Four Funerals and a Wedding

The funeral of South Australian writer Max Fatchen. His typewriter was called Ivan the Imperial.

DEATH IS ALL AROUND

I've often been told that the older I get, the more I should become accustomed to having friends, family and childhood heroes fall off the perch. Still, whenever it happens, it gives one a serious jolt, and a heightened sense of one's own mortality.
There was a time, not so long ago, when I considered myself unfortunate enough to attend a friend or family member's funeral once in every three or four years. Now it seems it's four funerals every two months. 

In the past months, four very close friends have died: a good and constant mate in Federal Capital Press head printer Barrie Murphy, historians Max Howell and University of Canberra emeritus professor Bill Mandle, and The Canberra Times' dearly beloved editorial assistant Julie Watt, a former member of Bob Hawke's staff when Hawke was Prime Minister.

Barrie Murphy

I will, of course, treasure fond memories of each of them. Barrie was born in Northern Ireland but came to Canberra from Christchurch in New Zealand. It was at The Canberra Times that Barrie lost the fingers on his left hand, after coming off second best in a tussle with a printing press. He continued played rugby and one day he and I were in a front row together playing against a team with an Australian Test prop called "The Iron Duke".  At halftime the referee approached me and said the Duke had complained about eye gouging by our hooker. I turned to Barrie and said, "Murp, hold up your hand." Barrie did and the referee saw he had no fingers. Case dismissed, your honour! I still laugh when I think about that.

 Max Howell

Max Howell also played rugby for Australia, as an immediate post-war centre. I can happily recall the time we spent together and the fun we had putting together a Sports Hall of Fame in Townsville many years ago. 

Bill Mandle

Bill Mandle was another fellow sports historian and a fellow Canberra Times columnist. I admired him greatly for his pioneering and inspirational work in the field of sports history, but he went up considerably in my estimation soon after I joined the Times in 1997. He wrote in his column:

(Geoff Pryor is a nationally recognised political cartoonist)

Julie Watt

As our former editor Jack Waterford said in his eulogy at her funeral, Julie Watt always went to extraordinary lengths to help people. When I was putting together an exhibition of the models of typewriters used by famous authors for a Literary Festival at the National Library, I badly wanted a Hermes Baby and a red IBM Selectric. I had seen the Baby on the cover of a book of John Steinbeck writings, and the image of Johnny Depp, playing the part of Hunter S.Thompson, carrying the big red IBM.

By chance I found the Baby in a most unexpected place (a recycling centre) the day the show started. Earlier, I had told Julie of my plight and she said, "I think we're got a red Selectric stored away somewhere." Many days later she announced, "Found it!" It was on the ground in a large stationery room, completely hidden under laden shelves. She dragged it out for me. I was proud to own it.

The loss of these dear friends came amidst a flurry of departures of people I greatly admired as a young man, sporting heroes and rock musicians - many of whom I got to know well in later life. One does expect those musos who survived the age of 27 (which Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse failed to do) to eventually succumb to the ravages of their calling at some still premature point.
Doc Neeson of The Angels and Jim Keays of Masters' Apprentices put in major fights to hang on, as did Julie Watt (eight years with throat cancer; I was one of the first she told about it, and I feared she'd last but a few months). Yet each died far too soon. Barrie Murphy and Julie had both had just reached 60, Jim and Doc were 67. It's my age bracket.

 Friday on my mind. Not his song, but Jim Keays died on Black Friday. I met him on a Friday and got to know him during this, the unforgettable Long Way to the Top tour.

Doc: Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again? A absolute classic. Basement blues.

Tommy died, just when I thought there were no members left of the greatest rock band ever.

Actress Wendy Hughes: ''I did but see her passing by. And yet I love her till I die.'' 

Perhaps we're a little more stunned by the early death of sports heroes, whom one always assumes to have led, in the main, somewhat healthier lifestyles.
Either way, being able to so vividly remember watching these people play (both sportsmen and musos) has the effect of suggesting: Your time is coming, and perhaps sooner than you think.

The late Jack Brabham. Luckily, I did get the chance to meet him. A true gentleman. But gee, I can't tell you how much I yearned for Bruce McLaren to edge ahead of his teammate. I reckon McLaren ranks up there with Stirling Moss as the greatest Formula One driver never to win a world championship.

The late Reg Gasnier. Played for St George, the "Dragons", and was called "Puff" because he was the "magic Dragon". In 1965 I stood face on to him, only a matter of yards away, as with a subtle change of pace he ghosted through the defence for Australia. One of the very best. A nice bloke, too. Not all that many sports greats are.

Gary 'Gus' Gilmour, the wonderful all-rounder from Waratah, best remembered by me as a century-scoring left-hander, also for his bowling in the first World Cup final, in 1975.

I even had a kind thought for a politician who shuffled off this mortal coil. Neville Wran was a decent New South Wales premier, and one who also believed typewriters (even if electric ones) should be kept for posterity. The mallet was for other things.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really fear death all that much. It may seem silly, but does keep me awake at night is the worry about the task I would leave behind, of friends and family trying to match typewriters with their cases and disposing, somehow or other, of the lot. I have seen the mammoth tasks left to Tilman Elster's son and Emeric Somlo's widow, and I do not envy them one little bit.

Anyway, before it's my turn, I'm planning to reverse Four Weddings and a Funeral and leave it, at least for the time being, at four funerals and a wedding. My son Danny and his partner Emily are getting married on November 1. Let's hope I make it that far! Then the vultures can hover!

Farjeon first Writer-Journalist to 'Master' Typewriter?

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon

Westport Times, April 11, 1876

In the early northern autumn of 1874, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) joined an exclusive club - becoming a member of that dissipate, impulsive group of 400 people who forked out $125 to purchase a Sholes & Glidden typewriter between July (when it was launched on the market) and December of that year. Twain bought his in Boston and on December 9 of that year used it in Hartford, Connecticut, to write a letter to his brother, Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa. From all reports, Twain didn't get much, if any, personal use out of it beyond that time.
Like Twain, British journalist and author Benjamin Leopold Farjeon was exuberant, impetuous, extravagant and generous. Like Twain, he also had an extensive background in the printing industry, notably in New Zealand and Australia. According to newspaper reports from London reaching New Zealand in January 1878, this was the main reason why Farjeon had become the first writer, at least in Britain, to "master" the typewriter. That he had mastered the machine presumably put him one step ahead of Twain, in this regard alone, on the other side of the Atlantic.

The evidence very much suggests Farjeon was indeed the master of the typewriter. Literary historians have noted his massive output (almost 60 novels) in the 35 years after he returned to England from New Zealand in 1868, saying he wrote with "unceasing toil". But they fail to attribute this to his use of the typewriter, which unquestionably allowed him to write - without the aid of transcribers - more legible typescripts, and more often, than his contemporaries. 

Given the timing of the early 1878 London reports, following a dinner given by journalists for the war correspondent Archibald Forbes in mid-December 1877, we might assume the typewriter which Farjeon had mastered was the Sholes & Glidden Model 2, introduced at the end of 1875. Farjeon's copy was typed all in capital letters, and the Remington No 2, which introduced the shift device and lower case letters, didn't appear until later in 1878. 

From early 1876, the updated Sholes & Glidden model was being sold in Britain through the Remington Sewing Machine Company on Queen Victoria Street in London, later to become the home of the (British) Type Writer Company, through which William Richardson sold the Royal Bar-Lock. (In 1877, E.Remington & Sons was losing money from its sewing machines and farm implements production, and concentrating more on guns and typewriter sales.)

From the British Trade Journal, 1876

Farjeon was born on May 12, 1838, in London. He was raised in Whitechapel and educated at a private Jewish school until he was 14. His first job was as a printer's devil on the Nonconformist, a Christian newspaper, where he became a skilled compositor. After a breach with his father over religious matters, an uncle bought him a steerage passage and he left England in 1854, aged 16, for the goldfields of Victoria, Australia, arriving practically penniless in Melbourne on the Ocean Wave. Farjeon spent a month working as an accountant in Melbourne, then set out for the goldfields, moving from camp to camp and starting newspapers at each one.
In 1861, anxious to reach the new goldfields of Otago in New Zealand, Farjeon approached the editor of the Melbourne Argus and sought a position as the paper's New Zealand correspondent. Arriving in Dunedin, he joined the staff of the weekly newspaper the Colonist but soon transferred to the newly established Otago Daily Times, New Zealand's first daily newspaper, where Julius Vogel was editor and joint proprietor with William Cutten. (On Vogel, see also here, here and here.)

Julius Vogel

Farjeon was appointed the Times's business manager and also acted as sub-editor, contributor and frequently compositor. In November 1864 Cutten terminated his partnership with Vogel, who took on Farjeon as his partner instead. In March 1866 Farjeon and Vogel sold the Times on condition they were kept on as manager and editor respectively.

Farjeon's literary career flourished in Dunedin and among his early works was one of his best known, Grif: A Story of Colonial Life (1866) - 17 editions to 1898 - which was set on the Australia goldfields. It was originally simultaneously composed and set up in type by Farjeon in the Times office. 

Julia Matthews

He also wrote plays and burlesques, in which the leading parts were taken by London-born actress and singer Julia Matthews (1842-76), who subsequently won a reputation back in her native country and in the US (she died in St Louis). (See here and here.) Farjeon was not alone in being infatuated by her. Explorer Robert O'Hara Burke proposed to her, and she was played in movies about Burke and Wills by Greta Scacchi and Nicole Kidman.
Farjeon left New Zealand for England in December 1867. He had dedicated a novel, Shadows on the Snow, to Charles Dickens and sent Dickens a copy in the vain hope Dickens would publish it in his weekly periodical, All the Year Round. On the basis of Dickens's mildly encouraging reply, Farjeon threw up a burgeoning career in Dunedin and returned to London through New York, where he declined the offer by Gordon Bennett of an engagement on the Herald. Farjeon adopted a literary lifestyle with enthusiasm, living in the Adelphi Theatre, buying himself a Sholes & Glidden and becoming widely known as a prolific and popular author.

Farjeon's father-in-law, American actor Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905)

In June 1877, Farjeon married Margaret Jane "Maggie" Jefferson, daughter of American actor Joseph Jefferson. The couple's four children all enjoyed considerable success in the arts: super prolific writer, journalist and playwright Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955), author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), Herbert Farjeon (1887-1945), a major figure in the British theatre from 1910, and New Jersey-born composer Harry Farjeon (1878-1948).

Farjeon's daughter Eleanor.

Farjeon died at his house in Belsize Park, Hampstead, on July 23, 1903, aged 65.

Apart from war correspondent Archibald Forbes (1838-1900), the other British journalists mentioned in the clipping above - the ones who couldn't "master" a typewriter - were Sir Henry William Lucy (1842-1924) and Edmund Hodgson Yates (1831-1894).

 Forbes

 Yates

Lucy

New Zealanders and their Typewriters

A young Māori woman photographed at a Remington typewriter in Christchurch in 1906 by Steffano Francis Paulovitch Webb (1880-1967). 

Politician Sir Ethelbert Alfred Ransom (1868-1943) with his Royal Bar-Lock typewriter in 1938. A former sheep farmer and saddler, he was an officer in the Ruahine Mounted Rifles in the Second Boer War.  In politics, he was twice acting Prime Minister. 

Politician George Robert Sykes (1867-1957) at his Empire Aristocrat portable typewriter in 1956. He was a Member of Parliament for 24 years, from 1911 to 1935. 

Writer, poet and educator Sylvia Constance Ashton-Warner (1908-1984) in 1968. She spent many years teaching Māori children, using stimulating and often pioneering techniques which she wrote about in her 1963 treatise Teacher and in the various volumes of her autobiography. Her success derived from a commitment to "releasing the native imagery and using it for working material" and her belief that communication must produce a mutual response in order to affect a lasting change. Her novel Spinster (1958) was made into the 1961 film Two Loves (also known as The Spinster) starring Shirley MacLaine. Her life story was adapted for the 1985 biographical film Sylvia, based on her work and writings. The Ashton School in the Dominican Republic was founded in 1998 and was named in her honour. She said, "You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are."

Politician Hubert Maxwell Christie (1889-1982) in 1938. He was a former shearer in New Zealand and Australia.

Doris Clifton Gordon (1890-1956) at a first model Imperial Good Companion typewriter in 1938. She was a doctor, university lecturer, obstetrician and women's health reformer. Gordon was born in Melbourne, Australia.

George Eric Oakes Ramsden (1898-1962), seen here in 1942, was a journalist, writer and art critic. He is at an Underwood Noiseless portable typewriter.

War correspondent Graham Evenson Beamish (1906-1975) at a Royal portable typewriter in the Libyan desert during World War II in 1941.

The shipping news writer. The Wellington Evening Post's Sydney David Waters (appropriate name!) at an Imperial Good Companion portable typewriter in 1958.

"'It was a dark and stormy night'. What comes next?" Adele Jansen at her Imperial 65 typewriter in 1959.

John Bryan Clayton of Whites Aviation at a Royal 10 typewriter in 1946. Whites was a company which flew around New Zealand taking aerial photographs of towns and cities and publishing them in very fine books.

 Journalist Thomas Wilson Ewart worked for Whites in 1946.

Miss Cullen worked for Whites and for Qantas in New Zealand in 1948.

Unidentified female journalist at a Corona portable typewriter, Evening Post, Wellington, 1956.

Stenographers at the Court of Arbitration in Wellington in 1959. The typewriter is an Imperial 65. 

A student working on an Underwood electric typewriter at the Kimi Ora School for children with special needs in Thorndon, Wellington, in 1958.

John Thompson of Gisborne works on an Imperial 50 at the New Zealand Divisional Field Workshops on the Italian Front in 1944.

The typewriter repair section of the New Zealand Electrical and Mechanical Engineers workshop at the Maadi Camp in Egypt in 1943.

 A typist in 1947.

Four New Zealand soldiers who have lost limbs in World War I learn new skills on typewriters at Oatlands Park in Surrey, England. At this time, Oatlands Park, a hotel, was being used as a hospital by the New Zealand Expeditionary Force for medical and tuberculosis cases and limbless men (informally known as 'limbies'). Oatlands Park was a few miles south-west of No 2 New Zealand General Hospital at Walton-on-Thames. It was also near the Queen Mary Convalescent Hospital at Roehampton where the amputees could be fitted with artificial limbs.