Britannia

This week The Queen is visiting Australia for the sixteenth time since 1954. I have a vivid memory of the third of those official visits in 1970, to mark the bicentenary of the arrival of James Cook aboard H.M.S. Endeavour. I was five, and in the first grade at Grimwade House. Every schoolchild received a little medal to commemorate the event, and mine is somewhere. I must find it. Dad and Mum took me down to Port Melbourne to witness the arrival in Hobson’s Bay of the Royal Yacht Britannia. Not too far from Station Pier I waved my small Union flag with tremendous vigor, and was in every other respect beside myself with excitement. I have no recollection of seeing anything or anyone larger than a couple of brightly colored specks, descending the gangplank, and transferring to the snappy little tender that brought the sovereign, the Duke, Prince Charles (aged 21) and Princess Anne (19) all the way up the River Yarra, not I suspect an experience in those days that was ever likely to become etched upon their collective memory. Nevertheless, the drama created by the gradual approach of an ocean-going vessel as big, as sleek, and as glamorous as Britannia, and the certain knowledge that The Queen was definitely on board, these outshone anything that is now ever remotely feasible in the conveyor-belt desolation of a modern airport, even the patch of cement that is from time to time with pluck designated as the V.I.P. Apron. So to some extent when I think of The Queen, as I quite often do, I think also of that childhood vision of Britannia steaming up Port Phillip Bay. I think of the immense crowds, too, Maie Casey, Mr. Gorton, Jumbo Delacombe, Miss Mountain, Mrs. Woods, and the huge black Rolls Royce Phantom VI that I gather still lives in Canberra, and by no means in semi-retirement.

Hengist

I have lately finished a brief article about Richard Henry Horne, one of the battiest and most colourful Victorians who ever lived. His first poem was published in London when King George IV was still on the throne, and his last in New York when the future George V was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. Some time in the third quarter of 1867 Horne added the name “Hengist” to his existing ones, and on Tuesday, November 26, presented a card inscribed “R. H. Hengist Horne” at the enormous levee held at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne in honor of Queen Victoria’s second son Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who was just then visiting the colony aboard H.M.S. Galatea (see Argus, Wednesday, November 27, 1867, p. 5.) Nobody knows why Horne alighted upon the name of Hengist, although the hazy origins of Hengist and Horsa, the mythical Saxon invaders of Kent, were fodder for antiquarian Church of England clergymen with time on their hands, and therefore regularly cropped up in the columns of Notes and Queries (2nd series, No. 22, May 31, 1856, p. 439; No. 25, June 28, 1856, pp. 517–518; No. 61, February 28, 1857, p. 170; Vol. 11, March 2, 1861, pp. 171–172; 3rd series, Vol. 7, January 21, 1865, p. 64). Long ago, referring to Horne, W. M. Hurry of Sydney, N.S.W., explained: “In the Australian bush he had met a Mr. Hengist, whose name he took” (Notes and Queries, April 18, 1931, p. 286). In due course Horne made it known that that fugitive gentleman actually saved his life, but no specifics have ever come to light. It is safe to assume that this was one of Horne’s crazy inventions. Prompted in this direction by my excellent colleague Gerard Hayes, of the Australian Manuscripts department of the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, I wondered if when Lewis Carroll has the Mad Hatter and the March Hare re-appear as Anglo-Saxon messengers named Hatta and Haigha (rhymes with mayor), this was in fact a joke at Horne’s expense, but the chronology does not work. Through the Looking Glass (1865) appeared at least two years before Horne alighted upon Hengist, but Carroll was evidently satirizing the same Victorian fascination with primitive Britain that Horne took almost as seriously as himself. Having added Hengist to his existing names, very soon Horne dropped the middle name of Henry, and thenceforth signed himself Richard Hengist Horne. Thus after seventeen years in Australia he reappeared in London, with an apparently serious proposal to represent H.M. government in some sort of consular capacity in Japan.

A Touch of the Vice-Regals

There is a point early in vice-regal terms of office when, at times, either separately or in tandem, the incumbent and his or her spouse may be temporarily affected by certain vibrations arising from their elevated standing. The shorthand term used by household staffs of several generations to describe this disorder is “having or getting a touch of the vice-regals.”

At worst, in rare instances, the sufferer may for brief periods behave like Middle European royalty.

Davis and Jean McCaughey were unusual in that so far as I am aware they never once suffered from this inconvenient vice-regal syndrome. Indeed, at times they were inclined instead to travel in the opposite direction.

Certainly they seemed never to notice when the organizers of huge events like the V.F.L. Grand Final paid far more attention to starlets and political hacks than the sovereign’s representative.

At times it was incumbent on their staff to attempt to stand on ceremony on their behalf, when clearly they would never themselves voluntarily choose to do so.

On Grand Final Day in 1988, for example, at the enormous, chaotic lunch put on by the V.F.L., one sensed that few people in the room even knew who Davis was. But on that occasion it so happened that Olivia Newton-John was present in the room, swamped by admirers and Les Patterson lookalikes – she was to sing the National Anthem.

A generalized sense of astonishment overcame the entire gathering when Miss Newton-John beat a path through the throng, and inexplicably threw her arms around Davis – whom, of course, she knew well because her father, Bryn Newton-John, was Davis’s predecessor as Master of Ormond, and both families grew up as neighbors.

As a result of this charming gesture, proffered so spontaneously by such a famous woman, one sensed in respect of Davis and Jean in all corners of the room, a not too subtle retraction of the jib of familiarity and offhandedness, and in its place the hoisting of effulgent spinnakers of respect.

Here I am at the age of twenty-three: evidently not doing my job properly - which is always to keep out of press photographs.

This is The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, accompanied by the Governor and Mrs. McCaughey, and the Premier, the Hon. John Cain, M.P., and Mrs. Nancye Cain (obscured), on what used to be called the V.I.P. apron at Melbourne International Airport, Tullamarine, about to board an R.A.A.F. flight bound for Brisbane, Friday, April 29, 1988.

The Rolls still lives with the Governor-General, at Yarralumla in Canberra.