Love's Obsession

by Judy Powell

  She sighed as she sipped her brandy. She wondered what would happen to everything when she died. Would anyone be interested?

  Epilogue

  Legacies

  Eve Stewart died in a nursing home on 8 December 2005, aged 91. At her funeral both Laila Haglund and Robert Merrillees gave eulogies. Basil Hennessy spoke of her skills as an archaeological draughtswoman, and Professor Paul Åström remembered his time at Mount Pleasant. From America Stuart Swiny wrote of her ‘timely support’ for the Cyprus American Archaeological Institute.

  Laila’s children, Karin and Kerstin, had known Eve since childhood and remembered her vividly. They could still taste the bread she baked, the special porridge and homemade plum jam:

  We went for walks down the bush tracks looking for fire wood and in the evenings in front of the fire we played board games and cards, at which Eve was brilliant. It was always cold at night in Wentworth Falls and it was so nice to jump into that big bed with a hot water bottle and an Agatha Christie novel to read and to fall asleep listening to Eve and Laila chatting away in the living room.1

  Eve belonged to another age, one that became more remote with time. Born at the rag end of Edwardian England, she died as the twenty-first century rolled around. As she aged, Eve tried on attitudes more aligned with the modern world but she never wore them easily. Her close friendship with Laila Haglund and Laila’s children may have influenced her decision to write to the Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, in 1991 condemning plans to dam the Franklin River. Her financial support for the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, on the other hand, was a natural extension of her love of animals and the Australian bush. Her rare engagement with politics included manning stalls for the Liberal Party and later led her to join Grey Power. ‘I don’t like either Labor or Liberal, and I can’t stand Fred Nile who seems to be “down” on everybody’, she told Robert Merrillees.2 Into old age, she could still write trenchant and intemperate letters of protest. A letter to the radio station 2GB complained about a new announcer and was written the year she turned seventy. ‘How long are you going to continue to employ that insolent, self-opinionated man, who has recently taken over on Saturday and Sunday evening?’3 she began and filed a carbon copy of the letter under ‘Radio’, immediately after correspondence with Professor Dan Potts at Sydney University, and in front of receipts for her subscription to The Readers Digest.

  Eve Stewart had no job, although she continued to use writing paper with Sydney University letterhead, but with the address struck out, for decades after Jim’s death. She tried to maintain a separation between her personal finances and those she set aside for research, but apart from time as a volunteer at the Cyprus Museum in the 1930s and a short period working as a technical assistant at the Nicholson Museum, all her work was voluntary and self-funded. She expected others to do the same and could not understand when they did not. She came from a world where obligation and duty held centre stage and it was the only world she knew.

  On enlistment in the army in 1939 Eve gave her vocation as ‘archaeologist’, but like many women she was happy to defer to her husband, and by 1978 her English passport gave her occupation simply as ‘archaeological draughtsman’. Certainly Eve was an archaeological draughtsman of great distinction and an efficient editor to whom many scholars turned. Her coin casts were technically excellent, but her skills were not simply technical. Her broader knowledge of numismatics grew as she dealt with Jim’s research on the Lusignan coinage of Cyprus and Andreas Pitsillides was certainly impressed by her scholarship. As she worked to complete Jim’s corpus she strengthened her knowledge of Early Cypriot material and grew confident making decisions and drawing conclusions; numerous requests in her archive attest to her detailed knowledge of archaeological material from Cypriot sites. In the course of meeting her obligations to Jim’s memory and ensuring his legacy, Eve remade herself. From Mrs J.R. Stewart to Mrs D.E. Stewart—and always, and simply, Eve.

  Eve Stewart never forgot a birthday or failed to meet deadlines for posting Christmas cards and presents overseas. On the ninetieth birthday of her cousin John Mills she arranged for a card to arrive on the exact day, although she hadn’t seen him for decades and had always been closer to his younger brother Giles. But John was important, a member of parliament, resident owner of Bisterne, and family. In a similar vein she kept detailed lists of Christmas cards, noting who she’d received cards from and those she’d sent them to. This was what was expected, and she never failed.

  Eve’s letters were generally cheerful, professional, and correct in more than simply grammar. They were almost never personal or revealing.

  The sale of Jim’s library to the Fisher Library was the easiest of Eve’s duties on his death. The ‘Stewart collection’ came to hold a special place in the Fisher, housed in its own space and consulted with reverence by visiting academics.

  Against Eve’s wishes the collection was eventually dispersed among the main collection. All evidence of it as a private collection was lost, and books and articles previously in pristine condition and beautifully bound were subjected to the wear and tear of student use. The library ended, Basil says, in tatters. Occasionally a student will take a book from the shelves and wonder about the bookplate inside the front cover.

  Jim’s massive collection of coins, a collection of international significance, was finally sold to the established firm of A.H. Baldwin and Sons, a family business run by Jim’s old friend Albert Baldwin. The firm favoured scholarship over profit and was generous in providing access to numismatists wanting to study material. In due course, John Seltman, son of another of Jim’s friends, the numismatist Charles Seltman, began a PhD study of the coinage of the Lusignan dynasty. He borrowed a copy of Jim’s manuscript on the Lusignan coinage from Christopher Blunt and in 1994 published a volume on the coins of the Crusader states. Much of the content bore a striking resemblance to Jim’s manuscript. A.H. Baldwin and Sons agreed to lend Seltman some coins from the Stewart collection to assist with his research in America. Several years after the loan, one of the managing directors of Baldwins was horrified to see some of these coins for sale at a coin auction. He flew immediately to Washington to confront Seltman, who returned the remaining coins and promised to pay back losses. In 1974, most of the remainder of the collection was offered to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, but neither could afford to buy everything on offer and so the remaining coins, numbering in the hundreds, were sold to private collectors. Only because Jim and Eve were so meticulous in making plaster casts of the coins is it today possible to re-create his original collection and, therefore, the original hoard from the village of Stavrokono, the village Jim visited with Petro Colocassides in 1947, that fateful year.4

  Jim Stewart believed that the Nicholson Museum could be world-class. In moments of paranoia he believed that another world war was imminent and that with Europe destroyed the Nicholson would be the only repository of material from the ancient world. Over the years he amassed objects—skulls from Jericho, ivories from Nimrud, even a hoard of over three thousand Roman coins acquired by auction in 1949 from Taunton, where Jim and Eleanor had once lived.5 Sadly, he spent little energy making sure that the material was properly curated, catalogued or conserved.

  The Nicholson was planned as a teaching museum. Jim appointed a teaching fellow responsible for managing visitors and school groups, and encouraged students to handle material and use objects to learn about the past. No doubt standards were not those that are expected today, but it was a far cry from the art museum it became under his successor. Keenly aware of the value of archaeological material, Jim did not see objects simply as works of art.

  After the 1966 reorganisation of the museum, Professor Cambitoglou opened the exhibition with a lecture that extolled the virtue of beauty for its own sake, remarking: ‘We don’t apologise for displaying a beautiful Greek drinking cup.’ Students learned that the small or ugly or vernacular was of lesser value. One student, engaged t
o restore pottery at the Golden Grove, was mortified one day when he dropped and broke a pre-dynastic Egyptian pot. Fearfully he told Cambitoglou, who simply dismissed the material and told him to throw it away.6

  Assistant curators have always done most of the work at the Nicholson but have rarely been acknowledged. Vincent Megaw, first appointed to the staff by Jim Stewart in 1961, remains furious that, during Cambitoglou’s long reign, so little attention had been paid to objects not of Greek or Roman origin. Some objects—the Nimrud ivories or the Jericho skull—cannot be dismissed, but in general the emphasis has long been on a museum, like the Department, ‘of Classical Archaeology with appendages’.7

  After completing his doctorate at Oxford, Jim’s student Basil Hennessy went on to become Director of the British School in Jerusalem and lectured at the University of New England in Armidale. In 1973 the Edwin Cuthbert Hall chair in Near Eastern Archaeology was fully restored and Basil became only the second Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Sydney University. While at Sydney University he began excavations in Jordan, first at the Chalcolithic site of Teleilat Ghassul (1975–77) and, from 1978, at the more complex multi-period site of Pella in the Jordan Valley. In much the way that Jim had hoped, students from all over Australia learned archaeology while working at Pella and the camaraderie engendered there under Basil’s gentle guidance meant that many of these students remained in touch and retained fond memories of Jordan. All major teaching institutions in Australia and all state museums and heritage departments include people who at one time or another worked at Pella.8 I am one.

  After nearly two years at Mount Pleasant Laila Haglund married and moved to England to study at the Institute of Archaeology in London, which Gordon Childe had once directed. When she returned to Australia her husband Malcolm Calley took up a position in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Queensland and Laila helped to design the anthropology museum at the university. In 1965, building developments at the Gold Coast uncovered and threatened an extensive Aboriginal burial ground. With support from student volunteers, Laila Haglund excavated 140 burials and produced evidence of the site’s use for a period of nearly one thousand years from 900 CE to the twentieth century. As no legislation existed to protect such sites, Laila helped draft the first cultural heritage legislation for Queensland, the Aboriginal Relics Preservation Act, in 1967.

  Paul Åström remained as Director of the Swedish Institute in Athens until 1963. He was a lecturer at the University of Missouri and director of the Swedish Institute in Rome, before taking up a position as Professor at the University of Göteburg, where he remained until his retirement. His house in Göteburg was, he told Jim, ‘my Mount Pleasant’ and from there he ran his publishing series, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (SIMA). In retirement he was able to do what Jim had failed to do, with the University of Göteburg acquiring his property. On his death, editorial responsibility for SIMA passed to Professor David Frankel and Dr Jenny Webb from La Trobe University in Melbourne. The Swedish Australian connection remains.

  After graduating with a PhD from the Institute of Archaeology in London, Robert Merrillees joined the Australian Foreign Diplomatic Service. He served on the Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations and was Australian Ambassador to Israel, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, Bulgaria and Greece. Even as a diplomat he continued an active interest in archaeology, publishing scholarly work on Cypriot archaeology. In 1999 he was appointed Director of CAARI, the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, which Eve had done so much to support.

  Peter Megaw never held an academic position but influenced a generation of Byzantine scholars. In 1962 he was appointed Director of the British School at Athens, and on retirement went to the Harvard Centre for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington. He directed conservation and excavation works on Cyprus at a number of places and finally established a base at Paphos. He died in 2006 aged ninety-five.

  In 1964 Vassos Karageorghis was appointed Director of the Department of Antiquities, on the departure of Porphyrios Dikaios. He remained director until his retirement in 1989, when he became the official advisor to the President of the Republic of Cyprus for a further three years and subsequently a member of the Board of the Leventis Foundation. Not until 5 May 1964, six years after he had sent it, did he receive back from Eve the edited text of his manuscript and as director, Karageorghis made a reputation for demanding that excavators publish excavation reports promptly. Just days before the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Basil wrote to Eve, attaching a letter from Vassos. In it he made it clear that Basil would pay the price for being Jim’s student. ‘Of course you are not to blame,’ wrote Vassos’, but as the “successor” of an Australian enterprise you have somehow to suffer the consequences’. He would only reconsider his decision to refuse Basil an excavation permit if and when he saw the first proofs of the publication of Jim’s Cypriot excavations.9

  Alexander Cambitoglou remained Professor at Sydney University until 1989 and Curator of the Nicholson Museum from 1963 to 2000. Between 1967 and 1975 he directed excavations at the Iron Age site of Zagora on the island of Andros, and subsequently directed excavations in northern Greece at Torone. He founded the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens in 1981 and remains its only director.

  Jim never believed that Australia could produce archaeology of worth. He loved Australia but could never take it seriously. If he was uninterested in Australian archaeology, even more was this true of the department under Alexander Cambitoglou.

  Judy Birmingham and Vincent Megaw, both appointed by Jim, arrived only months before his death.

  Judy Birmingham was trained by Kathleen Kenyon, who believed that all archaeologists must learn their craft through their own landscapes. It was inevitable, therefore, that Judy would be drawn into archaeology in Australia. She founded the Australasian Association for Historical Archaeology and taught the first course in historical archaeology in Australia.

  Vincent Megaw also believed that archaeology was a discipline, not a geography. He became interested in the pioneering work of Australian archaeologists like John Mulvaney and his research interests moved in that direction. He published The Dawn of Man in 1972, co-authored with Welsh-born Australian archaeologist Rhys Jones. Megaw was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester for ten years (1972–82) and took up a personal chair at Flinders University in 1995.

  Judy Birmingham and Vincent Megaw were only allowed to work on Australian archaeology projects during their holidays or in their spare time.

  When the border between North and South Cyprus opened on 23 April 2003, Bellapais quickly became a major tourist destination. Visitors come to see the house where Lawrence Durrell had lived during the troubled years of the 1950s. Tourists can choose between two ‘trees of idleness’ under which Durrell found inspiration and wrote Bitter Lemons. Tourist buses park outside and the abbey itself has been brought to life by music festivals. An expensive restaurant overlooks the plain below, with the abbey as a backdrop. The house where Eleanor and Jim lived and the workshop where they mended pots are difficult to identify.

  The tombs of Vounous have been robbed for generations. Most recently, a Turkish Cypriot has robbed—or so he claims—dozens of tombs, removing thousands of objects. He has an intimate knowledge of the pottery of the Early Bronze Age on Cyprus and has been responsible, he proudly boasts, for ‘mending’ many of the pots he has seen on display in museums. His career as a tomb robber came to an end when he was arrested taking one of the pots out of the country, but he escaped a jail sentence. Now he and his son run a pottery workshop, which I visited with an art lecturer. Father and son make exquisite copies of the pots once looted from the Vounous tombs. Now, the father puts his name to them and sells them as souvenirs. Recently the Centre for Traditional Crafts on the Greek side of Nicosia has signed a contract with him to supply pots for their display shop.

  Ayios Philon, near the tip of the Karpas in northeastern Cyprus, still feels
remote. The house where Joan and Eve, Judith and Kim lived is in ruins, the roof has collapsed, but the stone walls still stand. The view through what was once the front door has not changed—golden ripples on the sea as the sun sets, a harbour view little changed since Roman times. On the beach beside the ruined house is a six-room hotel, each room overlooking the beach where a broken rubber swan lies wrecked on the shore. When I visit, the Turkish proprietor and his family are welcoming. Their brochure speaks of the history and beauty of the place and at the reception a photocopy of Joan du Plat Taylor’s article on Ayios Philon is pinned to the wall. At dinner a young Kurdish waiter complains about the ‘cold’ English visitors and longs for the snowfields of his homeland. The Alsatian dog is tired of tourists and grumbles when his sleep is interrupted by the petting of strangers.

  In Northern Nicosia the Kumarcilar Khan remains derelict. It has never been restored as Jim and Peter Megaw planned, but the nearby Büyük Khan has and is lively with tourist shops selling Turkish carpets and art works. Scaffolding suggests a similar fate awaits the Khan.

  The village of Karmi is now known by its Turkish name—Karaman. After the expulsion of its Greek residents the village stood derelict until 1982, when foreigners were allowed to renovate the houses on renewable twenty-five year leases. English residents have restored the houses and made their presence felt. Outside the village store are English notices advertising jazz concerts and items for sale. Jim would have smiled at the notice announcing the ‘cat feeding roster’ for the village.

  Below the village, a rusted signpost points to the Bronze Age site of Karmi. The holes of emptied tombs dot the slope. One tomb entrance is protected by a rubble brick stone hut built over it. Within this hut, Mary Ann still stands guard at the tomb entrance, but there is graffiti on the walls of the hut and the floor of the tomb entrance is littered with cigarette packets.