More bonds

Last night I dreamed I was having a lively discussion with someone about the merits of the graphic work of Saul Steinberg. Dad was much intrigued by Steinberg’s fine covers for The New Yorker and I rather think his own line drawings were at times influenced by him, though not quite as much as they followed the prompts of Daumier’s gens de justice series, with a dash of Doré and even Goya thrown in for good measure. Certainly there were large-format, lavishly-illustrated books about Steinberg at 18 Denham Place, and I remember as a child poring over them with real fascination, and trying my best to imitate his style. Only now do I realize that Steinberg must have played an important part in steering me towards art in the first place, thanks above all to our wonderful father, and maybe also latterly towards old bond certificates. For in the frigid light of this morning it struck me with sudden force that Steinberg must have studied them closely. Throughout The Passport (1954) for example, he paraphrased portions of their stylistic vocabulary with rare wit, capturing that overinflated Neronian pomposity and plutocratic flamboyance in controlled fits of high Modernist, steel-nibbed satire. There is the neurotically minuscule “small print,” the showy signatures, the cartouches, sunburst striations, the trophies, the armorial bearings, the banner-swoop arabesques, and the flutter of all those intricate marginalia. The bonds were not his only source, however, for Steinberg threw in the posturing habits of more recent forms of official documentation. This portion of his restless mindscape embraced the certified public accountant, the university registrar, the consular section, and rubber-stamp customs and excise officials with every bit of the enthusiasm with which he took aim at the banks and brokers responsible for pumping up the Gilded Age bond market. Still, this is a source and, now, an essentially Edwardian residue, that I never recognized before this morning, thanks to that strange dream. Visual memory is evanescent, but apparently jogged powerfully by sleep. Come to think of it, there is something tangibly Edwardian about that too.

Mum again

The day before my mother’s funeral in early December 2009, I bought a new pair of socks. I am not quite sure why I did this, except that it seemed wise to look my best, and these socks were snappy. I am wearing them now. They have broad horizontal black and purple stripes, which seemed somehow appropriate, with the added touch of bright fuchsia heels and toes, which, of course, are invisible when wearing shoes, but a rather liminal hint towards the kind of cheerfulness that I am sure Mum would have bravely urged upon her grieving sons, but without necessarily displaying it. The socks are wearing out, alas, for the heels and toes are fraying, and I am no darner—Mum was. This gives me a little pang for three reasons, because (a) I suppose it is yet another indication of the widening distance in time that continues to open up between us and her; (b) I still miss her very much indeed, and (c) I am ashamed to say that when Mum darned my socks, a labor of love that held, I am sure, absolutely no appeal to her—and, to be fair, I never once requested the intervention—I was rather inclined not to wear the sock in question quite so much as before. Still, I have kept one such pair, which I never wear but cannot now bring myself to discard. How strangely these little emotional tics reveal themselves post hoc, and how I wish I had said, you know, do please, please save yourself the bother. This, I am sure, would have vexed her. Helen was a firm believer in mending. No garment, implement, or appliance was thrown out if it could be repaired, and the extension of the usefulness of anything at all Mum regarded as a minor victory in the dogged battle for domestic economy, and a point therefore of mostly secret satisfaction. The dishwasher, however, defeated her. At some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s the dishwasher gave up the ghost. She was, in any case, disinclined to use it, preferring instead a scarifying procedure involving boiling water from an ageing electric kettle, a soap-saver, a rather grimy dish-mop, and an ancient chipped enamel grey mixing bowl (to save water, because the kitchen sink was larger than she felt necessary for doing the washing up). Detergent was anathema; she used just soap and scalding water. Nothing too terrible seems to have happened as a result. The oily grey lukewarm washing-up water afterwards went onto the garden. For larger gatherings she did permit herself the luxury of the dishwasher, but when it died she went back to the old method and she never bothered to go through the upheaval of replacing it. I am sure she thought that would be an unnecessary extravagance. Most other labor-saving devices were regarded with similar skepticism. However, there was one exception. After Dad died, and after much consideration, Mum spied at one of the motor shows in the Royal Exhibition Building a gleaming white Citroën C4 (or a model very similar) rotating on a podium. Somewhat unexpectedly she liked the look of it, and, with Simon’s enthusiastic encouragement, at length decided to buy one. It took many months of patient waiting before this new-model vehicle was eventually delivered, and she loved it until the very end of her life. I am sure those distinctive chevrons on the bonnet reminded her of Dad in his heyday, for he was for decades a committed Citroën-ista. Through those last ten years Nick, the nice young man at her local Citroën dealership—Cars of France—became something of a rock and a stay, and Mum trusted him completely with every aspect of the maintenance of her buoyant little car, which, like the prototype, was snowy white. In many respects, I think, she probably trusted his advice rather more willingly than she ever sought it from us, her younger sons, not for any particular reason other than that her attitude towards us as adults was never entirely untethered from her overriding concern for the slightly vulnerable child. I am now in a cold sweat wondering, hoping, that one of the others got in touch with the dependable Nick of Cars of France after Mum died. I expect he would have appreciated the gesture.

Who we are, part 2 (Dad)

Our grandfather, T. C. Trumble, a descendant of the Trumble hunter-gatherers of Northern India and the Levant.

Thanks to the National Geographic Society’s Geno 2.0 Project, I can now dilate further upon the distant origins of us Trumbles. All such genetic studies begin with the identification of the “marker” for our oldest male ancestor, and walk forward thence to more recent times, showing at each step the line of his descendants.

What is a marker? Each of us carries DNA in every cell of our body, a hugely complex combination of genes passed from both Mum and Dad. This combination endows us with traits that range from eye color, height, and bone structure (fabulous, if I do say so), to athleticism or otherwise, creativity, intelligence, and even susceptibility to certain diseases. As part of this process of combination and re-combination, the Y-chromosome is passed directly from father to son down a purely male line, in our case the Trumble line, unchanged from generation to generation. Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, is passed from mothers to their children, but only their daughters pass Mitochondrial DNA to the following generations. In other words it traces a purely maternal line. We have already dealt with this, and, with it, our exciting dalliance with Neanderthal and Denisovan man.

Now, parts of the DNA are passed on unchanged, unless a mutation occurs—a random, spontaneous, natural and usually harmless change. The mutation, known as a marker, acts as a beacon; it can be mapped through generations because it, too, is passed down through the generations for thousands of years. When geneticists identify such a marker, they try to determine when it first occurred, and in which region of the world: in Ethiopia, or Manchuria, or the Yukon, or Borneo, or Tierra del Fuego. Each marker is essentially the beginning of a new lineage on the human family tree.

Branch M42: ca. 75,000 years ago

The common direct paternal ancestor of all men alive today was born in Africa around 140,000 years ago. Naturally he was a Trumble. He was neither the first human male nor the only man alive in his time. He was, however, the only male whose Y-chromosome lineage has survived until now. All men, including our direct paternal ancestors, trace their ancestry to one of this man’s descendants. The oldest Y-chromosome lineages in existence, belonging to the “A” branch of the tree, are found only in African populations.

Around 75,000 years ago, the “BT” branch of the Y-chromosome tree was born, defined by many genetic markers, including M42. The common ancestor of most men living today, some of this proto-Trumble’s descendants began the journey out of Africa, to India (!) and to the Middle East. Small groups would eventually reach the Americas. Others would settle in Europe, and some from this line remained near their ancestral homeland in Africa.

Individuals from this line in Africa often practice cultural traditions that resemble those of their distant ancestors. For example, they often live in traditional hunter-gatherer societies. These include the Mbuti and Biaka Pygmies of central Africa, as well as the Hadza of Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika), a range of possibilities that I feel quite sure would have tickled my late father, and filled my mother with deep skepticism and, perhaps, a wry or mischievous chuckle. She was modestly proud of her own ancestors.

Now, as M42-bearing populations migrated around the globe, they picked up additional markers on their Y-chromosomes. Today, there are no known BT individuals without these additional markers.

Branch M168: Africa/Asia, ca. 70,000 years ago

As the proto-Trumbles left Africa, they migrated across the globe in a network of pathways that spread out like the branches of a tree, each limb of migration identifiable by a marker in our DNA. For male lineages, the M168 branch was one of the first to leave the African homeland.

Moving outward from Africa and along the coastline, members of this lineage were some of the earliest settlers in Asia, Southeast Asia, and, significantly, Australia, the Aboriginal Trumbles. Some from this line would even travel over the land bridge to reach the Americas. The Trumble who gave rise to the first genetic marker in our lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania. My preference would be for Kenya, a distant premonition, as I have already put it, of gins-and-tonic on the verandahs of suburban Nairobi or in Happy Valley. The descendants of this rather blasé Trumble became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living now.

Why did this Trumble and/or his descendants leave Africa? The first migrants probably ventured across the Bab-al Mandeb strait, a narrow body of water at the southern end of the Red Sea, crossing into the Arabian Peninsula soon after M168 originated—perhaps 65,000 years ago. These beachcombing Trumbles made their way quite rapidly to northern India and Southeast Asia, following the coastline in a gradual march eastward. One can see it, I think, in the satisfactorily Brahmin Trumble eyebrows. By 50,000 years ago, they had also reached Australia. These were the ancestors of today’s Australian Aborigines.

It is also likely that a fluctuation in climate may have contributed to our ancestors’ exodus out of Africa. The African ice age, as we have already seen, was characterized by drought rather than by cold. Around 50,000 years ago, parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to a savanna, the animals hunted by our ancestors expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Our nomadic Trumble ancestors therefore followed the good weather and the animals they hunted, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined. In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern Trumbles’ intellectual capacity. Many scientists believe that the emergence of language gave we Trumbles a huge advantage over other early human species. Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn’t been able to earlier: all these allowed ancient Trumbles rapidly to migrate into new territories, exploit new resources, and replace or subsume other hominids such as the Neanderthals.

Branch M89: South Asia (hmmm) or West Asia, ca. 50,000 years ago

The next male ancestor in our ancestral lineage is the man who gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This Trumble was born around 50,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle East. The first Trumbles to leave Africa probably followed a coastal route that eventually ended, satisfactorily, in Australia. Our ancestors followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond, and were part of the second great wave of migration out of Africa.

Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. Drought bore down upon Africa and the grasslands reverted to desert, and for the next 20,000 years, the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, our Trumbles had but two options: to remain in the Middle East, or to press on. Retreat to the home continent was no longer an option. While many of the descendants of M89 remained in the Middle East, others continued to follow the great herds of wild game through what is now modern-day Iran into the vast steppes of Central Asia.

These semi-arid grass-covered plains formed an ancient “super-highway” stretching from eastern France to Korea. Our Trumbles, having migrated north out of Africa into the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country.

Today, geneticists have found the lineage in 1% to 2% of Pakistani and Indian populations. However, it is about 4% of some Austro-Asiatic-language-family-speaking groups in India. It is about 9% of some Dravidian-language-family-speaking groups in India, and it is 9% to 10% of male lineages in Sri Lanka. In Borneo, Borneo!, it is about 5% of the population. In Malaysia, it is about 6% of the population.

Branch P128: South Asia, ca. 45,000 years ago

The next male ancestor in our ancestral lineage is the Trumble who gave rise to P128, a marker found in more than half of all non-Africans alive today. This man was born around 45,000 years ago in the Middle East or Central Asia. The descendants of P128 migrated to the east and north, picking up additional markers on their Y-chromosomes. This lineage is the parent of several major branches on the Y-chromosome tree: O, the most common lineage in East Asia; R, the major European Y-chromosome lineage; and Q, the major Y-chromosome lineage in the Americas. These Trumbles went on to settle the rest of Asia, the Americas, and Europe; many others traveled to Southeast Asia. Today, P128 individuals lacking these additional markers are rare in most populations, and are most commonly seen in Oceanian and Australian Aboriginal populations.

Branch M45: Central Asia or South Asia, ca. 35,000 years ago

This Trumble traveled with groups in the open savannas between Central and South Asia during the Paleolithic era. These were big game hunters, and parents to two of the most widespread male lineages in modern populations, one that is responsible for the majority of pre-Columbian lineages in the Americas (haplogroup Q) and many others from Asia and Europe. Another one that spread farther into Asia produced the highest frequency lineages in European populations (haplogroup R). Today, Trumbles of this lineage who do not belong to a descendant branch are rare, and geneticists have found them most often, again, in India. These populations include such diverse groups as the Saora (23%), the Bhumij (13%), and Muslims from Manipur (33%).

Branch M207: Central Asia, ca. 30,000 years ago

Trumble M207 was born in Central Asia around 30,000 years ago. His descendants went on to settle in Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East over the following 20,000 years. Today, most western European men belong to one branch—R–M342—all descended from this glorious Trumble lineage. While it appears to have been one of the earliest to settle in Europe more than 25,000 years ago, more recent population expansions associated with the post-glacial re-population of northern Europe after the end of the last ice age, as well as the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic, also contributed to its high frequency in Ireland, Britain, France and Spain. One descendant lineage—R–L62—is common in Eastern Europe and India (again; are we detecting a pattern?), and was probably spread in part through the migration of Indo-European steppe nomad Trumbles over the previous 5,000 years.

Branch P231: Central Asia, ca. 25–30,000 years ago

The Paleolithic Trumble who founded this lineage was also a nomad. His descendants include two major branches that today account for most European men and many others from Central Asia, West Asia, and South Asia.

Branch M343: South Asia or West Asia, 17–22,000 years ago

The first Trumbles of this lineage lived as hunter-gatherers on the open savannas that stretched from Korea to Central Europe. They took part in the advances in hunting technology that allowed for population growth and expansions. When the Earth entered a cooling phase, most Trumbles from this line sheltered in the southeast of Europe and in West Asia. It was from these regions that their progeny rapidly expanded when the ice receded once more. Some of these Trumbles migrated west across Europe. Other Trumbles moved back toward their distant ancestors’ homelands in Africa, passing through the Levant (!). Through these movements and the population boom triggered by the Neolithic Revolution, these Trumbles and their descendants came to dominate Europe. Today, it has a wide distribution. In Africa, geneticists have found this lineage in Northern Africa (6%) and central Sahel (23%). Its frequency in Europe is at times high and at other times moderate. It represents about 7% of Russian male lineages, about 13% of male lineages in the Balkans, about 21% of Eastern European male lineages, 55% to 58% of Western European lineages, and about 43% of Central European male lineages. In Asia, most men of this lineage are found in West Asia (6%) and South Asia (5%). However, trace frequencies of around one half of a percent from this lineage are present in East Asia, our very distant Han Chinese Trumble cousins.

Branch L278: West Asia, date yet to be determined

While some Trumbles from this group traveled west into Central Asia, others moved south toward the Levant. Today, they are present in trace frequencies of less than 1% in Italy, the Ukraine, and the region of the Pannonian Basin, pottering about in their characteristically Trumblish way.

Branch P310: West Asia, date yet to be determined

Trumbles of this lineage strolled into Central Asia, Europe, and the Levant (!). One such Trumble branch has the highest frequency of any male line in Western Europe. However, rather than a single movement across Europe, this lineage’s branches may represent many simultaneous and successive waves of migration. Today, it is 48% to 52% of male lineages in Ireland. This comes as no surprise to us, for we already knew that our Irish great-great-grandfather William Trumble (1828–1908) emigrated to Australia from Ballymote, Co. Sligo, in 1841, aged fourteen. The family also had connections to the little town of Castlerock, near Lough Foyle in Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Their father, John Trumble, was evidently a freeholder, and their mother’s name was Ann (née Knott). John Trumble survives in the land records for two parishes in the neighborhood of Ballymote, Co. Sligo. It seems he paid a church tithe or tax for arable and bottom land, and what is unsentimentally described as “reclaimed bog” at Feenaghroe in the parish of Toomour, to the tune of £1/10/10½.

However, looking at the much farther distant horizon, we are now sure that Branch P310 also represents 45% of those in France—Les Trumbles. It is about 38% of the male population in Spain—Los Trumbles. It is about 8% of male lineages in Italy—i Trumble. It is about 5% of male lineages in Oman. It is 1% to 2% of the male population in Iraq and Lebanon—the Lebanese Trumbles. It is also 1% to 2% of the male population in Kazakhstan, the sturdy Kazakh Trumbles. Today, members of this lineage are even more widely distributed across Europe and West Asia. Yet they reached their highest frequency in Ireland where we and our descendant branches contribute to between 35% and 38% of the male population. It is between 1% and 2% of male lineages in Germany—Die Trumbln. It is about 2% of the male population in Croatia. It is also present in some paternal lineages from the Ashkenazi population of eastern Europe. Can this perhaps mean that certain Trumbles were in fact once Jewish, or, at any rate, proto-Jewish—because this almost certainly predated Abraham and Sarah by several millennia? Quite possibly, and, if so, how very wonderful!

His malaria

You find out things. Among the mountain of paper Mum left behind is this spare communication from the village of Ladava in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea—where by coincidence I went on a school excursion in 1979—reporting to the relevant authorities in Melbourne, and, presumably, onwards to our grandparents, that Dad was diagnosed with malaria and admitted for treatment on January 23, 1944, when he was serving as an able seaman in the Royal Australian Navy. This was just a few days prior to his twenty-second birthday. I fancy the note in pencil, explaining what “B.T.” meant, was made upon further investigation by my grandfather, Tom Compson Trumble—and I bet the information came from his brother Hugh, the eminent brain surgeon. “Bacillary tertian” was a serious form of malaria that certainly killed many American and Australian servicemen during the war, so Dad was lucky. My grandparents must have been frantic with worry. Dad obviously recovered, returned to active duty, and, in due course, retrieved the document and filed it after he was demobbed and returned to live at home in Huntingtower Road. I never knew he suffered from malaria. To the best of my recollection he never once mentioned it, and as far as I know he was also fortunate not to encounter any recurrence of the disease. As I contemplate this thing about which I knew nothing, I realize that Dad hardly ever mentioned the war in the Pacific—any aspect of it. I know he was present in Tokyo Bay aboard an Australian patrol boat when the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945, but I cannot recall him ever describing that or any other wartime event. He was certainly a member, and a longstanding one, of the so-called Heroes’ Club, the Toorak branch of the Returned Servicemen’s League, so perhaps with considerable self-discipline he preferred to sequester his wartime experience, and share it only with men and women who also served. That bond between them must have been very strong indeed. Still, perhaps I should have made a better effort to ask him all about it—or was there some tacit sense that he wished to protect his family from that portion of his youth, and also that his family preferred to let him do so? Perhaps there were dark aspects of it that were best left to recede, above all, I suppose, the fear and the danger and the difficult task of re-entering civilian life afterwards as if nothing much had really happened. Certainly his stone deafness in one ear was partly caused by close proximity to big guns. That much I do recall Mum telling me, so he must have seen action—in the Coral Sea, I think. But I never knew about his malaria.

His cards

These days there is no limit to the amount of information we cram onto our business cards, as they are known—visiting cards as people used to call them—and an infinite array of design possibilities, front and back, vertical and horizontal. However, for most of his professional life as a city solicitor in Melbourne, and sometime senior partner of the old firm of Mallesons, my father used this one—a symphony of plainness, the ne plus ultra of minimalism, entirely bereft of supplementary information. In fact the version to which he adhered with his customary scrupulousness was in scale and quality of embossing largely the form in which the gentleman’s visiting card existed at the end of the nineteenth century. (Ladies’ were significantly larger.) Perhaps the persistence of the old-style “card” in Australia was no more than a persistence of imperial usage until the end of the 1960s, a process of gentle drift. In fact present arrangements are, in a way, a reversion to more inventive, and certainly more decorative, eighteenth-century progenitors. This is made clear by the anonymous author of a leading article in Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art (fifth series, Vol. 13, No. 664, Saturday, September 19, 1896, pp. 593–94):

The visiting-card as we know it is barely a century old. Like most other every-day articles of use and ornament, it is the result of a gradual process of evolution; and the form which the card now universally takes is by no means so attractive as those which it took in some of the earlier stages of its history. Of late years, indeed, there have been whispers of a new departure in cards. A revolt from the prevailing monotony in “paste-boards” has more than once been threatened; and the great army of those who suffer from collector-mania have been tantalized with the prospect of new worlds to conquer, in the shape of visiting-cards ornamented with elaborately engraved devices. The idea of those who mooted the change was to give the visiting-card a touch of individuality, so that each card, like a book-plate, should be a witness to its owner’s individual taste and inclinations, and not a mere machine-made reproduction of a universal pattern. But nothing came of the proposal, and the present-day visiting-card still wears its uniform of plain black and white. Had the proposed change been carried out, however, it would simply have been a revival of a fashion that prevailed more than a hundred years ago.

Visiting cards were a development from the old style of message and invitation cards. Throughout the greater part of the last century it was customary to write messages and invitations on the backs of used playing-cards. The particular card used was often chosen at random; but occasionally it was picked out with an eye to the delicate suggestiveness of some one suit. This sometimes gave the recipient an opportunity for airing his or her wit…

From the use of such cards simply for invitations and other messages it was an easy transition to their use for visiting purposes. At first the person who so used them simply wrote his name across the back of a card. Dr. Doran, in one of his pleasant books of gossip, declares that it was in Paris, about the year 1770, that the custom was introduced of visiting en blanc, as it was called, that is by leaving a card. Old-fashioned folks, he says, who loved to visit in state and display their costumes, called this fashion fantastic, and strongly opposed it. But, of course, opposition of this kind was bound to fail. The ceremonial leaving of a card as equivalent to a visit may have begun in 1770, but the writing of a name on a card and leaving it when the person called upon was not at home was certainly practiced somewhat earlier…

Writing the name on the back of a card was soon found to be too simple a matter, and it became the practice to write the name either on the backs of playing-cards, or on the face of cards adorned with engraved devices. Classical ruins and the like designs were highly fashionable. Cards so engraved appear to have been sold in packs, with assorted views; for two or more cards have been found bearing the same name written across them, but with quite different pictures as backgrounds. The practice of writing the name seems to have been soon superseded by engraving the name as well as the background. Much artistic ability and ingenuity was devoted to these cards…

Visiting-cards seem to have been known by various names. Madame d’Arblay in her Diary uses the term “name-card.” They were often spoken of as “tickets.”…

Dad in Budapest

P. C. Trumble (front row, far right) attends a murder trial in Budapest.

Shortly before Hamish took up residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, Dad took him on the old Orient Express to Vienna and Budapest, where for some reason he had arranged to attend a law conference, along with several other Australian delegates, including, I fancy, Diane Baker. This must have been in the early fall of 1974. I must have inherited my interest in espionage from Dad, because on this brief excursion to the eastern bloc, he was thrilled by the prospect of being subject to covert surveillance, and certainly alert to the possibility that everyone from concierge to putzfrau was a covert Soviet functionary. I am sure he knew that this was almost certainly not true, but part of him would have regretted it. Some people are disturbed by the thought that all is not as it seems, but Dad was simply delighted, and I must admit that I usually am too. He loved the thought of hidden microphones, agents provocateuses lurking on every street corner, intrigue aboard the steamer on Lac Balaton or being followed across the Heroes’ Square. Certainly, part of the entertainment provided to the conference delegates was the opportunity to attend a public murder trial, of which this photograph is the slightly sinister record. There he is, seated in the front row on the far right, wearing headphones, and looking wholly absorbed. I suppose it is rather depressing to think that for some poor wretch in that court room the only thing worse than being tried for murder was being tried before an audience of well-fed lawyers mostly from the other side of the iron curtain. In any case, the more some foreign capital resembled the setting of a spy novel, the happier Dad was. He loved spy novels. And in his hotel room, late at night, he poured his delight into ridiculous verses, written in longhand with his fountain pen, and posted them home to us in envelopes decorated with cartoons, almost always harnessed to the PAR AVION portion at the top left hand corner of an airmail envelope. Incidentally, does anyone under 50 remember air-mail envelopes, or the frisson of pleasure caused by receiving one, and devouring the onion-skin contents? If the attention of the Hungarian authorities was ever drawn to these, one can only imagine what perplexity they must have caused. Such was the pointlessness of Cold War paranoia. Certainly Dad’s gleeful presumption that Budapest was a seething nest of Russian spies went hand in hand with the certain knowledge that there was nothing much that they could gain by ensnaring a Melbourne city solicitor who was also, at that time, director of the Housing Loans Insurance Corporation, honorary treasurer of the Medico-Legal Society of Victoria, and a member of the board of management of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, etc. etc., except general confusion, and a lot of wasted time and effort. Safely back in the free world, and coinciding there with Kenneth and Sylvia Aitken, of all people, Dad and Hamish attended the Staatsoper in Vienna. In the audience that night, in other words the night of Monday, September 16, 1974 (Parkett, Reihe 8, Sitzen 3 und 4), only a few places away and in the same Reihe, were seated Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. Was it The Tales of Hoffmann, I wonder? I must remember to ask Hamish.

Dad and documentation

Lately I have commenced the awesome task of sorting through and identifying the Trumble family papers that are ultimately destined for the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Dad’s run of scrapbooks is fascinating because he kept everything—pretty much in chronological order—a confetti of mementoes of professional and domestic life from 1949 to the 1980s. Nothing he regarded as too trivial to escape notice and preservation. Beyond the scrapbooks, however, there are hundreds of other documents and photographs that came from previous generations—a group of long letters, for example, from the novelist Mary Grant Bruce to her lifelong friend our great-grandmother Borthwick and to her daughters, Aunt Jean and Aunt Kath, which seem to imply that various aspects of the Billabong stories, and of the Linton family of Gippsland, were based at least in part on the Borthwick family of Bald Hills near Sale. As well there is a sheaf of more official papers. This one is typical. Evidently inspired by the glorious Trumble heritage of test cricket, Dad put each of his sons up for junior membership of the Melbourne Cricket Club—at birth. Here is Hamish’s docket, lodged when he was a fraction more than two months old, on March 14, 1956. The annotation down below “Hamish David Campbell Trumble / plse Edgar” is a courteous instruction to Edgar Parker, who for years served as a law clerk (I think, I hope I am right about that) at Mallesons, and as the designated custodian of valuable and/or important documents that Dad preferred to keep under lock and key in the office: documents such as deeds, titles, share certificates, passports, and the completed nomination forms for his four sons’ junior membership of the Melbourne Cricket Club. As I recall, Mr. Parker began his lifelong career of devoted service to the partners of Mallesons as a junior deputy to the ancient Mr. Ted Russell, ultimately rising in the mid-1970s to be in charge of the files, which in those days were still folded in half down the middle and tied with red tape. Files pertaining to dormant matters were customarily retained for a period of about fifteen years, after which time they were put in large canvas bags and consigned to an industrial incinerator, to make way for the next year’s accumulation of files. The task of doing this was allotted to the teenaged sons of partners during the first few weeks of the Christmas holidays, and so it was that in the summer of 1979 Mr. Parker became my very first boss, and an exceedingly kind and benevolent one he was too. I was fifteen, but looked closer to nine.

The engagement ring

Dad kept everything. Tucked inside the back cover of the earliest of his many scrapbooks is the receipt for Mum’s engagement ring. He bought it on March 2, 1948, from W. M. Catanach of Catanach’s (est. 1880), who then occupied premises on the corner of the Royal Arcade and Little Collins Street. Incredibly they are still going strong. The item is a “W[hite] G[old] & platinum 3 st[one] Diamond and Sapphire Ring,” and the price was high: £68 10s. When in 1949 Dad began work as a lowly law clerk at Mallesons his salary was £10 a week.

No solicitors

I’ve been looking through the albums. How very lucky we are to have them.

Whenever they traveled to the United States of America, which was not often, Dad rarely lost an opportunity to have himself and/or Mum (as in this instance) photographed inspecting those little signs on the front door of Upper East Side apartment and other buildings that say “NO SOLICITORS.”

Dad was a solicitor, but not the kind that bother us here. In the British legal system from which the Australian was derived, solicitors were attorneys who dealt with any legal matter, including certain minor court proceedings. However, by universal convention solicitors engaged learned barristers to argue their clients’ cases in the higher courts, and until recently defendants or litigants had no choice but to consult a solicitor in the first instance. It was very much a two-tiered system: suave barristers above, and humble city solicitors below. Indeed before the First World War it was not unusual for Australian solicitors not to have a law degree; barristers invariably did. When our grandfather was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Victoria, the law in Australia was in the process of rapidly professionalizing. Thenceforth solicitors invariably took law degrees before being articled to a senior solicitor. They then had the option of reading for the bar (to become a barrister), or not. Judges were almost invariably chosen from the pool of senior barristers. Dad graduated from the University of Melbourne on December 18, 1948, was shortly afterwards admitted to practice as a solicitor, and did so for the rest of his professional life.

In America, the sign “NO SOLICITORS” is meant to ward off door-to-door salesmen, hawkers, canvassers, etc., but Dad and Mum were always tickled by the notion that this could be read as an outrageous rebuke aimed at respectable partners of the old Melbourne firm of Mallesons. God, how I miss them both!

GAY 900

In the 1950s and 1960s, indeed throughout the rest of his life, our father indulged an immoderate enthusiasm for French automobiles, many of them unreliable. At the funeral Hamish summoned an especially charming image of Dad’s Walter Mitty-like reverie behind the wheel of whichever Citroën was for the time being the object of his affection—“I hear the thrum of accordions, I savour the fragrance of Gauloises mingled with that of blanquette de veau or the bouquet of a good Côtes de Rhône, and, with my beret worn just comme ça, I coast along the grand corniche…” or something similar. In fact for many years, but long before I came along, the family vehicle was a model very similar if not identical to this one, and it provided excellent service on many long-haul family holidays, country picnics, skiing trips to the old Belmore Ski Club at Mount Buller, which Dad helped build with his own bare hands, etc. Its Victorian registration plate was the altogether delightful “GAY 900.” Indeed the vehicle continues to be fondly remembered by my brothers as “the GAY 900.” So imagine his surprise when last week in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, where he is currently on vacation with Lesley, Nicko was astounded to come face to face with this relic of the French colonial period—think of what it must have survived: blanket bombing, napalm, the chaos of insurgencies, the American evacuation, the arrival of the Viet Cong, and the rest. In other words, without actually saying so, I suspect this chance encounter, of which he immediately notified us by email, powerfully removed Nick to Australian places of childhood and adolescence that must be about as different as it is possible to be from any aspect of life in Vietnam, then or since. I have an idea that through the immense number of automobiles Nick owned as a young man he may well have bought himself one of these jaunty black traction avant Citroëns 11CV (1934–1957), though alas it did not last.

The token

Among the detritus floating at the bottom of an old deed box inscribed “Rutherford Trust,” that Dad kept for years in his study at home in Melbourne, I have this morning found an old copper coin, with the baffling inscription (obv.): “OIL & COLOR STORES • O. H. HEDBERG • ARGYLE ST. HOBART TO[W]N” (above) and (rev.) O. H. HEDBERG • HALF PENNY • SWEDISH HOUSE HOBART TO[W]N.” I have never before encountered artists’ colourmen who doubled as issuers of currency, let alone in Van Diemen’s Land, so in search of an answer to the vague question “huh?” I did some digging, and have just finished reading an entirely absorbing article in the Tasmanian Numismatist, vol. 9, no. 2 (2004), viz.: “Tasmanian Tradesmen’s Tokens Revisited,” by the estimable Graeme Petterwood.

It turns out that the explanation for the existence of this odd little private Tasmanian halfpenny is relatively simple, and what follows is merely a condensation or digest of Petterwood’s fuller, livelier, and more expert account.

Throughout the British Empire during the Regency period there was a persistent shortage of small change. Paper promissory notes and letters of credit were issued and circulated in many colonies, but there was also a host of different coins, not necessarily even British, that trickled in from passing ships, and circulated freely alongside them. When these coins grew scarce, a simple barter system evolved—often centering on rum and tobacco. In Australia rum, in particular, was controlled by the officers of the deeply corrupt New South Wales Corps until Governor William Bligh tried to put a stop to the nuisance, thereby precipitating the so-called “Rum Rebellion” of 1808, and his successor Governor Lachlan Macquarie finally disbanded the corps in the following year.

In September 1813, Macquarie ordered a large shipment of £10,000-worth of silver Spanish dollars from the East India Company in Madras, each valued at 5s, to be centre-punched to produce two coins from one, that is, a ring, and a smaller solid dump—this idea was not new; the same technique was earlier used to create small change at Prince Edward Island. The ring (thenceforth known as the “holey dollar”) would remain pegged at 5s, but the smaller dump would be re-struck, and circulated with a value of 15d. The colonial treasury obviously made a substantial profit, and, for a while, viable, small-denomination currency circulated in Sydney and elsewhere in the Australian colonies.

In 1824, the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land opened in Hobart, and issued sterling under licence from the London & Westminster Bank. Before this, Tasmania was awash with paper promissory notes of any and all values above 3d, and hardly any coins. The issuers of these notes—which could be purchased in bundles or booklets of 100 blank forms—promised to reimburse the bearer for the amount stated on the note. It was, in essence, a checking system unsupported by any bank, and therefore completely unreliable. Paper “money,” meanwhile, in the form of official commissariat bills of exchange, was not much better.

Instead, the Spanish silver dollar became accepted as universal currency, and Van Diemen’s Land did not hesitate to use it alongside sterling at a rate of exchange that was sometimes more favorable than that of the Bank of England. Even promissory notes could be issued in Spanish dollars, but the bank cashiers routinely converted them back to sterling at a substantial discount. Even this did not discourage widespread speculation in private Spanish-dollar promissory notes, so in 1826 the colonial government pegged the dollar at 4s 4d, and prohibited the exchange of notes worth less than £1, and all such notes made out in Spanish dollars. This produced an instant and remarkable effect of deflation, in the absence of any viable colonial money at all, until private banks hurriedly opened for business and began issuing more sterling to fill the cash void. These included the Tasmania Bank (1826), the Derwent Bank (1827), the Launceston Savings Bank (1835), the Hobart Savings Bank (1845), and the deeply unpromising-sounding Convict Savings Bank (1829). None of this solved the problem of small change, so foreign coins continued to circulate freely, but not nearly enough to satisfy the need or demand.

In England, the practice of issuing copper and silver tradesmen’s tokens comparable in style and weight to minted coin was well established, most often as an ingenious form of novelty advertising. Many private manufacturers of such unofficial penny-tokens were thriving in England when the First Fleet reached Botany Bay in 1788, but few of the tokens themselves found their way to Sydney or Hobart Town, for the simple reason that there was at first nothing at all to buy, and convicts were not allowed to have money. The first tradesmen’s token prepared for exclusively Australian use was made in England in 1823 and introduced the following year to Van Diemen’s Land. It was a silver shilling piece, for Macintosh and Degraves, who then operated the Cascade Saw Mill near Hobart Town.

Gradually more tokens were privately produced for public circulation in Australia, of varying degrees of poor quality from the crude to the downright atrocious, but in the end British manufacturers produced quality pennies and halfpennies, even with Australian motifs such as the kangaroo that migrated via reproductive prints all the way down from George Stubbs’s 1771 treatment of the same subject. After the Macintosh and Degraves silver shilling there were eventually twenty more local issuers of copper or bronze tokens, among them Lewis Abrahams the draper; I. Friedman the pawnbroker; W. D. Wood the wine and spirit merchant; Alfred Nicholas’s tea warehouse; R. S. Waterhouse the draper; Joseph Moir the ironmonger; J. G. Fleming the grocer; R. Andrew Mather the draper; H. Lipscombe the seedsman; R. Josephs the customs agent; H. J. Marsh & Brother the ironmongers; William Andrew Jarvey the pawnbroker and general clothier; G. Hutton and R. Henry, both ironmongers—and they’re only the ones in Hobart. Naturally there were vigorous competitors in Launceston. Some of their tokens were manufactured in England and shipped out in barrels, but others were made in the new die-sinking, token-making, and medal-casting establishment of Thomas Stokes in Melbourne, or by other reasonably competent metalsmiths and manufacturers who migrated to Australia and mostly set up shop in Port Phillip.

Olof Hilmer Hedberg was born in Sweden, and came to Van Diemen’s Land in 1844. At first he worked at the government’s bonded store, but soon started what rapidly grew into a successful whaling business. At its peak, Hedberg owned two large whalers, the Victoria and the Maid of Erin. Tasmanian whaling was profitable until the mid-1850s, when the price of blubber and whale oil rapidly declined from £83 per ton, and whales themselves became scarce due to over-fishing. Compounding these losses, Hedberg’s flamboyant investment in a number of coal mines on the island’s east coast failed completely, and he was forced to open a much-reduced mixed business and commission agency in premises he named, rather grandly, “Swedish House” in Argyle Street, Hobart. It was for this business that this little copper token was issued. Perhaps it was the pleasure and satisfaction of issuing coins, in the manner of a bank, that partly distracted Mr. Hedberg from the sharp reality of his reduced circumstances, and his unobstructed view of mist hanging gloomily over the summit of Mt. Wellington.

Interestingly, Hedberg’s new business gradually moved towards a more or less exclusive dealership in artists’ materials. In early 1858 on the front page of the Hobart Mercury he took out an advertisement for “Sperm Oil, Black Oil, Colza Oil, Paint Oils, Turpentine,” but in Walch’s 1866 Tasmanian Almanac a much wider range of paints, oils, and varnishes was offered, and there is no longer any mention of sperm oil, etc. It is not clear what, if anything specific, carried Mr. Hedberg commercially all the way from whale blubber to artists’ materials, but it may simply have been a natural affinity with oils—animal, mineral, and vegetable. It seems likely that this token was made in the early to mid-1860s.

Until recently Mr. Hedberg’s tokens were thought to have been struck by W. J. Taylor of London, but later “mules,” that is, struck from dies that were originally made for two separate issuers, are not necessarily Taylor’s own work. These may have been made by and/or for the firm of Ralph Heaton & Sons in Icknield Street, Birmingham. At the very least their provenance is uncertain.

Despite his commercial failures, Mr. Hedberg achieved some popularity in Hobart and Tasmania. When he died on August 22, 1884, the Tasmanian reported that for two whole days most if not all the ships at anchor in the Derwent River flew their ensigns at half mast—more, and for longer, I daresay, than any banker or businessman in our present economy could ever possibly expect.