Author Archives: residentjudge

A poignant little postscript to J B Were

Posted on October 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, from which I’ll be drawing much of my “Entrepreneur Watch” material  is really a fascinating book.  It comes in 2 large volumes and comprises 67 chapters.  It was written by the journalist Edmund Finn some thirty years after the events it describes, drawing on his own experiences and the newspaper reports he wrote at the time,  and the papers and memoirs of Port Phillip citizens still living in the 1880s.  It is witty, racy and, I suspect, rather prone to exaggeration, bluster and mockery.

It’s rather self-referential in places, where Finn discusses the process by which the material was collected and arranged.  As Finn himself tells it, when he was researching the chapter about the Twelve Apostles (which I shall discuss more when I get to Apostle No 1. Rucker), J. B. Were expressed his concern about  digging up the past, reminding Finn that some of the people were still alive and that their children and grandchildren might take action against him. When he enquired what sources Finn was going to draw his material from, he offered to write up his own recollections and construction of the events.  Finn did not, as he suspected Were wished him to, incorporate the material into his own narrative but instead attached it as an appendix.

I’ll let Finn tell the story from here on in:

The next time I saw Mr Were was our last meeting in this world, and it was caused by the receipt of the following communication:-

Wellington, 1st May 1885, Brighton Beach

Dear Mr Finn- I have been under the doctor’s care for the last six months, suffering from an attack of jaundice, and have become very emaciated with wasting and loss of appetite.  I am ordered to Riverina for change of climate, and I leave on Monday morning.  If you can see me this evening, or at any time tomorrow, I am gathering some papers which I desire to hand you, and to have the pleasure of a short conversation with you.  The terminus is within sight,  and a very short distance from my house.  Yours faithfully, J. B. Were.

After reading the foregoing I handed it to a friend sitting by me, remarking that the “terminus” mentioned therein was intended as a way-mark to point to my intended destination; but something seemed to foreshadow it as the terminus of the writer’s long and not unnotable terrestrial career…  In compliance with his desires, I visited Mr Were that afternoon, and noticed such a striking change in his appearance and manner as to leave but little doubt that if not absolutely in sight, the “terminus” was not far off….Shaking hands with Mr Were, we parted with mutual good wishes; but I never saw his face again. (p. 992)

So, poor old J. B.  The terminus was, indeed, within sight and a very short distance from his house.

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Port Phillip Apostle No.10 J.B. Were

Posted on October 25, 2008 | 3 comments

Is the name J. B. Were familiar to you?  It should be. Goldman Sachs JBWere is a large, multinational financial company, and prior to metamorphising into this splendid many-named creation, J B Were was a well-known Melbourne stockbroking firm.  In fact, come to think of it, my cousin worked there.

Although Garryowen places J. B. Were as No. 10 on his list of Twelve Apostles, I’ll start off with him because I have borrowed a book about him and he, of all of the twelve that Garryowen listed, most clearly evokes the term “entrepreneur” for me. The book, called “The House of Were 1839-1954” is an in-house publication.  It has a rather curious note on the title page:

This publication has not been registered as a book and is not available for sale because it has been issued by J. B. Were & Son for the interest and information of its clients, public companies, financial and other institutions with whom the prestige and business interests of the firm are identified.

Recipients of a copy of the publication are requested to regard the contents as for their information alone.  It is desired that no reference should be made to the publication in the Press.

What an odd statement. Well, they don’t say anything about blogs or the internet…..

Jonathan Binns Were was born in Somerset on 25 April 1809, the third of four sons to a landed gentry family.   The House of Were states that according to Burke’s Dictionary of Landed Gentry, the original family name was Giffard and the Weare-Giffard family is documented back to 1411 during the reign of Henry IV.  His father inherited from his father and grandfather three estates in Somerset: Landcox, Osmonds and Penslade.

De Serville, however, is rather equivocal about his social status.  Were is not found in De Serville’s Appendix 1 Gentlemen by Birth (“Gentlemen colonists from titled, landed or armigerous families”), but instead in Appendix III Colonists Claiming Gentle Birth (“A list of colonists whose claims to gentle birth have not been fully established. Those who were members of good society are also listed in Appendix II”).  Under the entry for Were, De Serville writes:

Were, Jonathan Binns. Merchant.  Son of Nicholas Were and his wife Frances Binns.  It is difficult to know whether to place him in Appendix I or III. His family were landowners in Devon and Somerset (especially his great-grandfather). However, after appearing in Burke’s Commoners, the family was dropped from the first and subsequent editions of Burke’s Landed Gentry.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that they were an ascendant family who gained the capricious attention of the Burkes and then lost it.  Were was prominent in the commercial and public life of the colony, where he died in 1885.

After finishing school Were received business training in the house of Collins and Co in the port city of Plymouth. Collins and Co. were involved in trade with the colonies where, no doubt, Were would have heard from colleagues and  clients about the commercial opportunities abroad.  Such contacts would place him in Ville’s third category – i.e. colonial merchants with experience in Britain or the colonies.

His father and older brother broke the entail on the Were estate and Jonathan received 9000 pounds from the sale of the family properties.  With this he purchased goods that netted him 70,000 pounds on resale in Australia.  (The ADB cites lower figures for this). Nonetheless, Entrepreneurial Lesson from J.B. Were #1: use your capital to buy cheap, sell dear.  Or perhaps there should be a lesson before that: have capital.

In fact, when he arrived in Melbourne on the William Medcalfe, most of the cargo in the hold belonged to him, including a demountable house, and a consignment of port wine that he picked up at Oporto en route. He, his Quaker wife, 4 year old daughter and baby son, his brother-in-law and two servants arrived in Melbourne on 15th November 1839 after a journey of 113 days.  Garryowen lists the other first and intermediate class passengers on the ship, including Mrs C. Liardet and five children in the intermediate berths, the wife of Liardet who painted the picture on my blog header.  There were also 230 assisted immigrants on board – I’m not sure whether they were ‘his’ bounty migrants or not, but he was certainly an immigration agent later on.

Entrepreneurial lesson #2 from J. B. Were: get cracking! Six weeks after arrival, Were assembled his house on the south-west corner of Collins and Spring Street (where No. 1 Spring Street is now?) which he purchased for 3 pounds 10 shillings an acre and named the property “Harmony Lodge”.  At about the same time he commenced trading as a general merchant advertising tents for sale on 1 January 1840- a highly sought after product.  By February, he had established himself as a general merchant, shipping and commission agent and advertised 200 rams due to arrive from the Murrumbidgee.  In March he formed Were Bros. and Co with his brother-in-law Robert Stevenson Dunsford (who had journeyed out with them) and his younger brother George Were (who must have made his own way to Melbourne separately).   Forming networks with family members like this, as Ville pointed out, was advantageous in a low-trust environment. By April 1840 he was advertising to buy wool from pastoralists, make advances against it, then ship it to London.  He was involved in the exchange business early- discounting bills for customers and arranging drafts on London, Sydney, Hobart and Launceston businesses.  He became involved in importing prefabricated houses (including a teak house!) and refurbished sailing sailing ships.

Entrepreneurial lesson #3 from J. B. Were: network! He was one of the directors of the Melbourne Auction Company, a successful venture which was ultimately thwarted by legislative red-tape.  He was also a director of the Melbourne Bridge Company which, although it had plans for a splendid iron suspension bridge, settled for a humble wooden bridge across the Yarra because of uncertainty about government plans to build Princes Bridge.  He was Chairman of the Temporary Exchange, a gathering of merchants who met daily at 12.00 noon in the rooms of the Melbourne Auction Company. He was a director of the Union Bank in 1841, a Lloyds Insurance Agent in 1842 and an agent for Alliance Fire and Life Assurance Company in 1843.  He joined the Shipping and Steam Packet Association in 1842 and was one of the five members of the the Steam Navigation Board which licensed and supervised steam ships.

He developed political and cultural networks as well. By May 1840 he was appointed one of the committee of three to draft a Separation memorial, praying for separation from NSW. He was involved in the planning for the Melbourne Hospital, he was on the Botanic Garden’s committee, and involved in the British and Foreign Bible Societies and the Philosophical Society (later the Royal Society).

Entrepreneurial lesson #4 from J. B. Were: position, position, position. Henry Dendy arrived in Port Phillip with a signed and sealed certificate from London allowing him to select 5120 acres at a fixed price of one pound per acre (a definite bargain given that land was selling at 5 to 40 pounds an acre at auction!).  Not unsurprisingly, he found that La Trobe and locally-based settlers resented this method of land sale, and difficulties were placed in his way when he tried to buy land at Williamstown and near Heidelberg.  Dendy approached J. B. Were, who advised him to use his land voucher in what is now Brighton.  It is not known when it happened, but by April 1845 Were was in possession of half the original survey.  He built there “Moorabbin House” with stone walls three feet thick, with huge hidden doors across the front that could be pulled across to provide a barricade should the house be attacked- I assume by aborigines? bushrangers? The house was demolished in 1924.

He later built other houses in Brighton again, Toorak and East St. Kilda.

Entrepreneurial lesson #5 from J. B. Were: be careful helping out your friends. The whole circumstance by which he became one of the “twelve Apostles” was by joining with ten other colleagues to come to the financial aid of William Rucker (Port Phillip Apostle No. 1) when he ran into difficulties as part of the general financial upheaval of the early 1840s.  It seems that he, in particular, sustained huge financial loss from this agreement and even ten years later, there was an instability in his affairs that led to further financial problems in 1854-6.

And what about Were’s relationship with Judge Willis? Garryowen claims that, after initially cordial relations, the two men fell out over Judge Willis’ pursuit of William Lonsdale (another story for another blogpost) and Willis’ emnity turned on Were. The most colourful display of this animosity occurred when Were was sitting as a magistrate alongside Willis on the bench when his name arose during the evidence being tendered to the court.  Willis ordered Were into the witness box where, startled and unprepared as he was, he was rather unforthcoming.  Willis charged him with contempt of court, and when Were asked for a copy of the Judge’s notes, Willis sentenced him to jail, and with every squeak of protest from Were, upped the sentence a month at a time.   Were actually served only one night in jail before being confined to the Rules, and the verdict was overturned once Judge Willis was replaced soon after.  Certainly, J. B. Were appears regularly on the petitions urging Justice Willis’ dismissal.

References

  • The House of Were 1839-1954: The History of J. B. Were & Son and its founder Jonathan Binns Were, 1954
  • Finn, Edmund The Chronicles of Early Melbourne 1835 to 1852: historical, anecdotal and personal by ‘Garryowen’ Melbourne, Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888
  • de Serville, Paul Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne before the Gold Rushes Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1980
  • Ville, Simon ‘Business development in Colonial Australia’ Australian Economic History Review Vol 38 No 1, 1998 , pp. 16-41

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, History, Judge Willis, Port Phillip history

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Making a motza in Port Phillip

Posted on October 24, 2008 | 6 comments

Let’s be quite clear about this: people came to Port Phillip to make money as individuals.  It wasn’t a penal colony like Van Diemens Land or Sydney. It wasn’t a philosophical-cum-evangelical political experiment like South Australia.  It was not a privately-run settlement scheme like Western Australia.  It was conceived in the pubs of Launceston, and talked over and gesticulated to by the pastoral overlanders of Sydney, by men out to make a motza and the government could just get stuffed.  And even more importantly, in the early years people came to Port Phillip from another Australian colony, rather than coming out straight from Europe.

As part of thinking about financial security in 1840s Port Phillip, I recently read Simon Ville’s article ‘Business development in colonial Australia’ .  He points out that New South Wales (of which Port Phillip was part) had strong entrepreneurial capacity:

1. There were the ex-convicts and emancipists who had been either pardoned or their sentences had expired, who, swept by fate onto the other side of the world were denied conventional routes to achievement, but had scope to forge their own, too.  Certainly some had only a poor education, and they often lacked institutional and infrastructure suport.  But some also had a strong desire for legitimacy, esteem and recognition.

2. There were the government officials, who had had access to higher educational levels, but were not motivated by the need for social elevation.  Because of their position in a penal colony, they had access to a means of overseas payment and free labour.  Particularly in the first decades, there was scope to indulge their entrepreneurial proclivities.  This was less true of Port Phillip than Sydney, but is nonetheless worth bearing mind when Judge Willis started castigating government officers for “speculation”.

3.There were colonial merchants living locally.  They were usually from Britain; sometimes from India, and they brought with them their accumulated experience of previous success, capital, information and credit links of their overseas partners and agents.

I suspect that there’s a fourth group too. Jim McAloon speaks of settler capitalists, of lower middle class origins who brought with them the values of the British middle class: thrift, deferred gratification, self reliance and steady capital accumulation.  Although his research is based on the South island of New Zealand, he cites Paul de Serville’s work in Port Phillip  on the colonial elite which distinguishes one fifth of them as  gentlemen by ‘birth’ as distinct from gentlemen by education and profession and a large group of unclassifiable middle-class gentlemen.

Industries and opportunities draw on innovation for success (Ye Gods! I sound like a management textbook!). Innovation doesn’t just mean invention of the completely new- it also involves the modification of imported technology to local circumstances.  Often entrepreneurial decisions of this kind are made under conditions of great uncertainty and highly imperfect information- and you can’t get much more uncertain and imperfect than settlement in a new colony on a new continent in a different hemisphere.

Ville points out that vertical integration is common at the start of an industry’s life, and a signal of a low-trust environment, but that as an economy matures, vertical integration is replaced by specialization .  Vertical integration is a form of management control where all aspects of a product or process are under the control of a common owner.  For example, the Sydney merchant Robert Campbell was involved in whaling, shipbuilding, shipping, banking and farming.  Early NSW certainly qualifies as a low-trust environment: the convict origins of the colony were reinforced by mutual suspicion between convicts, officers and immigrant merchants.  Networks, bound by social, religious and kinship ties provided a high-trust organizational form based on common interests and propinquity.  Often individual entrepreneurs operated several distinct partnerships with different business associates. Certainly in Port Phillip, we can see that entrepreneurs were involved in diverse activities- e.g. general mercantile, shipping and commission agencies, wool purchase and consignment. Their ubiquity and prominence makes them particularly important when we consider who backed whom in the local politics of the district, and especially in relation to Judge Willis’ dismissal.

Edmund Finn (‘Garryowen’) speaks of the Twelve Apostles who were dominant in financial circles in Port Phillip in these early days. They are:

  1. William Frederick Augustus Rucker, Merchant
  2. Thomas Herbert Power, Auctioneer
  3. John Pascoe Fawkner, Landholder
  4. Alexander McKillop, Settler
  5. John Moffat Chisholm, Landowner
  6. John Hunter Patterson, Landowner
  7. James Purves, Landowner
  8. John Maude Woolley, Settler
  9. Abraham Abrahams, Merchant
  10. Jonathan Binns Were, Merchant
  11. Horatio Nelson Carrington, Solicitor
  12. Patricius William Welsh, Merchant.

I can tell you now without going any further, that this group of men, like nearly every constellation in Port Phillip was split right down the middle in relation to Judge Willis.  Fawkner was his staunchest ally, Carrington his most ardent enemy, and the rest are distributed between them (with perhaps, at first glance, more opposed to him than for him).

My task is to look at these 12 men.  Do they fit into Ville’s three categories at all? How does de Serville classify them?  What was their entrepreneurial story in Port Phillip? How did the 1840s financial meltdown affect them?  And what position, if any, did they take in relation to Judge Willis?

References

  • Ville, Simon P. ‘Business Developmentin colonial Australia’ Australian Economic History Review vol 38 no. 1 March 1998 pp.16-41
  • McAloon, Jim ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and Settler Capitalists: Imperialism, Dependent Development and Colonial Wealth in the South Island of New Zealand’ Australian Economic History Review, Vol 42, No. 2, July 2002
  • de Serville, Paul  Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne before the Gold Rushes, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1980
  • Finn, Edmind, The chronicles of early Melbourne, 1835-1852: historical, anecdotal and personal (by “Garryowen”, Melbourne, Fergusson and Mitchell, 1888 p. 707



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Good on you, Evan Thornley

Posted on October 23, 2008 | 1 comment

Although I do often tune into News Radio, I generally only last about ten minutes listening to the Parliamentary proceedings before I switch stations in frustration at the raucousness, ratbaggery and inanity of it all. The weary tones of the Speaker remind me of  extras duty as a teacher, having to take a Year 9 class for the  last period of the day, say,  in mathematics. You don’t give a fig for these kids, or their work; you just want something less than absolute mayhem; you’re more concerned about the hubbub leaking out through the windows than anything else and you just want to get out of there with a shred of professional dignity intact.

I was looking through James Curran’s book The Power of Speech and note that political speeches are not only delivered in parliament, but also at events like the Australia Day Council, launches of awards and celebratory events,  commemorations, party conventions and conferences.  Some of the anticipation that preceded Rudd’s “Sorry” speech in February was an awareness that something important was about to happen in Parliament itself, as the highest expression of national discourse. Quite beyond my own feeling of relief and pride that it had been said, I recognized the importance of the context and setting as well.

Of course, there are those curious parliamentary aberrations, the conscience vote, that seem to be exclusively centred on sex and particularly the consideration of sex and women.  Obviously there is no room for conscience and ethics in considering poker machines, going to war, climate change, treatment of refugees etc. but if we’re talking about abortion or RU486 then, well, every parliamentarian has a story. And they share those stories with us, each and every one of them, in more detail than perhaps any of us want to know.

The Victorian government recently passed legislation to decriminalize abortion in Victoria.  It went to a conscience vote, and there was plenty to say- especially from ‘no’ voters like Liberal Bernie Finn, who spoke for nearly six hours, and DLP member Peter Kavenagh who managed three hours.  The newspaper columns were full of letters on both sides, dominated, I perceive (I wish I’d kept a running tally) by angry male voices.

I was delighted to read this report in yesterday’s Age by Paul Austin about Upper house Labor MP Evan Thornley’s contribution to the debate- an elegant, succinct, powerful, aposite ten-minute speech.

It is simple as it is obvious: if men took as much responsibility for contraception as women did, the number of unwanted pregnancies would drop like a stone…How much courage or responsibility does it take for a bloke to walk into this place and pronounce moral judgement on women in a situation that he will never find himself in?… Mr Finn, Mr Kavenagh and others have asked, ‘Where are the men in this picture?’. I ask the same thing….If you walk into this chamber wanting to take some responsibility and wanting to show even the tiniest amount of courage compared to that which women must face when they have an unwanted pregnancy, then when you walk out of here you should take the lead in convincing men to take their share of responsibility for contraception.  If you are serious about the unborn and if you are serious about reducing the numbers of abortions, then get out there with your videos and your horror stores, get out there with your moral righteousness and self-importance, and walk into the pubs and clubs, the footy clubs and the construction sites, the high school halls and the army barracks, and tell the blokes to take responsibility for contraception.

If you do that, you will save thousands of unborn children from abortion.  If you do not do that, all you can do is parade around here in cowards’ castle excoriating women for making a decision- that you will never, ever have to make- for whatever you perceive to be their moral shortcomings.  If that is all you do, that is basically gutless and it raks being nothing more than political grandstanding and campaigning for votes.

I am up for it- and I hope you are too, boys! It’s time for men to show some leadership, to show just a tiny fraction of the courage that women have to have every day when they contemplate how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.  It is time for men to take responsibility for contraception and contribute to a massive reduction in the number of abortions and the suffering involved to the unborn, their mothers and their families.

Good one, Evan.

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Alas poor debtor!

Posted on October 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

As part of my avowed intention to explore the experience of financial anxiety during the 1840s, my eye was attracted to this little morsel in the Port Phillip Herald of 10 May 1842:

SHARP PRACTICE. A rather novel mode of obtaining the payment of a debt from an insolvent, has just come under our notice.  A gentleman of our acquaintance, whose change of fortune from affluence to indigence occasioned him so much excitement as to materially effect his intellect, and to leave him at times in a state of perfect imbecility, was a few days since arrested by the Deputy Sheriff at the suit of a Sydney creditor.  Having found the necessary bail he was allowed to occupy a tenement within the Rules. He had not been many days in confinement before his spirits were so materially afflicted as to bring on the malady before alluded to, and under which, we regret to state, he still labours.  In this fit of nature he proceeded to the wharf, but in less than half an hour returned to his prison, thus stepping out of the limits laid down for his safe incarceration.  Having been seen outside the Rules, a party acting as agent for the Sydney creditor, forthwith instructed his solicitor to write to his bail, informing them that as the debtor had exceeded his limits he should hold them liable for the account of the debt and costs, which are very considerable.  Now, for the honor of the Province, we hope such a case will never be brought before a court of justice, for sharper practice we never, in the whole career of our colonial experience, heard of…. An application is about being made to the Judge to release the unfortunate man from confinement upon the score of insanity, and if his Honor has the power, who can doubt his will to extend such an act of mercy?

Well, I’m now mid-way through June 1842, and I haven’t seen any public applications of mercy to the Judge, but perhaps such things did not occur in open court.  I, at least, do wonder about his will to extend such an act of mercy.  Perhaps he’d decide that this was another case of dishonesty and dissembling that he had to “sift to the bottom”: but, then again, perhaps not.  It was exactly this unpredictability that made his courtroom even more anxious than it had to be.  Which Judge Willis would be sitting today?- merciful Willis? or avenger Willis?

A number of things to remark on here:

1. The Port Phillip Herald is being particularly kind in their reportage of this case.  Certainly, they have not held back at all when insolvents have absconded, or indulged in their own “sharp practice” to avoid their debts.  Perhaps the key lies in that this is a “gentleman of our acquaintance” rather than a speculator, embezzler or rascal, as they could have just have easily designated him.

2. This is one of the first references I have found to insanity caused by insolvency.  There are certainly references to insanity and suicide:indeed, the very next issue of the Port Phillip Herald referred to the putrid bodies washing up against the wharf at the end of Elizabeth Street. (I wonder if it was, in fact, this gentleman? I haven’t seen any further mention of him.) There are many coronial inquests into women, in particular, throwing themselves into the Yarra. I wonder what stories lie there.

3. Although there was a strong belief in “British justice”, legislation particularly prior to the 1850s varied between colonies and was not necessarily the same as in England.  This was true of the Insolvency Act in New South Wales, which differed from the English insolvency laws in many fundamental respects.  The legislation was drafted by Justice Burton in 1841and allowed all debtors to take advantage of bankruptcy provisions.  Instead of imprisonment, as under the English act, debtors’ assets were distributed to their creditors, allowing them to resume business quickly.  Unlike the English law, the legislation did not emphasize morality- possibly because it was drafted at a time when many otherwise ‘moral’ people were facing insolvency. Imprisonment for debt was abolished in NSW in 1843 (i.e. after this vignette), predating similar changes to the English law by 26 years.  Justice Willis, however, was critical of Burton’s legislation (perhaps because it was Burton’s legislation and not his own???) and preferred the English approach.

4.  The ‘rules’ were instituted by Justice Willis almost as soon as he arrived in Port Phillip, initially in response to the severe overcrowding in the very small jail.  Rather than being sentenced to jail, minor offenders, bail applicants and insolvents, could be ‘confined to the rules’, which took up quite a large area of the built-up area of central Melbourne.

Bear in mind that at this time, the major development was located mainly along the Collins Street and Elizabeth Street area, rather than eastward along Swanston Street which, although probably regarded as the main thoroughfare through Melbourne today, was almost bushland in the early 1840s.  Confinement to the rules was often not a particular hardship: many people who were declared insolvent actually lived in the area, although it appears that our belaboured gentleman didn’t as he had to rent a ‘tenement’ specially.

5. Finally, we have to trust to our own empathy and imagination to flesh out this little vignette.  We can imagine him standing on the river bank, watching the river swollen with winter rains, weighing up his options, torn between loyalties and honour, then turning away and walking along the unpaved streets back into the rules again.

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‘The High Price of Heaven’ by David Marr

Posted on October 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

1999, 287p.

This is a collection of David Marr’s Sydney Morning Herald essays from 1999, extended and revised into a collection that critiques fundamentalist Christianity and its attitudes towards sex, censorship, drugs and pleasure more generally.

It’s vintage Marr- witty, brittle, bitter and bombastic. He certainly doesn’t hold back at all on his dislike for John Howard, George Pell, Peter Jensen and the Sydney religious elite.

Of course, a book of “current” essays from 1999 becomes dated, and yet many things remain the same. Howard may be gone, but the religious influence is still with us- unchanged in the case of Jensen and Pell; dominant still with Rudd but somehow, I sense, taking a slightly different direction.  I haven’t read Marr’s latest book on the Hensen controversy, but I suspect that it takes up where this book left off.

So, I was interested in Juliette Hughes’ review of David Marr’s new book The Henson Case.  She writes, in an observation that is equally applicable to The High Price of Heaven:

Marr is as ever a pleasure to read even when you largely disagree with him about the subject, as I do. But it’s difficult when you disagree with much of the other side, too. The trouble is that most people are well meaning and the subject is incendiary. You’re either a pedophile voyeur or a prudish ignoramus; nothing in between…Marr’s fervid advocacy admits of no equivocation; this discussion begins mezzo-forte, crescendoing rapidly to fortissimo and stays there, attacking predictable targets, the dullard Christian right, the unspeakable Sydney shock jocks

Much of Juliette Hughes’ review resonated with my own uneasiness about the Henson controversy.  I was surprised that so many people so quickly adopted such clear-cut and definitive opinions.  Almost a year on, I’m still undecided- and think that I may remain this way- about the photographs, the dividing line between art and exploitation, and the contract (if any)  between the creator and the beholder.

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‘Crossing the River’ by Caryl Phillips

Posted on October 14, 2008 | 1 comment

1993, 237 p.

This is a very post-modern novel of the African diaspora, written by a West Indian author, raised in England. There are multiple narratives, bookended by an opening lament of a father forced to sell his children into slavery in Africa, and closed by a lament about diaspora and dispossession which ties together the four stories in between.

The four stories are those of the sold children, but untethered in time and place.  The first voice is that of a slave liberated by his master to move to Liberia, writing letters back to his master. The letters are unanswered, and he is unaware that his master is travelling to Liberia to meet him.  The narrative shifts between an epistolatory form, and the ‘straight’ narrative of the master’s journey from America to Liberia in search of his former slave.

The second voice is that of Martha, the second sold child, an old Negro woman, travelling for the West Coast in the post civil-war era.  She is abandoned because she is too old and slow.

The third voice comes through the journal of the slave trader, moored off the African coast for an inordinate amount of time while he collects more cargo. He reports on the deaths and escapes of his cargo as the boat waits in humid waters until there are sufficient bodies for the trip to be profitable.  The author captures the tone of the journal well, couched in the language of late 18th century piety and commercialism, and it is chilling in its banality at times.

Finally, the fourth story is a long one, taking up about one third of the book.  This voice belongs to Joyce, the white wife of a man arrested for black market activities during WWII who starts up a relationship with a black GI, who represents the third ‘sold’ child.  This section is told in very short (1-2 page) discontinuous entries; weaving back and forth over the war years.

So- the three sold children, but told at different jumps in the unfolding history and in different countries (Liberia, US, UK), and interwoven with the stories of the grief-striken African father, the slave-trader, and an omniscient narrator intoning rather academically on diaspora as a phenomenon.  I really wondered how the author was going to carry this off- how on earth was he going to draw all these disparate bits into a whole? But he did, deftly, cleverly and succinctly in the last few pages.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I feel deep admiration for the sheer virtuoisity and intent of the book, but I found myself rather distanced from the stories: it was almost as if the technical cleverness of the author’s intention and execution overshadowed the human aspects.  And yet, even as I write this, I wonder if this is what the author intended all along.

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An economic downturn 1840s style

Posted on October 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

What strange times we live in.  Each night, the news bulletin starts off with the financial report, extending over about ten minutes, then briefly the “other” news, then a return to the usual financial report, sport and weather.  Each morning I unwrap the paper and marvel at the increasing size of the headlines reporting on the latest falls on the Australian Stock Exchange, or Wall Street, or the FTSE,  or the Hang Seng.  How do I even know about such entities?  I think it’s probably indicative of the recent financial bubble that we’ve all been caught up in over the past 10 years,  that even before this crisis, every news bulletin has  the financial report as a staple item each night- I really don’t particularly remember it having such prominence, say, twenty years ago.  Ah, but we’re all investors now-unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly through our compulsory superannuation, and cajoled to “unlock the equity in your home” by drawing back on our mortgages to spend on the sharemarket.

And of course, it’s all on such a global scale.  There’s no shutdown period at all on a sharemarket somewhere- Australia wakes up and looks at what America has done overnight, responds by a rise or a fall on the ASX, the day moves on, that night the UK market responds, the US market responds to that, and it all goes around again.  There’s no sigh of relief of “thank God that’s finished”- although at least the weekend allows a global breather, until the whole merry-go-round starts again on Monday.

Our whole system is predicated on credit in a way that is largely unconscious and invisible to us.  With just-in-time manufacturing, there are no storehouses any more of goods waiting to be sold- instead the credit system balloons forward to buy in a consignment as it is needed right now, retracts when it’s sold only to balloon out again to replenish the shelves next week.  We’re bombarded with “buy now, no deposit!!” advertising; we’re asked as a matter of course for every transaction with a swipe card “will that be on credit?”

And so, conscious of all this, I’ve been thinking about the recession (depression?) in the early 1840s in Port Phillip, and the way it impinged on the worldview of people there at the time.  I surmise that, like me, their understanding at the time was incomplete:no doubt more so, given the four-month delay in any information from Britain compared to our instantaneous communications now, and the dependent state of a colonial economy within the Empire as a whole. What they understood of the financial situation was filtered through the newspapers, gossip, and lived economy of their own experience.

Contemplation of this- and I’m doing quite a bit of reading on this which I shall, dear reader, share with you- is not completely irrelevant to my Judge Willis thesis work.  As sole Resident Judge, he heard all of the civil cases that came to the Supreme Court; he oversaw (but was not directly involved in) the Insolvency Court, and his own propensity to “sift to the bottom of things” characterized his approach to the bankruptcy cases that crossed his bench.  I feel sure that the general ‘anxiety’ and ‘excitement’ of Port Phillip reflected both the economic and political currents of the day, and directly fed into his dismissal.

So how did the Port Phillip communications of the day portray the financial crisis?  Newspapers had always carried a column showing the price of goods on the local market -wheat,  bread, spirits, sperm candles, parsnips etc. (The parsnips have particularly taken my attention because at my local supermarket they have been $5.95 per kilo for the last few months.  For bloody parsnips!!!!! Fine words may butter no parsnips, but obviously $5.95 a kilo will!)  The shipping reports were often followed by correspondence from the wool agents in London, reporting on the wool sales- generally chiding the Australian suppliers for lack of quality, and sighing at the dearth of buyers.

Much of a four-page Port Phillip newspaper of the 1840s was devoted to Court reports, and as the judicial system expanded in Port Phillip, so did the scope for court reporting- the Supreme Court, the Insolvency Court, the Police Bench, Quarter Sessions, the Court of Requests.  The tales of drunkenness and violence that ran through these courts were increasingly supplemented by stories of insolvency, defections from debt, unemployed immigrants, forced sales etc. as we move from 1841 into 1842.

And increasingly as we move from late 1841 into 1842 there are also  the required advertisements of bankruptcy posted in the newspaper, notifying of the first, second or third creditors’ meeting of one bankrupt after another.  By April 1842 (which is where I’m up to at the moment), the Port Phillip Herald regularly published a table of insolvent debtors, their assets and liabilities, and the dates of their scheduled meetings with creditors.  Real estate advertisements spruiked  “we’re at the bottom of the market- so buy now!!” . Occasionally there would be a high-profile insolvency case that demonized a particular individual, surely read  and gossiped about with a sense of schadenfreude by the subscribers to the newspaper.

And all of this occurred within the bullishness and heightened expectations of people who thought they were coming to “Australia Felix” to make their fortunes!

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, Current events, Judge Willis, Life in Melbourne, Port Phillip history

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‘The Great Game’ by Peter Hopkirk

Posted on October 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

1990, 524 p

The Great Game commences with an execution- that of Capt Charles Stoddart and Capt Arthur Conolly by the Emir Nasrulla Khan in Bokhara in 1842.  Ironically enough, it was Capt Conolly who coined the term “The Great Game” , later adopted by Rudyard Kipling, to describe the political, military and strategic manoevres in Central Asia. There are many such vignettes in this book of crazy-brave  explorers and adventurers, both Russian and British, who surveyed and fought over the remote but strategically crucial area of the ‘stans’ that separated Russia from India.

Although the book covers the nineteenth century, the book has a cyclical feel as one set of adventurers takes up the baton from the previous ones, and borders move northward then southward only to move northward yet again.  Taken from the long view, it is clear that the political parties in Britain had consistently different foreign policy approaches: the Tories were always Russo-phobic and more inclined to opt for a military solution while the Liberals or Whigs feared overstretch and preferred to work through treaties.  Likewise, there was an ongoing tussle between the military and the politicians for control of the agenda, in both Britain and Russia. Neither approach yielded a permanent solution or outright victor.

Hopkirk’s use of vignettes helps to tether our attention and emotional response on particular men and events in what is a relentless succession of campaigns.  His book is engagingly written, although I found his cliff-hanger questions at the end of each chapter rather tedious after a while.  Although he commenced the book being fairly evenhanded, by the end of the book the Russians were more clearly identified as “the enemy”, and he increasingly resorted to that dead, pompous military citation language that is used to describe “our” heroes.

There were only three maps, but I found them indispensable and far more exhaustive than I would have imagined- almost without fail I could locate the positions he was describing.  I would have appreciated a 20th/21st century map superimposed over the 19th century one- although such a map would run the danger of being outdated, I suppose, as different countries assert their independence, as recent events in Georgia have shown.

I am left with the overwhelming impression that this is one wild place that is largely impervious to the designs that ‘great powers’ might have on it.  I think I’m with the UK envoy to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles (surely a name truly fitting for a Great Game player!) : this is a no-win situation.

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‘The Secret Scripture’ by Sebastian Barry

Posted on October 2, 2008 | 3 comments

2008, 300p.

I really don’t like my chances of reading the Booker Prize shortlist before it is announced on 14 October, especially as this is the only one I have read!  I always try to read the Miles Franklin shortlist of Australian literature, and usually finish the night before it is announced! But the Booker is usually beyond me.

But I was excited about reading The Secret Scripture when I realised that it was written by Sebastian Barry. I read A Long, Long Way last year, and along with The Book Thief, these are the two books that have had me audibly sobbing whilst reading.

As with A Long, Long Way, this book is set in Ireland and takes for its main characters people, events and perspectives that are often overlooked.  Indeed, the main character of The Secret Scripture, Roseanne McNulty- or is it Roseanne Clear?- has certainly been overlooked.  She has been incarcerated in an asylum for about sixty years, and it is only at the age of 100, as the asylum is being deinstitutionalized, that questions are again raised about why exactly she came to be placed there, and by whom.   The story is told in alternating voices- Roseanne’s own testimony surreptitiously written on scrap paper and hidden under a floorboard, and that of Dr Grene, her recently-bereaved psychiatrist who has to decide on the appropriate placement for her when the asylum is closed.

Roseanne has truly been a victim of Ireland’s ‘big’ history in her own little life: all the distrust and hatred of religion and politics comes right into her most intimate and precious relationships.  She is a passive victim- perhaps to stop resisting is the ultimate defeat. Tragic things have happened to her,  often not of her own making, and yet there is a simplicity that shines through her. Or is there?  The major theme of this book is history- its evasions, its slipperiness and its unreliability.  And Dr Grene himself, who at first seems to be the anchoring ‘truth’ in the narrative becomes increasingly suspect as a narrator.  You find yourself wondering if either of these narratives- Roseanne’s and Dr Grene’s – can be trusted.

Barry has written about these characters, and their situations before.  Eneas McNulty had already appeared in his The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and was an officer in Thomas Dunne’s policeforce.  Dunne was a main character in Barry’s play The Steward of Christendom, and his son Willie appeared in A Long Long Way, and Willie’s sister appears in Annie Dunne.  So while each book is self contained as a narrative, there are allusions and resonances in Barry’s other work as well.  Of course, Barry is not the only author to construct an interconnected web of characters like this- Tim Winton does it too- and there’s a frisson of recognition when you make the connection.

In this case, Barry takes his characters from his own family tree.  He’s not the only writer to do that either-  Kate Grenville seems to be devoting herself to it  (her new book The Lieutenant pairs up with her earlier The Secret River) , and Peter Behrens (whose Law of Dreams I reviewed earlier)  also based his story on an ancestor.  On one level I can understand the attraction of recovering and making your own family members come alive again through your writing.  I guess that it’s a form of self-reflection, wondering whether certain characteristics have come through to you.  And there’s also the element of identification and indebtedness: that I am who I am because of them.  But all this seems very “me” oriented.  I think about the ‘celebrities’ on the increasing formulaic Who Do You Think You Are? wide-eyed with  wonder at their forebears’ lot and determined to squeeze every possible supposition out of the flimsiest of evidence- and culminating, always always always with trembling chins and tears at the injustice and hardness of other people’s lives. Ah, but they are OUR other people’s lives- hence our empathy and imagination wells up for them, when it has laid dormant for any other of the millions of other people who trod the same paths.

Not just characters- Barry also revisits his earlier work in his narrative voice too. The scene that affected me so much in A Long, Long Way was where the young boy stood up and sang Ave Maria- I don’t have the book here, but it was beautifully written with a sob of pain in each sentence.  Beautiful, beautiful writing.  And then, in The Secret Scripture, I found another lamentation which evoked the keening of his earlier work as well:

…that he hanged himself.  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh, oh, oh, oh.  Do you know the grief of it? I hope not.  The grief that does not age, that does not go away with time, like most griefs and human matters.  That is the grief that is always there, swinging a little in a derelict house…..

But I have a little lamentation of my own- the ending.  Barry has unsettled us throughout the book over issues of truth and secrecy, and yet has tied up all the ends neatly and plonked it on our laps as a finished product.

So I have mixed feelings about the book.  The writing was beautiful; Roseanne was a haunting, tragic character; it is a very sad, sad book.  The ambiguity of truth, invention and forgetting keeps you wary and watchful as a reader.  But oh- the ending- (oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh….).

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