The Mayne Inheritance

by Rosamond Siemon

  In October 1881, their fifty-eight year old neighbour, John Markwell, had died and when his widow Harriet put the river-fronted ‘‘Moorlands Villa’’ up for sale, the Maynes purchased it. The house had a sad history. Markwell married three times. The house was a wedding gift to him and his second wife Georgina. She and three of her children died early. Two children died at ten months, one at fifteen months, a seven-year-old was drowned, and one daughter did not survive her twelfth year. The sixth, his eldest son, Henry John Markwell, managed to reach twenty-three before he was fatally thrown from his galloping horse. The coming of the Maynes to River Road did not end the tragedy attached to that apparently charming garden of Eden. Instead, the name Markwell eventually became intricately entangled in the complex Mayne family myth.

  After the move, Mary dropped from recorded view. Owning no property in her own right, she features only once in a Post Office directory. Isaac’s name now appears with the address River Road, Toowong. It would be imagining the inconsistent to expect that a woman of Mary’s strength and temperament spent all her time quietly but happily, in her pleasant garden with the company of her sister-in-law and some of her children. Having exercised command in her world for eighteen years, she was unlikely now to take a back seat. There is more reason to believe that her authority was never surrendered to any of her sons. It was a women’s household in which Isaac lived and to which William returned, aged twenty-eight. In 1884 he came home from Sydney University with a Master of Arts degree, a gentleman’s style, a taste for good jewellery, and no apparent inclination to do other than live on the money he had inherited. He allowed himself to become a Commissioner of the Peace, which no doubt was useful in witnessing signatures in the various family property deals. The outgoing young sportsman of Grammar School days had drained his small cup of social freedom. Coming home, he faced social stigma because of his father’s crime. The gentleman’s clubs which might have rounded out the style of life he desired were not open to him. He, too, withdrew and became locked into a very private life. Local folklore agrees that he was an excellent horseman, a skill he had learned from Patrick in the 1860s. Until old age he rode regularly in solitude in the western suburbs. He still kept a horse at ‘‘Moorlands’’ at the time of his death.

  Despite the Maynes’ low profile, the family shame was never allowed to be buried by the passage of time. In 1888, Henry Stuart Russell’s book The Genesis of Queensland retold the gruesome story of the Cox murder. No doubt the fact that Isaac Mayne was a solicitor stayed the author’s pen from actually naming Patrick as the murderer, but he ended the chapter by writing:

  the cook was charged with the crime, tried, convicted and hung, in spite of loud protestations of innocence. Some years afterwards another, in the horror of a deathbed upbraiding, confessed that he had been the guilty one, and had looked on at the execution of his innocent locum tenens! Let his name perish!

  Brisbane people avidly read this popular history of their State. The reborn tragedy ensured that the family had little peace. Its effect on them, particularly on the ageing Mary, was incalculable. On 3 September 1889 she suffered a heart attack and died. If her immigration papers are correct, she was sixty-eight, not sixty-three as stated on her death certificate. Although she remained a Protestant, she was buried high on a hill in the Irish Catholic section of the Toowong cemetery by her long-time friend, the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, Robert Dunne.

  Three weeks after her funeral the remains of Patrick, whose deathbed confession twenty-four years earlier had laid an unending burden on the family, was disinterred from the cemetery at Milton and reburied beside her. With him went their baby daughter Evelina Selina, who died in 1854; and Mary’s mother, Mary Kelly. No record tells us whether this was Mary’s wish for the family to be together or whether Isaac and William decided that their removal was necessary.

  At that time it was not unusual for bodies to be moved from Milton; the area was prone to flooding. In the late 1850s a large section of nearby land had been Patrick’s bullock paddock, watered by the run-off from Paddington heights and had a six foot deep water hole. The poorly drained cemetery was also subject to flooding and it was not unknown for coffins to float. These occurences led to renewed gossip, making it very stressful for the already overburdened Mary and her children.

  From 1875 when Milton was closed some families had their loved-one’s coffins removed to a better-drained cemetery. Hundreds of graves without a headstone could not be identified and the neglected site became an eyesore. In an effort to tidy it up, unclaimed, smashed headstones were crushed and used for landfill. When Patrick was moved to Toowong cemetery the headstone remained and, with Mary Kelly’s, was one of a few shifted up to the Presbyterian section on the highest, driest ground where they are today. The low flat sandstone tablet that marked Irish Catholic Patrick’s grave is with those of some of John Dunmore Lang’s Presbyterian citizens of note. It no longer marks his grave, but Patrick would have greatly relished being of historic importance, renowned not for his crime, but for being a member of Brisbane’s first town council.

  9

  A Family Ostracised

  As far as can be ascertained, Isaac was thirty-six before he stepped sufficiently out of line to attract adverse notice. In April 1888, a Mrs Mary Kelly called on her solicitor, Thomas Bunton to make her will. Although she had the same name as Isaac’s maternal grandmother, she was not related—one of the many Mary Kellys in Queensland. A countrywoman, she owned several properties, some in Brisbane, and as her only child had died, she planned to leave her estate to her several grandchildren. Three executors were to hold the properties in trust until the children came of age, and act as their guardians. Two executors were from Dalby; the third was the solicitor, Isaac Mayne. Mrs Kelly died on 28 September 1889; four days later, Isaac’s employer, Thomas Bunton filed with the Supreme Court a renunciation of Isaac’s role as executor and guardian. In it Isaac declared:

  that he had not intermeddled in the personal estate and effects of the said deceased and will not hereafter intermeddle therein with intent to defraud Creditors and I do hereby appoint Thomas Bunton of Brisbane aforesaid my Proctor Solicitor and Attorney to file or cause to be filed this renunciation for me in the said registry of the said Supreme Court of Queensland.

  This was just a month after his own mother had died. Her will, drawn up in 1878, two days before their overseas trip, when Isaac was the only adult son in Brisbane, discriminated against her daughters. It left Rosanna (Sister Mary Mel) £25 to buy a souvenir, Mary Emelia £50, and Patrick’s sister Ann Mayne £500. All Mary’s real and personal estate, valued at £16,000 was left to the three boys, Isaac, William and James.

  Neither Patrick nor Mary had seen a need to share much of their wealth with their churches. His only sizeable donation had been £50 in 1864 for Bishop Quinn’s Cathedral Fund. After Patrick died, Protestant Mary had done her duty by giving St Stephen’s the costly stained-glass window as a memorial for her husband. Neither willed any money to their respective churches. Mary’s will clearly indicated that none of her money was to go to the Sisters of Mercy through her daughter Rosanna. She was of the opinion that Rosanna’s ample share of her father’s will made sufficient provision for her dowry. Although the other daughter, Mary Emelia lived with her brothers, she, too, was effectively cut out of her mother’s will. If Mary Mayne was influenced in the disposition of her property, it could only have been by her solicitor son, Isaac. William either did not approve of the unequal distribution or, at a later stage, had feelings of guilt about it. His will rectified the unequal position by making provision for Mary Emelia with a special bequest of £5,000 to be paid immediately before his estate was divided equally between her and James.

  At the time of his mother’s death James was still studying in London. He did not return until 1891. The boy who had lived away from home since boarding-school days in 1878 was now a man of thirty. He came home to a very changed household. Mary Emelia was thirty-two, full-bosomed a
nd tall, but still undecided on how to spell her own name. Sometimes she called herself Emelia, sometimes Amelia; on some documents she used both spellings. Her brothers considered her flighty, and at times they locked her in her room, from where even distant neighbours could hear her loud continued protests.

  Isaac was moody and tending to stoutness. Having little interest in anything apart from the law, he lacked the cultivated style of the more widely-educated William and James. According to the few who remember William, he was a gentleman with a known interest in the classics, a knowledge which later probably influenced a great deal of the interior decoration of ‘‘Moorlands’’. James, like Isaac, was shorter than Mary Emelia. He remained quiet and reserved with gracious manners. His London style of dressing hinted at an interest in fashion. He usually wore a bowler hat, flourished a silk paisley handkerchief in his breast pocket and quite frequently livened up his spirits by sporting a bright boutonnière. On special occasions he gave his delight in beautiful things a freer run, and often anchored his conservative choice of tie with a large diamond pin. After six years of medical training in Britain he had returned as a surgeon with higher qualifications than some of the handful of Brisbane doctors; nevertheless he did not attempt to set himself up as a private practitioner nor seek a partnership. Instead, he took up a less public role as a low-salaried resident medical officer at the Brisbane General Hospital. His appointment to the position brought the number of resident doctors to two, and soon he began building a Brisbane reputation as a skilled surgeon.

  Both William and James had left the world of their Irish immigrant parents far behind. Both seemed gentle and lived a quiet, controlled way of life. They appear to have escaped the Mayne mental instability and exhibited nothing of Patrick’s volatility or viciousness. Perhaps their lives, especially the stoicism they showed in coping with continued family tragedy, reflect the character of their mother. At the time of Patrick’s death they were young enough to blot out his dubious role model; from then on the quality of Mary’s mothering provided the security and stability that sustained them.

  For James, the advantage of having lived for so long in late nineteenth-century London’s cultivated environment gave him a desire to maintain a similar cultured background in his life at home. William shared that interest—but the reality was that despite their wealth, style and education, all the Maynes’ lives had a certain emptiness which was probably aggravated by the narrow confines of ‘‘Moorlands Villa’’, where all four had to work out their very different lives and temperaments. There was almost no outlet where they could relax and enjoy being part of a wider social group. They decided to build a grand new house with more space and a new environment to suit their tastes. In doing this they tried to blot out much of what had gone before and create the suggestion of a different past.

  During the 1880s and 1890s, Brisbane took on a more substantial appearance. Prosperity was increasingly displayed in large elegant homes and imposing commercial buildings. No longer were the central Brisbane streets partly residential, and many inner-suburban dwellers were dispersing along the tram routes and railway lines. Toowong was an elite satellite suburb with shops, a hotel, churches, and a school. The Maynes engaged as their architect Richard Gailey, whose innovative designs and impressive buildings made him much sought after. His greatly admired Regatta Hotel already graced River Road. Built in 1886, he garlanded its three storeys with tiers of cast-iron lace balconies. ‘‘Moorlands’’, to be built in front of ‘‘Moorlands Villa’’, was to do equal justice to its designer.

  This new residence was intended to mark the beginning of a new era for the family. On 2 June 1892, Mary Emelia was permitted to lay the foundation stone using a delicately embossed and inscribed silver trowel. On the site rose a large, two-storied mansion with an observation tower, from which they regularly flew the Union Jack. A charming combination of brick, timber and cast-iron, the house was set in acres of lawns, tall trees and gardens reaching back from River Road to the railway line at Auchenflower Station, halfway between Milton and Toowong.

  The house was no sooner completed than the monsoon rains of February 1893 twice turned the river into a rampaging force that tore at riverside homes. The second flood savaged the trading heart of Brisbane and swept away much of the new Victoria Bridge. At the Regatta Hotel, just up the road from the Maynes’ new home, two floors were invaded by swirling murky water. ‘‘Moorlands’’, on higher ground, safe above the thirty foot rise of the brown surging torrent, suffered only muddy lawns strewn with soggy, battered treasures washed from upstream people’s lives.

  Even today the grace and charm of ‘‘Moorlands’’ is still reasonably preserved. The interior is rich with the warm brown cedar of the staircase and wide folding doors. Several rooms have fireplace mantles of Italian marble. The dining room has dignified black marble, while all the other fireplace surrounds are soft, gleaming white. Elaborate detailing in gilded timber and ceramics enhanced the main rooms, while gas chandeliers hung from decorated plaster rosettes.

  There was plenty of space here to be one’s self. For the four Maynes and their aunt there were ten large rooms downstairs and ten bedrooms and several bathrooms above stairs. The most individual facet of their mansion is the large stained-glass window that dominates the entrance hall and sweeps upwards from the elaborately carved staircase to the high ceiling. The English influence on James’ taste is clearly seen in the design of the window, which might have been found in many British homes reflecting a family’s history. The design is built around eight delicate, pastel-coloured detailed cameos of two castles, two grand manor houses, and four seascapes. Linking them are the reeds, flowers, birds, butterflies and dragonflies of English moors, surmounted by two waterfowl.

  In the angled staircase there is a strong statement of Catholic commitment. It is an act of propitiation by the family for the redemption of Patrick’s soul. The four-sided newel post which faces everyone who enters the front door is topped by a solid orb and cross, the sign of the Church’s domination of the world. Below it on each side is a carved rose, then the words sursum corda (lift up your hearts) from the beginning of the Mass. They surmount a winged heart, representing the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. Around the base of the post are carved the initials ‘‘PM’’, and they are repeated on both sides of the twenty fretwork panels that reach up the staircase. It seems that the family adopted a special devotion to the Virgin; as patron saint of sinners, she was to intercede between Patrick and his God. The honour to their mother was kept quite separate. They were well aware of their debt to her, and at the time ‘‘Moorlands’’ was built, they financed another stained-glass memorial window in St Stephen’s Cathedral in her memory. Near the entrance, its theme is Marian, again showing devotion to the Virgin.

  James, particularly drawn to the Virgin Mary, was to adopt the winged heart and the motto sursum corda above his own entwined initials, as though it was an ancestral heraldic device. In gold, it decorates the blue suede cover of one of his photograph albums, and in 1936, the artist Melville Haysom incorporated it into James’ portrait by adding the device to the plan of the University site which rests on his lap. James had a frequent need to lift up his heart. He was a sensitive, humane man, troubled by his family history and concerned by occasional signs that Isaac, like his father and sister Rosanna, might be carrying the hereditary flaw which governed their behaviour. Perhaps it was James who gave Mary Emelia her gold brooch which featured the device.

  The building of ‘‘Moorlands’’ and the quiet, dignified life of the family gave a lift to their social acceptance. For a time, life moved comfortably within the limits which local approval accorded it. Colleagues of Isaac and James showed interest in the new home, and when it was completed the social pages noted that ‘‘Mary Emelia hosted a pleasant dance’’ in the ballroom. A month later they noted that she and Isaac travelled south for a holiday. This was one of the regular annual holidays which she took with Isaac. Sometimes they were
accompanied by William, and on a few occasions all four went to New Zealand. Elderly Aunt Ann remained at home. She acted as housekeeper and companion to Mary Emelia, who, despite approaching middle age, never appears to have gone far from ‘‘Moorlands’’ without a brother as escort. One of her breaks from dull domesticity was church attendance. Regularly every Sunday two spirited horses, drawing a highly polished carriage with the morning sun gleaming on the spokes and harness, swept the family along River Road, Roma, George and Elizabeth Streets, to St Stephen’s Cathedral.

  Then, in 1895, rumour, dulled for a few years, began to fly as fast as their horses. It was sourced by another much-read book, J.J. Knight’s In The Early Days. Chapter fifteen, titled ‘‘An Awful Crime’’, devoted seven pages to the ghastly brutality of the Cox murder. The author took a cautious lead from Henry Stuart Russell, quoted his denouement, then added: ‘‘It is best perhaps to let sleeping dogs lie.’’ Unfortunately for the Maynes, the sleeping dogs barked all over town. The memories of even their most charitable neighbours were awakened. One such near neighbour was John Brenan, the Immigration Officer. He was stationed at ‘‘Yungaba’’, built beside the site of the murder at Kangaroo Point. The Maynes were well aware that everyone knew the unpublished name of the murderer, even if those charitable neighbours kept their silence. There was also Rosanna’s continued mental instability, which became part of the gossip about the ‘‘mad Maynes’’. The continued hurt of it all firmed their protective mask of detachment.