The bag

I cannot now recall how I came into possession of an empty British diplomatic bag, but I fancy Charlie Curwen gave it to me more than twenty years ago. I must remember to ask him. It is a fine buff calico model, with four pairs of brass eyelets along the top for ease of fastening with a lead seal; the faded impresa HBM—Her Brittanic Majesty’s—DIPLOMATIC SERVICE, and the number 2 floating up at the top left-hand corner. Perhaps this indicates some second-class designation as might befit documents destined for a colonial outpost, but why then resort to the diplomatic pouch in the first place? Though scuffed in places—the evidence of rough handling at Cairo, Addis Ababa, or the Porte, or else a leaky corner of the freight depot at Croydon—the bag is perfectly intact and could easily resume service, such is the quality of the stitching—indestructible. Until I discover a secure method of restoring it to the Foreign Office, I shall continue to use my diplomatic bag for loose change, of which there is a surfeit in the United States. It is also a much cherished reminder that communications between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall and Government House, Melbourne, must once have been conducted through diplomatic channels, just as, even in 1986, my own late and much lamented Governor, Dr. J. Davis McCaughey, A.C., was appointed by letters patent from the Queen that were counter-signed by Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Secretary, a fact that would surprise most Australians. That my bag ended its last journey at Government House, Melbourne, suggests that the return communiqué was entrusted to more conventional post or telecommunications. I recall reading somewhere years ago that between the wars the diplomatic pouch was used by some officials to bypass H.M. customs and excise, and that a traffic in gowns and accessories from Paris couturiers, upon which duty was otherwise payable, provided much of the padding that surrounded official communications to the Foreign Office. I cannot imagine that this was true for more than a few second secretaries struggling with a flock of daughters, and therefore I suspect this was a figment of the imagination of Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford, yet I suppose there existed the possibility of abuse. However, you would need to be confident that the bag would end up in the right hands, and that one’s motives for shuttling from a British legation to the Foreign Office pale pink tulle, the finest-quality lace smalls (hand-stitched by French nuns), or elegant high-heeled shoes were sufficiently innocuous, although I suppose there could be in this a rich seam of comedy.

Tennis?

I suspect I am becoming a fully paid-up, card-carrying bore, but sometimes I feel I could write an entire book about a single image—actually some people regularly do just that. In this case, there are for me personal as well as professional resonances.

The subject of this exquisite photograph is the break for tea during a summer tennis party at Government House in Melbourne. The photographer was the Honourable Victor Albert Nelson Hood (1862−1929), the sixth and youngest son of Lord and Lady Bridport.

Hood lived in Australia for twenty years, serving as private secretary to successive governors of South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, and New South Wales. He was in 1911 briefly Chamberlain to the Earl of Dudley, although it was not during that brief period that he took this photograph. Hood pursued the expensive and time-consuming hobby of photography, and his splendid albums, which are today in the collection of the State Library of Victoria, provide a unique porthole into the comfortable world of the ruling élite of an especially far-flung outpost of the British Empire during the Edwardian period.

Wherever he went, Victor Nelson Hood took his camera and tripod: to weekend house-parties at Mount Macedon, Mount Barker, and the Western District; on hunting or shooting parties and yachting days; on fishing and camping expeditions; his travels to New Guinea, and New Zealand; the voyages to and from Britain, and side-trips to his family estate, the Castello di Maniace at Bronte in Sicily.

More often, however, Hood simply recorded with the panoramic wide-angled apparatus (to which he was evidently addicted) aspects of daily life at the various Government Houses in which he served.

The dramatis personae here are (from left to right) Captain Haskett-Smith, aide-de-camp to the Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson (1914 to 1920); Major Beauchamp Kerr-Pearse, Munro-Ferguson's Private Secretary (October 1915 to February 1916, and thereafter Military Secretary); Mr. Bickersteth; Doris, the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Downes of the Australian Army Medical Corps; Lieutenant-Colonel H. W. Dangar, Acting Chief of Ordnance; Lady Doris Gwendoline Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the eldest of the three daughters of the second Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, and Miss Eve Robertson. The cast of characters narrows down the date, somewhat soberingly, to no earlier than October 1915, and no later than the end of the Great War.

The door at the far end of the verandah leads to a small ante-room which adjoined the Governor’s study, as it still does. Captain Haskett-Smith seems to be holding his own camera, and leans against the window-sill of a charming small sitting-room which, eighty years later, Naomi Miller and I used as an office when together we worked as aides to Davis McCaughey, certainly the most beautiful, tranquil, and comfortable I shall ever occupy. It was my first job after I left college.

As for the war-time unrealities of the gorgeous tea table; details of costume—tennis attire, white shoes, and flannel trousers; the refreshing jugs of lemonade on the wicker stand at the top of the steps to the right, and the general atmosphere of good-humored languor—look at plump Lady Doris by the folding screen!—there is indeed much to be said, as there is about the folding screen itself, that indispensable item of Victorian and Edwardian furniture which vanished almost as suddenly as servants did. While the folding screen enjoyed a brief respite due to the contrivances of early cinema, evidently it was doomed: A good proportion of the land-fill of large mid-twentieth-century cities must consist mostly of folding screens.

Vale Eartha

Before Christmas, Martha “Sunny” Sharp Crawford von Auersperg von Bülow, so named for her bright disposition, died in her suite at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home on York Avenue at 72 Street, after twenty-seven years, eleven months, fifteen days, and an undocumented number of minutes in which she was marooned in “a persistent vegetative state.”

Last Monday, whilst carrying out an errand for my brother at Sotheby’s, the nice woman at the front desk in jewelry, who has an unobstructed view of the Mary Manning Walsh Home directly opposite, told me that Sunny von Bülow occupied the whole of the two top floors. I am not sure how she came by this information, but in New York the allocation of that much space surely represents an unusually awesome weekly outlay.

“Do you think he did it?” asked the woman at Sotheby’s, with a look.

No sooner had I successfully navigated in respect of Sunny the five stages of the grieving process per Elisabeth Kübler-Ross than news of the death from cancer on Christmas Day of Eartha Kitt appeared in the New York Times.

For Sunny, I knocked over denial, anger, bargaining, and depression in a record number of shopping days, arriving at acceptance, and achieving closure, over cocktails a week last Saturday. With Eartha the process will not, I think, be so straightforward.

Miss Kitt was a star, a great big star, shining gamely in the firmament of the greatest and brightest of all stars of stage, screen, and cabaret.

She was 81, had worked non-stop for more than 60 years, spoke four languages fluently, and until recently was regularly playing the intimate Café Carlyle, at 35 East 76th Street and Madison.

How I wish, wish, wish I had made a better effort to see her there.

Soon after I went to work at Government House, Melbourne, in the hot, late summer of 1988, I made a cold call to the old Southern Cross Hotel, somehow guessing correctly that this would be where Miss Kitt was staying during her brief return visit to Melbourne.

Amazingly, the telephonist put me straight through, and at length Miss Kitt picked up the phone, and, after an exquisitely timed pause, she acknowledged me with a superb, gravelly “Hello?”

Demonstrating the audacity of a young, dangerously inexperienced, still “closeted,” yet even by then fully paid-up, card-carrying, foppish queenlet, aged twenty-three, with distinctly star-fucking tendencies, I explained as brightly as possible who I was, and without hesitation invited Miss Kitt to join me for cocktails at Government House, if she had a spare moment, there being very little else going on, because Dr. and Mrs. McCaughey were still away, spending the tail end of their summer holidays at Walkerville, near Wilson’s Promontory.

To my stupefaction, which deepens with the passage of each subsequent year, and with rare charm, Miss Kitt actually accepted my invitation.

At the appointed hour, unexpectedly accompanied by that self-appointed bard of Brunswick Street, the “poet” and awful old fishwife Adrian Rawlins, Miss Kitt strolled languorously up the gravel drive of Government House, and, together with Tom Hazell, A.O., sometime Deputy Official Secretary to the Governor, who, for reasons that are still unfathomable, not merely coöperated with, but aided and abetted this odd scheme, I met Miss Kitt at the State Entrance, and took her on a guided tour.

The ballroom at Government House is truly impressive, the most Neronian gesture in a great house which, since the 1870s, has trumpeted the colossal wealth and even greater pride of colonial Victoria. Its very raison d’être was to enable Melburnians to claim ad nauseam, and to anyone who may care to listen, that this ballroom is longer, broader, higher, and more magnificently decorated than the one in Buckingham Palace.

I do wonder if that is true; certainly, however, they run neck and neck.

At one end is this canopy and dais on which stands the governor’s gilded chair, sporting the gubernatorial badge of office, the Crown of St. Edward.

Without hesitation, and with perfect bearing, gait, insouciance, and, at the same time, total authority, Miss Kitt glided up the steps, sank into the chair, and, leaning comfortably to one side, crossed her legs, and continued our easy conversation from that position, only relinquishing it after a lengthy stay, when she was quite ready.

Afterwards we retired to the Governor’s small private drawing-room for a gin-and-tonic.

At the end of her hour-and-a-half visit, when the time came to say goodbye, Miss Kitt kissed me on both cheeks, and told me to be sure and come and find her. If she wasn’t at home in Connecticut, she’d be in New York, or else at her house in Jamaica. Why I never took up this kind invitation I cannot say, because I am absolutely sure it was genuine.

Not long afterwards, Lawrence Money, an old hack on the Herald, who had, and, for all I know, still has, a nose for bits of relatively harmless gossip, presumably in this instance proffered by Adrian Rawlins, rang me in the office, and asked point blank if it was true that I had upon my own responsibility entertained to drinks at Government House the great cabaret star Eartha Kitt.

This was my first, and hitherto entirely untutored experience of dealing with any sort of inquiry from a representative of the media, so, inevitably, I suppose, the entire transcript of my desperate, panic-stricken, and cringe-making telephone conversation was printed in Lawrence’s column, of which the most ridiculously evasive locution, as futile as it was mendacious, was “I don’t understand the level of your inquiry.”

To their credit neither Davis McCaughey nor Charlie Curwen ever mentioned this awful indiscretion, even though I am sure they laughed and laughed about it. By contrast, a few good old friends, led by the estimable David J. O’Callaghan, Q.C., rarely fail to mention, indeed deploy it.

Last Friday’s obituary, and the extended appreciation by Allan Kozinn on the front page of the Arts Section in Saturday’s New York Times, brought home the full measure of genuine hardship Eartha Mae Keith endured throughout her remarkable life, commencing at the moment of her conception by rape in Orangeburg County, South Carolina.

Miss Kitt should never have been subjected to the abuse of their powers by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., who, under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, wasted much public money by trying to gather into the relevant files grossly stupid tittle-tattle, in a sinister, surprisingly effective, but fortunately short-lived effort to destroy her career; long enough, however, to do Miss Kitt much damage.

This cowardly whispering campaign was mounted because, whilst visiting the White House, Eartha Kitt made the mistake of telling Lady Bird Johnson exactly what she thought of the Vietnam War, and evidently the President thought it worth taking some action, however inappropriate, and, incidentally, illegal.

A few days ago in Starbuck’s I ran into my friend Stan Fivekiller, a Yale alumnus, veteran Whiffenpoof, and fellow homosexualist. At length we chatted ruefully about Eartha.

In an amusing exchange of anecdotes—after all, it’s not, or oughtn’t to be, a competition—it turns out that Stan once lunched with Eartha Kitt, at the old Les Halles at 411 Park Avenue South, between 28th and 29th Streets—still going strong. Stan’s lunch date was arranged by a mutual friend who designed and maintained Miss Kitt’s wigs when she played the Wicked Witch of the West in the New Century Opera Company’s 1998 touring revival of The Wizard of Oz.

After lunch, which was healthy and abstemious, Miss Kitt, who was 71 or 72, put on her trainers, set off north along Park Avenue, and power-walked, alone, all the way up to the Carlyle, a distance of forty-seven blocks.

There never was, and there never will be another star like her. Zikhronah livrakha זיכרונה לברכה May her memory be for blessing.

The Vice-Regal Carriage

Country tours were a lot of fun. At that time, around 1988, the Governor of Victoria had at his disposal two vice-regal carriages which could be hitched to any regular train, and shunted into a convenient siding wherever we needed to stay at our destination in country Victoria.

A miniature Government House on wheels, the vice-regal train provided a familiar, comfortable, and relatively private “home base,” together with a loyal supplementary staff of V-Line employees who joined the vice-regal party and made sure the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey were looked after properly – a cook, an aged conductor cum steward of great gentleness and good humor, and I think there were other people as well.

Here I am, smug as can be, an insufferable youth, making myself at home in the saloon.

The train gave the Governor the advantage of not needing to make invidious choices of hotel or motel accommodation in local communities where one business or another might end up feeling slighted. No doubt such scruples strike many today as entirely irrelevant, but they were not then.

In some respects the journey to Mildura, Dimboola, Hamilton, Alexandra, Sale, or Ouyen, was only as long as the drive from Government House to Spencer Street.

Both crown cars would drive us onto the platform, the vice-regal standard fluttering cheerfully on the bonnet, and – to the stupefaction of ordinary commuters with bikes, bags, and parcels – we simply boarded the train. Whereupon we unpacked, settled into the saloon, consulted our briefing documents, opened the newspaper – that was when people still read daily newspapers – and trundled with the rest of the train out of Spencer Street.

Meanwhile, as soon as we departed, Patrick Famularo and Jimmy Hermence, the drivers, would drive the crown cars on to the final destination, ready to hook up with us later in the day or early the next morning, to commence the country visit programme.

The vice-regal carriage proper consisted of two large adjoining cabins for the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey, each with an en suite bathroom, two small cabins with compact facilities for staff (us), and a comfortable saloon which doubled as a sitting and dining-room, as well as a small galley in which the gritty V-Line cook wove a mysterious, if at times slightly ponderous, culinary web.

As time passed, I started keeping certain clothes and other things in “my room” on the train, because we used it so frequently. It was perfect.

The carriage was actually built prior to a projected state visit to Australia in 1948 by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) which never eventuated because of the King’s declining health, and was for many years used occasionally by The Queen, and in-between times by successive governors of Victoria.

By the 1980s, the railway authorities were occasionally leasing it to rock bands for their tours of country Victoria, with unfortunate consequences. It was wonderful – all fittings intact, down to the cabinetry, china, cutlery, even the Victoria Railways linen, and customized Royal Doulton potties. It was retired some time in the 1990s, though hopefully not demolished.

The second car was much older, and a relic of a far less glamorous by-gone era, not at all comfortable, in fact at top speed one had the impression that it might easily disintegrate.

On one occasion I remember being invited to ride with the driver between Stawell and Ararat, an unnerving experience because he spent most of it gleefully describing in great detail what happens when at top speed an engine collides with stray livestock.

Occasionally, in their wisdom V-Line shunted us into deeply unglamorous sidings, such as, believe it or not, the Geelong Tip, a.k.a. Siding Breakwater Road, Geelong Racecourse, in March, 1988, when the Governor’s wonderful widowed sister Mrs. Mary Park, her traveling companion Dr. Margaret Haire, and Charles Curwen were all with us.

All things considered, the system worked extremely well.

Cocky McGrath

In the late 1980s, the oldest resident of the cottage at Government House was a Major Mitchell cockatoo called “Cocky McGrath,” whose death from natural causes in 1994 was genuinely mourned by the Queen and the Royal Household, especially by Cocky’s kinsman Brian (now Sir Brian) McGrath, who was at that time the Duke of Edinburgh’s private secretary, and is now an extra equerry.

News of Cocky’s demise reached the R.Y. Britannia in Jamaican waters.

Cocky could speak – “Marg-aret,” among other memorable words and phrases – although by that time nobody remembered who taught him, or why.

The cottage, actually a fairly substantial, rambling weatherboard house in the grounds, was originally built during World War I, or shortly afterwards, as an official residence for the military secretary to the governor-general.

Edward Kenelm Digby, 11th Baron Digby, K.G., D.S.O., M.C., (1894–1964), who occupied that position from 1920 to 1923, brought Lady Digby and their infant son and daughter to live in the cottage. The Hon. Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, their eldest daughter, had vivid childhood recollections of having lived there, aged three, and shared these with Charlie Curwen when, in 1978, she returned to Melbourne with her ancient third husband, Ambassador W. Averell Harriman (Yale College class of 1913) – inter alia a Bonesman, sometime secretary of commerce in the Truman administration, ambassador to the Soviet Union, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, and governor of New York – to represent the United States Congress at the funeral of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Menzies, K.T., C.H., F.R.S., Q.C.

During World War II, when the King’s younger brother, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was governor-general, for some reason it was thought safer for the Duchess, their infant sons, the Princes William and Richard of Gloucester (the present duke), and their household to live on the grounds of Government House in Melbourne than at Yarralumla. As unlikely as this now might seem, Japanese bombing of the federal capital was either expected or seriously feared, and the ground floor of the cottage was extended to accommodate them.

As a much younger bird Cocky McGrath witnessed all these developments but, as a longstanding member of successive vice-regal households, he was ever the soul of discretion.

A Day at Government House

I went to work for Davis McCaughey as one of the two aides at Government House, Melbourne, in December 1987, when I was twenty-three. I had just returned from a happy year spent in Rome working for two extremely worldly Dutch nuns. I was an aspiring aesthete: self-confident, excessively opinionated, inclined to be garrulous, smug, wholly lacking in shyness (so I thought), and extremely wet behind the ears. To some extent one spends the rest of one’s life recuperating from the illness of youth, and if today I were to come face to face with that tall, rake-thin, occasionally well but more often flamboyantly dressed boy, standing in the Vestibule of Government House, I am not sure I would necessarily warm to him, even though his handshake was strong, he spoke acceptable Italian and a little Melbourne Grammar French, and before too long, thanks to the example of Charles Curwen and Loris Callander, he knew how to administer conversational first aid. I stayed for a little over three years, until early 1991. It was a life-changing experience. At that time, the aides still lived in Government House. Each of us had a large bedroom on the top floor, upstairs from the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey’s apartment and directly above state visitors’ suites and other guest rooms. We shared a dubious sort of kitchenette elsewhere on the same floor, and a comfortable sitting room overlooking what was once the kitchen garden, and the swarms of bats flapping eerily over the Royal Botanic Gardens farther down the hill. Our bedrooms looked in the other direction, across the immense front lawn, towards the lights and towers of the city. My bathroom was at the end of a long corridor, adjacent to a forbidding portrait of Field-Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, G.B.E., K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., E.D. We parked our cars in the mews, near the huge, semi-detached laundry, and we generally came and went either through a kind of cellar which was where Alison the florist had her unconventional studio, or at times through the state entrance. There was a creaking old elevator tucked behind the billiard room that took you all the way up past the kitchen and pantry to the top floor. Our quarters didn’t really have the flavor of an apartment. It was more like a relatively unpopulated wing of a great house. When a state visit was in full swing and all available bedrooms were occupied, the quieter corners of the house sprang to life and functioned in every respect as one might imagine a large royal establishment did in the nineteenth century. Maids dashed to and fro. Handsome, semi-naked equerries strode along corridors, with valets trotting along behind cradling their freshly pressed uniforms. An ordinary day – to the extent that there ever was one – was always busy. Thanks to the generosity of the Governor, the household staff – the official secretary, his deputy, and both aides – had breakfast together and read the papers at the round table in the Small Private Dining Room. Every “reign” is different, but it is important to grasp that we, the beneficiaries of this arrangement, by no means took it for granted. It gave us a chance to talk over the events of yesterday, and what was coming up today. The Governor and Mrs. McCaughey had breakfast upstairs in their apartment. This daily meeting was always a lot of fun, and anyone in the entourage of a state visitor was also made welcome, especially the Queen’s private secretary Sir William Heseltine, a West Australian, and his deputy Robert (now Lord) Fellowes but occasionally other visitors as well. Lord Zouche (the 18th Baron Zouche of Haryngworth, sometime aide-de-camp to the Governor of Tasmania) was a regular, as was Ambassador Joris Vos of the Netherlands. On one occasion I remember President Cossiga of Italy and his entire staff joined Charles and the rest of us for breakfast, but I cannot now remember why. Occasionally, also, delegations visiting from China were likewise made welcome to breakfast, including Li Peng. On any given day one of the aides was “on duty,” which meant being in attendance upon the Governor, while the other was in theory making arrangements or preparing for future events. After breakfast, at around nine o’clock the Governor came downstairs to his study and almost invariably Charles joined him for at least fifteen minutes, sometimes a lot longer. I know that that time was especially important to Davis and Charles, and in due course from Charles I learned the valuable lesson that when, in the role of private secretary, you transact any pressing business with your boss it is essential to try and restrict that business to the one or two most important or pressing matters, never too many. Loris, whose office adjoined the Governor’s, would go in after Charles left, and take dictation in her elegant, expert shorthand, or deal with more routine correspondence and matters arising. If there were callers – both the incoming and outgoing presidents of the board of management of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, for example; a new High Court judge; the Moderator of some branch of the Presbyterian Church; presiding officers of learned or charitable or professional bodies, accompanied by their chief executive – these would begin to arrive at around 10 o’clock. The front gate would press a button, we would hear a bell, and the duty aide would meet them at the Private Entrance, ask them to come in and wait for a moment, check to see if the Governor was ready to receive them, then take them through and make the formal introduction, if that were necessary. The form of words was “Your Excellency, may I present…” Obviously the more important the visitors – above all the premier – the more likely it was that we would we check with the Governor before we met them at the front door, so that we could take them straight through without keeping them waiting. At around 10.30 the Governor liked as many of the household, office, and domestic staff as were available to join him and Mrs. McCaughey, and any callers who happened to collide with this happy ritual, for morning tea in the private hall, at the foot of the staircase. This was a custom that Davis imported from Ormond College, and it was characteristically generous. In a previous era the hall table had posed certain logistical difficulties, as for example during a long forgotten cup week house party when the wife of a governor visiting from another state famously issued the following, grand instruction to the then duty aide shortly before her host, Sir Rohan Delacombe, descended the stairs: “Young man, please move that table. I wish to curtsey to His Excellency.” On ordinary days when the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey were not entertaining anyone, the duty aide (often both aides) joined them for lunch and dinner. It is those occasions that I look back on with the greatest pleasure and gratitude because the often hilarious conversations we had furnished me with a kind of second education. We talked about novels and philosophy and the theology of grace and medical ethics and history and croquet and Ireland and geography and water policy and indulged at times in analytical discussion relating to whichever state visit had taken place most recently – never gossip in the conventional sense, and nothing of real moment that will ever pass beyond that room. There was much laughter. I suppose the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey enjoyed the company of two young people, but I cannot help feeling that we benefited from those occasions far more than they did! Every Tuesday the Governor went to preside at a meeting of the Executive Council in his office in the Old Treasury Building in Spring Street. But there were often extra meetings of the Executive Council in between when the clerk and a quorum of (I think) two ministers came to Government House on whatever urgent business it might be. They, too, went straight into the Governor’s study without being asked to wait. And they could happen really at any time, even late in the evening and on weekends, if the government business was sufficiently urgent. It is this aspect of the constitutional machinery of Australian parliamentary and executive government that few people, if any, fully appreciate. Without the governor-general’s, governors’ or territorial administrators’ signature, many executive decisions of state and federal government, some of them actually quite trivial but nevertheless specified in the relevant constitution cannot take effect. Frequently one read about something in the next day’s newspapers and realized after a few moments that whatever it was had actually occurred as a direct result of the previous morning’s meeting of the Executive Council. It is a massive indictment of the quality of Australian journalism that this was rarely acknowledged. By contrast, in America rarely is the signing of a significant document in the Governor’s mansion in Hartford, Connecticut, or Frankfort, Kentucky, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or Albany, New York, as the case may be, not noted in the (usually excellent) local newspaper as a matter of public record, and its implications suitably editorialized. True, the difference is in the nature of the executive branches of government in the United States, but that contrast exemplifies one of the strengths of the American system, and a corresponding weakness in ours. Late Afternoon Parties (L.A.P.s) – acronyms loomed large at Government House: H.E.’s (His Excellency’s) correspondence was generally marked M.R.U. (Much Regret Unable) or A.W.P. (Accept With Pleasure) – L.A.P.s took place in the State Drawing Room, but usually one or two key guests were asked to come to the Private Entrance to meet the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey beforehand, and they would cross over to the state apartments in tandem once all the other guests had arrived through the state entrance. On those occasions the Governor’s honorary aides-de-camp Warwick Teasdale (Navy), David Presgrave (Army), and Richard Bluck (RAAF) and their wives would be in attendance also, and, with the rest of the household staff, helped the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey to entertain their guests. Afterwards they and we would all go back to the private side of the house for a drink before dinner. Again, this was an entirely characteristic gesture of personal generosity on the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey’s part. The honorary aides wore full military uniform with dazzling aiguelettes looped over their shoulder, a distinction arising from their vice-regal appointment, and although it is perhaps too easy to see them in a Ruritanian light, as individuals they were the kindest and good-humored of men – eager and willing to help the duty aides in various ways. On huge occasions we simply could not have done without them. And it is true that for optimum crowd control there is nothing as effective as an impressive military uniform. When no formal gathering was taking place at Government House, the Governor, Mrs. McCaughey and both aides and naturally any houseguests would gather for a drink at around 7.00 o’clock in the Small Private Drawing Room. When the butler, Mr. Young, or the duty footman announced dinner we would go through to the Private Dining Room (accompanied by Sandy the dog). usually we stayed on after dinner for a little while and had coffee with the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey before excusing ourselves and saying goodnight at around 9.00 o’clock, sometimes a little later if our conversation led in that direction. It frequently did. It was largely a by-product of the celebration of the Bicentenary of European settlement of Australia that in 1988 the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey hosted a far greater number of state and other visits to Government House than usual. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who had visited Melbourne only a very short time after Davis took office in 1986; the Prince and Princess of Wales; the Duchesses of York and Kent; Prince Michael of Kent; Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Prince Claus; Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Prince Henrik, and the young Crown Prince Frederik; the Presidents of Israel, Greece, Italy, Nauru and Vanuatu, among other countries; Prince (now King) Albert of the Belgians; Prince Albert of Monaco (then heir, now reigning); Princess Benedikte of Denmark; Special Envoy, formerly Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger; Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria; the Taoisach of the Dàil; Countess Clementine Schenck von Stauffenberg (whose father-in-law was executed by Hitler following the assassination plot in 1944); the Knight of Glyn and Lady Desmond FitzGerald; the Duke and Duchess of Argyll; the Earl and Countess of Harewood (regulars, because of his artistic directorship of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and the fact that in due course they became good friends of Davis and Jean); Li Peng of China; the Governor of Aichi Prefecture in Japan; a slightly dubious party from the yet to be transformed Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, including an over-sexed director-general of the Azerbaijan State Refigerator Factory; Lord and Lady Adrian (Master of Pembroke College); the Governors-General of Bermuda and New Zealand; the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta, as well as both governors-general (Sir Ninian and Lady Stephen and the Haydens) and most (if not all) of the other state governors and the administrators of the territories – all came to stay at Government House at one time or another in the McCaughey era, and I am sure there are others I am forgetting. In many instances they were given state dinners and other ceremonial entertainments. Later, Pope John Paul II, Juan Antonio Samaranch, along with various other members of the International Olympic Committee, of which he was then president, as well as President George Herbert Walker Bush – these visited Melbourne also. At Tullamarine, President and Mrs. Bush took the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey on an impromptu tour of Air Force One. This crush of V.I.P.s meant that Government House staged many more state dinners than usual, and for these events the enormous State Dining Room with its huge table was used to feed up to 54 guests. Now, if you have 54 guests coming to dinner it is something of a rarity for all 54 to turn up in one piece. Almost inevitably at the last minute somebody goes into labour, is declared bankrupt, has a car accident, heart attack, or nervous breakdown, and the exquisitely calculated placement, often with considerable political implications, is at the eleventh hour thrown into disarray. To guard against this eventuality, two dinners were staged: the main event in the State Dining Room, and a smaller gathering of the Governor’s household staff in the Small Private Dining Room. The Governor’s household were in attendance at the State Entrance and in the State Drawing Room when the principal dinner guests arrived, to help to make introductions, and to insure that people knew who was their next-door neighbor, and how to find their seat in the State Dining Room. After dinner was announced with the strike of an enormous, rather vulgar brass gong, the household would discreetly withdraw to the other side of the house and eat a kind of splendid “nursery tea” in the smaller Private Dining Room. But if at the last minute it was found that we were missing, say, two female guests and a male, we had a convenient pool from which to draw an appropriately chosen emergency substitute who discreetly took whichever vacant spot in the State Dining Room needed to be filled. It was a brilliant system. Formal toasts were exchanged, and after dinner the household rejoined the Governor, premier, and all the other state dinner guests in the State Drawing Room for coffee and a generous supply of Cognac, whisky, mineral water, chocolates, or whatnot. It was at state dinners that I made the important discovery that there is no such thing as a boring person, no matter how bleak the prospects may initially strike you when a succession of increasingly desperate and/or experimental conversational gambits fail to apply throttle, much less achieve lift-off. I think of the extremely shy wife of a middle-ranking public servant from Canberra, who seemed determined to deliver the message to her next door neighbor (me) that she was in every respect ordinary, uninteresting, wholly preoccupied by her children’s schooling, and that out of her life there was absolutely nothing of interest to be decanted and shared, much less admired. Yet I remember sensing also that she was holding something back. To uncover whatever it was simply required a little patient digging. Sure enough, after a few minutes I found out that this resourceful woman was an enthusiastic semi-professional sky-diver, and on this unlikely but fascinating pursuit, in which I am absolutely certain few people had ever been given the opportunity to express interest, she dilated for the rest of the evening – the feeling of exhilaration, the skills needed, the things she had seen and the places she had visited on her various dives. She even offered to take me up and accompany me on my very first descent, an invitation I confess I declined. In other words, it was as if this lady turned into a completely different person, and incidentally, one now saw her husband in a completely new light. Actually in this respect my friends and contemporaries, many of whom were inclined to view my Government House existence as that of a cosseted dweller in some remote ivory tower, failed to grasp the degree to which, on the contrary, it gave me and no doubt many other young and inexperienced members of staff before and since, an incomparable lookout from which to scan and learn about as many walks of life within the local community, indeed far beyond, as one was prepared to pay attention to: from the hardworking manufacturer of ice cream in Colac to ministers of the crown, from restaurateurs to breeders of racehorses, from prison workers to the Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Sydney and Melbourne. Nothing remotely packs that kind of education into your life as quickly and effectively as a tour of duty at Government House, Melbourne. One might add to all the events I have described the regular official lunches the Governor hosted for in-coming and out-going ambassadors and consuls-general. These took place in the Private Dining Room. Guests were greeted at the Private Entrance, ushered through the Private Hall, and announced by the aide at the door to the Large Private Drawing Room. Ambassadorial lunches were obviously arranged by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra, though never dominated by them because Davis was extremely shrewd in his selection of, as it were, supernumerary guests to help leaven each occasion. I do not think that any feelings will be hurt in Canberra if I say that the initial guest list for these occasions was often uninspired, and mainly sought to tick the boxes of international commerce. People who did business with the relevant country were, of course, a high priority. But where Davis’s genius lifted these occasions was in knowing, for example, that the wife of a prominent poet had grown up in the new ambassador’s home country, or that some lecturer in microbiology at Monash had for years done important work in partnership with an opposite number in Paris or Madrid, or that such-and-such an Ormond farmer had pioneered the use of salt-tolerant grasses in East Gippsland – my own uncle, David Borthwick – a skill he learned from Danish and Swedish agronomers. The 95% success rate of the resulting admixture was distinctly audible as the lunch unfolded, and in many cases firm friendships were formed – the economic or commercial benefits to Australia were not perhaps easily quantifiable, but the diplomatic and political effect upon foreign envoys returning happy to their glum embassies in Red Hill cannot have been lost on DFAT in Canberra. There were also any number of annual or at least recurring state and unofficial commitments such as investitures, state openings of Parliament, the ceremonies of ANZAC Day, the opening of the legal year, and the huge Queen’s Birthday reception which was normally held in the Ballroom, the annual staff Christmas party, and so on. The list is long, and very rapidly gives you get a sense of the demands on the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey’s schedule. In all of this they were supported by an amazingly cheerful domestic staff, headed by the butler Mr. Young. The late and much-lamented Ken Young, formerly of the Coldstream Guards, was a fine Englishman who took great pride in his work, and was supported in it by his kind, sweet-natured wife Margaret. He was built like a brick mausoleum, and in times of stress assumed a similar complexion. Below him were the enormously tall, brilliantly talented under-butler, Leigh Millington (now butler at Government House, Tasmania, and a person whom I would not hesitate to describe as a true artist), and three or four good-humoured, attractive, and occasionally naughty liveried footman, at least several of whom came to Government House from the R.A.N. I shall never say, though they know who they are, which of these I developed a youthful crush on – and it is a traditional, if rarely remarked aspect of life in a great house that domestic arrangements rarely go unaccompanied by sexual tension, sometimes as intense as the hours of day-to-day contact are long. But it is also true to say that discretion and correctness and appropriate boundaries were rarely (if ever) crossed – at least not by me, nor to my knowledge by anyone else in the McCaughey era, sorely tempting though it was late at night to steal silently from upstairs bedroom to upstairs bedroom, or down to the mews. Security was handled by the Shrine Guard – indeed the gatehouse was at that time still a fully functioning police station, with lock-up. I have no idea if it was ever used. A good proportion of the housemaids, I think, were Greek, and headed by the quiet but redoubtable Dimitra. The kitchen was at that time staffed by two full-time chefs and an ad hoc staff of caterers, waiters and waitresses, depending on the size of the event (occasionally enormous). As well, there were at least several gardeners, a handy-man, a full-time florist – who harbored an irresistible urge to create “themed,” occasionally unfortunate arrangements in honor of visiting ambassadors – and a much-loved, at times somewhat recklessly flamboyant Spanish launderess called Basi Carrasco. The Office of the Governor, meanwhile, was supported by at least six to eight full-time clerical staff, three drivers, a comptroller, Mrs. McCaughey’s secretary Marguerite L. Hancock, the Governor’s personal assistant Loris A. Callander, M.V.O., M.B.E., P.S.M., the aides, the honorary aides-de-camp, the deputy official secretary, and, at the top of the tree, our fearless leader Charles Roderick Curwen, C.V.O., O.B.E., official secretary. Charles was (and is) an impeccable courtier, a fair and generous employer, an invaluable asset to the Governor, and at length became a good friend. He is the best-dressed man I have ever known. There was very little he had not at one time or another seen or experienced at Government House. He enjoyed the confidence of Buckingham Palace, successive state governments, Governors, and earned the loyalty and devotion of his staff. There is much that I owe him, and I fear I shall never be able to repay that debt of gratitude. Despite the enormous demands on their time in Melbourne, and on the resources of Government House, the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey managed around three or four tours of country Victoria every year, as well as at least two state visits each to China and Japan, and two or three visits to England and Ireland when on at least one occasion they were entertained to lunch at Buckingham Palace by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and a chaotic Greek chorus of yapping corgis. Except for the speech from the throne, which of course was written for him by the Government, usually inelegantly, Davis wrote all his own speeches in his minute but always clearly legible, rather elegant longhand. They were invariably good, often excellent, and a high proportion of those completely dazzling. Part of the joy of listening to them was that as a professional minister of religion Davis had accumulated decades of experience and therefore knew instinctively what style suited what occasion, what audience, what was important to say, and how to say it. I never heard him miss a beat, or misjudge an audience. He was never nervous. Nor did he ever take his audience for granted. On the contrary, he was inclined to address a country classroom with as much dignity and respect for the minds of all present, as he projected unforgettable authority whilst reading the speech from the throne. Being in attendance on that occasion (the state opening of the 51st Parliament of Victoria, Tuesday afternoon, October 25, 1988) made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up, although I remember being horrified when afterwards we saw video footage that when the Governor made his inspection of the guard of honour I walked behind him in the manner of a large, semi-arthritic wading bird – not at all an adornment. I never used to feel anything other than tremendous pride when I listed to Davis, and I now realize that, having so often been, as it were, “ring-side,” I very rapidly learned to imitate his beautifully spare prose style. These days people fear long sentences. We’re told that short ones are preferable. But Davis knew that crisp, short sentences sometimes benefit from close proximity to long, sometimes exceedingly long ones, which set in train the pleasing ebb and flow of rhythmical prose without necessarily creating clutter or confusion and, when properly deployed, give you the power clearly to express complex ideas – even when those ideas are meant to be imparted by the spoken word and not read privately. For me that was a valuable lesson. Don’t be afraid of long sentences. They should be drafted with taste and judgment, never wasted on trivia. Use them, but use them wisely. And distrust anyone, especially media people, who will insist that short sentences are automatically clearer than long ones. In due course we collaborated on our book – a book which it would be more accurate to say Davis wrote, while Naomi and I fed him some documentation. (His insistence that we be named as co-authors was entirely characteristic of Davis’s intellectual generosity and esprit de corps.) No doubt working on the book made a big difference, but twenty years on I still find myself from time to time trying to write prose in the elegant manner of Davis McCaughey. I do not often succeed. Actually, as I reflect on that wonderful time, I think I learned more important lessons from the Governor’s amazing breadth of reading. He put me onto George Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain), the Psalms, Job, and Tolstoy. Mrs. McCaughey regularly re-read War and Peace and I remember being electrified when she told me that she had read the novel in 1942, when the great narrative of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was exactly and eerily mirrored by Hitler’s. On a few occasions when they were traveling abroad, I stayed behind to serve the Hon. Sir John Macintosh Young, A.C., K.C.M.G., who was then Chief Justice and Lieutenant-Governor. Davis and Sir John liked and respected each other enormously, yet they were very different. Sir John used to call in at Government House after he had finished his day’s work at the Court. Sometimes he saw Charles for a few minutes, dealt with whatever correspondence or government business needed attention, and afterwards went upstairs to change into black tie for dinner. I would then join him in the Private Drawing Room for a drink, also dressed in black tie, and the two of us would sit down to dinner – alone in the Private Dining Room. Afterwards a crown car would drive him home to Sorrett Avenue. It was on one of those occasions that Sir John told me the extraordinary story about how, as a young Irish Guards officer stationed in Scotland, he had had the awesome responsibility of bringing Rudolf Hess under close escort by train from Floors Farm near Eaglesham, just south of Glasgow, where he was captured, to the Tower of London. It was not until recently, when I visited the Tower, that I learned that the cell to which Sir John successfully delivered Hess was the same one in which Sir Thomas More was incarcerated four hundred years earlier. That cell is connected by a short corridor from the front hall of the official residence of the Governor of the Tower of London, and it retains an extraordinarily pungent atmosphere. In a neat twist, it turns out that, as a nineteen year-old, Charlie Curwen, who was an officer in the 11th (Prince Albert’s Own) Hussars, then stationed in Berlin, was for a brief time responsible for guarding those prisoners who remained in Spandau, including Rudolf Hess, and for returning his library books. He now regrets that he never noted down what they were reading. On Sunday evenings Davis and Jean’s enormous family of children and grandchildren came to dinner, and, again, it is typical of them that the duty aide was always made welcome, and treated as part of the family. The younger children disappeared into the wilderness of the state apartments – which nowadays causes me to break into a sweat because there were plenty of potential dangers which would today ring the alarm bell of occupational health and safety, i.e. the narrow, rickety, ill-lit staircase up to the top of the tower, the rather insubstantial railing along the balcony overlooking the ballroom, and the thrilling contents of the unattended offices and cellar. Anyhow, nothing ever seems to have gone wrong, and no doubt the children will treasure until their dying day the memory of those thrilling expeditions in search of buried treasure, poking around the Hopetoun suite, or investigating the junior aide’s suspiciously flamboyant wardrobe. Ha: They thought I never knew! Many people used to take for granted what they imagined were Davis and Jean’s political views, but it is worth dwelling on this matter for a moment because I do not think it is a simple one. True, they belonged to that generation which looked back with tremendous pride upon the achievements of the post-war Attlee administration, which addressed pressing issues of national importance – the unfinished business of the Great Depression in which so many people in Britain had suffered intolerable poverty. Nobody who voted in the long-delayed general election of 1945 should be remotely surprised by Winston Churchill’s crushing defeat, and most astonishment arising from the outcome is the result of cold war revisionism and Churchill’s enduring and somewhat baffling popularity in America. It was no secret that Jean and Davis, and many others in the same generation, also shared a generalized sense of dismay at the increasingly aggressive privatizing policies through the 1980s of Mrs. Thatcher’s government, and her notoriously ill-judged claim that “there is no such thing as society.” Certainly, in his role as Governor Davis knew perfectly well that it was his constitutional responsibility to maintain cordial relations with all political parties. However, it was largely as a result of having been Master of Ormond for so many years that he knew, admired, and was on the best possible terms with many federal and state politicians on both sides – extending far beyond any sense of obligation or responsibility. And I remember on occasion being moved by the fact that although there were clearly philosophical differences between them, actually bitter divisions, time and again what one might have assumed beforehand to be wholly improbable encounters between politicians on opposite sides of various legislatures regularly took place under Davis’s roof with astonishing friendliness and good cheer. Nor, I think, did Davis necessarily feel entirely comfortable with certain policies of the government which appointed him in the first place. He rarely if ever commented on particulars, and nor would the aides have ever pressed him for his views, but my recollection is that he maintained in office an impressive independence of outlook, which at times I am sure the Cain and Kirner governments benefited from, and may actually have acknowledged to themselves if not to the electors. I have no doubt that Davis exercised his constitutional right to be informed, to encourage, and to warn. Certainly his relations with both premiers could not have been better. Indeed, Davis and Jean were genuinely distressed by the departure of John Cain, whom they regarded as a fine premier, rightly, I think, despite the enormous economic problems that ultimately caused his administration to fall. Writing this after several cycles of global boom and investment bank-driven bust have unfolded, one now wonders if those problems were just grounds for Cain’s departure. I have no doubt that history will smile on his administration. It is one of the anomalies of the Constitution of Victoria that when a premier resigns, the rest of the government resigns with him. This is not the case in Whitehall, or in many other Westminster jurisdictions. I am sure that there were at least several, maybe even one or two actively disloyal members of John Cain’s cabinet who were genuinely shocked when on the day of his departure their permanent heads of department presented each with a formal letter of resignation pending the Governor’s invitation to someone else to form a new ministry. They had no choice but dutifully to sign it. I remember being occasionally surprised at how imperfect a grasp of Victorian constitutional arrangements certain ministers had, but in this respect I think it is probably a case of plus ça change, and not at all confined to one side or the other, nor indeed to the state of Victoria. So, if I were asked to sketch a portrait of the public or political Davis I knew, I would encourage the inquirer to lay in a background drawn from the public record: speeches, sermons, a fine collection of eulogies delivered at notable funerals across many years (always revealing), and Jean’s well-known charitable and research work in the social sciences, on poverty, and the family. I would gradually build up the principal forms with historical hues, in particular the ideal of the Attlee administration, the achievements of the Student Christian Movement with which Davis was so closely involved from the 1930s onward – the first Australian he ever met was my dear friend, the late, lamented Jean Mary Waller (q.v.), at an S.C.M. conference in San Francisco, Calif., some time around 1936 – not to mention the formation of the Uniting Church of Australia, and a tradition of enlightened dissent partly derived from the liberal end of the family’s Irish and Presbyterian heritage, partly modeled by his love for both Ireland and Scotland, together with the best qualities of the old Churches of Ireland, Scotland, and England, many of whose most distinguished bishops he knew well. He was a pioneering ecumenist, and knew more about Hebrew scripture and Judaism than many Jews. He was also in touch with German and Swiss theologians such as the charismatic Lukas Vischer, who at one point came to stay. Archbishop Frank Woods was a close friend, likewise Frank’s brother Robin Woods, also a bishop, formerly Dean of Windsor. I would add to the mix Davis’s respect for the traditions and values of the learned professions, which at times he felt were endangered by the Dawkins reforms, and what he saw as the inappropriate elevation to university status of institutes of technical and vocational training. That skepticism was based on the ancient traditions of the universities, from Cranmer to Newman, which the federal government did its best to undermine. Again, I wonder how many policy-makers would now regard the Australian universities as having benefited in the short to middle-term. Finally, I would try to balance the forthright social democratic aspect of Davis and Jean’s general outlook with a slight tinge of conservatism, conservative in the best sense – together with dazzling highlights of common sense, and plain wisdom. Davis was no different from anyone else in that the better you got to know him the more likely you were to detect occasional blind spots. He was inclined to be exasperated by what he regarded as the “middle brow.” He was impatient with empty gestures of political expediency, and the grotesque 6-second sound bite. He disliked the Murdoch media, yet Dame Elisabeth was a good friend – indeed few people admired Davis more. I never saw him lose his temper, while curiously innocent things tickled his funny-bone to the point of tears of laughter, and breathlessness. At length Davis encouraged me to resume my studies, and although I went on my way, eventually to the United States. He and Jean continued to write, and I tried to keep writing back with my not terribly interesting news. Jean knitted me a pair of woolly socks for the winter, and I saw them in Melbourne whenever I could. It should also be emphasized that Davis rarely discussed political matters with his aides. There were too many other, less important things to worry about. Naomi and I were fortunate that although we were almost as different from each other as it is possible to be, we became lifelong friends. Actually, I think we complemented each other perfectly. There was a ferocious looking sword in the cupboard behind my desk, long used for dubbing knights. Yet I was highly disorganized, hopelessly unable to master the intricacies of (inter alia) the military pecking order, when frankly it did not interest me very much. The junior professional staff officers based at Victoria Barracks struck me as a pretty unimpressive lot. No doubt that assessment was unfair, and I am sure it was amply reciprocated. I was fearfully accident-prone, but I never slept through my alarm clock on ANZAC Day when my job was to get up at some truly absurd hour, well before dawn, collect the Governor’s wreath from the fridge, meet Davis and Charles in the Private Hall, then walk with them, following a few steps behind, out the back gate, down past La Trobe’s Cottage, which has since then been shifted to its present position to Birdwood Avenue, and onwards to the Shrine of Remembrance. We made our way through the eerie darkness, an armed shrine guard or two in discreet attendance. It was always amusing to me when, discreetly skirting the public lavatories opposite the Observatory, which were at that time always rather busy, twenty-four hours a day, certain nocturnal habitués with other things on their mind were flabbergasted to see the Governor and his staff walk briskly past, pretending not to notice. Barely fifty paces further on, a dense crowd was gathered on the steps of the Shrine, and, after exchanging somber greetings with the President of the Shrine Trustees near Simpson’s donkey (was it Bill Littlejohn?) we mounted the north steps through a narrow path separating throngs of people, guided only by the light of a small torch. The heavy silence was broken only by the rustling against people’s cuffs and overcoats of the leaves in the fringe around the wreath, which was large and quite heavy. At the top we entered the Shrine, where the premier, leader of the opposition, diplomatic corps, clergy, and Shrine trustees were already assembled in two long, motionless rows, and at this point I had to discreetly turn the wreath around so that the Governor could with ease take and place it against the stone of Remembrance, a slightly tricky maneuver. He then uttered in a loud, clear voice the single phrase “Lest We Forget,” and everyone held what felt like an interminable, almost deafening silence, at the end of which a bugler played the Last Post and Reveille, and we walked slowly out the south door into the first glimmer of dawn. It was a strange ceremony, pungent with a kind of secular, slightly leaden religiosity – rooted in what then seemed the increasingly anachronistic symbolism of Flanders’ fields, which paradoxically still shows no sign of diminishing. It cannot have lasted for more than five minutes. Afterwards, we walked slowly back to Government House, only to return later in the morning for the long military parade, at the end of which – it was interminable – the Governor gave his annual address from the shrine steps. I did not always perform my duties so well. Once, I drove to Wodonga to plan the Governor’s country tour itinerary, and discovered when I arrived that I had left my brief case and overnight bag in the spot where I put them down in the porte-cochère at the State Entrance of Government House. I once announced His Excellency the Ambassador of Norway (it was actually Sweden), and for some baffling reason the Duchess of Devonshire instead of Grafton. When with many others I was given the rare honor of a private audience at the end of the Queen’s 1988 state visit, I forgot what to do, hyperventilated, then, attempting to flee, walked straight into a sofa, to my sovereign’s audible amusement. I failed to arrive at the V.I.P. Apron at Tullamarine in time to represent the Governor at a ceremony officially to bid farewell to the President of Nauru. All that one could do was to return as cheerfully as possible his enthusiastic Polynesian waving through the window of the R.A.A.F. aircraft which the government had placed at his disposal. Patrick McCaughey remembers with glee the time Davis left me behind at the front door of the National Gallery of Victoria, and I had to canter up the drive of Government House, black tie a-kimbo. This gave Patrick Famularo the head driver, and all the footmen exquisite pleasure for weeks. By contrast, Naomi was a consummate professional, in command of every detail, and exceedingly patient with her bumbling junior side-kick. We became great friends. Perhaps it is vanity, but I would say that those occasions on which I was able to nudge the imbalance of skills a little in the other direction were those when certain visitors to Government House exhibited a surprising, occasionally shocking tendency to overlook Naomi’s legitimate role and authority in certain situations purely on the grounds of gender, which was bad enough in 1988, but occasionally also on the crude and somewhat sinister grounds of undisguised class prejudice. Fairly brutal snobbisme was occasionally in evidence, and to those persons foolish enough to reveal this unattractive trait Naomi sometimes communicated her displeasure, even annoyance, and who can blame her? However, having been not too many years prior expensively under-educated at Melbourne Grammar, and being possessed of a measure of no doubt maddening self-assurance – as well as an exaggerated, at times puffy pride in my family’s place in the history of the state – I found that the ruder, more difficult, intractable, or even catastrophic the visitor (there were a few), the greater the satisfaction I derived from applying myself to the awesome task of smoothing ruffled feathers, conjuring the mot juste, selecting and applying the appropriate anecdotal balm, then as soon as acceptably possible lobbing him to exactly the right fellow guest in whose company he might possibly regain some contentment. I was quite good at it. But the main point is that Naomi and I were a good team. Others are far better able to attest to the beauty of the Governor’s long and happy marriage to Jean, and the great support they received from their family. Naomi and I loved hearing the story about how they first met. Davis gave a lecture in Belfast on some aspect of the S.C.M., and Jean, a medical student, was in the audience. Old photographs demonstrate how very handsome Davis was, eerily like his grandson Matthew at the same age. Afterwards Jean boldly introduced herself, and asked him if she could borrow a book. The rest is history. It is worth recording that very occasionally Davis felt faint, and it just so happened that the few times I witnessed this disturbing phenomenon we were having an “ordinary” weeknight dinner in the Small Private Dining Room: Davis, Jean, Naomi and myself. Jean was always alert to what was happening to Davis before he was, and would leap to his side in a split second, speak softly into his ear, and gently guide his head down between his knees for a few moments. The speed of this, and the almost embarrassing intimacy of it, made Naomi and I feel like intruders – certainly powerless to do anything useful – but after Davis recovered (the spells usually lasted only for a minute or so) he and Jean were adamant that we should not telephone the doctor, nor alert Charles. They must have known that this was an instruction which neither of us could possibly obey, and once again it is a measure of the wisdom of all parties that Charles evidently handled the information with exquisite tact, while Davis and Jean never expressed displeasure at our insubordination. While they were inclined to discount any alarm we may have felt from time to time on their account, Davis and Jean responded like lions to the needs of other people. In any other context they took a dim view of queue-jumping, but when a sick grandchild, a loyal member of their domestic staff, even Sandy the dog, evidently required special attention Jean saw no reason not to discreetly pull a carefully selected string. We loved them for it. Once when I was very sick in bed with a comparatively rare and horrid skin complaint (now unfortunately enshrined in a medical textbook), Davis came up to my room to see if I was all right. It was a typically kind gesture, and one I shall never forget.