Barry Jones first came to public prominence as Pick-a-Box quiz champion, and from then on he has embraced a myriad of passions and causes. A Thinking Reed spans his remarkable career, from a lonely childhood in Melbourne of the 1930s and 1940s to the fight he led against the death penalty to his crusade to make science and the future prominent issues on the political agenda. He has worked tirelessly on both a global and local scale to rethink education, to improve and preserve our heritage, to revive the nations's film industry, and to build a better Australia.
Almost unique among politicians, Barry Jones is held in enormous public affection. And while he reveals many insights into the political process - both the problems of office and the atrophy of Opposition - he concentrates above all on the life of the mind; a mind with deep, passionate and often witty insights into history, philosophy, music and literature. A Thinking Reed is a generous gift from an extraordinary Australian.
Barry Jones first came to public prominence as Pick-a-Box quiz champion, and from then on he has embraced a myriad of passions and causes. A Thinking Reed spans his remarkable career, from a lonely childhood in Melbourne of the 1930s and 1940s to the fight he led against the death penalty to his crusade to make science and the future prominent issues on the political agenda. He has worked tirelessly on both a global and local scale to rethink education, to improve and preserve our heritage, to revive the nations's film industry, and to build a better Australia.
Almost unique among politicians, Barry Jones is held in enormous public affection. And while he reveals many insights into the political process - both the problems of office and the atrophy of Opposition - he concentrates above all on the life of the mind; a mind with deep, passionate and often witty insights into history, philosophy, music and literature. A Thinking Reed is a generous gift from an extraordinary Australian.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Barry Jones first came to public prominence as Pick-a-Box quiz champion, and from then on he has embraced a myriad of passions and causes. A Thinking Reed spans his remarkable career, from a lonely childhood in Melbourne of the 1930s and 1940s to the fight he led against the death penalty to his crusade to make science and the future prominent issues on the political agenda. He has worked tirelessly on both a global and local scale to rethink education, to improve and preserve our heritage, to revive the nations's film industry, and to build a better Australia.
Almost unique among politicians, Barry Jones is held in enormous public affection. And while he reveals many insights into the political process - both the problems of office and the atrophy of Opposition - he concentrates above all on the life of the mind; a mind with deep, passionate and often witty insights into history, philosophy, music and literature. A Thinking Reed is a generous gift from an extraordinary Australian.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781741765595 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 592 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Thinking Reed
By Barry Jones
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2006 Barry JonesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74176-559-5
CHAPTER 1
Family
Thinking reed. It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.
Pascal: Pensées 113
I was born in Geelong, Victoria, on Tuesday 11 October 1932, at St Margaret's Private Hospital in Ryrie Street, now the Geelong Hospital's Dialysis Unit, at the depth of the Great Depression. It was a complicated forceps delivery, due to my birth weight, about 5 kilograms (more than 10 pounds), and the size of my head which was compressed in the process. My face still has a distinct droop on the left side. The delivery was difficult for both of us and my mother could have been understandably resentful.
The obstetrician, Dr Mary Clementina de Garis (1881–1963), a Melbourne graduate, had been only the second woman in Victoria to take out the higher degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD). She led a Scottish Women's Hospitals team in Serbia during World War I and became a pioneer in the feeding of high-protein diets to pregnant women.
My mother's sister Iris proposed the name 'Barry', fashionable in the 1930s but rare now. I share it with Barry Humphries, born 16 months after me. Barry is common in Ireland, as a contraction of (St) Finbar. In Wales its origin is disputed, possibly from the Celtic word for 'spear' or 'good marksman', or from 'ap Harry' (son of Harry) — say it quickly — derived from the Scandinavian Harald (army ruler).The Welsh town of Barry was named for St Baruch, a holy hermit who lived on a nearby island before the Normans came. Its choice for me owed everything to fashion, none to etymology.
My second name, Owen, from my paternal grandfather and very common (as Owain) in Wales, is the Gaelic equivalent of the Greek Eugenios ('well born'), Eugenius in Latin, Evgenyi in Russian, Eugène in French.
In the year after my birth, the national Census estimated Australia's population as 6.6 million. It was overwhelmingly English speaking and white, with a scattering of Greeks, Italians, Maltese and Chinese. Aborigines, about 80 000, but uncounted in the Census,were virtually invisible in Victoria.
Melbourne, Australia's second city and the Federal capital from 1901 to 1927, had just under one million inhabitants. Geelong, Victoria's second city, with almost 40 000 people, was dismissed by Melbourne's residents as 'Sleepy Hollow', but in my childhood it was a significant part of Victoria's economy, a major port and rail link, handling most of the state's wool crop. Ford cars, blankets, carpets, cement and fertiliser were manufactured there. It had a famous football team in the Australian Rules code, four celebrated private schools (Geelong Grammar and Geelong College for boys, The Hermitage and Morongo for girls), two CSIRO laboratories, many attractive parks, significant heritage buildings from the early colonial period, substantial churches, an art gallery, museum (now defunct), library, botanical garden and a major hospital.
My mother's family arrived in Geelong in 1894,my father's in 1918.
My father, Claud Edward Jones, had been born in Williamstown, Victoria, second son of Owen Jones, then a non commissioned officer in the Commonwealth Naval Forces, and Martha Jane Gerring. He had one brother in Fremantle, one in Geelong, and there were male cousins. Two sisters lived in Melbourne, one in Perth: all three were childless. Claud had followed his father into the RAN as a rating, and had a silver cup to prove that he had been the Navy's welterweight boxing champion.
My mother, Ruth Marion Black, was born in Geelong, eldest daughter of Alexander James Black, a reprobate Salvation Army officer, and Ruth Millicent Potter, a gifted singing teacher. My mother had two sisters, Iris and Tui, but no brothers.
Both parents had attended the Swanston Street State School and Geelong High School, but left early. My mother studied piano with Harold Smith and became a skilful instrumentalist. She rebelled quietly against the Puritan culture, religion and taste of the previous generation.
As a young man, my father had admired Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a dapper, largely expatriate, spats-wearing patrician. My parents were conservative voters, deferential rather than aspirational. They both smoked heavily. He was a regular social drinker, mostly beer. She liked sherry, much to the disapproval of her mother and aunts. My father was a sports enthusiast, barracked for Geelong in the Victorian Football League, loved horse racing and gambled frequently. He was a voracious, but undiscriminating, reader. In childhood he was reputed to have kept a book by his side as he chopped wood by kerosene lamp. Photographs suggest a resemblance to the English character actor Michael Hordern.
After ten years of presumably low-key courtship, my parents married on 18 January 1930 at 'Montana', a large house in Drumcondra, overlooking Corio Bay. It belonged to my mother's relatives, Oswald and Alys Hearne. The Geelong Advertiser carried an article and photograph on the ceremony. It described my mother's dress as 'picturesque'.
At the time of her marriage, Ruth was a telephonist for Bright and Hitchcock's, Geelong's biggest department store. She also taught piano to a few pupils, including my second cousin, Gwen Potter, who was a sharp observer of family matters. By 1932 Claud was working for Bright's, selling men's clothing. They both were lucky to be employed. For her to leave work for my birth and nurturing must have been risky financially: I assume her family helped out. In any case, she was married for two years before becoming pregnant with me. Gwen thinks that the marriage lacked much intensity and probably weakened early. I was an only child for seven years until my sister Carol's birth in September 1939.
FILLING THE GAPS: FAMILY, PLACE AND GENDER
There was a striking lack of symmetry with my family connections. While I had the regulation number of parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. (see the family tree on page 12), the only strong links were with the family of my maternal grandmother, the Potters, who lived in Geelong. This was my family's emotional centre of gravity where I spent my holidays, but had no friends. In Melbourne, where I lived, went to school and had friends, there were scattered family connections but no relationships. My father had two childless sisters in Melbourne, but little contact with them. Grandmother Jones (née Gerring) died when I was seven, and I can only remember her from the waist down.
I received the greatest warmth and psychological support from my grandmother, Nana Black (née Ruth Millicent Potter), and her unmarried sister, Auntie Edie (Edith Anna Potter). These elderly relatives, living remotely and seen intermittently, survived until I was 33. I had far less support from my parents.
There were few males around. Grandfather Black had deserted the family in 1910 and Grandfather Jones died nine years before my birth. My uncles, Dad's brothers, and my male cousins I saw rarely. My father had only a minor role in my life from the end of the 1930s.
It was hardly surprising that I began looking for male role models outside the family. They were a diverse collection: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio commentator E.A. Mann (known as 'The Watchman'), clergyman-missionary-politician Andrew Hughes, Professor W.A. Osborne, retired professor of physiology who dominated a popular radio quiz program, Information, Please, Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, the medical-missionary-organist Albert Schweitzer, pianist and film buff Henri Penn and Methodist clergyman (Catholic convert) Frank Blyth.
The Joneses, Gerrings and Potters had all migrated to Australia between 1850 and 1860, the decade of the Gold Rush. They came from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the north and west of England. None came from London or the south-east. The forebears of my mother's father, Alec Black, came earlier from Scotland in 1833, and others arrived in Australia (about 1880) from New Zealand.
NANA BLACK
Ruth Millicent Black, my maternal grandmother Nana Black, was my greatest encourager in the family. I adored her. She had been born in Glengower, Victoria, on 25 November 1881, became a pupil-teacher, developed her singing voice (mezzo-soprano) and performed at church concerts and evangelistic campaigns. In one of these she had the great misfortune to meet Alec Black, was swept off her feet and lost her chance for a singing career. He persuaded her to break her engagement to Walter Ramsay McNicoll, a teacher and musician.
Family tree (with help from Dennis Perry)
Ruth and Alec were married in Geelong in January 1904. She was 22, he was 27. They sailed to New Zealand for the honeymoon and, according to her affidavit in the divorce petition, he committed adultery during the short voyage to Auckland. They then returned to Australia. There were three daughters to the marriage, my mother Ruth Marion (born in Geelong in 1904), Iris Willerton (born in Geelong in 1906) and Tui Barbara (born in Auckland in 1908), named for the New Zealand night bird. They had moved to New Zealand in 1905 but Nana Black returned to Geelong in 1906 with two daughters, determined to end the marriage. Alec pursued her and persuaded her to try again.
According to family legend, Alec had a mistress in Auckland who also gave birth to a daughter in or around 1908, and she too was called Tui. Alec must have had a keen interest in ornithology.
In 1910 Alec, Ruth and daughters returned to Victoria, then Alec deserted. Divorce was uncommon in that period and it took some time to find Alec and serve the papers, but the decree was granted in 1915. His fate was a mystery, except that in the 1920s he worked for a cement company in Kandos, New South Wales, and had written one letter to his daughter Iris.
With three small girls, my grandmother needed income and decided to become a singing teacher, taking over the practice of her younger sister Alice, who had married well and abandoned her profession. Nana had studied with Annie Williams but usually described herself as a pupil of Dame Nellie Melba. She kept a signed photograph of Melba on her piano. I suspect that she had little individual tuition, but Melba gave what we would now call 'master classes' in Melbourne in 1902, 1909, 1911 and from 1915 to 1916.
Nana called herself a practitioner of the 'Marchesi method'. She first had a studio in Malop Street, then in her modest house at 12 Sydney Avenue, East Geelong, about 450 metres from the family home, 'Bethany', in Myers Street, where her sister Edie lived with their mother. She named the house 'Huntley', after her mother's family, and her three daughters grew up there.
Nana's star pupil was the baritone John Brownlee (1901–1969). He had been born in Geelong and my mother was his first accompanist. He went on for further studies in Melbourne with Ivor Boustead, won the South Street competitions in Ballarat, then sailed for London, attracted Melba's interest and made his Covent Garden début in 1926, at her London farewell. He sang for years in London, Paris and New York and appeared in the first productions at John Christie's Glyndebourne Opera in 1936. He had a fine voice, but his diction, acting and stage presence were even better.
Nana generally had between sixty and eighty pupils and was able to pay off 'Huntley'. Many of her pupils came not just for the singing, but for confidence building, learning how to breathe and phrase properly, or as therapy for stammering. Each year she put on a well-attended public concert when her pupils sang. Sometimes my mother accompanied.
In the program for her Annual Students' Demonstration for November 1943 ('In aid of the Prisoners ofWar Fund, admission price one shilling and sixpence') 62 performers are listed, mostly rendering sentimental ballads. On the serious side were two works by Schubert, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Massenet and Edward German, one each by Handel, Thomas, Liszt, Sullivan and Puccini. The duet 'La ci darem ...' ('Give me your hand ...') from Don Giovanniwas eccentrically attributed to Donizetti.
Nana had been a competent painter in oils, all landscapes, with well-rendered sky and clouds. Only a handful survive. She kept framed prints of Gluck and Mozart on the wall, and an insipid, 19th-century engraving called 'The Music Teacher'.
She occupied the front of 'Huntley', while her daughter Iris and her husband Stan Walker lived at the back. When staying with Nana, I shared the sleepout with Uncle Stan's souvenirs of World War I service in Gallipoli and Egypt. Iris was responsible for meals, although Nana sometimes cooked her specialities.
Nana lived for fifty-one years after her divorce. She had a devoted suitor called Virgilius Vogel Lorimer, a tally clerk who had once played the double bass, conducted choirs and directed a light opera society. Under his direction, Nana had sung the role of 'Jill-all-alone' in Edward German's Merrie England (1902), once enormously popular, now almost forgotten. He invariably called her 'Jill-o'. He called round constantly to pay bills and send out accounts to pupils. As he aged, he looked very much like William Ewart Gladstone. As she aged, she looked like Dame May Whitty as Miss Froy in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. I thought she looked vivacious, but she photographed atrociously. In my youthful superciliousness, I found Lorimer irritating and could not understand why he was so often under foot. Now I see the relationship as infinitely poignant. He clearly idolised her. I think she was bored by him, and certainly had no intention of marrying again. At each visit, after a decent interval she wanted to see him off, then go to bed. He would attend to the paperwork, and then, 'Good night, Jill-o', 'Good night, V', and he would slope off to his lodgings.
Did they ever have a physical relationship? Some relatives suspected that they had and fear of scandal was enough to cause a rift. Cruelly, Nana's sister Alys and her husband never spoke to her for a decade.
She was determined not to give in to pressure or moral blackmail and while her three daughters supported her, I doubt that they warmed to her suitor. After the mid-1930s the presence of Iris and Stan in 'Huntley' would have inhibited any physical relationship.
V.V. Lorimer must have served the extended family in a Jeeves-like capacity over many years, and I was surprised to see that he was the informant on my birth certificate, with the details written in his exceptionally beautiful handwriting. I once tactlessly asked him if he had a wife and family. He muttered that his wife's name was Ada, and said no more.
In 1943 Nana suffered from a frightening episode of acute septicaemia just before penicillin became generally available. We thought she was going to die. I observed Lorimer's agonised look, complicated by his role as outsider. I felt pain and fear for her — but it would have been inhuman to exclude him. There was clearly a degree of jealousy between us, absurd as it sounds. My sister Carol has a completely different perspective on V.V. Lorimer. She thought he was very kind and a wonderful storyteller. He died in July 1951, aged 79.
In 1944, almost twenty-five years after Alec's last contact, his sister Vida and her husband Benjamin Orames, Commissioner for the Salvation Army in Canada, came looking for him, without success. After Nana died in 1966, I began checking the New South Wales Births, Deaths and Marriages Register. I found that an Alexander James Black, born in Karamea, New Zealand, in 1876, the son of James and Marion Black, had died in St George's Hospital, Kogarah, a Sydney suburb, in December 1943. His death certificate listed three marriages, to Sarah Maslen, Iris Macey (the Christian name must have appealed) and Alice Irving. Marriage to my grandmother was not recorded.
While deeply devout and a fervent Bible student, Nana was unorthodox. She was an ardent member of the British Israel World Federation (BIWF). British Israelites, or BIs, argued that the British, and Americans of British ancestry, were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, scattered at the time of the Babylonian captivity. They also believed fervently in the Glastonbury legend, implicit in William Blake's poem Jerusalem ('And did those feet in ancient time ...'), that Jesus had visited England with Joseph of Arimathea during his 'lost years'.
Most conventional Christians did not make the connection between Jesus and the Jews, Christianity and Judaism. After all, Jesus grew up in Palestine and this raised the possibility that he might, not to put too fine a point upon it, be Jewish. Auntie Edie was quite firm: 'Jesus wasn't Jewish, he was Christian'. She probably meant European, or even English.
BIs were keen on pyramidology. They believed that precise measurements of the inner chambers of the Great Pyramid of Cheops could be used to interpret the past and predict the future. There is an extensive literature on this subject. BIs also pursued fanciful word associations, for example linking the names Isaac and Saxon, so that 'Isaac's sons' became 'Saxons' and so on. Nana pressed much BI literature on me, and I did not like to offend by rejecting it too obviously. She recognised kinship with Jews and saw the importance of Judaism in the life and teaching of Jesus. She was distressed by early reports of the Holocaust in Europe.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Thinking Reed by Barry Jones. Copyright © 2006 Barry Jones. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Phillip Adams,Illustrations,
Overture: 'An abundant life ...',
1 Family,
2 Childhood,
3 Death Penalty,
4 Quiz Show,
5 Fifty Years Hard Labor,
6 Faces,
7 'Bump Me Into Parliament',
8 Life of My Mind,
9 Sleepers, Wake!,
10 Inside the Hawke Government,
11 Ministering to Science,
12 Backbench Explorations,
13 Beliefs,
14 'The Third Age',
15 Years of Exile: 1979, 1989, 2001,
Afterword,
'The Second Coming',
Lists,
Bibliography,
Acknowledgments,