Autobiography of My Mother

by Meg Stewart

  Streamers festooned the drawing room, hanging from corner to corner and cascading from the light bulb in the centre. The excitement had reached fever pitch; we had just finished putting up the very last streamer when the doorbell rang. It was Uncle Barney with John, a young cousin of ours – Joe from Riverview’s brother, in fact. Barney’s eyes lit up as he took in the decorations.

  ‘You’re having a party,’ he said.

  Could Mum have sent him to check on us, we wondered, panicking, or was Barney being genuine? Mollie acted quickly. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Would you like to come?’

  Barney’s eyes positively shone. ‘I’ll have to bring John,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ we answered. It was not all right, but we didn’t find that out until later. John was only twelve, and we banished him to the kitchen.

  Determined not to spend the evening there with John though I was only a year or so older, I searched my mother’s wardrobe for an evening dress I could wear to the party. Long dresses were fashionable. I was as tall as my mother, but I was skinny. The gown I chose hung about me like a flag without wind, its hem trailing on the floor. I must have looked a sight.

  Joy from the flat upstairs came to the party on her own; her husband Bill was working as a dancing instructor at the Palais Royal and didn’t finish till late. A tall, awkward, angular youth, a friend of my brother King’s, was immediately besotted with Joy. Early in the evening they both disappeared into my mother’s bedroom.

  About midnight, Bill arrived at the party. ‘Where’s my wife?’ he asked in a loud voice.

  Joy emerged smiling from the bedroom, the angular youth nowhere to be seen. His whereabouts remained a mystery.

  Barney enjoyed himself immensely; I can still see him reciting poetry to an admiring circle in the drawing room. John had a good time, too, as Mollie discovered when she went to serve the supper. He had eaten all the trifles Mollie and Lila had so painstakingly and lovingly prepared.

  Dancing continued in the second bedroom until early in the morning. There were not enough chairs to go round, and people either danced or leaned against the wall. Towards the end I was shocked to see a fat man sitting on the floor, with his pudgy legs stuck out in front of him and a tankard of beer in his hand. He seemed extremely gross to my youthful eyes.

  When the last guest had gone, the gramophone finally wound down. The angular youth appeared from under the double bed in Mum’s bedroom, where he had flung himself in terror at the sound of Bill’s voice.

  Next day the furniture was moved back inside. We cleaned up, washed the dishes, took down the streamers and everything was in place as Mum arrived home. She took one look around the room.

  ‘You’ve had a party,’ she said.

  A shred of streamer was stuck to a tack in the corner of the ceiling. The trouble that ensued was nothing, we felt; the party had undoubtedly been a triumph.

  We had exams at Kincoppal, but there wasn’t the emphasis on them that there is today; the school was too small to bother with formal examinations. Trix called me in at the end of the year after the Intermediate exam and told me that if I wanted to do the State Leaving exam, she would send me to Rose Bay Sacred Heart convent (now also known as Kincoppal) for my final year.

  Again, I resorted to tears, though not of joy this time. I didn’t want to go to Rose Bay, I pleaded. I couldn’t bear to leave Kincoppal because I loved it so much. Besides, I wanted to leave school so I could become an artist. (I thought that once I was out of school I would become an artist in a few weeks. As it has turned out, being an artist has taken me half a century.)

  So I stayed at Kincoppal for another year, without exams. My last year was a good one. I studied the history of art and worked on my art lessons with Dattilo-Rubbo. We had a few painting lessons now, as well as still life drawing. I did a painting in oils of the harbour from the school grounds and for the first time Signor Rubbo praised my work. ‘Excellent – good in pen work,’ was his comment.

  I also compiled a Great Artists book as a sort of school project. The finished product was bound in red and gold. The artists I wrote neatly about on lined pages included Giotto, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Raphael and Titian. There was also a section at the end on Australian art, complete with several pages of glowing description of Australia’s landscape.

  ‘The gum trees of this land of ours, are I think the most artistic trees in the world,’ I enthused. ‘We find them robed in leaves of lovely green and brown and red. We find them with stark white trunks and leaves of cool misty blue.’

  I praised Australian artists, including my teacher Rubbo, for his portraits of old men, and Thea Proctor for her exquisite silken fans. I also expressed my admiration for Australian artists who were ‘lovers of black and white’ and went on to mention both the pencil drawings of Lloyd Rees and Hardy Wilson, and the penmanship of Sydney Ure Smith and Norman Lindsay. Among the illustrations I pasted in was a photo of Norman, intent on an etching.

  In my final year I also taught art to the four or five young boys who attended Kincoppal. Their classes were held in the stone stables behind the nuns’ house. A funny beginning for them, I thought, coming to school in the convent with the grown-up girls and the strangely dressed French nuns.

  One boy, who had a crush on me, bought me a series of presents: first rosary beads, then he shyly pressed a two shilling piece into my hand. I didn’t want to take the two shilling piece because I didn’t know if he had stolen it from his mother’s purse. I didn’t want him to get into trouble, but he was so insistent I should keep it that in the end I did. They were nice little boys; I liked them. I don’t think there were any older than six years.

  Trix was still hoping I would be able to wear the blue sash of merit, but it didn’t come my way until about three months before the end of the year. It was a beautiful cerulean blue silk ribbon with a wavy watermark through the silk. As soon as I had the ribbon I did something wrong; I can’t remember what, but the sash was in jeopardy. I do remember that only the intervention of Mother Percy-Dove, the nun who always had a twinkle in her eye even when she was upbraiding me, saved the ribbon. To Trix’s relief, I finished out the year besashed.

  There was no caning or corporal punishment at Kincoppal; we were simply expected to live up to their ideals and any girl who did not was out. I managed to survive their regime of prayer and discipline. All those years at Yass helped; to me religion was just another part of life. But I also always had an inner conviction that I was going to be an artist no matter what, and that’s what really sustained me.

  I was sixteen years and nine months old when I left school at the end of 1925. On my last day I was presented with a prize for art history and I won an ‘O’Grady Says’ display competition. Just before I left, Reverend Mother called me in to see her.

  God, what have I done now? I wondered desperately.

  ‘Margaret, you are not crying?’ Reverend Mother looked at me hard.

  ‘No.’ I stared back at her apprehensively.

  The girls always cry the day they leave school,’ Reverend Mother continued. Oh, no, I thought. Surely I won’t get into trouble for not crying.

  ‘I believe you are happy to be leaving school, Margaret,’ Reverend Mother said, shaking her head at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am,’ bowing my head and hoping that the wrath of God would not descend upon me. But Reverend Mother merely shook her head again and dismissed me.

  I was happy at Kincoppal. I had loved my seven years there but I was glad to be leaving. I was going to be an artist.

  FIVE

  IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

  They were happy days at Randwick the first year after I left school. Amber Hackett and I were partying, planning our next party, playing tennis (at which I wasn’t good), or just lazing about. If I wasn’t with Amber, there was plenty going on at home. Mollie, King, Jack and I were living together as a family for the first time since I had been a little girl at Yass. We went out to friends’ hom
es and to dances. It was fun.

  On Tuesdays I went to Dattilo-Rubbo’s ‘Special Class for Ladies’ in the city, and when I wasn’t going out, I practised drawing at home.

  My mother seemed quite thrilled about my being an artist; there was never any question of my doing something else. Besides, there was the legend of Jack Flanagan, my second cousin. Jack was part of the reason I was aware of Norman Lindsay, even at this age. Jack knew Norman. He had worked for the Bulletin newspaper and had actually stood in for Norman and done two Bulletin covers in 1916. Mum had Jack’s Bulletin covers carefully stuck in a scrapbook we had at home.

  Soon after that, Jack, at the age of about twenty-one, had gone to America, where he worked mostly out of New York. In the space of roughly ten years he became one of America’s highest-paid black and white artists (he was allergic to oil paint), illustrating stories in such magazines as Cosmopolitan. When I said I wanted to be an artist, the family hoped I might become as rich and famous as Jack Flanagan. I don’t think they really believed it, but at least Jack Flanagan’s success encouraged their positive feelings about artists. I, of course, was obsessed by the legend; the drawings I did at home were always in black and white because I was trying to be like Jack Flanagan.

  The famous artist and sculptor George Lambert had a studio in Randwick, where the Prince of Wales hospital is now. Soon after I left school, I saw him riding down Botany Street, looking magnificent on horseback. I rushed inside to tell my mother so she could see him too. After the bright sunlight, I was blinded in the dark kitchen. I crashed into the door and regained consciousness on the kitchen floor with Mum bending anxiously over me. My eye came up like an egg before it discoloured. I often saw George Lambert riding round Randwick after that, but never with such painful results.

  Friends of mine arranged for me to visit a relative of theirs called Alf Coffey. Alf Coffey lived by his art; he was a painter and an etcher, and a couple of years before he had had an exhibition in a gallery of Farmers department store, of works he’d done in Java and Bali. Now, with my friends, I spent a week at his Wyong studio house. I was enthralled, watching a real artist work.

  Mum’s brother Joe O’Dwyer came to stay with us. After tea he read aloud from Dickens and the Canadian writer Stephen Leacock. Stephen Leacock’s Nonsense Novels, as a book of his short stories was called, had us laughing all night. We liked ‘Gertie the Governess’ who made herself a ball dress out of old newspapers. But by far the most hilarious was Leacock’s ‘Boarding House Geometry’ from his book, Literary Lapses, with its rules such as ‘any two meals produced at a boarding house are together less than two square meals’. We loved those family evenings. We were really getting to know each other.

  My brother King, slim and athletic with chestnut brown hair, worked in the bank. Jack was red-headed and made wirelesses; Mollie had curly black hair and very blue eyes. She worked in the Taxation Department.

  Mollie was a perfectionist in her dress. Gloves, shoes, handbag: everything had to match. I was much more haphazard with clothing. When I left school I cut off my long hair and tried to wave it, but my hair was never in place like hers.

  I had big black freckles, which I hated. While I was at school, I started smothering myself every night with a thick, greasy, mercury-based cream called Thorburn’s. I anointed my freckles nightly with Thorburn’s for years; I think it did eventually tone them down.

  A friend of my mother’s had another remedy. Freddy her son was so pale-skinned and fair that even his eyelashes were white. He was covered in freckles. Every night as he slept his mother dabbed his face with urine. She assured me that this was the best way to remove them, but I could never face Freddy’s mum’s freckle treatment.

  King and I used to go swimming early in the mornings. We would get up about five, walk to the top of Coogee Bay Road then run downhill all the way to Coogee beach. King was a good swimmer. I wasn’t, but I loved our expeditions, the exhilaration of the run, the freshness of the surf. Sometimes we went to Wiley’s Baths on the south side of the beach. After our swim we caught the tram back to Randwick; it was too strenuous to run up the hill. The tram fare home was twopence.

  The Coogee aquarium was at the end of the line where the tram stopped. When we were children it was an indoor swimming pool; later they turned it into the aquarium that featured in the famous shark arm murder case.

  The Coogee picture show was up the other end of the beach. The day the outdoor amplifier arrived at the picture show was a tremendous occasion. Peals of bells re-echoed across the sand and out blared ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’. Coogee was ringing with the song. So excited were the proud proprietors that they played it night and day. There was nothing like it in Sydney.

  King was a lifesaver. He joined the Coogee club because Dad’s brother Frank had been a foundation member. The lifesavers took it in turns to keep watch in the shark tower on the beach. King was alone, doing his stint in the tower, when he saw a shark cruising and rang the alarm bell. Everyone left the water immediately, but King could see one man left out in the surf. He couldn’t understand why the man didn’t come out. At last someone came to relieve King and he raced into the water and swam out to the surfer. The sound of the ringing bell had paralysed the man; he literally couldn’t move for fear.

  Shark attacks were quite common then, before they put shark nets off the beaches. A shark killed the Randwick postmaster’s son and I knew another boy called Jack Dagworthy who was attacked by a shark. Late one summer evening Jack Dagworthy and a friend went down to Coogee for a swim. Walking past the Coogee picture show, they saw a poster for a film showing a shark attack.

  ‘That’s not the way a shark tackles,’ Jack Dagworthy said. While they were swimming, Jack Dagworthy was mauled by a shark. He lived, but only just.

  King was a lifesaver most of his life. He told a funny story about a swimming test he had to do when he was getting older. King knew he was really too old for it, but wanted to try. He had to swim round a buoy in the surf. About halfway out, a bluebottle wrapped itself round his leg. King started swimming faster than he had ever thought possible. He passed the test with flying colours and remained a lifesaver for another year – thanks to the bluebottle, he always said.

  Amber Hackett and I were almost inseparable that first year after school. The Hacketts had a beautiful house in Milford Street, Randwick, with parquet floors for dancing and a tennis court. The verandah had a view overlooking Randwick right down to Coogee.

  They had two small fluffy Pomeranian dogs. Every time the front door bell rang, there was a chorus from these two. Yapping madly, they seemed to dance on the tips of their toes with curiosity. The dogs were cared for by Old Bob, whose sole function this appeared to be. Old Bob was a bit of a mystery. I never knew who he really was; we called him Bob to his face, Old Bob behind his back. Jim Hackett had brought him back from Bourke. We didn’t know if Bob was a relative, an old employee, an ancient chauffeur or a business friend. He was treated with great respect by the Hackett family and lived with them until he died.

  Three times a week I had my evening meal at the Hacketts’ with Amber and Noel. Every night was like a party. Noel loved dancing, Amber always had a couple of admirers hanging about and the two girls from next door came in. The gramophone would be wound up and we danced the Charleston. ‘Chicago’ was the big song. I would stay until ten o’clock then I ran home. It was two minutes from Milford Street to Botany Street.

  The blond heart-throb tennis player Paddy appeared again. Amber and I were both in love with him this time. The Hacketts used to call for me in the white Rolls Royce when I was going to dances with Amber. She and I sat in the back with Paddy between us.

  Paddy would be alternately squeezing my hand then Amber’s all the way to the party. We were totally jealous of each other, but we kept a stiff upper lip because neither of us wanted to admit that she cared so much about Paddy.

  The Palais Royal in Moore Park was the popular spot for dances and balls in
Sydney. Peggy Dawes and Jim Bendrodt gave dancing exhibitions there before they married. Later Jim Bendrodt opened the elegant Prince’s restaurant in Martin Place in town. We also went to the Ambassadors in those early days. The Ambassadors, which was in Pitt Street, had a specially sprung floor which moved, or seemed to move, as we danced. The waltz and the foxtrot were what everybody danced, and the tango. I was very proud of being able to tango. Charities held dances to raise funds, as they have fetes now.

  Boys asked girls to go with them to dances. Mollie had plenty of invitations, but often we bought our own tickets and went in a party. As well as public dances, people held smaller private dances in their homes. I didn’t have nearly as many dance dresses as Mollie. Mum, who made all my clothes, taught me to sew and I ran up my few dance dresses myself – simple frocks with full skirts, the fuller the better, a straight bodice with straps, a large rose or posy pinned to one shoulder, and some floating tulle.

  My only bought dress, a present from Mum, was made of white georgette: it had a pleated skirt with gold ribbon running round the hem – sounds garish, but it wasn’t – and a little gold lamé jacket to go with the dress. It was the nicest frock I ever had.

  I didn’t make my debut, though most girls did, including Amber. The year I left school, Grandma broke her hip. We all believed Grandma was immortal and the news caused consternation in the family. She refused to be hospitalised and spent six months with the leg in traction ruling the roost from her brass bed in The House. I felt Grandma’s broken hip was sufficient commotion without my ‘coming out’, as they called it. My mother was secretly relieved; Mollie’s coming out had been enough drama for her.