The accident

One of my father’s more eccentric habits was whenever possible to photograph the relatively minor childhood illnesses and injuries sustained by his sons—a slightly scarifying suite of mumps, measles, playground scrapes, cuts, bruises, splinters, casts and bandages. I am not quite sure what lay behind this curious habit, but it has certainly left us with a powerful resource for memory-jogging. I suppose he must have felt that no record of an essentially happy childhood is complete without including at least a few of its less comfortable moments. The others are better able to date this photograph than me, but I think Dad must have taken it in the drive at 18 Denham Place while Simon was building the catamaran, ca. 1969, when I was about five. I am standing between the twin hulls of that fine, handmade work-in-progress. Some days earlier Mum took me to watch Hamish playing football on the oval at Grimwade House, and, in a moment of genuine joie de vivre—ignoring the football—I scampered along a low parapet in the direction of Orrong Road, tripped, fell headlong into a blocky brick quoin, and smashed my little nose to smithereens. I can see the spot, not too far from an enormous Moreton Bay fig that rises next to the dark blue scoreboard, but the subsequent images are but flashes of vague recollection. I remember the first aid room in the old house, along dark corridors, then staring into the white enameled kidney-shaped dish in my lap with spots of blood dripping down and rapidly accumulating in it. A large and sensible nurse is there in a white apron and starched cap. Mum is on an old black bakelite telephone. I remember the ward at St. George’s Hospital in Kew, at the end of another very long corridor, then bravely waving goodbye to Mum and Dad when in due course they had to leave me there. I remember the kindly old men in the adjacent beds, set at right angles to mine, who I imagine did their best to divert me, and the kindly nurse who, the next morning, after my operation, showed me my bandages and my two purple black eyes in the mirror and told me that I looked just like Batman. There is a bright shaft of light slanting in from the window next to my bed. The tears came fast and strong, for I had no idea who Batman was. The operation was performed by Mr. Ham, the ear nose and throat surgeon; not our general practitioner, Dr. Richard Ham, but Mr. Ham the specialist. In that old-fashioned locution, the medical specialists of Collins Street still went by the slightly superior “Mr.,” or, in the case of the surgeon who removed my appendix some years later, “Sir Edward” (Hughes). Lady Hughes—Alison—is still alive, and a loyal member of the 8.00 a.m. congregation at St. George’s Church of England, Malvern. I have a strong feeling that the basis upon which both surgeons were engaged was that they were golfing cronies of my father’s, but that is neither here nor there. Certainly my little nose was never quite the same afterwards, and to this day it lacks an underlying bone structure extending far past the uppermost portion of the bridge. My brothers have rather elegant, straight Roman noses, but mine was from then on different, broader, and a little spongier. This vaguely bothers me. Still, it has served me well, and shows no other outward signs of trauma. It is a matter of conjecture whether any lingering inward trauma is helped or hindered by a close perusal of Dad’s slightly weird photograph. Look at the posture: little hands clasped behind my back, gently biting the bottom lip, gazing up quizzically, feet firmly planted, delightful little knees—rather formal. Obviously I have never since scampered along anything remotely resembling a parapet, and much less one punctuated by squat brick quoins.

Moonrise Kingdom

Last week in London we went to see Wes Anderson’s glorious new film Moonrise Kingdom. I didn’t really want to go, because I had so much work to do that evening, but he insisted. Resistance would have been futile had I persisted in it. Thank goodness I did not, because no film has so charmed or inspired me for many years, rather like the man himself. Partly this is because at Grimwade House, when I was around the same age as those kids, we too mounted a production of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde. I gather the director Wes Anderson also played in it once. I fancy the late and much lamented Geoffrey Joachim must have had a part to play in staging our Melbourne production, though it must have been realized by the then director of music David Byrne, or was it Ian Harrison? All of this came back to me in a powerful surge, a torrent of pretty difficult nostalgia. At some point we must also have sung “Cuckoo!” from Britten’s Songs from Friday Afternoons (Opus 7), because it too crashed over me like an ocean breaker of memory, mingling unhelpfully with the smell of the floor polish they used in the old Memorial Hall, and the ghastly hot-pheromone wall of airlessness that adolescent boys seem to generate. I could also hear the rapid-fire clatter and clunk of all those folding seats in hideous, moveable batches of four. I want to say they were blue. Never have I been gladder to have his hand to hold—except last February when we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, and I was shaking like a leaf. But there were in the film many other echoes of my Australian childhood: the fishing basket, especially, exactly the same as the one we had at Metung (though in a far better state of preservation; that seemed just right: ours was heavily perfumed with whitebait). And then there are the sailing and the canoeing and the inlets and the beaches and the colors. On the whole I am glad they resisted the temptation to dispatch Tilda Swinton’s wonderfully officious “Social Services” in a sea-plane accident, but all of the performances were good, especially I think those of Frances McDormand and Bill Murray. My man told me beforehand that every frame was technically perfect—he is a brilliant photographer, as is Anderson’s director of photography Robert Yeoman—which one naturally grasped at once, but to this I would add and underline artistically perfect too. Chromatically so rich and nuanced: every shot a composition of painterly sophistication, and delight. Watteau for the screen, with a dash of Richard Dadd, and maybe the paleness of a Puvis or, much further back, the artful symmetry of a canvas at least as large as Veronese’s The Feast in the House of Levi. The film was evidently shot around Narragansett, Rhode Island, not all that far from where I now live. I suspect love makes a big, big difference, but I am so very glad I saw Moonrise Kingdom.

Angus

One of the trying aspects of living in America for the time being is that when local persons learn that my Christian name is Angus, they regularly respond with “Angus, you mean like the beef? Ha, ha, ha…” The reference, here, is to the Black or Aberdeen Angus breed of hornless cattle, which was developed through the first half of the nineteenth century from beasts native to the Scottish highland counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus, and successfuly transplanted thence to the New World. Touching though it is when people laugh so heartily at their own jokes, this form of crude free association is not usually applied to me at home in the Commonwealth of Australia, where Angus cattle are also plentiful. Nor does it ever crop up on my frequent visits to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Further, I have noticed that a good number of other American persons, to whom the Christian name of Angus is entirely unknown, assume that what I want to say is “Agnes,” and respond accordingly—and, if we are on the telephone, sprinkle our conversation thereafter with the respectful “Ma’am.” Being a man of the world, and entirely comfortable with gender issues, I really don’t mind this at all, and am careful only to correct the culprits if I sense that to allow their confusion to continue beyond a certain point might cause them discomfiture, awkwardness, or embarrassment. Moreover, I am quite used to it, because for years and years at Melbourne Grammar School entrenched bullies such as the appalling Simon Cameron made a habit of addressing me as Agnes, confident in their belief that this would cause me pain. They were quite wrong, because the beatings were far, far worse—and I have always been most fortunate in having what used to be called “bottom,” in other words a good deal of psychological ballast, much of it inherited. Anyhow, the delightful Agnes is not nearly so bad as what the spell-check portion of a now thankfully obsolete version of the Microsoft Word program used to suggest to my colleagues on the staff of the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, viz. that, wherever it appeared, my full name should be altered to “Anus Tremble.”’ Let us assume that my tactfully worded letter of protest to Mr. Bill Gates went astray, or was more probably forwarded to their attorneys for filing and/or future reference.

The Bird of Paradise

Thus far I have led a remarkable life, full of adventure and excitement. Long may it continue.

Yet as I get older, and slower, some childhood memories not only gain in vividness, but, from the vantage point of my study window on the sixteenth floor of the Crown Building in New Haven, Conn., also seem literally incredible.

Not long ago, whilst leafing through an auction catalog with my director, Amy Meyers, and our brilliant paintings conservator, Mark Aronson, we came upon a watercolor illustration of a splendid bird of paradise, and I remarked, as casually as possible, that many years ago, thirty in fact, I had actually seen a real one, and would never forget the experience.

Mark, who as well as being a highly skilled conservator and connoisseur of Latin American dancing is also a dedicated twitcher, knew what I meant.

But, quick as a flash, dear Amy said, yes, they have a great collection of specimens in the Peabody.

That wasn’t really what I had in mind.

In 1979, Mum and Dad sent me, not yet fifteen, on a Melbourne Grammar School expedition to Papua New Guinea. It was a rare oasis in the midst of an otherwise grim few years of misery at the senior school, before (thank God) I was rescued by Alan Eustace, Geoff Smith, Betty Elliott, and the art department.

We traveled under the kindly aegis of the Church of England, whose local bishop, a portly, pink, snowy-haired Englishman, entertained us for tea in his palace garden in Port Moresby.

We flew from there to Alotau at the eastern end of the island, in an ancient corroding DC3 aircraft, and, after a short boat trip across the bay, walked thence to the church community of Dogura, on the north coast.

It was a relatively easy day’s walk, but the path, such as it was, took our little party over what are amusingly described as “hills,” but better resemble precipitous mountains covered in dense jungle.

In fact the region is the farthest extremity of the Owen Stanley Ranges, which, in a neat twist, were named after the pioneering son of a Victorian Bishop of Norwich.

About half way across, in a little clearing hard by the summit of a hill almost entirely shrouded in steaming vapor, surrounded by jungle noises, strange squarks and snufflings, we saw it, on the upper branch of a big, scrubby mango tree: a lone bird of paradise, performing like a consummate professional, with his astonishing repertoire of brightly-colored Vegas-level plumage.

He trembled and shivered, swayed and shimmied, bounced and flounced, riffled, shook, dangled upside down, and, I presume, called in vain for his mate.

We stood there motionless, wholly transfixed, for a few long, long minutes, before he threw in the towel, and vanished.

I am not sure I have seen anything as beautiful as that chipper bird of paradise in the hills above Dogura, and I doubt if I ever shall.

Cricket

Today I tackled another of the regular inquiries I receive about eighteenth-century paintings of children with cricket bats.

With his long hair and loose shirt, the English schoolboy Richard Heber (1773–1833), here portrayed in 1782 by the American expatriate John Singleton Copley, exhibits the informality and naturalness that was such a desirable quality in British portraiture of this period, while the paraphernalia of the great game of cricket allude to the manly sports in general.

Looking fearlessly toward the bowler’s end, leaning on his bat and holding the ball—which means that play cannot commence until he chooses—Heber strikes an easy but authoritative pose. The son of a well-to-do, intellectually minded clergyman, Heber was to become a passionate book collector, one of the leading bibliophiles of his generation.

In the early 1820s, Richard Heber’s close friendship with the nineteen year-old Charles Henry Hartshorne (1802–1865) led to rumors about a homosexual relationship between the two—Heber being twenty-nine years older. Hartshorne had composed Latin verses for Heber while still a schoolboy. When in 1825 Heber suddenly resigned his seat in Parliament, it was claimed that he fled abroad just before a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of sodomitical practices. The Tory John Bull wrote:

Mr. Heber, the late Member for Oxford University, will not return to this country for some time—the backwardness of the season renders the Continent more congenial to some constitutions.

Heber’s friend Sir Walter Scott feared the rumors were true, but no evidence has been found of any outstanding warrant.

Richard Heber is not to be confused with his half-brother Reginald, who in later life became second Church of England Bishop of Calcutta and composed the famous hymns “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty” and “God That Madest Earth and Heaven.” Bishop Heber died whilst taking a bath, half way through a pastoral visitation of South India.

In America cricket is obscure and mysterious, and this makes it possible for me to conceal my almost total ignorance of the game. I derive particular amusement from reinventing myself here as a cricket aficionado. For example, I can explain the tapering, rounded shape of the cricket bat that was standard in the mid- to late eighteenth century. I speak with authority about the gradual flattening of the bat, the squaring off in the front, back, sides and “shoulder” during the Regency period. On it goes. With luck I can explain that the boy in the painting is holding the bat absolutely correctly, as far as I can tell from having myself batted execrably as a child whilst being systematically brutalized at Melbourne Grammar School, that forlorn, crudely rusticated stone gulag in South Yarra. I have a dim recollection of being dismissed for a duck – L.B.W., moreover, a concept I simply did not understand.

This was especially humiliating because my great grandfather and his more famous brother both played test cricket for Australia between 1887/88 and 1903/04. Great Uncle Hugh’s celebrated hattricks in successive test matches in 1904 was an achievement that apparently stood for ninety years, until it was finally overtaken in 1994 by a fat person who likes to send obscene text messages to young women in provincial English bars and nightclubs who are not his wife. O tempora, O mores.

On that occasion – I mean the eclipsing of that famous succession of hattricks – Great Uncle Hugh’s photograph appeared on the front page of The Times newspaper in London. He has somehow found his way into the files of Getty Images also, though I cannot imagine how the international law of copyright allows them thus to own his portrait.

The Colon

Last week I had what the gastroenterologist blithely described as a “routine” colonoscopy. He told me the colon is a danger zone. He was slightly taken aback when I begged leave to remain conscious throughout, and I’m glad I did. You see much wobbly pinkness on screen, and they go all the way around to where your appendix ought to live.

As it happens, mine was removed more than thirty years ago by an ancient Melbourne surgeon of rare eminence, Sir Edward Hughes, who was a golfing crony of my father’s.

I was eleven, and by then hated Melbourne Grammar so much that one morning I contrived to have an awful tummy ache so as not to have to go to school. Mum whisked me straight off to our family doctor, a 250-pound yachtsman and sadist. The doctor conducted a curiously thoroughgoing rectal examination.

“Does that hurt?” he asked, eventually.

“Yes” was the only honest answer, and forthright, but before I could do anything to qualify it, or to provide happy news of an unexpected recovery, I was admitted to St Frances Xavier Cabrini Hospital in Malvern, and Sir Edward was called to remove my appendix.

Years later I discovered that for the same glum reasons my brother Nick had done exactly the same thing, and they unnecessarily removed his healthy appendix also.

I recall Sir Edward had a mild tremor in his scalpel hand, and rich mahogany nicotine stains along the sides of his somewhat arthritic index and middle fingers. There were no gloves in those halcyon days.

It occurred to me half way through last week’s “procedure” to ask the gastroenterologist why on earth he had chosen this particular branch of medicine to practice, and with the deadpan seriousness that one only finds here at Yale, he actually told me the answer: He said he likes to be “hands on.”

I began to express the view that surely there must be pleasanter parts of the body to come to grips with, when his theater sister shot me a really hostile glare.

No option but to cast my eyes down, very Jane Austen.