Though she wouldn’t necessarily have called herself an adventurer, her life had its share of interest and intrigue and so as I reflect on the influence she has had on me, I know that part of what pushes me forward each day to new horizons, part of what makes me know I can do the things I try to do is the genetic imprint she has left in me.
Although my lasting impressions of my Grandmother will probably always be from a time when she was in her 60’s and my associations with her have more to do with the smell of her house on nights when the extended family would meet over Roast Beef, and my mother would argue with my Grandfather over University education, literature and history and we would read the books my father and his brothers and sisters had read and then climb into her impossibly high bed at the end of our child-sized night. Or with the fact that she selflessly arranged for the “box room” under the house at Chelmer to be cleaned out and wired with electricity after her grandchildren “discovered” it one Boxing Day, turfed out the suitcases and other carefully stored paraphernalia, declared it the underground home and themselves (along with Tessa, my grandparents’ Alsatian) the new famous five! I know another woman existed beyond the one who did the washing up in the kitchen listening to the radio, who would sometimes play the piano for us and who tickled my neck at the door as we would say goodbye.
As I got older, I got better glimpses of that woman- but still, I don’t feel I ever really knew the secret hopes and fears of her heart. Perhaps though I did; in eulogising her, my Uncle says that they were true and simple hopes – to be kind and virtuous and to love and care for her family. These things I have surely learned from her – though still only aspire to do them as well and as selflessly.
I may not have known my Grandmother in her heyday but that woman – the one at the edges of my imagination – is the woman who left Australia by herself on a ship to London in the 1938 under a cloud of scandal – gone to meet with her beau, later her husband and my Grandfather who was doing his PHD at the London school of Economics. She is the woman who sat in a flat across from a ballet school and typed her husband’s thesis while Hitler’s menace and the war in Europe drew ever closer; a woman who was aboard one of the last ships back home before the danger made that trip impossible.
Gran leaving for London, New Year's Eve 1938/9
In my 20’s when I took on the ritual I’d accompanied previously as a child - taking my Gran shopping on a Saturday morning - I probably didn’t see her as a veritable Jackie Kennedy; but I should have. In the 50’s, my Grandfather became a pretty famous Historian who met with Heads of State and advised on International Affairs; had his own TV show, a Journal of Politics and History – his admirers and his detractors. Because of this life of minor celebrity, there are photos of my Gran at Buckingham Palace Garden Parties, Presidential receptions and Balls –there was even one that hung for a while in the foyer of City Hall in Brisbane showing my Grandparents with Wally Campbell the one-time Governor of Queensland- and the guy who gave a toast at my parents wedding. Despite knowing all of this, I don’t think I have ever really reflected on the panache, courage and exemplary social skills it would have taken my Grandmother to stand beside her husband for all those years at all those events.
Gran and Grandfather in Sydney with Aunty Helen
My Grandmother had a formidable intellect. And although I knew the endless list of books she had read (in fact I just found out that she had read so many novels she exhausted the possibilities of 2 Brisbane libraries!) and the fact that well into her 80’s she continued to read three newspapers a day – I think that rather than engaging properly with her, I continued to see her as a product of her times as I cringed when she told me in my early 20’s lesbians shouldn’t be seen on the ABC (or anywhere really), or that the stolen generation were a product of a Government trying to “do the right thing.” But her interest in politics and her habitual watching of Parliament meant that she could have outdone most of my friends with degrees in political science on the history of politics in Australia – and added in a few funny anecdotes about people like Whitlam (who once kissed her!) at the same time. She and my father are probably responsible for my own slight obsession with Hansard and my nickname at one stage of “Hansard dot com”.
By the time I formed my own adult relationship with my Grandmother, I think I appreciated much of the person she was, and right now that’s a comfort to me. I only ever knew my Grandfather as a caricature of himself – and was only just beginning to come to have an adult understanding of my father when he died. My Grandmother and I connected most when it came to her love of travel. She accompanied my Grandfather on many sabbaticals and she was one of the most widely travelled women I know. In my 20’s and early 30’s, whenever I was travelling somewhere (for there was almost nowhere I was going she hadn’t already been) I would seek her advice on the places she went and loved and I would invariably follow in her footsteps and enjoy our conversations comparing notes when I returned. I remember especially our conversations about New York which we both loved despite initial scepticism. I think she loved the fact that so many of her Grandchildren ended up living overseas and I wonder if she ever realised that her own demonstrations of fearlessness and resilience were part of what made such bold moves possible. It is to her very great credit that she never stifled the ambitions of her own children or Grandchildren through wishing they would stay close to home; instead she applauded ambition and a sense of adventure- as long as it was undertaken with integrity and the desire to be productive and passionate.
One of my Grandmother’s greatest gifts was her compassion. Like all of us she had her human failings – but she believed that the pursuit of any person’s life was to show kindness and virtuosity in all things. I remember my father once saying he used to cringe when she told her 4 children that they had a “position to uphold”. I suspect he thought it reeked of elitism. And perhaps it did a little. Like it or not, in 1950’s Brisbane they were role models. My Gran used to raise money to build new kindergartens and libraries and my Grandfather used to be asked to open them. My older sister and I still recall our 5 year- old awe when a Graceville shopkeeper asked for my Grandfather’s shopping list one Saturday morning and ran around filling his basket for him asking “is this brand alright Professor?” It’s just how it was. Regardless, my Grandmother taught us all that who you were and what you did was of no consequence unless you were doing good for others.
And so it is that in understanding her I can understand myself better; that’s how we pass knowledge and understanding from one generation to the next. She was a product of all her experience; her father’s post first word war shellshock and his love of family Christmas, her own experiences in the depression, her love of the Arts – and so too I am the sum of her experiences and my own brought to me through those I know and love. She got the idea that wisdom is gained and transformed through community and for this, and so much more I so humbly thank her.
Vale Gran.
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