat?’. (Answer: green peas.) There is a manuscript for a book or extended article on natural history photography and another that details, in 29 steps, how to prepare a bird study-skin. There are complimentary letters, their praising phrases underlined in red.

Before the material was sent to the Library, at Ramsay’s request, Alec Chisholm examined the material for its ornithological interest and, with the approval of the Commonwealth Librarian, another H.L. White (Harold), published a summary of the nine excursions covered in the diaries and field notebooks. Chisholm also felt the need to sum up what he had gleaned of this complex personality:

Jackson was an odd mixture. A keen observer and most diligent worker, he was extremely temperamental—apt to be completely downcast one moment and thoroughly joyful soon afterwards. In some respects he was entirely humourless, and yet he could be highly entertaining when giving performances of ventriloquism and [bird call] mimicry, added to which he had a child-like fondness for those trivial gadgets (such as a piece of tin shaped and painted to resemble spilt ink) that alarm or embarrass unwary people. Practical and self-reliant in the bush, he was just the reverse in matters of business, and so he was frequently in trouble, financial and otherwise. The one factor that sustained him during tribulations, and also caused him to exaggerate his own achievements, was a strong strain of egotism.

S.W. Jackson Busy Skinning a King Parrot at His Camp on the McPherson Range, SE Queensland 1919
glass negative; 16.3 x 12 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3123196

Sidney William Jackson deserves to be better known; he certainly would have thought so! A century ago, when the self-taught, if unlikely, field naturalist was active, reference books were few, transport could be difficult and tree-climbing was even more dangerous than it is today. His well-curated collections and detailed records are a remarkable legacy.

Penny Olsen is a research scientist based at The Australian National University. Her most recent book for the National Library is Louisa Atkinson’s Nature Notes (2015)

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

The Flight of the Budgerigar — June 2011

Penny Olsen takes a look at the humble budgie and uncovers the world’s most successfully marketed pet

Collections Feature: 
‘This Laborious, Expensive, and Arduous Undertaking’
Thomas Martyn’s The Universal Conchologist

By NAT WILLIAMS, The James and Bettison Treasures Curator

The enterprising and innovative natural history illustrator Thomas Martyn was born about 1760 in Coventry and subsequently moved to London. He died around 1816. Surprisingly little is known about his life, but he was definitely a hard worker. He established a painting academy in Westminster, apprenticing talented boys ‘born of good but humble parents’ to illustrate his publications; by 1789 he had ten apprentices who apparently lived a rather monastic life. A man of varied interests, Martyn produced publications on everything from the advantages of hot air balloons, to insects, spiders and animals and the need for superannuation for disabled soldiers and sailors. He is sometimes confused with the Reverend Thomas Martyn (1735–1825), the long-serving Professor of Botany at Cambridge, also a prolific author with varied interests.

Thomas Martyn (c. 1760–c. 1816)
1 Thready Snail; 2 Sun Trochus; in The Universal Conchologist: Exhibiting the Figure of Every Known Shell, Accurately Drawn, and Painted After Nature, with a New Systematic Arrangement
(London: Thomas Martyn, 1784)
Rex Nan Kivell Collection nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn137348

A folio book, The Universal Conchologist (1784) was written in French and English and was the first major production worked on by Martyn’s youthful team. The author declared his ambitions for the publication in its subtitle, A New Systematic Arrangement. He had purchased, for 400 guineas, two-thirds of the shells brought back from Captain Cook’s final voyage and used these and others from famed London collections, such as those owned by the Duchess of Portland (who employed naturalist Daniel Solander to catalogue her vast collection). The famed Holophusicon, a natural history museum owned by Sir Ashton Lever on Leicester Square, also contributed shells to this volume, which purported to describe all the world’s known shells discovered since 1764. Sadly, Martyn’s grandiose ambition to create an expansive eight-volume set was never achieved. The Library’s rare copy is one of only 70 released in the first withdrawn edition of the book and features 80 plates. A revised second issue of it was successfully published in four volumes with 160 plates in 1792.

Thomas Martyn (c. 1760–c. 1816)
Frontispiece in The Universal Conchologist: Exhibiting the Figure of Every Known Shell, Accurately Drawn, and Painted After Nature, with a New Systematic Arrangement
(London: Thomas Martyn, 1784)
Rex Nan Kivell Collection nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn137348

Martyn’s published works frequently bear dedications to the famous natural historian, writer and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (whose notebook is presently on display in the Library’s Treasures Gallery) and to his friend, the botanist Joseph Banks. Additionally, this conchological volume is extravagantly dedicated to George III and acknowledges the king’s promotion of ‘discoveries in remote regions’ and his encouragement of the investigation of natural history and philosophy. Martyn cleverly lists, and dextrously describes, the names and collections of almost 30 conchologists known to him, no doubt enlisting purchasers for the lavish and expensive volumes in the process. His ambition to artistically reproduce the shells in this remarkable publication, its range of content and the beauty of its production make it the greatest of all shell books.

Thomas Martyn (c. 1760–c. 1816)
1 Echinated Snail; 2 Purple Snail; 3 Crimson Snail; 4 Opal Snail; in The Universal Conchologist: Exhibiting the Figure of Every Known Shell, Accurately Drawn, and Painted After Nature, with a New Systematic Arrangement
(London: Thomas Martyn, 1784)
Rex Nan Kivell Collection nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn137348

The copy of The Universal Conchologist in the Library’s Rex Nan Kivell Collection bears the bookplate of the improbable Thomas Snodgrass (c. 1760–1834), a fellow of the Royal Society from 1822 and a generous supporter of other learned societies. Snodgrass had, in rather dubious circumstances, amassed a huge fortune in India over 27 years and been dismissed twice by his employer, the East India Company, for negligence. On his return to London he was refused a pension and promptly set himself up as a crossing sweeper directly outside offices of his ex-employer. He continued to sweep until they relented. Like the collector Nan Kivell, Snodgrass was a generous bachelor and supporter of good causes, leaving his house in Mayfair to a young woman, Eliza Russell—the daughter of a friend. No doubt these exquisite volumes were included.

Anzac Panorama, August 7th 1915

An unusual map depicts the battle of The Nek by one who was there, writes Stuart Braga

Among the contemporary tributes to the men who died at Gallipoli in 1915, one stands out from the rest. It is a striking map, drawn, somewhat idiosyncratically, by one of the officers who took part in the tragic charge of two of the three regiments of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at The Nek, a name that has had a sombre meaning throughout Australia ever since. Most of the officers who led the men of the 8th Light Horse Regiment against a hail of Turkish fire at 4.30 am on 7 August 1915 were killed. A few survived; only two were unscathed. Of the 600 men from the 8th and 10th Light Horse regiments thrown into that terrible onslaught, 234 were killed and 140 wounded. They lay on a flat and exposed ridge described by Charles Bean, the official historian, as a ‘strip the size of three tennis courts’. It was impossible to rescue the wounded, who died unless they could drag themselves back to the Australian trenches.

George Lambert (1873–1930)
The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915 1924
oil on canvas; 179.5 x 333.2 cm Australian War Memorial
awm.gov.au/collection/ART07965 Courtesy Australian War Memorial

In the early 1920s, when the Australian War Memorial set about commemorating the most important episodes of the Great War, it commissioned a number of large paintings. George Lambert’s The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915 was one of them. On display at the memorial in Canberra since 1941, it has become iconic. Two generations later, the tragedy of The Nek was the climax of Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli. The death of Weir’s hero, Archy Hamilton, played by Mark Lee, shocked the nation when the screen suddenly went black as his life was snuffed out. It was a powerful moment. A much earlier tribute to the men of the Light Horse was produced by one of them soon after the terrible event, but it is almost unknown. This is a remarkable map of the Anzac positions on 7 August, drawn by Captain L.F.S. Hore of the 8th Light Horse, and published with the title Anzac Panorama.

Leslie Fraser Standish Hore, known as George Hore, was an English-born, Oxford-educated solicitor who emigrated to Tasmania. He enlisted in the 8th Light Horse Regiment on 3 February 1915 and went with them to Gallipoli when, dismounted, they were sent to reinforce the infantry. Hore, fond of sketching, made 44 drawings during his service at Gallipoli from 26 May to 7 August 1915. He worked mainly on small pieces of paper, later adding notes in pencil indicating place names and explaining particular features of each scene. These sketches have been in the Mitchell Library in Sydney since 1919.

Anzac Panorama, held at the National Library, is similar in style to several of these drawings. It shows the dispositions of the Australian and New Zealand forces on the day of the charge. Hore was one of only six officers in his regiment to survive. Wounded in the right shoulder and foot, he dragged himself back to Australian lines after nightfall.

Leslie Fraser Standish Hore (1870–1935)
Anzac Panorama, August 7th 1915 1916
map; 18.8 x 57.9 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn6610181

Hore wrote to his mother about what happened. She sent his letter to Melbourne newspaper The Argus, which published it on 19 October 1915. It reads, in part:

Truly, we have been through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as our regiment has been cut to pieces, and all our officers killed or wounded except two. Out of 18 officers present, 12 were killed and four wounded.

Our orders were that at half-past 4 on August 7 we were to rush the neck which divides us from the Turks, and is about 200 yards lengthwise, and from 30 to 100 yards (varying) between trench and trench …

At 4 a.m. we stood to arms in our trenches; the bombardment started; in 25 minutes it stopped. Immediately a fierce crackle of fire came out of the Turkish trenches. We knew we were doomed; the bombardment had failed, and had simply advertised our attack. I was in charge of the right wing of the second line—under me three subalterns, and about 175 men …

We had about 100 yards to go, the first line starting from saps, which are trenches in front of the firing line leading in the enemy’s direction. At 25 minutes past 4 we stood up on the banquettes of our trenches, and in a few minutes the crackle of musketry turned into a roar. Never have I heard such an awful sound, and no wonder. We knew they had three machine guns trained on the neck, and quite possibly there were more; their trench must have had at least 200 men.

Hore had trained and worked as a lawyer, and his calculation of Turkish firepower reflected his keen sense of evidence:

Now, a machine gun fires at top speed 600 rounds a minute, and a rifleman 15 rounds per minute. So we had concentrated on a piece of land, say, 200 yards long and 100 yards deep, no fewer than 5,000 bullets per minute.

Out went the first line, and we waited for our word. By the time they had covered the first 40 yards they were down to a man. What could 175 men do against that volume of fire? We saw our fate in front of us, but we were pledged to go, and, to their eternal credit, the word being given, not a man in the second line stayed in his trench.

The letter continued:

As I jumped out I looked down the line, and they were all rising over the parapet. We bent low, and ran as hard as we could. Ahead we could see the trench aflame with rifle fire; all round were smoke and dust kicked up by the bullets … The trench ahead was a living flame, the roar of musketry not a bit diminished …

At that moment, the 8th Light Horse Regiment, the cream of the youth of country Victoria, ceased to exist as a fighting force, with almost all of its officers and most of its troopers mown down:

Our colonel was killed; one major killed, the other wounded; the only captain (myself) wounded. 10 subalterns killed, and three wounded, leaving only two officers not hit, and about 75 per cent of the men killed or wounded.

Leslie Fraser Standish Hore (1870–1935) 
left “North Beach Evening.” Nov. 5 1915 
right Anzac Beach, June 1915 
ink, pencil, wash and watercolour; 13 x 17 cm 
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Hore’s Anzac Panorama panorama is his memorial to his regiment, a strong graphic statement done in the way he knew best. Informed by his earlier sketches, it was apparently drawn in Cairo, where Hore spent a month in hospital and then returned to Gallipoli. After the withdrawal in December, he was again in Egypt until March 1916. During this time it seems he added notes to the panorama and saw it through the press. The printer has skilfully typeset Hore’s notes in the correct places. These notes make it plain that the intended readership was not expected to be familiar with the topography of the Anzac position.

Hore’s notes are detailed and well informed. They commence with a necessary explanation beneath the heading: ‘Note: The observer is standing on a high ridge with his back to the sea. Right rear, Anzac Beach; left rear North Beach’. Anzac Cove is therefore not shown. Another note, in the lower left corner, adds: ‘This sketch, being done from memory, is approximate only’. On the left in the distance is Suvla Bay; on the right the Australian front line is marked with a series of arrows. Salient points are identified with a note. Special attention is given to the attack on Lone Pine. The small ridge now known as The Nek is identified with a simple note: ‘where 8th & 10th L.H. cut up’.

James Pinkerton Campbell (1865–1935)
b&w photographs; 5.5 x 8.4 cm

left Arrival at Squadron Lines, Mena Camp, 4 pm, 4/4/1915
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23217250

right Writing in the Trenches 1915
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23297142

James Pinkerton Campbell (1865–1935)
Some of B Squadron on Top of the Great Pyramid 1915
b&w photograph; 5.5 x 8.4 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23217404

The circumstances in which Hore’s map was printed by the Nile Mission Press in Cairo are unknown, but the number of copies must have been small. They were hand coloured, possibly by Hore, who also initialled them. He then sent them home to his wife, Emily, in Hobart. Here they were placed on sale by J. Walch and Sons Ltd, who advertised the panorama just twice, in The Mercury, on 15 and 16 May 1916:

ANZAC PANORAMA.

A Sketch in colours of that part of GALLIPOLI PENINSULA occupied by the ANZACS during 1915, by Captain L.F.S. Hore, of Hobart.

PRICE, 1/. Posted, 1/1.

The copies must have been folded to fit into a standard envelope to qualify for the Penny Post. The circulation of the Anzac Panorama was therefore confined to Hobart, where it was advertised. It seems that only a few were sold.

George Hore went on to serve in France with the 6th Machine Gun Company and was awarded the Military Cross and a Mention in Despatches ‘for conspicuous gallantry in action’. After the war, he went to New Guinea where he held senior positions in the new Australian administration. He died at Rabaul in 1935, aged 65.

Hore’s Commanding Officer, Sir John Gellibrand, who appointed this Light Horseman to command a Machine Gun unit, summed up his qualities in an obituary in Reveille in November 1935:

It was obvious that Hore was the man to make individuals into a unit … To those who served with him he stands as an example of the Good Comrade. It was a pleasure to be with him, a comfort to work with him.

Clearly, Hore’s precision and attention to detail were to stand him in good stead as a competent machine gun commander; they were qualities already evident in his remarkable Anzac Panorama.

Stuart Braga has written several military biographies

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Secret: To Be Destroyed in Event of an Attack — September 2009

Damian Cole examines some of the military maps in the Library’s collection

In the Frame:
‘Off to the Great War’:
Woolloomooloo, 1915

Peter Stanley takes a closer look at photographs reflecting life during the First World War

In 1915, more men volunteered for the Australian Imperial Force than in any other year. July was the peak month, with over 36,000 men enlisting—one-tenth of the total number who served in the war.

Herbert Fishwick’s photograph depicts a volunteer walking past the big waterside sheds at Woolloomooloo—today probably waterfront apartments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—just before he embarks on the transport that will carry him to Egypt, then Gallipoli or Britain and the Western Front.

None of the individuals in the photograph is named, but they stand for the almost 100,000 men who left that year for the war and for those who farewelled them.

The volunteer carries his kitbag on his shoulder. One of the two young women—his sisters, perhaps, or even daughters—carries his rolled-up overcoat, with his service cap dangling from it; he’s preferred to wear his slouch hat. The woman on the far right could be his mother or wife. The women wear white; this may be autumn or spring. The young ones are buoyant. Only the older woman seems to be ambivalent about farewelling him. She might one day be wearing black.

If this is early to mid-1915, the subjects of this photograph have not yet seen the full extent of casualties on Gallipoli. In July 1915, the first wounded from Gallipoli will arrive home, also at the wharves of Woolloomooloo.

The photographer, Herbert H. Fishwick, was born in Britain and became well known in the commercial field in New South Wales and beyond, working for The Sydney Mail and The Sydney Morning Herald. He recorded a wide range of subjects, including the Southern Alps (Fishwick was a pioneer skier and kept skiing into middle age); aerial photographs of towns; boxing matches; landscape scenes—and sheep. The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record noted when he died that ‘in the realms of the stud Merino sheep breeding industry he excelled … outstanding amongst these experts in animal photography’. The National Library holds over a thousand of Fishwick’s images.

See the boys larking about—embarkation for them meant a more interesting day out. The lad on the right is about to be yanked out of the frame, but he has been captured forever—a bystander innocent, for now, of the war that will come to dominate his country and, perhaps, his life.

Herbert Fishwick (1882–1957)
New Recruit Off to the Great War Carrying His Pack as He Walks with His Family in Woolloomooloo, Sydney, 1915
b&w glass negative; 12 x 16.3 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6329193, Fairfax Syndication

Kate Kelly in Story and Song

Art, stories and the folkloric tradition have helped to create an enduring legend, says Jennifer Gall

The daring Kate Kelly how noble her mien

She sits on her horse like some newborn queen.

She rides through the forest, revolver at hand,

Regardless of danger—who dare bid her stand?

May the angels protect this young heroine bold

And her name be recorded in letters of gold,

Though her brothers were outlaws, she loved them most dear

And hastened to tell them when danger was near.

These verses from Ye Sons of Australia embody the essence of what it takes to transform a historical person into a legendary figure. The song is represented in several audio recordings in the Library’s Oral History and Folklore Collection. In Australia, our folkloric heroes are primarily bushrangers such as Ben Hall, Captain Thunderbolt and Ned Kelly. Few women have achieved an immortality maintained in tales and songs passed from one generation to the next—aside from Kate Kelly.

A number of ‘Kelly songs’ describe Kate’s daring journeys to bring supplies and news to her brothers in defiance of the police, praising her love for each member of the gang, and her courage. They have been reinterpreted many times by musicians and represent a continuing portrayal of the Kelly family as a symbol of the poor or persecuted who resisted British colonial authority to establish an Australian character. In assessing both the historical evidence and the artistic record, something of Kate Kelly’s magnetism may be divined.

E.G. Tims, Australian Photographic Co.
Kate Kelly c. 1873–1878
carte de visite; 10.4 x 6.3 cm
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
acmssearch.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/itemDetailPaged.cgi?itemID=889266

Fascination with Kate Kelly has preoccupied historians, ballad singers, authors, filmmakers and composers since the Kelly Gang was at its most vigorous in the late 1870s. An 1894 painting of Kate as a black-clad romantic heroine is in contrast to the more realistic portrait, in a photograph taken by E.G. Tims (the author’s great-grandfather), of a young woman’s face hardened by a desperate struggle for survival. Both aspects of her character—the romantic and the defiant—have kept Kate Kelly alive.

Patrick William Marony (1858–1939)
Portrait of Kate Kelly 1894
oil on canvas; 107.1 x 61 cm nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an2263673

While some Kelly scholars dispute Kate’s unwavering loyalty to Ned’s gang, her brother Jim, in a 1911 interview with Brian Cookson from The Advertiser, was adamant:

Dear, loyal, brave little Kate! … Yes; she fooled the police time after time … And instead of the girl they found that they had to do with a woman … one who knew the bush and knew no fear.

Catherine Ada Kelly was born on 12 July 1863 in Beveridge, Victoria. Her father was John ‘Red’ Kelly, transported to Tasmania from Tipperary for stealing two pigs. He was freed in 1848 and travelled to Victoria to work on James Quinn’s farm, marrying Ellen, Quinn’s daughter, in 1851.

After Red’s death in 1866, Ellen and her seven children—Anne, Ned, Margaret (Maggie), James (Jim), Dan, Kate and baby Grace—moved to live with Ellen’s sisters at Greta and a year later she took up her own selection on Eleven Mile Creek. Kate had finished her schooling and remained at home to help her mother care for the younger children and manage the property. In these years, Ned, in his attempts to support the family cattle ventures, found himself on the wrong side of the law.

Patrick William Marony (1858–1939)
Dan Kelly, Steve Hart, Ned Kelly, Joe Byrne, Kate Kelly c. 1894
oil on canvas; 107 x 61.2 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an2263689

The story of the activities of the Kelly Gang and the last stand at Glenrowan has been told elsewhere—it is the ability of the outlaws to transcend mortality in the popular imagination that is of interest here. When Ned was sentenced to death, Kate, Maggie and Tom Lloyd (sympathiser with the gang) applied through the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment in Melbourne for conversion of Ned’s sentence. Kate, aged just 17, reputedly knelt in front of the Governor, presenting a petition of 34,434 signatures, but her plea was denied.

After the hanging, on 11 November 1880, the family returned to Eleven Mile Creek. Kate could not settle and, the next time she was heard of, was performing with brother Jim as part of a Wild West show in Sydney, purportedly featuring Ned’s grey mare. Notices in The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Kelly Show had attracted ‘boys from 12 to 20 years of age’ and ‘girls of the larrikin and disorderly classes’ and the police inspector on duty considered ‘the exhibition of the relatives of Edward Kelly a gross outrage and highly injurious to public morals’. In reality, authorities feared that a groundswell of public outrage at the hanging of Ned Kelly might turn the outlaw into a martyr and ignite riots in communities across the country. Indeed, when Ellen Kelly, who had been jailed for allegedly striking a constable with a shovel, was released from prison in February 1881, she returned home to incidents of incipient civil rebellion, but was persuaded by Constable Robert Graham to calm Kelly sympathisers.

The Recent Kelly Outrage (Sydney: The Illustrated Sydney News, 1880)
wood engraving; 48.3 x 31 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an8420456

Kate left Sydney after accepting an offer to appear in Adelaide, but she became seriously ill and gave up performing. After finally regaining her health, she worked as a domestic servant and, in 1886, moved to Forbes, in central-western New South Wales, adopting her middle name, Ada. Here she met and married William Foster, a horse trainer, in 1888. Seven babies were born, three dying in infancy. As time passed, Foster more frequently worked away from home and appeared in court for ‘using indecent language in his own house to his wife, within hearing of the public’.

The final chapter in Kate Kelly’s story ended with the discovery of her body in a lagoon on the Condobolin Road, near Forbes, on 14 October 1898; she had gone missing eight days earlier. Evidence at the inquest given by Kate’s neighbour, Susan Hurley, stated that she had seen Kate in her house on 5 October, slightly under the influence of drink. Kate asked Susan to take the five-week-old baby and gave assurances that Mr Foster would pay for its upkeep while she ‘went away for a few days to get straight’. Susan was adamant that Kate had never threatened suicide and that she had only been drinking to cope with the unassisted birth of the newest baby. No certain cause of death was determined.

In Jean Bedford’s 1982 novel, Sister Kate, Kate’s death is linked to her ardent desire for Ned’s accomplice, the 21-year-old Joe Byrne. Bedford postulates that Kate’s inconsolable grief for both her lover and brothers led to a mental collapse, establishing a plausible explanation for the way in which she met her tragic death. The novella investigates the Kelly legend from a woman’s perspective, a vivid reimagining of life in a marginal rural homestead where the men were either in prison or living as outlaws. The women fought for survival against starvation on their smallholdings and battled continual harassment from the police.

An incident in which Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick entered the Kelly home, allegedly goading Mrs Kelly and molesting Kate, provoking Ned to shoot at him to protect his sister, is presented in the novella as the moment at which Ned turned towards the path of outlaw. Historical evidence confirms that Fitzpatrick had been attracted to the 14-year-old Kate soon after his arrival in Benalla in 1877. The attraction did not extend to the rest of the family and Fitzpatrick was antagonistic towards Kate’s brothers. Known throughout the district as a ruthless womaniser, Fitzpatrick had fathered children with at least two other women, whom he abandoned prior to pursuing Kate. In her brother Jim’s version of the story, his sister was no willing victim:

He tried to put his arm around her and she gave him a punch that sent him reeling … he told her that if she would consent to certain suggestions, he would go back and say that Dan was away, and could not be got … she hurled herself on him in a wicked temper, and it was then that the struggle began in which he attempted to assault her.

Ned’s act of violence to rescue his defenceless sister from violation is a firm foundation for his heroic stature. It is this pivotal relationship between the siblings that has sustained Ned Kelly’s reputation as a hero, despite evidence that he later killed in cold blood.

Kate Kelly’s allure was documented in newspapers early on. In 1880, her smile was described as ‘dangerously fascinating’ and, in 1929, 31 years after her death, The Western Mail published a serial, The Girl Who Helped Ned Kelly, in which Kate was described by the story’s hero:

Although he had never before seen her, instinctively he knew whom she was. Her features were pleasing and her colouring attractive, but it was the strength of character revealed in that well-poised head that he observed most of all. She cut a fine figure as she rode over to him and with airy grace dismounted.

This was a heroine—active and fearless—to inspire Australians down the ages. As Tom Gibbons sings in The Kelly Gang, recorded by John Meredith and available as an audio recording in the Library’s Oral History and Folklore Collection:

Long life unto Kate Kelly

For she was a noble girl;

And she appeared on the scene

In spite of all the world.

For true she loved her brothers,

Likewise the other two,

And so she proved to all the world

Her heart was fair and true …

If any praise be due at all,

Then let the praise be gave

To those four poor unfortunates

Who now lie in their graves.

The Kelly songs from the Australian oral tradition supplement the published stories, and court and news reports. Their survival is a powerful testament to the common acceptance of Kate Kelly as a heroine equal in status to her brothers. References in the lyrics to the love between Ned and his brothers and sisters maintained the sanctity of the Kelly family in the face of accusations of lawlessness by the Victorian police. For as long as musicians, authors and artists continue to reinterpret the legend, daring Kate Kelly will live on.

Dr Jennifer Gall is an assistant curator at the National Film and Sound Archive and visiting fellow at The Australian National University School of Music

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Our Ned — May 1999

Barry York explores some of the literature about Australia’s best-known bushranger

The Continuance of Friendship:
Alec Bolton’s Photographs of Writers

Linda Groom introduces some portraits of a very literary circle of friends

On a sunny day in 1977, David Campbell invited friends to lunch at his property, The Run, near Queanbeyan, New South Wales. One of his friends, publisher Alec Bolton, photographed the group. The picture shows a scene that, at first glance, seems ordinary—a modest courtyard, people seated on low wooden benches that look a little uncomfortable, and the leavings of a meal that has ended simply with a bowl of apples. There is nothing ordinary, however, about the people in the photograph. Geoff Page, on the left, sprawled in striped pants, is in the first decade of a distinguished career in poetry. Behind him is the host, acclaimed poet David Campbell, who seems to be pausing briefly between anecdotes. He had a great store of them—not many poets are also champion rugby players, boxers and war heroes. Half hidden in the background is the reclusive, but already wealthy, James Fairfax; 1977 was the year he took over his father’s publishing empire. On the right, Alec’s wife, Rosemary Dobson, is sitting gracefully; she was by then the author of over a dozen books of poetry.

Alec Bolton (1926–1996)Portraits of Geoffrey Page, David Campbell, James Fairfax and Rosemary Bolton (Dobson), 1977
b&w photograph; 16.5 x 21.6 cm, nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14475548-1
Courtesy Bolton family

They are looking at the camera with indulgent smiles. Alec was in the habit of taking photographs of his friends. He did not consider himself a professional photographer, and certainly no professional photographer would have sliced through the unknown figure on the left of the image. Alec Bolton’s friendship with his subjects, however, and his disarming and ever-present courtesy, allowed him to create intimate portraits of some of Australia’s most important twentieth-century writers.

Two years later, Alec and Rosemary would have looked back on this happy scene with sadness. David Campbell died from cancer in July 1979. Four hundred people attended his funeral at St John’s Church, Canberra, and historian Manning Clark gave the oration. After the funeral, Rosemary began work on 12 poems to commemorate her friendship and literary collaboration with David. The poems were published by Alec’s Brindabella Press in 1981, under the title The Continuance of Poetry. It’s an unusual expression, ‘continuance’, as befits a word chosen by one poet for another. It has gentle phonetics, an honourable history from Chaucer onwards, and meanings that range from ‘durability’ to ‘the action of maintaining’. Although Rosemary Dobson chose it to refer to poetry, it could equally point to the affinity she and Alec felt for David Campbell, and for their friendship with so many of the leading Australian writers of the late twentieth century.

The couple had many opportunities to meet writers. They both started their working lives in editorial positions in the Sydney office of Angus & Robertson, where they began lifelong friendships with Douglas Stewart, Francis Webb and other writers. After their marriage in 1951, Rosemary continued to write while raising three children. Alec joined publisher Ure Smith in 1960 but, in 1966, was lured back to Angus & Robertson with an offer of the position of London editor.

In 1971, the family returned to Australia so that Alec could take up the newly created position of director of publications at the National Library. In 1972, he installed printing machinery in his Deakin home and established the Brindabella Press as a leisure-time occupation. Through his roles as owner of the press and publications director at the National Library, and via Rosemary’s connections as an established poet, Alec’s circle of friends expanded after his move to Canberra.

Henk Brusse
Alec Bolton at Work at His Brindabella Press in Canberra, 3 February 1987
b&w negative; 5.5 x 5.5 cm nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn4803021

In the 1970s, Canberra punched above its weight as a centre for writers of literature and history. The Australian National University’s English department was adorned by two poets of national significance, Emeritus Professor A.D. Hope and Bob Brissenden. In the history department, Manning Clark and Laurie Fitzhardinge were stimulating many minds and provoking others. Two Australian National University arts students of the 1970s—Kevin Hart and Philip Mead—have since become widely published poets and critics. Alec Bolton photographed them all—in his home, in their homes, or with groups of friends.

Alec’s talents as a photographer are perhaps most evident in his portrait of Sir Keith Hancock, Emeritus Professor of History at The Australian National University and, among other things, vigorous opponent of the construction of Canberra’s Black Mountain Tower. Alec has placed his subject so that window light falls exactly down the midline of his face and glances off his shock of white hair. Something of the same composition is evident in his portrait of Laurie Fitzhardinge.

Alec Bolton (1926–1996)
Portrait of Sir Keith Hancock, Campbell, ACT, 1984
b&w photograph; 16.5 x 21.6 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14261934-1  Courtesy Bolton family

One of the advantages of living in Canberra was that it was an easy place from which to travel. Alec visited and photographed many friends within a few hours’ drive of the city—not only David Campbell on his property, but also Roger McDonald at Braidwood, Judith Wright at Mongarlowe, Rodney Hall at Bermagui and Joan Phipson at Mandurama. In 1978, Alec and Rosemary visited Bundanon, the newly acquired property of Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, near the Shoalhaven River. One of the topics of conversation would presumably have been the Brindabella Press’ forthcoming publication The Drifting Continent, a limited edition book of poems by A.D. Hope, with illustrations by Arthur Boyd. A group photograph at Bundanon shows Hope and Boyd, their wives, and Alec. On this occasion it was probably Rosemary who held Alec’s camera. In the background is a modest weatherboard house and a glimpse of scraggy bush—a very Australian setting for some of Australia’s leading names in art and literature.

Alec Bolton (1926–1996)
Alec Bolton, Yvonne Boyd, Arthur Boyd, Penelope Hope and Professor Alec Hope at Bundanon, 1978
b&w photograph; 16.5 x 21.6 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14324571 Courtesy Bolton family

In Sydney, Alec photographed Douglas Stewart, Dal Stivens, Bruce Beaver and Geoffrey Lehmann. Bruce Beaver, a widely published and highly awarded poet and novelist, was plagued by depression; Alec’s photograph has caught him in a lighter mood. Geoffrey Lehmann is an example, should one ever be needed, that a social circle comprising poets and writers need not exclude the more pragmatic aspects of life—when not writing poetry, he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and lectured in taxation law.

Further afield, Alec photographed novelist Helen Garner and art historian Professor Bernard Smith in Melbourne, David Martin in Beechworth and Gwen Harwood in Hobart. Known as the ‘pugnacious poet’, Harwood had resorted to using male pseudonyms in her early career. Under one such name, in 1961 she famously submitted a sonnet to The Bulletin in which the initial letters of each line spelt out, in no uncertain terms, an uncomplimentary message to the editors. The editor, Donald Horne, only discovered the subterfuge after publication. The sonnet is credited with garnering Harwood much greater acceptance. Alec’s portrait of her, taken in 1988, shows a woman with neat grey hair, wearing a conservative cotton blouse fastened at the collar by a brooch. It hardly seems the image of someone whose career was accelerated by the use of a four-letter word, until one looks more closely at her gaze, which could be saying, ‘Editors, the years may have mellowed me, but don’t relax just yet’.

left Alec Bolton (1926–1996)
Portrait of Gwen Harwood, West Hobart, 1988
b&w negative; 3.7 x 2.3 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3119883 Courtesy Bolton family

right Alec Bolton (1926–1996)
Portrait of Bernard Smith, Fitzroy, 1987
b&w photograph; 17.7 x 12.7 cm
nla.gov.au/nla.pican14555647-1 Courtesy Bolton family

The expressions of Alec’s photographic subjects show their pleasure at being photographed. The clicks of the shutter on his camera were simply punctuation points in many lifelong and amiable conversations. Yet, as in any circle of friends, there were tensions. One of his tasks as editor of the Brindabella Press was to say no to some submissions. In 1977, Bernard Smith sent Alec some poems he had written in the 1940s; Alec decided not to publish them. Sending a rejection to Professor Smith, a man of formidable intellect and strong opinions, was not a task to be undertaken lightly. Alec’s rejection letter, now housed in the Library’s Manuscripts Collection, was a model of tact:

I like the Woolloomooloo poems particularly, and the rousing salute to Lawson … I have very reluctantly decided that I should not offer to print the collection. It would be an honour to have your name associated with the Brindabella Press, but I think people would feel … that I had done the book for the wrong reason. It seems to me that the moment has passed.

The two remained friends. Ten years later, Alec photographed a benign and relaxed Professor Smith in the study of his Fitzroy home.

The Alec Bolton Portrait Collection at the National Library contains over 360 photographic prints. The subjects of only a handful of them have been mentioned in this article. Taken together, they provide a remarkable picture of Australian writers in the late twentieth century. The individual portraits allow personalities to shine. The group photographs show some of the interactions within a literary circle, at the centre of which were one of Australia’s most important women poets and a man with a printing press and a camera. Taken over more than 20 years, the photographs are a monument to the continuance of friendship.

Linda Groom, retired Curator of Pictures at the National Library, is the author of First Fleet Artist: George Raper’s Birds and Plants of Australia (2009) and A Steady Hand: Governor Hunter and His First Fleet Sketchbook (2012)

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Canberra Then and Now — March 2013

Geoff Page reflects on what Canberra means to him