The Dame

I knew Dame Elisabeth Murdoch not well, but slightly. When I was no more than an extremely callow undergraduate, barely aged seventeen (1982), I served for a bit on the committee of the friends of the library of the National Gallery of Victoria, of which Dame Elisabeth was naturally president. She was exceedingly kind to me then. Later, when I worked at Government House in Melbourne, Dame Elisabeth was—I do not think that this is an exaggeration—a favorite luncheon guest of Dr. McCaughey, whom she obviously worshipped. She was usually seated to the Governor’s left, and always responded to this compliment, even as she approached the age of eighty, with disarming girlishness—a quality I gather otherwise she strictly rationed. Just before she died my mother filled a vacant spot in a regular four who played bridge at Cruden Farm. This was, I think, the last social engagement Mum ever fulfilled and it was clearly too much for her—though she thoroughly enjoyed those intense afternoon rubbers, and was only mildly critical of Dame Elisabeth’s chicken sandwiches. The late and much lamented Jack and Elizabeth Kennedy, who were dear old friends of my parents, took a kindly interest in all the affairs of Dame Elisabeth; they shared a passion for the meticulous cultivation and cross-pollination by hand of violently colored zinnias. I have a feeling that Jack was Dame Elisabeth’s accountant. The Dame was patron of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, where Mum wound bobbins with Nancye Cain and many other volunteers. The Dame was also interested in the welfare of Trinity College in the University of Melbourne, where occasionally I bumped into her in the early 1990s. So the connections were many and varied. As Rupert Murdoch pointed out in his tribute last week in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Dame Elisabeth’s life ran parallel with, and for almost the whole extent of, that of the Commonwealth of Australia thus far. I gather she was also popular at the Palace. May she rest in peace.

As we get older I suppose that point about many and varied connections becomes truer of life itself. Looking back over the past year’s blogging, I am struck by the number and variety of regretful reminiscences of the fallen that I have felt compelled to scatter like rose petals among more frivolous musings about art, scarlet heels, and other ephemera—Ronald Searle, John Gage, Dame Joan Sutherland, Pope Shenouda III, the King of Tonga, Margaret Whitlam, Peter Steele, Jean McCaughey, Richard Warren, and, now, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. No doubt this is symptomatic of advancing years. Yet I am no obituarist. In fact, notwithstanding the restorative hours before dawn that I often spend devouring two whole pots of tea in my bloggy haze, I have been busier this year than at any time in the past ten. Our huge book and exhibition are essentially finished, and merely await the arrival of the crates. We open on February 27. I should say that Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century has been, is, and will probably remain, the central episode of my working life, and I am mighty proud of it. Please do come and see the show. I suspect the blog has kept me sane, though not as much as my wonderful Lyolik. And now I must go to New York for Christmas.

The Earth Goddess

I loved that summer job working for Jean Waller. Her Mollison Library catalogue cards were carefully drafted on slips of scrap paper in the spidery longhand of which I still treasure numerous specimens, mostly cheeky postcards that she sent to me while I was living in Rome, and much later in New York, and Adelaide.

Somewhere along the line by mutual consent there developed between Jean and me the unusual concept of “Earth Goddess” and, at her feet, the groveling slave/acolyte/temple prostitute, a fantasy with which we persisted for many years—and to which latter broad-brush categories other friends gleefully subscribed also. This gave Jean particular enjoyment, and she never failed to reference it in her many cards and letters—typically reporting to me the modest entertainments she enjoyed with mostly Presbyterian friends and relations as “orgies.” Hers was one of the most finely calibrated senses of the ridiculous that I have ever had the good fortune to encounter.

Mostly the catalogue cards required only two or three added entries, and for this purpose I used an exciting putty-colored “word processor” of immense size, which had the capacity to remember the main entry, and allow minor adjustments for printing the added ones. The vast bulk related to specialist works in systematic theology, New Testament studies, philosophy, ethics, and church history—leaning heavily towards the Church of England, this being the diocesan library (overseen by Bishop James Grant). At its height, the process of typing the cards simply barreled along, and each day I returned to Jean’s desk in the Muniments Room a swatch of handwritten slips with the relevant cards for checking. I am proud to say that very few (if any) required correction.

Perhaps it was my impressive performance of this vital task that led, the following summer, to being hired with the beautiful Jeremy Gaden to carry out for Jean and her colleagues Margaret Brown and Helen Brown (no relation) the annual Leeper and Mollison Library stocktake—an immense undertaking that required days of patient shelf-reading. Right through the summer, Jeremy would stand at the top of a tall wooden ladder in those boxy, airless rooms in the Leeper building, wearing, I recall, comparatively tight-fitting shorts, while I did my best to read off the shelf lists (meaning drawers densely laden with cards), performing this function from as advantageously configured a vantage point below. It worked rather well, though I fear we gradually assembled much evidence of pilfering—hardly a credit to the theological students of several generations.

Years later, I came face to face with Jeremy outside a large tent in Adelaide. He was doing the “Roll up! Roll up!” routine in a spangly bowler hat. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised to see the other. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Ran away and joined the circus,” was his jovial reply, with a full-throated laugh.

In both jobs there was the twice daily ritual of morning and afternoon tea in a corner of the dining hall, to which all the staff of Trinity College repaired at half past ten in the morning and three fifteen in the afternoon—the Warden, Evan Laurie Burge; the director of the theological school, Jeremy’s father John Gaden; Arthur Hills, Frank Henigan, and everyone else. Of these I realize only Frank is still alive.

Arthur was technically the college porter, though upon reflection his role was then and is largely still impossible to describe. He was a genuinely Falstaffian figure, beloved of all students and staff. Between him and Jean, in particular, there existed a lively banter in which Jean gave quite as much and as good as Arthur gave her. From time to time Arthur answered the college telephone, and for sheer, peremptory abruptness—it didn’t matter if you were the Archbishop of Melbourne, or a member of the council—Arthur’s telephone manner was unequaled. When he died, virtually nothing was known or indeed knowable about Arthur’s life, which must have been eventful. He lived in a small room near the laundry, and left behind two or three cashmere sweaters, $6, and nothing else. The rest was almost completely shrouded in mystery, although I imagine Evan must have known considerably more, but for whatever reason chose to suppress it.

In turn, of course, Arthur was the custodian of innumerable secrets imparted over the years by despairing students in the back bar of Naughton’s Hotel, across Royal Parade. There is literally no limit to the number and nature of potentially career-destroying scrapes into which undergraduate law, medical and other students inevitably get themselves, and the beauty of having a wise old Arthur en poste, who enjoyed the complete trust and confidence of the warden, was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred Arthur could somehow get them out of it. To him no doubt more than one puisne judge, suffragan bishop, member of parliament, or cabinet minister today owe their careers, and each and every one of their youthful peccadilloes went with Arthur to his grave, which, incidentally, is under a pretty gum tree on the southeast side of the Bulpadock.

The Cards

In middle age I seem to have become more and not less subject to the brisk forms of nannying in which our Yale information technology time-lords seem to specialize. Just now, you cannot log onto anything internal without being reminded that it is time to change your password. Tick, tock—it must be done, once a year. This is dreadful because, having in recent days finally obeyed that instruction (for fear of getting a big smack on my bottom for non-compliance), I now type in the old one out of sheer habit before remembering to correct myself by entering the new one instead—almost as ingeniously configured. Nobody could ever possibly guess what these were/are, and they are not written down, except in some secure and (I hope) impenetrable spot on the server. On the other hand, I do wonder what anyone would gain from stealing my identity. Best not to tempt fate, but they might at least get a few amusing surprises. Anyhow, now the central presidium urges me to scan my computer for credit card and social security numbers, a process that takes forever and yields a bunch of false hits—ten-digit clusters that are not, in fact, social security numbers at all, but rather the accession numbers of various objects that belong to other art museums. I am invited to shred the offending documents in which these suspicious numbers crop up, and indeed I have now done so because (a) resistance is futile, (b) anything for a quiet life, (c) I don’t seem to be able to proceed unless I obey, and in any case (d) you have to log onto some internal site and click on a box that alerts the authorities to the fact that you have carried out their instructions to the letter. All of which reminds me that my very first job after entering university—this was in the upper cretaceous period—was to type out Mollison Library catalogue cards for the estimable Jean Mary Waller of beloved memory, a task (in her words) of “sub-professional” responsibility, which I carried out in a small room right next door to Angela Mackie’s private loo. Everything else has long since changed; the cards pulped (or worse), but at least the loo is still there.

Jean Waller

Jean Mary Waller, 1914–1999, librarian, teacher, mentor, and friend.

Jean was born on March 15, 1914. Despite having in infancy suffered from septic arthritis of the hip joint, which caused her to grow up with a degree of permanent lameness, Jean lived a remarkably active life in the course of which she overcame many obstacles – mainly physical, but not exclusively.

Jean trained in librarianship in Sydney, and got her first job in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne.

In 1953 she went from there to be deputy librarian, then chief librarian of what was then the University of Malaya. From 1960 to 1966, Jean was University Librarian of the University of the newly independent Republic of Singapore.

In 1967 Jean returned to Australia to take up the position of deputy librarian at the Australian National University in Canberra. She wrote a Guide to the Libraries, the Australian National University (Institute of Advanced Studies), Canberra: Australian National University Library, 1970, and, with Enid Bishop, edited International Co-operation in Orientalist Librarianship: Papers Presented at the Library Seminars, 28th International Congress of Orientalists, Canberra, 6–12 January 1971, Canberra : National Library of Australia (for the Library Seminars Planning Committee), 1972.

In semi-retirement, Jean succeeded the redoubtable Miss Mary Rusden (reg. 1966–78) as Leeper Librarian (1978–82), then, in a voluntary capacity, as Mollison (i.e. diocesan) Librarian (1982–94) at Trinity College in the University of Melbourne, where – as she always did wherever she went – she attracted a posse of new and admiring friends.

One of the most enlightened but hitherto unsung administrative decisions Jean took upon arriving at Trinity – with the full support of the then Warden, Dr. Evan L. Burge – was to abolish the old “reserve” section, which consisted of a locked cupboard containing mostly illustrated scientific textbooks, certain French novels and other matter which Miss Rusden regarded as indecent, or merely distasteful, and to which access was routinely denied to undergraduates, theological students, and junior tutors.

Jean was a stalwart of the Student Christian Movement in its heyday; a staunch supporter of the Uniting Church of Australia, Amnesty International, Community Aid Abroad, and the Y.W.C.A. She was endowed with a finely calibrated sense of humour, was a connoisseur of fine wine, and Chinese paintings.

Jean was not by any means intimidated by ex-Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, Church of England bishops, wardens of colleges, or wise-cracking undergraduate sub-professional staff.

Jean died at Epworth Hospital in Melbourne on January 25, 1999. May light perpetual shine upon her.