Bill and Margaret Clifford's Imperial Good Companion Model T
The Cooks Travel name tag attached to the Model T's case
As I inch toward the end of a 42-year career of newspaper column
writing, my second-to-last column appeared in yesterday’s The Canberra Times. Since I only have
one more column left to write, I couldn’t resist this chance to devote one last
column to typewriters – if for no other reason than as a way of thanking
Canberrans for their enormous generosity in giving me their typewriters during
the past 10 years.
This
post is an extended version of yesterday’s column. The one which appeared in
print was just as I wrote it, 900 words, unchanged. In this form, I can provide
a few more details:
I love
Canberra in the spring time,
I love
Canberra in the fall,
I love
Canberra in the winter, when it drizzles,
I love
Canberra in the summer, when it sizzles.
- with apologies to Cole Porter
Forget that boring debate about whether the mining boom has or
hasn’t ended. My investments take a much different form, though still
predominantly black. Of far greater concern is that I have mined as deep as I can
into the rich mother lode of old typewriters in Canberra. My own private typewriter
boom is doomed. The typewriter exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery
ends in nine days’ time, and this column has just one more week to run. Each of
these things has led to me unearthing untold, unexpected treasures. They have
been the source of gifts of inestimable value. Given that these machines have
been bestowed in person, it is not been so much their rarity that matters as
the incredible stories behind them.
On the Monday of the
week the exhibition opened, CMAG social history curator Rowan Henderson and her
team were putting together the display when there was a tap on the glass door. Christel,
84, wanted to donate her Olympia portable typewriter. Christel had bought it in the
Soviet zone of Berlin in 1951, just before the Iron Curtain fell. She had gone
shopping with a friend, who had advised, “Take a typewriter, that way you’ll be
sure to get work.” Christel was on her way to join her father, who had escaped
Germany before World War II and was a professor of botanical science at
Cambridge University. They were to start a new life in Canberra, where her
father would work with the CSIRO.
At the exhibition
opening, Lothar turned up from Newcastle with the mint condition Adler portable typewriter his
father, Heinrich, had bought in Kassel in Germany in 1932 and brought with him
to Australia in 1954.
Before the exhibition opened, Rod got in touch to tell me about a Smith Corona he
had rescued. A dear old widowed neighbour had died and many of her possessions
had been dumped in a mini-skip. Out with his wife walking the dog one evening
in September 2010, Rod spotted what looked like a suitcase in near new
condition. On opening it, he found it contained a typewriter, one of the first
machines to include a power pack, so it could be used without an electrical
connection. Rod dropped the Corona off at The
Canberra Times.
A few weeks later I was interviewed by Louise Maher on ABC Radio. We talked about the exhibition. Louise was keen to get her fingers back on the keys of a manual portable typewriter, so I gave her a little Olympia Splendid. She was taken aback by the gift, but I explained, “Whenever I give a typewriter away, I’m invariably given two in return.” Before I’d even left the studio, the show’s producer tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a note. A listener had called in. The note said, “Ring Lisa on … she has two typewriters for you.”
A few weeks later I was interviewed by Louise Maher on ABC Radio. We talked about the exhibition. Louise was keen to get her fingers back on the keys of a manual portable typewriter, so I gave her a little Olympia Splendid. She was taken aback by the gift, but I explained, “Whenever I give a typewriter away, I’m invariably given two in return.” Before I’d even left the studio, the show’s producer tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a note. A listener had called in. The note said, “Ring Lisa on … she has two typewriters for you.”
I met Lisa at a house which had belonged to a much-travelled couple, now
deceased. The house was still full of items accumulated from various parts of
the world. We found there were three, not two typewriters, two electric Smith Coronas
and an old Imperial manual portable, a Good Companion Model T. Lisa and I were
talking about such finds, and I happened to mention Rod’s discovery of a Corona
in a mini-skip. Straightway, Lisa declared, “This is the same house!” Unbeknown
to me, Rod lived right across the road.
The Imperial’s case was festooned with Cooks Travel stickers and address labels, ranging from Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in
the “Republique du Congo” to New York and many parts in between. The couple who
had owned these typewriters were Bill and Margaret Clifford.
Margaret Mary Clifford (née Sillitto) died
in Calvary Hospital, Canberra, on July 16, 2010, aged 89. Bill had died, aged
67, of ischaemic heart disease, at Royal Canberra Hospital on June 6, 1986. The
Cliffords were one of those couples who had spend their final years in relative
obscurity in Canberra, yet who had led the most fascinating of lives.
When Bill died, the Canberra-Goulburn
Archdiocese refused permission to have his funeral service said in the old
rite. This decision helped push Margaret toward the breakaway Lefebvrist
movement, and she spent the last quarter of her life fighting for and then
defending permission for the old rite in the archdiocese. In September 1988,
there was a rapprochement between Margaret and the Canberra Catholic hierarchy,
opening the way for the old rite to be said legitimately in diocesan churches.
Agatha Christie at her Remington Model 5 portable typewriter
Gerard McManus’s obituary for Margaret opened:
“If detective writer Agatha Christie was indirectly responsible for saving the
traditional Catholic Latin liturgy in England and Wales, then another
Englishwoman, Margaret Clifford, who was also something of a sleuth herself,
was directly responsible for saving the traditional liturgy in Canberra.
British soldier, cryptologist, humanitarian and diplomat's wife, Clifford was
one of Canberra's more unusual identities …
“To understand the Agatha Christie
connection it is necessary to recall an obscure but significant event in recent
Catholic Church history. In 1971, Pope Paul VI was besieged by the cream of
Britain's cultural elite pleading with him not to ban the traditional Latin
mass in the Church's rush to modernise itself in the aftermath of the Second
Vatican Council. The Pope had just granted permission for local churches to
translate a newly created rite of the mass into vernacular languages, and
Vatican officials were attempting to bury the Latin mass. Among the dozens of
petitioners urging the Pope not to vandalise its richest treasure were
prominent non-Catholic and Jewish intellectuals. Kenneth Clark, Dame Joan
Sutherland, Cyril Connolly, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Cecil Day Lewis,
Yehudi Menuhin, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Maurice Bowra, Philip Toynbee,
William Rees-Mogg, Agatha Christie and two Anglican bishops were among the
identities arguing a ban would be tantamount to the destruction of basilicas
and cathedrals. The petition was published in The Times on July 6, 1971, coincidentally Margaret Clifford's 50th birthday.
Iris Murdoch's Erika portable typewriter
“Pope Paul was unmoved until he spotted the
name of a favourite author, Agatha Christie. That prompted a special narrow
permission for the Latin mass to be said in England and Wales. Afterwards known
as the ‘Agatha Christie Indult’, the dispensation in fact helped the old mass
survive until 1984, when Pope John Paul II widened permission to the world
provided bishops agreed. In 2007, Benedict XVI fully restored the old liturgy
to its central place inside the Catholic Church.”
The couple served in the British Colonial
Service and later for the United Nations.
Cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park
Margaret was trained as a cryptologist by
some the best minds at Bletchley Park. Her skill at deciphering was deployed
during her husband's first posting, in Cyprus (1952-58), where at the height of
the Cold War she helped monitor the activities of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile
Bill, as director of social development in Cyprus, was charged with bringing
Cypriots closer to administrative independence. He promoted ethnic integration
policies and founded Greek and Turkish children’s homes around the island.
Bill’s later postings took the Cliffords to
Northern Rhodesia (Zambia, 1958), where as director of social welfare and
probation services (later commissioner of social affairs), Bill worked for
greater racial integration and in 1962 became the founding principal of the
Oppenheimer College of Social Service, the first multiracial college in central
Africa. It is now the University of Zambia's School of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1964 the Cliffords moved to the United Nations, organising refugee
services in the Congo (Zaïre). Bill went to Japan in 1966 as a senior adviser
to the UN Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the
Treatment of Offenders.
University oi Zambia
Margaret was actively engaged in her
husband's work in her own right, including overseeing the supply of food and
clothing in the aftermath of the Paphos earthquake in Cyprus in 1953. In Zambia
in 1961 she played a key role in informing the world of the death in a plane
crash of the second UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold. And in the Congo,
her welfare work was honoured by a gift from the senior Methodist churchman,
who gave her a powerful ivory staff.
Dag Hammarskjold
From 1968 the Cliffords were in New York,
where Bill was UN director of social defence. He was executive secretary for
the Fourth UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of
Offenders at Kyoto, Japan, in 1970. Made head of the UN’s crime prevention and
criminal justice services, he was also an adjunct professor in criminology at
New York University. He wrote numerous articles and influential monographs on
prisoner rights, preventive criminology and crime control.
In 1974 Bill, by now a renowned pioneering
criminologist and prison rights reformer, accepted an invitation from then
Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam to become the first permanent director
of the newly established Australian Institute of Criminology, and the Cliffords
arrived in Canberra in 1975. Bill was determined to ensure that Australia did
not succumb to the racial tensions of the United States, which he believed
underpinned rising crime rates.
Bill noted the high rate of imprisonment of
Aborigines and sought to train Aboriginal social workers. Clifford believed in
prisoner rights, opposed the death penalty and pioneered fields such as
white-collar criminology and victimology. He argued forcefully that crime was
sociological, a product of social and economic disadvantage rather than
individual pathology.
Bill was vice-president (1978-80) of the
Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences. In 1980 he founded the Asian and
Pacific Conference of Correctional Administrators. He retired in August 1983
and next year advised on law and order in Papua New Guinea.
The story of the Cliffords is an amazing one.
Is it any wonder why, as a typewriter
collector, I so love Canberra?
*FOOTNOTE 1: The Cliffords' Imperial Good Companion Model T now belongs to young Canberra typewriter enthusiast Jasper Lindell.
*FOOTNOTE 2: Mention of the intransigence of the Catholic Church on certain matters brings me to this amusing document presented in 2006 in a paper called "Technology and the Church Through the Centuries", by Carlton F.Harvey of the Sciphre Institute, at the 25th annual conference of the Association of Nazarene Sociologists and Researchers Heritage Centre in Kansas City:
*FOOTNOTE 3: This column can’t be found online. Very few of my columns went on to The Canberra Times website. With its new emphasis on online “platforms”, The Canberra Times has no interest in locally generated columns, about local people and local situations - or anything with any depth to it, for that matter. It’s been a very long time since The Canberra Times bothered to promote its own in-house writers, or show them any respect, or appreciation for their experience and knowledge. Fairfax doesn’t want to know about professionalism in journalism, real journalism, it just wants to make empty promises about quality journalism. The reality is that the future for The Canberra Times will centre around flibbertigibbets prattling on about frilly panties, naked celebrities and topless protesters. I won’t be reading such frivolous claptrap. I’m much better off out of there.
Since I was cheeky enough to use a pre-2006 photo of Richard Polt on my post about ETCetera editors the other day, in fairness I suppose I should also run a pre-2006 image of myself.
*FOOTNOTE 1: The Cliffords' Imperial Good Companion Model T now belongs to young Canberra typewriter enthusiast Jasper Lindell.
*FOOTNOTE 2: Mention of the intransigence of the Catholic Church on certain matters brings me to this amusing document presented in 2006 in a paper called "Technology and the Church Through the Centuries", by Carlton F.Harvey of the Sciphre Institute, at the 25th annual conference of the Association of Nazarene Sociologists and Researchers Heritage Centre in Kansas City:
*FOOTNOTE 3: This column can’t be found online. Very few of my columns went on to The Canberra Times website. With its new emphasis on online “platforms”, The Canberra Times has no interest in locally generated columns, about local people and local situations - or anything with any depth to it, for that matter. It’s been a very long time since The Canberra Times bothered to promote its own in-house writers, or show them any respect, or appreciation for their experience and knowledge. Fairfax doesn’t want to know about professionalism in journalism, real journalism, it just wants to make empty promises about quality journalism. The reality is that the future for The Canberra Times will centre around flibbertigibbets prattling on about frilly panties, naked celebrities and topless protesters. I won’t be reading such frivolous claptrap. I’m much better off out of there.
Since I was cheeky enough to use a pre-2006 photo of Richard Polt on my post about ETCetera editors the other day, in fairness I suppose I should also run a pre-2006 image of myself.
Very informative article Robert. The Times will be lamenting about the demise of newspapers before long. What you've stated is what happened and is happening with many newspapers around the world and then they all wonder why readership has drastically declined.
ReplyDeleteI sent my comment before commenting on the piece about the church resisting the typewriter. What was not stated is that a persons penmanship may be so poor that whatever was written could be illegible and the advantage of a typewriter is that the written article will be legible. I wonder if there was similar resistance to the PC.
ReplyDeleteEven though you spent decades working there, Robert, yes, you are better off out of there.
ReplyDeleteSounds like it's no longer the kind of 'journalism' that an actual journalist would want to be associated with.
Why am I not surprised to hear that the Catholic church tried to resist the typewriter. "Progress? RUN AWAY!"
ReplyDeleteI love that you posted your own pre-2006 photo. It's only fair.
I am sure the powers that be will soon realize what a large mistake they have made in making you 'redundant'. Your articles, as I have read them on here, are well written, amazingly researched, and just into every nook and cranny you can perceive as related to the topic.
I applaud you, Robert, and hope all is well.
A fascinating next-to-last column, well done.
ReplyDeleteAs for the future of the Canberra Times, it will probably succeed in turning itself into a pathetic imitation of the most superficial aspect of popular Internet sites, will be recognized as such, and will soon fade into oblivion.
I hope that a few major newspapers -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the London Times -- will continue to make a go of it by charging for access to their stories, which is only fair.
Further evidence of the CT's loss.
ReplyDeleteThe Journalism standards at Fairfax certainly aren't what they used to be. Back in Melbourne, I read 'The Age' almost religiously every morning. Now? Well... the only thing that Fairfax has in QLD is the 'Brisbane times', which seems to be filled with wall-to-wall poorly written syndicated junk. Heck, even the Murdock press locally have been more accurate.
Rob, you clearly can walk out those doors with your head held high, knowing that in your time there quality was what they were after, and when Quality became too expensive, the pushed you out the door.
It won't be long till we end up seeing the likes of Andrew Bolt on the pages of fairfax media. That is - Poor quality, brain numbing, attention seeking - trash.