Cole also had a multicultural staff in his second Book Arcade, and of this he was immensely proud. He strongly opposed the White Australia Policy, and wrote a number of controversial essays on the values of a diverse society. In fact, Cole opened the Tea Salon in response to racism against Asian people: he wanted to bring in Chinese and Indian staff and in doing so, subtly show his customers their shared humanity. Cole’s Tea Salon became, like the wider Arcade, a favourite place for Melburnians to socialise.
Mr Pyke, Mr Gabriel, Miss Fowler, Mr Pamamull, Mr Chillingsworth, Mr Endacott and Miss Finch are the names of a handful of real Arcade staff members. In some cases, though, I’ve mixed different people together, fiddled with the dates of their employment, or given them slightly different roles in the Arcade. (For instance, Harriet Kay is a loose combination of Gabe Mellot and Harry Gay, who were animal keepers and lift drivers in reality.) Simon Gabriel was particularly interesting: a highly educated man, fluent in four languages, he came to be Mr Cole’s personal friend. As he had vitiligo, a condition that affects the pigments in a person’s skin, he was known as the ‘black man who turned white.’ Gabriel and Cole liked to make people guess where Gabriel was from, to challenge their assumptions about racial differences. However, unlike another great huckster of the nineteenth century – the American P. T. Barnum – Mr Cole never exploited people in ‘freak shows’. The only people who were ogled in Wonder Land were the customers’ own distorted reflections.
Throughout his life, Cole always tried to make the world a better place. However, he was also a product of his time. He was convinced that the assimilation of all world cultures into one was the key to world peace – and that this one culture should be mainly based on European ways of life, with English as the world’s only language. As he rowed down the Murray in 1861, he and his travelling companion George Burnell took photographs intended to show how suitable the land was for farming. This mission failed to recognise the sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples of the Riverine region: more than twenty distinct cultural groups, who by the 1860s were already suffering the depredations of colonialism. In advertising the land as ‘terra nullius’ for farmers to take over, Cole and Burnell contributed to the dispossession of the traditional custodians.
Mr Cole had a remarkable life and a unique career. He passed away on the sixteenth of December 1918: two weeks before his eighty-seventh birthday. Unfortunately, this did seem to drain the Book Arcade of its soul. The trustees Cole appointed in his will so spectacularly failed to understand or manage the business that even faithful Mr Pyke couldn’t stand to work there anymore, and the grandest bookshop in the world died ten years after its founder. The building was demolished in 1929 by Jim Whelan and sons – the original Whelan the Wrecker. Older Melburnians might remember J.G. Cole’s, which was built in the Book Arcade’s place, but this was not the same family; they just happened to share a surname. When I started writing this book, the six-storey pink building at 299 Bourke Street housed the David Jones menswear department. By the time I finished, the property was for sale again. You might have to go there and see the next chapter in its story for yourself.
The surviving Cole children went on to pursue their own interests. Linda and her husband managed their own bookshop until 1937, which was similar in size and atmosphere to the smaller Cole’s Book Arcade of 1873. Vally didn’t wind up as a lawyer, although he did once run in a local election as a candidate for East Melbourne. They all married and had families, except for Pearl, who remained unmarried but by no means single. I think she was just enjoying life too much to settle down: her writings in Novelty Evenings suggest that, like her mother, she loved a good party.
The Book Arcade might be gone, but a few traces of it still remain. Cole’s Funny Picture Books have been reprinted several times by Mr Cole’s descendants, to whom I am indebted for this book. If you go into Melbourne today, you’ll (hopefully) find a lane off Little Collins Street called Howey Place, which was once known as Cole’s Walk. A glass roof Mr Cole installed, without council permission, still shelters the street. The sandstone building on the western side of Howey Place is where the original Toy Land used to be. Copies of the Cole family’s books, pamphlets, diaries, photographs and letters can be viewed at the State Library of Victoria. And you should also pop into the Cole’s Book Arcade display in the History of Victoria section at the Melbourne Museum – the same one Pearl sees in Chapter Twenty-Two. Under a replica of the eight-striped rainbow sign, it contains a selection of original Arcade treasures, including the mechanical Hen That Clucks and Lays Eggs, the Little Men, the jukebox-like Symphonion, and some of Cole’s medallions.
There’s one more thing you can do to keep Cole’s Book Arcade alive. Like Mr Cole said, books treasure human knowledge up, and thus it never dies – so run and find someone special to you, and tell them about the human knowledge you found in this book. Perhaps they have their own memories of Cole’s Funny Picture Book to share!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
If I might paraphrase good old Mr Cole one more time: I have little space left for acknowledgements, and yet I have much to say. I must therefore speak to the point as fully as I can in a concise, pithy way; and as life is short, you will no doubt agree with this mode of action.
To Aloma Davis: thanks for introducing me to the grandest bookshop in the world, and for keeping the spirit of Cole alive by leaving free books on the tram on our research trip to the museum while you were dressed as Mary Poppins. You are a bright sunbeam.
To Mary Wilson, Julie Wells, Polly Hamer and the rest of the lovely people at the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust: thank you for the research outings, the coaching opportunities, the delightful cottage and the chocolate. To Iola Mathews, Trent Gillam, Claire Thomas, Dianne Wolfer and Writers Victoria: thank you for your creative space, writing advice and industry wisdom.
Huge thanks to Merron Cullum – daughter of Cole Turnley, great-granddaughter of E. W. Cole – for her time, anecdotes, records and encouragement. Merron, I hope you enjoy this book with your grandchildren as much as I have enjoyed my time learning about the Coles.
To Alysha Herrmann: thanks for reading the first draft as it came together, and tactfully not mentioning the stupid bits. To Alana Boltz, Elijah Lake and Lauren M. Crown: thanks for reading the first draft and tactfully pointing out the stupid bits.
My thanks to the team at Affirm Press are as vast as the Book Arcade itself. I must give a big flourishy bow to editors Clair Hume, Davina Bell and most of all, to marvellous Meg Whelan. Meg, thank you for welcoming Pearl and Vally into your heart and for making this story the best it could be. Thanks to Martin Hughes for taking a gamble on a greenhorn and for running the show. Mountains of thanks to the ever-meticulous Coral Huckstep and the perspicacious Laura McNicol Smith; and endless gratitude to Sylvia Morris for the beautiful cover. Solid green highlights for all of you.
Thanks to all the barrackers whose everyday encouragement spurred me on: the writers’ groups, relatives, classmates, colleagues, teachers, friends, students and charges. Special thanks to official riddle testers Lexi E. and Marley E., and the puzzle guinea pigs of Adelaide Loreto’s Year Five class of 2018. To my housemates Cazz Redding and Jimmy M. J. S.: thanks for letting all my imaginary friends move in with me uninvited, thanks for keeping me sane in the pandemic, and apologies for trying out ridiculously hard logigrams on you.
To Grace Slonim, Kelly-Maree Newling, Neil Sharpson and Mia Black, who wrote back to a million weird messages at odd hours. Thanks for being there for me, even when ‘there’ was tens, hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. To my late Poppa: thanks for buying me that original Arcade-printed Cole’s Intellect Sharpener, and taking an interest in the research. And thank you and Nan for always asking about my good news and giving me somewhere to stay in the city during those years of undergrad and studio time.
To my sisters Charlotte and Liv, and my brother Luca: I could never have written such a lively, smart, funny gang of siblings if I didn’t
have a few of my own. Thanks for putting up with so many years of loud typing, louder proofreading and ‘interesting factoids’. To my brilliant parents Rosie and Dave: everyone else on this list has contributed proofreading, creative time, creative space, coaching, emotional support, inspiration or research materials – yet only you two gave me the whole lot. Thank you for your contributions to this book, for taking us on adventures, for filling my childhood with books and magic, and for yanking me out of the path of life’s runaway horses.
And finally, reader – thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMELIA MELLOR began her writing career as her secondary school’s resident playwright in Year 11. As part of her creative writing course at the University of Melbourne, she completed a thesis on the reinvention of the Industrial Revolution in children’s fantasy literature. In 2018, she won the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust’s Ian Wilson Memorial Fellowship for The Grandest Bookshop in the World. Her other writing credits include a 2018 ASA Award Mentorship and a finalist place in the 2016 Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers’ Contest. When she isn’t writing, Amelia enjoys hiking, gardening and drawing. She is an English teacher in regional Victoria.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Copyright
Title
Chapter One: A curious visitor
Chapter Two: Strange birds
Chapter Three: A funny old monkey
Chapter Four: Pearl and ruby
Chapter Five: An astonishing deal
Chapter Six: Liquorice and phosphorus
Chapter Seven: The game he liked
Chapter Eight: Wonder land
Chapter Nine: Dance with me
Chapter Ten: An intruder in the palace of intellect
Chapter Eleven: The wrong sister
Chapter Twelve: Sweet revenge
Chapter Thirteen: Missing pieces
Chapter Fourteen: Cole’s patent whipping machine for flogging naughty children
Chapter Fifteen: Order and chaos
Chapter Sixteen: Nonsense words
Chapter Seventeen: Uncanny vally
Chapter Eighteen: Fiery coles
Chapter Nineteen: Monkey business
Chapter Twenty: An incredible price
Chapter Twenty-One: Cleaned out
Chapter Twenty-Two: Wisdom of pearl’s
Chapter Twenty-Three: As it began, it ends
Chapter Twenty-Four: Familiar
Historical Note: Cole’s book arcade
Acknowledgements
About the Author
The Grandest Bookshop in the World Page 24