Love's Obsession

by Judy Powell

  In my mother’s case, although I lament the separation, wh. has severed my childhood’s links, I am glad that she was spared further suffering. But with Jim it’s quite different, he was 48 not 80, & peak / of his career, looking forward to retiring fr. University & tedious administration / Dept. so that he could settle down to research & writing. Why sh’ld he have had to die, when there was so much he wanted to give world? Somebody like me could well have been spared instead of him.

  I feel that ‘Hell’ for Jim will be regretting all work he’d intended to do (much / it work wh. only he could do) & wh. He never finished. But I hope that this is not so. As you say, life after death must involve an entirely new dimension; we cannot hope to comprehend it, but perhaps imagination can give us glimpses? At one time I helped @ a school for blind boys in Cyprus; its custom, @ Easter, to have hard boiled eggs dyed w. different colours, & these boys expected to have their coloured eggs, even though we had to go round saying: ‘You have a red egg; you have a blue egg’—it meant something to them, even though nearly all had been blind from birth.

  Yes, in many ways there is no distinction between quick & dead; Jim will always live in his work. After 9 months, there are often moments when I feel he will come back again, that he just can’t be gone for ever! I’d got so used to him being away in Sydney 3 days a week that it’s quite natural for me to be alone in the house—& I haven’t swept away every trace / him, many things are still lying where he left them & then I look out / window & see his pathetic, temporary cross. At his special request he is buried here, in his garden.

  Well, as you’ll have realised, I’m still in a jumble—but I’m all right, really. A kind & understanding young couple fr Norwich have kept me sane all this time. I think Jim told you that he was getting Derek Howlett, from Castle, to join his staff here. Derek has now married Sonja Clouting (a Middlesex trained nurse, also fr. Norwich); they came up here last Jan. to take charge / Jim when I c’ld no longer cope, on my own. Since then, they’ve kept an eye on me, & have included me in their family—I do feel that I am more than a friend; I’m to be godmother to 1st baby (because they think I need a ‘human’ interest. Jim’s relations are all very friendly too.

  D&S have helped me so much because they’ve known that I just needed an audience to pour out my woes, & they’ve sat & listened patiently—I usually didn’t need any answer or comment. I seem to have poured myself out to you—it’s been a great help—but no answer or comment is needed.

  PART 3

  Wentworth Falls

  Chapter 11

  Australia, 1962–90

  Nearly twenty years after Jim’s offer to work on the Early Cypriot volume of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, Gjerstad was still waiting. He had used persuasion, cajolery, even bullying, and finally offered to edit the volume himself. Jim had not visited Sweden since 1958 and the only news Gjerstad had of him came indirectly or in delayed replies to letters.

  The text was written, the proofs sent for checking. It should have taken no time to complete but it was not when Jim died.

  Within a fortnight of his death, Eve wrote to Gjerstad. She had finalised work on the proofs and thanked him for his telegram of condolence, while expressing concern that Gjerstad himself had been unwell. She was sad that Jim would not see this publication. The preface would stay. So much of Jim was in it: his thanks to her for providing the working environment he needed, and to the cats for their companionship; his complaints about the university and its administration; his refusal to accept any blame for the late arrival of the text. Eve read Jim’s final sentence with a leaden heart. ‘Perhaps the future will be brighter may it be so!’1

  Within quick succession Eve had lost her mother, her father, her father-in-law and her husband. Her father’s and her husband’s wills entailed complicated financial business. Although her father had left property in Cyprus and Egypt, it could not be released until death duties were paid and on Cyprus alone these amounted to around £10,000. She and Jim’s Bathurst lawyer were joint executors of Jim’s will and the estate would have to realise considerable money to cover the death duties that would be levied. Jim’s library and coin collection would have to pay their way, as would his collection of antiquities. The will was finally sworn for probate at £262,066.2 Jim left Mount Pleasant to his son Peter, who would take control when he turned twenty-one in 1967, only five years away.

  Three months after Jim’s death, Eve wrote to her old friend Joan du Plat Taylor listing the jobs she had to complete. She had corrected the proofs for R.M. Dawkins’s translation of ‘The Chronicle of George Boustronios’ while sitting on Jim’s hospital bed and it would be published by Melbourne University Press in 1964. Vassos’s monograph on Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus was still waiting, many years after they had agreed to publish it. When she found time Eve retyped the manuscript, trying to improve the English and checking each reference as she went. Paul Åström promised to publish Jim’s ‘corpus’ but the text needed checking and expanding, and this was on top of the excavation reports of their work in 1955 and last year. Much of the pottery still waited to be mended and drawn and she didn’t feel confident writing up Jim’s conclusions. And the excavations at Karmi weren’t finished—four or five chambers near the bas-relief of Mary Ann remained to be excavated. Alexander Cambitoglou suggested that Judy Birmingham might help. Basil was too busy overseas but at least he had finished his work relating to Stephania. Jim’s numismatic friends offered advice and she hoped one or other might visit so they could decide what to do with the coins, the casts and notes. Albert Baldwin was not the only one who asked what would happen to Jim’s coin collection.

  ‘The house is full of notes, drawings & photos,’ Eve told Joan, ‘which Jim was planning to work up into articles when he had time’. So many letters needed answers and along with everything else she had to talk to the workmen about how to keep the sheep going through the winter as there had been so little autumn rain and feed was short.3 ‘I don’t know what I do with my time; I seem to be always either writing letters or else looking out documents for the lawyer, the accountant or the University—and I never seem to get anywhere’,4 she told Philip Grierson. Five years would pass quickly. How could she finish everything in time? Would she ever be able to retire to Tjiklos? She felt quite alone.

  Eve considered herself part of the Department of Archaeology at Sydney University. She had worked at the Nicholson Museum even before the department existed, and Jim’s work had always been hers. Alexander Cambitoglou was placed in a difficult position. He had only been in Australia a matter of months, had rarely met with Jim, knew little of the background to the proposal regarding Mount Pleasant or the acquisition of the Golden Grove. Suddenly he had to run a department that, thanks to Jim’s perseverance, had expanded. Eve saw no reason to believe that the Melbourne Cyprus Expedition would not continue, or that the preoccupations that had been hers and Jim’s would not remain the department’s. The film she had taken at the Karmi excavations was part of her long-term plan to raise extra funds for excavation work and she wrote to Cambitoglou outlining what she intended. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound as though I’m trying to organise your Department’, she said, and proceeded to ask that her letters be sent through university channels, and at university cost.5 Betty Cameron, who continued as departmental secretary, briefed Cambitoglou. That Eve had thrown her out of The Mount in the week before Jim’s death may have contributed to her jaundiced view. In any case, Cambitoglou had to work out how to deal with Eve: a recent widow; an archaeological collaborator; and someone used to having her own way. The department, he told her, might be able to help Eve work on Jim’s publications but only ‘within the limits of a department which is, as you know, already far too busy’.6

  Cambitoglou’s plans were not Jim’s and within weeks of his death—and two days before Stewart’s position was advertised—he began to revise the budget of the department and foreshadowed ‘the inevitable changes in policy direction as a result o
f Professor Stewart’s death’.7 He had already alerted the Vice-Chancellor to the possibility that members of the Greek-Australian community might seek to establish a chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek studies.8

  The Chair of Near Eastern Archaeology was advertised in the middle of 1962. Paul Åström applied, naming Eve as a referee9 but she was never asked to provide one and was not surprised. Jim was hardly popular with the university administration. Another name she heard mentioned was Hector Catling. But she knew little of what was happening and felt increasingly excluded.

  By the end of 1962 no appointment had been made and on 8 November the Registrar notified Cambitoglou that:

  at its meeting of 5 November, the Senate approved the following alteration in the Establishment of the Department of Archaeology to take effect as from 1 January 1963:- One Chair … to be filled in addition to establishment unless it is filled from within the University, in which case it will be counted as a conversion. It was determined that the precise form of this Chair be determined at a later date. It is not proposed to attempt to fill the Edwin Cuthbert Hall Chair of Middle Eastern Archaeology for the time being.10

  Alexander Cambitoglou remembers that the Registrar told him if he didn’t apply for the Chair they would assume he didn’t want to remain at Sydney University.11 Sydney University had chosen its administrator and intended to keep him.

  Cambitoglou had to walk a fine line but he was better suited to the role of administrator than Jim ever had been. Where Jim had been intemperate but open, Cambitoglou was correct, polite and very closed. Years later Judy Birmingham thought the changes wrought by Alexander Cambitoglou were ‘diabolical’. Although she had only known Jim for a short time, she remembers his approach as fluid and interesting. Cambitoglou, she thought, reduced everything to straight lines.12

  Jim had never separated parts of his life and despite a predilection for elaborate lists and budgets, his papers were in a mess and Eve was left to sort them out. The university was faced with the problem of unravelling the tangled threads. The university accountant told the Vice-Chancellor, Stephen Roberts:

  urgent investigations are being made along the lines requested … in 1953 Mr Colby went to Bathurst and prepared an inventory, copy of which is attached. Since that time, however, pretty well all the things listed were transferred to the Golden Grove building and the items still at Bathurst are those shown on the attached list, which include things left in 1953 together with purchases since that date … I am attaching also the report prepared by Sir Victor Windeyer at the time of the investigation in 1953. Information is also being obtained from the Accountant, University of Melbourne, about payments relative to the Cypress [sic] expedition fund, so as to expedite matters.13

  Jim had taken from the university library all the books not required by students and moved them to The Mount.14

  Four months after Jim’s death, Alexander Cambitoglou raised with Eve’s lawyer the possibility of purchasing Jim’s library and coin collection.15 Jim had often expressed his wish that Sydney University’s Fisher Library inherit his library, but death duties now meant it must be sold.

  In 1963 a new librarian took up appointment as University Librarian. Harrison Bryan would work at Sydney University for eighteen years and go on to head the National Library of Australia. New to Sydney, Bryan had few preconceptions, no obvious prejudices, and a job to do. He was professional and gentlemanly. And he knew how to handle Eve.

  Not long after his arrival he wrote in a courteous letter full of complicated qualifications: ‘I share the view, which I find to be fairly generally held, that it would be most unfortunate indeed if this library was unable to do itself the honour of housing such a notable collection.’16

  Bryan drove to Bathurst to assess Jim’s library—all 580 linear feet of it. The library was extensive. Not only had Jim amassed archaeological books and periodicals, but also references on all sorts of supporting subjects, such as the geology, geography, botany and zoology of the Mediterranean and Near East. Bryan’s report to the University Senate was clear. He strongly recommended buying the library and thought the asking price of £15,000 was ‘by no means an over estimate’.17 Both he and Cambitoglou agreed that the best place for the collection was Sydney, which at the time had the only school of archaeology in Australia.

  Eve began to haggle. As executor she had to realise as much money as possible for the estate, but also found it difficult to relinquish control. Two months after Bryan’s visit she raised the offer to £16,500 and began to add conditions.

  Once we have got over the initial hurdle we can discuss details, such as finishing the catalogue, housing, safeguards for the proper care and maintenance of the library, how soon you can take over paying subs. to periodicals (at present being paid by the estate) and so on. I am sure we will be able to come to amicable arrangements over these matters.18

  She requested that the library never be dispersed.

  Bryan sent librarians to The Mount to catalogue the books. Eve was grateful for the professionalism of the staff, who made things easy for her.19 Although she wanted to retain some control over the library, Bryan was polite but firm; when she tried to impose conditions she was gently rebuffed. The university could not accept a library with conditions, Bryan explained, although he softened his rebuttal with an offer to pay for a bookplate to be placed inside each volume. Eve was touched and asked an artist friend to design one. She thanked Harrison Bryan. ‘I must say it has been a pleasure doing anything I could to help you as you have all been so kind and made things so easy for me.’20 It only took kindness and courtesy to win her over. Soon the bookshelves would be bare.

  What was she to do with Jim’s coin collection, nearly 5000 coins, each stored with file cards and plaster cast in specially designed cabinets? Jim had left no instructions about the disposal of the collection—Eve said he wanted it kept intact.21 She believed it must be catalogued and studied but no written instructions existed. Only days after Jim’s death, numismatic friends wrote not just to offer condolences but to ask about the collection’s future.22

  Albert Baldwin worried that there was no single person with the capacity to complete a catalogue. Jim had built his collection with loving care and Baldwin believed it was, ‘for its content and scope’, unique.23 Philip Whitting agreed there was no one in Australia capable of cataloguing it and suggested that various of Jim’s friends might be persuaded to work on individual sections of the collection.24 This would necessitate bringing the collection to England and as it formed part of Jim’s estate, this would need the approval of both executors.

  Keen to keep the collection in Australia, Eve tried to sell it to the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Sydney. Jim’s friend and fellow numismatist Pat Boland visited The Mount to value it. He was astonished to find the door open, Eve asleep upstairs, and a note to the effect that he should let himself in and begin work.25 Boland tried to negotiate a sale. At first the museum agreed to acquire the collection for somewhat over £17,000. A special request to the New South Wales Minister for Education would, they hoped, provide a one-off grant for its acquisition.26 But Eve kept changing her mind. She checked again with Albert Baldwin, who now valued the collection at around £25,000 and Eve haggled over her own small coin collection and a spoon from the Stavrokono hoard. She argued that a sale could only occur if a qualified numismatist was appointed to work on it. Boland’s nerves frayed with the flaying they received from all sides.

  By late in 1965 Eve’s asking price had risen to £30,000 and matters came to a head late in the year, as Eve, Derek and Sonja Howlett prepared to leave for England and Cyprus. The director of the museum sought clarification from Eve, who had no appreciation of the need to give prompt advice to Treasury. Without this, the museum would have to wait another year before a further request could be made. The director called the situation ‘fluid and inconclusive’.27 Eve replied that the Stavrokono spoon was worth an extra £1500 and should not be sold separately, adding that ‘once the stumbling bl
ock of finance can be overcome we can go into such matters as adequate curation and publication of a detailed catalogue, both of which I have stressed in previous letters’.28 She would not let go.

  Boland had tried to obtain this collection since Jim’s death, but he came to doubt it was possible.29 The conflict between the new value and the probate valuation was a matter for concern, as was the way in which negotiations had gone on for many years.

  In the middle of 1966 Eve wrote smugly to the museum’s director.

  As I have not heard from you for some time I assume you have given up the idea of purchasing my husband’s coin collection. However, I think it is only fair to let you know that we have just had a very good offer for it, from England.

  She was sorry the coins would leave Australia, but pointed out that it was probably best that it should be available to more scholars.30 There was no reply. She travelled with the coin collection to England.

  Albert Baldwin worried at Eve’s delays. In the middle of 1967 Peter Stewart would come into his inheritance. Death duties would be levied and Eve’s lawyer warned that a decision on the coins must be made immediately; the control of the estate would soon pass from her hands and Albert Baldwin would have to take direction from others.31 In Kyrenia, preoccupied with plans for work that was going nowhere and arguments with Derek and Sonja, Eve dithered.

  And then there were the pots. Almost every student who studied archaeology at Sydney University in the 1960s heard whispered gossip about the Great Pottery Controversy.

  Jim and Eve had brought an enormous quantity of material to Australia, including pottery sherds and other excavated material from Vasilia, Ayia Paraskevi, Lapatsa and Palealona. Seventy-three purpose-built boxes held material just from the 1961 excavations. But who would work on the material? Although the Melbourne Cyprus Expedition maintained funds for excavations, there was little money available for the enormous amount of work that would be needed post-excavation. As is too often the case in archaeology, everyone wants to do the fieldwork, but no one wants to do the analysis—the routine, often boring, work that takes so long and without which publication is impossible. Yet without publication, archaeology becomes simply a self-indulgent form of controlled destruction.