Figure 1. The epitome of a quaint English cottage, amazingly transported to Australia in 1934: Cooks’ Cottage, Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne, 2008 photograph by Linda Young

The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage

by Linda Young

Abstract directly connected to Australia’s foundation hero — a relic that the great man touched — It is widely known that the so-called Cooks’ or else it is meaningless. This paper tracks Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, relocated from a sequence of managerial–interpretive Yorkshire to Melbourne in 1934, was never strategies derived from a chronology of inhabited by Captain James Cook. Yet a knowledge systems to make meanings at the subliminal nationalism, sustained by the cottage. It introduces evidence of the original ancient traditions of contagious magic, feeds shape of the building in its Great Ayton the conviction that the dwelling must be location, and observes the consequences on

reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia vol. 3, no. 2, October 2008, 123–42 management and interpretation of an older Cook’ — the one who chased a chook, demolition and consequent rebuilding of all around Australia … (Lost his pants in only half the cottage in Melbourne. Much the middle of France and found them in turns on changing ideas about authenticity, Tasmania). This mythic Captain-Cook as management strategies fail to engage is an avatar of the historic Captain James the popular taste for a hero via the magic Cook who, as discoverer of the east coast of faith. The result is a set of opposing of the continent and claimant of it for the principles in presenting the cottage: the role British throne, is the foundation hero of of the historical record as it has enlarged, and this country, the source of white Australian the desires of visitors who expect a simple history, legitimacy, antiquity. And this connection between myth and materiality. cottage has something to do with him — it must be his cottage, or else why would it be here? Introduction I aim to explore this problem by tracking the history of the cottage as a device The charming little stone cottage (Figure intended by its post-Cook owners and 1) is well-known to people who grew up in managers to present shifting inflections on Melbourne, Melbourne schoolchildren, and the celebration of the great man. In practice, Melbourne tourists. It is Captain Cook’s all their messages are subverted by the cottage, a legendary piece of Yorkshire that long-schooled conviction among Australian was relocated from the village of Great visitors that ‘Cook’ refers to ‘Captain-Cook’, Ayton to Melbourne in 1933–34: 1934 a cliché of heroic nationalism, more akin to a being the year of Melbourne’s centenary magical hero of myth than a historic figure.2 of foundation. The site is known officially The tangle of beliefs, assumptions and plans as ‘Cooks’ Cottage’, with the apostrophe that entwine the cottage has generated a in a critical position, because this was series of impasses, sidestepped by successive the cottage of the Cooks, the parents of managerial re-presentations. Each refers James Cook. If the date carved on the door distinctively to the mentalities of its age, so lintel — 1755 — is reliable, the cottage was it is not surprising to find that the cottage built 10 years after James had left home; in is once again overgrown with antithetical fact, the year he joined the Royal Navy. It strategies and interpretations. Yet all the is plausible to imagine that he might have while, the continuing public taste for heroes visited his parents there occasionally, but and their tales of achievement demonstrates his wife and children lived in London, so it how little facts matter in the face of faith. has no domestic connection with the great The topic of the cottage has been taken navigator as child or adult.1 up or touched on by numerous critical But even I, having studied the cottage’s writers.3 Especially relevant to this account history carefully and written consultancy are Jillian Robertson, Chris Healy and advice about it, cannot leave out the word Maryanne McCubbin. Robertson wrote ‘Captain’ when I say ‘Cook’. It’s just one of the first extended treatment of the myth of those phrases of common usage, where the Captain Cook, beginning bluntly, ‘Cook’s words fall off the tongue, twined together. role as a super-hero is a completely false If you’re an Australian reader, you probably one’.4 Healy distinguishes Cook the man have the same habit. This points to the deep from Cook the hero — a distinction I presence in Australian minds of ‘Captain- follow — and shows that, since the early

124 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage Figure 2. Almost — but not quite — the humble home of a national hero, or at least of his parents: Captain Cook’s Father’s House at Great Ayton, about 1788, by George Cuit , pen and ink wash drawing; item 41, Gott Collection, Wakefield Art Gallery photograph courtesy of the Gallery nineteenth century, his depiction as hero which continue to shape ongoing, converged in various social memories. everyday management — and that requires Among them, the cottage’s move to acknowledging both Captain James Cook Melbourne in 1933–34 contributed to the and Captain-Cook. maintenance of the narrative of imperial, My analysis suggests that a new racial bonds between Australia and Britain, perspective on both myth and history is in which context Healy suggests the opened by tracking the agendas of the authenticity of the presentation didn’t really cottage owners and managers, and the matter.5 McCubbin takes up the topic to sequence of furnishing the cottage (its suggest that the cottage is a hybrid emerging chief interpretive technique). I discern four between Healy’s master narrative of imperial paradigms of presentation: the eighteenth- history and an antiquarian history of century historical evidence of Captain Cook; material evidence, both of them somewhat the 1933–34 translation as a Victorian undermined by the sheer enthusiasm of the and Australian nationalist relic; a revision public.6 But appreciating the undeniable in 1976–78 led by the National Trust in public relish for Captain-Cook is inadequate the spirit of positivist Australian history, in explaining more rational motives in the which framed a new career for the cottage history of the cottage. I propose to look as an object of heritage; and its 1993 behind the relocation to its consequences, transformation into a site of delicately

Linda Young 125 allusive contest between the reality of the perished in exotic circumstances, but a desire cottage and the interests of the stakeholders to commune with him through material of Australian history, applied in a climate of connections. Characteristic of the urge is tourism as the rationale of heritage. a little memento mori made for Cook’s wife: a lock of Cook’s hair in a small (9 x 7 centimetre) coffin-shaped box made from The ancient history of the timbers of the Royal Navy brig Resolution, cottage painted with a scene of where he died.10 Grimm’s drawings of houses inhabited by the James Cook spent part of his youth in Great Cook bloodline reflect the same mentality, Ayton, North Yorkshire, though not in expressions of the early modern episteme this cottage; he is still Great Ayton’s most of collecting and documenting the world as famous son. Meanwhile, his birthplace, in history via specimens. It continues to thrive nearby Marton, claims him equally, and today, exemplified by the enthusiasm of has a dedicated Captain Cook Birthplace museums to acquire the material evidence of 7 Museum. The cottage in Great Ayton heroes. became somewhat famous for being The cottage’s apotheosis occurred in connected to the Cook family, even as the 1933, when the then-owners decided to man himself became a British national sell. The Dixon family of Great Ayton hero. For instance, it was drawn about 1788 had owned the house since 1873, though by George Cuit, a provincial artist who they didn’t live in it.11 Nonetheless, they worked for various aristocratic patrons, as had some sense of the building’s venerable one of eight scenes of places associated with character, for they rejected an American bid Captain Cook; this drawing is captioned to export it, specifying that the house should (in part) Captain Cook’s Father’s House at not be moved out of Britain.12 Alerted by 8 Great Ayton (Figure 2). Cuit also recorded a Melbourne journalist, Hermon Gill, an the pile of bricks that was all that was left of ex-First World War-Navy man with maritime Cook’s birthplace in Marton, and another history interests, Melbourne magnate and little house in Redcar on the Yorkshire coast, philanthropist Russell Grimwade determined where Cook’s surviving sister lived with her that the cottage should be acquired for husband; he carefully labelled each picture Melbourne. Gill constructed a Cook– with its Captain James Cook-connection. Melbourne connection, using the argument Such sketching indicates just how famous that the first Australian coastline observed by Cook had become in his own time, though it Cook’s 1770 expedition, now named Point was dying in 1778 at the hands of Hawaiians Hicks in Gippsland, was in what had become that really put him among the gods. His the state of Victoria. Since Victoria’s capital, fame was acclaimed in the classical tradition Melbourne, was about to mark 100 years of of commemoration, illustrated as The settlement, Gill suggested that Melbourne Apotheosis of Captain Cook, drawn by Phillipe should become ‘the proud guardian of the de Loutherbourg in 1794 for the program one-time home of the man who had made and backdrop of a drama played in London, that Centenary possible, Captain James and subsequently published as a broadsheet Cook’.13 On this ground (and for more than (Figure 3).9 twice the price offered locally), the Dixons In these images we see not just a were persuaded to permit the cottage to be fascination with the Royal Navy hero who sold within the patriotic sphere of Empire,

126 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage Figure 3. A British hero joins the pantheon: The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, 1794 by Phillipe de Loutherbourg National Library of Australia, NLA: an7678295-1 and it was carefully demolished, packed up form in which BRS recommended it should and shipped to Australia for reconstruction. be reconstructed, and a six-page specification A Dixon descendant later wrote that the day for the demolition contractor.15 Little is after the contract was signed they had a call known about the original construction of from New Zealand House, enquiring about the cottage; the earliest records date from its purchasing the cottage.14 sale in 1772, when the widowed elder Cook A firm of architects in York, Brierley, went to live with his daughter. These 1772 Rutherford & Syme (BRS), was engaged deeds list ‘two several cottages, dwelling to manage the relocation project. The houses or tenements’ and name two other only surviving records of the job are seven inhabitants and parties to the sale besides coloured drawings showing the cottage in the Cook senior.16 The two tenements occupied

Linda Young 127 Figure 4. The entire house, Great Ayton, about 1928 The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum/Middlesbrough Council a pair of adjoining one-cell, two-storey of the southern cottage was demolished for houses under separate roof structures, road widening, leaving a stump containing sharing a central through-passage, framed the through-passage still attached to the by a stone lintel engraved ‘C/JG/1755’, northern cottage.21 which was taken to refer to ‘Cook/James The BRS specification asserts: ‘It is & Grace [the Captain’s parents]/date of intended that the cottage shall be re- construction’.17 As depicted in the drawing erected as far as possible in the form which by Grimm, both cottages were roughly it originally presented. The alterations square in plan, one a little smaller than the proposed to be made in the existing structure other. It is possible that, in the tradition of ... are indicated on the drawings ... in this North Yorkshire through-passage houses, specification’, and new materials were to be they constituted a long house occupied by treated ‘so as to remove the appearance of two families.18 An additional room up and newness’.22 down was added to the southern19 cottage, The largest change BRS made was to involving relocation of its chimney. The transform the through-passage stump into a date of this addition is unknown, the oldest skillion, in order to preserve and incorporate evidence being the 1928 photo shown in the dated lintel, thus destroying the front Figure 4.20 The last occupants, the Simpson door and probable stair which were the last family, left the cottage in 1929, when most vestiges of the south cottage. What emerged

128 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage Figure 5. A house remade, with skillion instead of stump: Cooks’ Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne State Library of Victoria, SLV: H93.228/27 from the BRS program was a one-up, one- were translated to Australia. McCubbin called down cottage, entered from a lean-to passage this process a ‘hybrid historical manufacture’, (Figure 5). It doesn’t make much sense as combining monumental historiography and a house, and was clearly a compromise in antiquarian approaches to history, where the response to the 1929 severing of the other concept of ‘authenticity’ was the key to the part of the house. Other changes were to project’s purposes.23 Authenticity was and is reconstruct the byre at the other end of the the defining discourse in the management of house (since its resurrection in Australia, Cooks’ Cottage, but I suggest the cottage is it has been called the stable — though it less a hybrid than a shifting scenario. is unlikely the yeoman Cooks owned a horse); to improve the downstairs fireplace recess into an inglenook with a new beam Authenticity carrying the chimney and new built-in seats; ‘Authenticity’ is a chicken bone in the throat upstairs, to introduce doors that constituted of heritage, as ‘facts’ are in the throat of built-in wardrobes in the chimney wall; and history. Both concepts have plain meanings to construe two tiny partitioned areas as in popular understanding, namely, ‘real’ separate bedrooms, one-up, one-down. stuff and ‘real’ events. But professionals in The cottage as it was rebuilt in Melbourne both fields are more cautious, doubtful that in 1934 was a labour of antiquarian effort either authenticity or the facts can ever be to prove its own truth. The stones (though known with certainty. They prefer to regard not the bricks) were numbered and plotted; informed interpretation of object, site and the BRS plans depicted a modest olde-style documentary records as arguments that stand cottage. Even cuttings of the ivy on the walls until further evidence changes them. In this

Linda Young 129 domain, to acknowledge an interpretation is of museums. The stewardship of civil relics is an act of faith in the evidence. now the domain of museum curators, whose The arguments against authenticity as an professional techniques — from taxonomy absolute are blunt. Ontology shows us that and connoisseurship to the assessment if something exists in certain conditions, of cultural significance and values-based it is authentic within those conditions.24 management — offer systematic process and This points to the essentialist view that the perhaps comparability of judgement, but material character of things defines their cannot add any guarantee of authenticity. authenticity. Hence the dominant modern As Peter Howard writes, ‘Authenticity conservation focus on original fabric and is a slippery topic’. In a heroic effort to appropriate technique.25 Further, the address the topic in textbook dimensions, emphasis that Western thought puts on the Howard tabulates at least eight fields in first, the oldest, the original, endows it with which authenticity is discussed within the an apparently natural primacy equating heritage business: authenticity of material, to authenticity, and devalues subsequent creator, function, history, ensemble, style, manifestations of objects’ careers. A range context, and experience.28 It is an eloquent of possible authenticities demonstrates that demonstration of professionals’ techniques of unless limits are specified (contingently theory to cope with multiple possibilities in, admitting the existence of other limits), then or relativist readings of, what they think is a judgement of authenticity is an argument important to preserve. of conviction. In other words, recognising Among such a range of possibilities, a authenticity is a choice, a belief, an act of sequence of uses of the cottage can be traced faith. Faith in relics has an ancient history in in which authenticity has been invoked. In the traditions of magical thinking, expressed the late eighteenth century, natural history in what the early anthropologist of magic, defined the significance of Cooks’ Cottage, James Frazer, called ‘contagious’ magic: it derived from the famous sailor’s association enables the transmission via contact of the with the house. When Cuit sketched magical essence inherent in certain items Yorkshire sites associated with Cook, the and places.26 Religious relics epitomise the hero was alive and at the height of his fame challenges to knowing authenticity, where as a naval explorer, advancing the interests of the truth depends on proof by miraculous British power in the farthest reaches of the intervention, acquiescence to authoritative globe. The humble conditions that formed word, or unquestioning blind faith. Except such a man were curious in the eighteenth- for the first proof, the same conditions century sense of wonders of the world rather obtain among civil relics. than particular to the man himself. Death On this front, secular humanists from translated him to the patriotic pantheon, the Enlightenment to Modernism found it which continued to fill with further convenient to translate the power of relics Britannic heroes. The same vision of history into a sphere of civil religion, to validate informed the Dixon family to assert the nationalist or other political causes.27 special value of a cottage that by 1933 had Even when the doubtful authenticity of been half-demolished: its sale was advertised many saints and their relics induced the as ‘History under the hammer’.29 Church to a massive revision in the late Come the 1930s, Hermon Gill invoked twentieth century, plenty of relics remained. the old justification of reliquary honour for Meanwhile, civil relics flourished in the care relocating the cottage to Australia, appealing

130 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage the tourism perspective drives the visit as a search for the authentic national hero.33 These two have now rattled out of synch (de-synchronised?) — that is, if they were ever effectively joined. For the touchstone of all claims to authenticity is the great man, Captain James Cook, in his avatar as the mythic Captain-Cook, who guarantees to both local and foreign visitors that Australia has British origins.

Figure 6. Introducing the cottage as a relic of the hero, The production of authenticity Hermon Gill wrote the first guidebook. at the cottage State Library of Victoria, SLV: LTP 994.5 C77GI The 1930s demolition and rebuilding of the to faith in the materiality of the building. cottage was an exacting professional business. Calling on a passionate imagination, he But individual numbering of stones and tiles, wrote, ‘Its doorstep rang to his heel as and the labour and expense of transporting he entered. Its walls heard his voice ... them to Melbourne, mask a suppressed 30 Within them must be stored memories’. history of the house. That it had been almost Grimwade’s purchase of the cottage opened twice as big until just a few years before a new focus on Cook, driven by the need its sale did not appear in any records in of Australia for a foundation myth that Australia until 1993, when the Conservation 31 avoided its ignoble history. As discoverer Management Plan included the findings rather than founder, Captain James Cook of research in Yorkshire. Hence the stump constituted a bona fide hero untainted by of the through-passage on what is now the convict stain, who could be acknowledged south side was not understood, especially as author of the nation. Just as the ‘sacred since its roofline had been altered by BRS theft’ of saints’ bones around medieval in the reconstruction plans, in an attempt Europe brought the blessings of their to make it look more normal and provide a presence to their new owners, so would the front door to the public. The implications patriotic delivery of material connected to of the loss of fabric and knowledge reshaped the foundation hero endow legitimacies on the subsequent presentation of the remaining white Australians. cottage as the home of the Cook family by Since the late 1970s, the cottage has making it express more modern values.34 been managed as ‘heritage’ — a slice of the In this way the epistemic perspective of the past selected to create a sense of common cottage’s authenticity shifted from being identity32 — and presented as a tourist a site that demonstrated the nurture of a experience via the immersive and theatrical hero — a piece of evidence of history — to experience of walking through an authentic being a site that buttressed the Australian- home. The heritage discourse is defined ness of Captain-Cook, and the Britishness of by its 1978 listing in the Register of the Australia — proved by reliquary faith. National Estate and the 1993 Conservation First, the new logic of the reconstruction Management Plan (discussed below), but produced a small, single-family dwelling,

Linda Young 131 increasingly important collection in 1938.37 Inglenooks and other quaint features such as steeply pitched roofs and ‘Jacobethan’ furniture entered the repertoire of 1920s–30s revivalist taste, set off by collectibles such as samplers and copper bed-warming pans, which entered the cottage collection almost immediately it arrived in Victoria. The inglenook had come to epitomise a vision of the cosy life of the honest British yeoman in ye good olde times (Figure 7). Figure 7. Benches (built 1933) on either side of the fireplace Third, BRS either maintained or make an inglenook: a warm, cosy place to relax improved the fiction of three light stud photograph by Linda Young partitions constructing two tiny separate bedroom-closets and a pantry. All would apparently detached, with no hint that it have been anachronisms in mid-eighteenth- had been a tenement shared with other century rural vernacular culture, though they owners. Its lack of an external front door may have been introduced by subsequent mandated keeping the stump containing inhabitants. In rural vernacular eighteenth- the through-passage, an access arrangement century room use, bedrooms were arranged that has not been explicable until now. The in the medieval style of many people through-passage house plan was dominant sleeping in the same room. The husband in medieval England, surviving into the and wife of a household occupied a large, eighteenth century in houses of three or curtained bed, and children and sometimes more cells, as in the case of the Cook et al. other relatives shared less grand bedsteads. house; entry into the separate houses was off Thanks to a 1976 review of furnishings the through-passage, directly into the main undertaken by the National Trust, the room.35 The newly presented single-family ‘bedrooms’ acquired both reconstructed beds house now suggested respectable privacy, and gendered characters: the downstairs one an improbable circumstance in the social containing a small sea chest marked with register of the Cooks. the initials ‘JC’; the upstairs one with the Second, BRS specified improvements subtle hints of a hat, shawl and dried flowers, to the kitchen fireplace to present it as an clearly indicating feminine use.38 The effect inglenook, by reinforcing the beam above was to imply respectably single-sex sleeping the fireplace and inserting new bench among children, via low, narrow bedsteads seats (having ‘remove[d] the appearance of (made in Melbourne) to furnish the tiny bed newness’), on either side of the hearth.36 An closets. At the same time, a wooden cradle inglenook is not implausible in context, but was proposed to be acquired as ‘a charming its expression in the cottage was not quite addition’, although Grace Cook was 53 in obvious enough for the BRS vision. The firm 1755, and her youngest surviving child (of a may have been inspired by the inglenook total of eight) was 12.39 reconstructed in the Pickering museum of Fourth, BRS enclosed the chimney breast long-time York folk collector Dr John Kirk, in the bedroom and inserted doors to create and reconstructed again in the York Castle built-in wardrobes, an entirely twentieth- Museum when it opened to house Kirk’s century fiction. Storage furniture beyond

132 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage basic chests was unknown until the mass curiosity. Access was unsupervised. Visitors production of textiles in the late eighteenth trekked up and down the narrow stairs, then century began to enable humble people to took a turn around the kitchen. The volume possess more than they wore or slept on. The of traffic suggested to council managers that small built-in wardrobes constitute surprising a door should be pierced through the side insertions in the cottage, for though echoing wall direct into the byre, and the upstairs the conveniences of modern 1930s design, closed off. Grimwade objected to both ideas, BRS clearly had knowledge of historic but council officers waited until he was vernacular buildings. Posterity wonders at the overseas in 1936 to implement them. The solecism. patron was furious, and in 1937 he disowned The genre of the historic house the project.43 ‘museumised’ and interpreted by furnishings Thereafter, the cottage declined in was quite well-understood in the 1930s popular favour and become unsavoury in the United Kingdom. For example, the owing to constant vandalism. It was closed Dickens House opened in London in 1925 in 1940.44 Though re-opened after the war, with family-provenanced and introduced it was overlooked until civic preparations furnishings, and Dr Johnson’s house had for the 1956 Olympics. In the early 1960s, 40 been museumised since 1912. In this the Melbourne City Council Parks and tradition, Grimwade authorised BRS to Gardens Committee took up with Victoria’s commission a York antiques dealer to acquire new National Trust to reinvigorate the £98 worth of furniture appropriate to a cottage, continuing the reliquary mode mid-eighteenth-century yeoman’s station of presentation by adding specific (if to despatch with the packaged cottage. wishful) Cook-associated objects and more Thus several eighteenth-century oak items, furnishings for atmosphere, displayed in the including a settle, dresser, gate-leg table and new security of paid admission.45 The Trust eight chairs, furnished the cottage when it moved into a formal cooperative arrangement 41 opened in Melbourne (Figure 8). It was with the Melbourne City Council in 1976, minimal furnishing, but a mid-eighteenth- following the Cook Bicentenary of the century dwelling of Cook family status was English discovery of Australia in 1970. indeed spare.42 The effect was therefore impressionistic, but suggestive of real British antiquity, now made accessible to Australians. New ideas about authenticity The public loved it, and wrote numerous letters to Russell Grimwade to say so. The Trust was very aware of the new Having been gifted to the people of consciousness of ‘heritage’ that developed Victoria, the cottage’s life in Australia came in Australia in the decade of the 1970s, under the authority of Melbourne City introducing professional and academic Council, more because it had come to rest approaches to managing historic sites. on council-managed land than through Hence expert reports were prepared on the any active interest. This unsought status cottage fabric, its structural condition and condemned the cottage to minimal ongoing furnishing.46 These papers acknowledged management and abrupt, intrusive changes. the doubtful connection between the great After the rapture of opening on 21 December man and the cottage, but show that the 1934 and a hectic year of attention, the Trust’s vision was to interpret a big picture of cottage subsided from a spectacle to a Cook-era history via the visitor experience of

Linda Young 133 Figure 8. The cottage furnished for opening, 1934 Herald, 13 October 1934, p. 1 walking through an authentic environment. the cobbled floor of the byre was re-laid.47 The idea is fully expressed in the new garden Lewis concluded that the cottage had been developed for the cottage at this time, substantially rebuilt from its original form acknowledging that there was no evidence of (then unknown in Australia), though he any garden at all in its Great Ayton site, but summed it up as ‘reasonably authentic’.48 planned to demonstrate the herbs, fruit and John Rogan, a collector and member of vegetables available in eighteenth-century the National Trust Council, advised that the England. furnishings should not be given ‘an elaborate Under the new regime, architectural and romanticised treatment’.49 He pointed historian Miles Lewis made a detailed study out that separate bedrooms did not exist in of the cottage fabric as reconstructed in the mid-1750s but proposed nonetheless to Melbourne, following which the door in the furnish the closets with reconstructed stump north wall to provide straight-path visitor bedsteads.50 Rogan noted that he was aware access through the cottage was sealed, and of a socially-comparable inventory of 1768

134 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage which included a four-poster and feather Melbourne, staffed by guides and ticket- beds, but was convinced it was exceptional; sellers. A good text-and-pictures display on since then the surge of inventory studies Captain James Cook’s voyages was set up in shows that such consumption was not the byre, where a range of souvenirs began exaggerated, even in rural villages.51 He to be sold. In the same year it was inscribed approved the National Trust’s samplers hung on the Commonwealth’s Register of the on the walls as the only decoration; specified National Estate, assessed as follows: homespun window curtains; and introduced This tiny structure stands today as a several crusie oil lamps to the numerous monument to Captain Cook and to Sir candlesticks throughout the cottage. All Russell Grimwade ... It provides Australians these recommendations could be revised with a unique historic link to England and is today in the light of inventory research, a well-loved feature of the Fitzroy Gardens. which suggests a plainer, uncurtained and It was originally erected by Captain Cook’s little-lit interior, but with more bedding than father and was visited by Cook during his had been the conventional vision. home visits. Detached from its village it This degree of attention to historically reflects the architecture of the Great Ayton reliable detail (as known at the time) in the area. The interior is appropriately furnished.55 cottage shifted the intellectual framework of its presentation to the public towards Thus guaranteed by a cautious yet positive the performative platform of heritage. statement of significance, the cottage Cook was barely noticed in the cottage, was now managed essentially as a tourist but appeared in the cottage booklet, where destination, in the hope that its income 56 he was contextualised almost entirely in would cover operational costs. In these his exploration career as Captain James circumstances, it fell into a common Cook.52 The change in focus speaks to trough of historic sites where uninformed the 1970s–80s era of Australian heritage management picks up after a specialist management, exemplified by the original makeover. Little conscious management 1979 Burra Charter and its emphasis on appears to have been applied throughout the integrity of fabric as the expression of the 1980s, beyond marketing the site to cultural significance.53 Now, meaning was tourists and tour organisers, for whom it to be found in material authenticity, though represented an easy place to park a bus, just what the physical presence of the cottage a picturesque walk into Fitzroy Gardens, and its furnishings meant elided into the something to do with the national hero, inchoate social memory of Captain-Cook as and convenient toilets. Meanwhile in this the source of a collective national past.54 decade, the bud of heritage was nurtured by growing public interest in family history, plans for commemorative spectacle for the The cottage in the era of forthcoming bicentenary of white settlement, heritage and tourism and the burgeoning professionalisation of a new heritage industry. The latter’s standards The cottage reopened with National Trust- of care for sites of cultural significance now led improvements (including additional required that responsible owner–managers furnishings and fittings) in 1978, with a commission a conservation management ticket office and fence to control visitation. plan (CMP) to evaluate how heritage It reverted to management by the City of significance is expressed in the structure,

Linda Young 135 and develop a conservation schedule for been important in the past and, by maintaining the structure to protect its acknowledging how history-making significant elements. changes, to continue the renewal of history Architect Robert Sands was by adding, juxtaposing and recognising commissioned to produce the CMP. The different histories which are just as brief specified an expansive cultural context: important. ‘James Cook and his significance ... the • The Cottage is of significance as a unique nature of the empire ... Cook in the context successful example of the international of Australian history ... the nature of Cook transportation of a local, non-transportable as an Australian icon ... [the] removal of the building with specific English and cottage from its original location ... bearing Australian references. The process of in mind that legend might have its own transportation and reconstruction right’.57 This impelled the first professional represents a considerable creative and research on the cottage in the North technical achievement in itself. Yorkshire County Record Office, undertaken • It is significant as the representation of by Jonathan Clare, an Australian architect in Russell Grimwade’s interpretation of the London. He documented the ancient history history of the development of Victoria, cited above and located the watercolour an interpretation popular at the time by George Cuit, then attributed to Samuel of the celebration of the centenary of Grimm, providing critical new evidence. the founding of Melbourne in 1934. It The story of the relocation to Australia also provides tangible evidence of those 59 was contributed by professional historian centenary celebrations. Daniel Catrice, and the cultural context of The third element of the statement is the cottage in Australia was summarised incorrect: the relocation is not unique; by cultural theorist Chris Healy.58 Healy’s aviator Bert Hinkler’s house, a brick, two- elliptical vision is evident in the Statement of storey Victorian number, was transported Significance presented by Sands in the CMP: from Southampton to Bundaberg in • Cooks’ Cottage is of National Significance 1983.60 The other points are subtle in that it physically and metaphorically in comparison with run-of-the-mill represents the connection between a large statements of significance. As parameters proportion of the population of modern for the conventional purpose, i.e. physical Australia, its history and its antecedents. conservation works, only the fourth element It aspired to encapsulate a national is likely to determine management decisions, statement as to Australia’s origins for these namely, to maintain the reduced, 1934 shape people. At the same time it represents the of the building. The first and second items opposite to another proportion of the in the statement constitute a rhetoric that population of modern Australia. These could direct cottage interpretation — but in people believe it to mark the veritable end practice, they don’t. Rather, they constitute a of an uninterrupted culture and isolation call to rewrite history. and the beginning of a long period of Complex messages can be communicated repression. in historic site interpretation, though it • The Cottage provides an enduring requires a structured learning framework opportunity to both recognise the to the visit, more time than a ten-minute nature of visions of history which have browse, a warm but not hot day (in the

136 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage absence of undercover space for groups), and face-to-face staff. That these conditions are difficult to realise at the cottage makes the achievement of education programs for school students a triumph. ‘How famous would you be if people wanted to make a museum out of your mum and dad’s house in your honour?’ is one way of introducing the awkward history of the cottage, and leads to discussion of Captain James Cook’s heroisation in Australia.61 It is harder to present such ideas in a few minutes to individuals or groups in the tiny cottage rooms, and almost impossible to communicate to non-English-speaking visitors on bus tours. As Vanessa Collinridge, journalist and presenter of a 2007 BBC television program on Captain Cook asked in an astonished tone as she gazed at the cottage, ‘Why would anyone want to visit Captain Cook’s father’s house?’62 The answer can be explained following the ideas of the Statement of Significance, but a generic interpretation has evolved to avoid the specificity of the Cooks. And despite all, Captain-Cook lives on, incarnate in the cottage walls and furnishings. Today the cottage is rationalised by its manager as a representation of and tribute to the rural English who emigrated to Australia, willingly or unwillingly, via an authentic Figure 9. The Age ‘Metro List’, 30 June 2008, p. 15 domestic setting.63 It must be said that not all the guides subscribe to this line, and nor cottage in the twenty-first century, bolstered do the advertising brochures. Additional by Captain-Cook habitude (Figure 9). items have been added to the rooms without A 2004 survey of visitors and non-visitors any overall furnishing plan: some, like the indicates the span of interests, assessed from tall case clock, are plausible; others, like a marketing point of view, in which both the mahogany-framed, late eighteenth- Captain James Cook and Captain-Cook are century mirror, are not. In practice, the numinous spirit of Captain-Cook continues assumed, almost unmentioned, elements of 64 to permeate the marketing perception, the site. It shows the usual characteristics feeding and feeding off the desire of visitors of heritage tourism demography: 65 per cent to believe. Thus the application of late female; 52 per cent aged 35–54; 37 per cent twentieth-century professionalism clashes with university and higher degrees; 80 per with popular tourism as the métier of the cent in social groups of 2–5 others; 47 per

Linda Young 137 The success of these theatrical interventions strengthens an understanding of the cottage as a site of ritual — a celebration of Captain-Cook and the foundation of Australia — to be experienced in a state of willing suspension of disbelief, in other words, of faith. Writers on tourist behaviour since Dean MacCannell have observed that visitors capably recognise stage-setting conventions such as furnished

Figure 10. The author does Mrs Captain Cook, 2004 rooms (especially from behind a rope courtesy Linda Young barrier), and choose to participate for the sense of communing with authenticity.66 cent visiting with no children; 45 per cent But it is only fair to ask again, rephrasing living in Melbourne and Victoria. Three Collingridge: Captain-Cook lived here, or quarters of visitors chose in almost equal what are we doing? proportions the options explaining their motivation as curiosity to see the cottage, interest in history and showing it to the Faith or bad faith? children.65 Asked what improvements they would like to see, the top recommendation Three managerial moments in the cottage’s was ‘videos and interactive displays’. career in Melbourne — Grimwade’s gift in In this vein, dress-up costumes, a photo- 1933–34; the National Trust’s revision in stand to add an eighteenth-century body to 1976–78; and Melbourne City Council’s the visitor’s face, and a soundscape featuring CMP in 1993 — mark turning points an invented visit home by the young in approaches to authenticity. Proffered Cook, envisioned as having newly joined to audiences of visitors, that is, in the the Navy, were introduced to the cottage consciousness of spectacle, the first two in 2007 (Figure 10). The audio presents can be judged to have been in good faith. the voices of Mrs Cook and her daughter The authors of the reliquary and positivist discussing health and remedies; Mr Cook historical presentations knew what they returning from the fields and taking off his were doing, and why. But gagged by the boots; and (surely in a gesture to Hermon discursive reflexivity of the 1993 statement Gill) the doorstep-boot-ringing arrival of of significance, which acknowledged neither a young man announcing, ‘It is I, Mother, Captain James Cook nor Captain-Cook, the returning to visit’, inducing Mrs Cook to cottage has been in managerial limbo and muse that he could be famous one day. The driven into the bad faith of simultaneously concept is careful in its gesture to facts, while denying and not-denying an authentic presenting intelligible Yorkshire voices to connection to the hero. humanise the room settings with impressions Does it matter? Among the most of eighteenth-century life. The guides report problematic elements in the business of it is well-received by visitors, who further historic site preservation and interpretation express satisfaction by posting photos of is praxis: heritage practitioners know it is their children peeping through the photo- impossible to re-create the past, yet it is stand on the website Flickr. constantly attempted. Guru of authenticity,

138 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage David Lowenthal, offers modern heritage on the part of cottage management by insights into this topic: ‘1. The past is gone acknowledging and providing the kind of and irretrievable; 2. It nonetheless remains visitor experiences that the market wants. vital and essential for our well-being; 3. We At the same time, the professional standards cannot avoid changing its residues, especially of heritage, backed by historical evidence when trying not to’.67 I will here step away as gathered and interpreted by researchers from the detached perch of scholarship to including myself, can be maintained as take responsibility for participating in the the context of the magic, perhaps with a construction of ‘heritage’ myself. We do our multimedia intervention addressing the job by working with the objects that have significance of Captain James Cook and passed down to us, on the basis of (what we Captain-Cook. It is not possible to reconcile hope is) reliable knowledge and systematic the dichotomies of authenticity that shape method, informed by consciousness of the cottage: the eighteenth-century reliquary contests in public cultures. The varying reality and the 1930s reconstruction products of this ideal are visible in photos reality as it survives 70 years later. But by of museum installations over the years. But honouring the presentations of past and neither perspective really acknowledges the present and acknowledging public taste, we role of public faith in numinous relics. I can act in good faith. suggest it would be acting in good faith for contemporary management of the cottage to engage with this element of what we might as well call magic. As it happens, to do so would coincide This paper has been independently peer- adroitly with a marketing orientation reviewed.

Notes The Enemy Within, Vulgar Press, Melbourne, 2004; Glyndwr Williams, ‘“As befits our age, 1 Fervent cases were made in the 1930s to there are no more heroes”: Reassessing Captain substantiate this notion: see Maryanne Cook’, in Glyndwr Williams (ed.), Captain McCubbin, ‘Cooked to perfection: Cooks’ Cook: Explorations and Reassessments, Boydell Cottage and the exemplary historical figure’, Press, Woodbridge UK, 2007. Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 1, no. 33, 1999, 4 Jillian Robertson, The Captain Cook Myth, 35–48 (pp. 38–9). Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1981, p. 1. 2 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, Sage, 5 Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: London, 1995, pp. 5–6; Bruce Meyer, Heroes: History as Social Memory, Cambridge University The Champions of our Literary Imagination, Harper Collins, Toronto, 2007, pp. 5–11. Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 17–37. 3 See, for example, Inara Walden, ‘Cook’s 6 McCubbin, ‘Cooked to perfection’ (pp. 40–5). Cottage: National treasure or cultural oddity?’, 7 It has an excellent website: www.captcook-ne. Public History Review, vol. 3, 1994, 120–9; co.uk. Tony Horwitz, Into the Blue: Boldly Going Where 8 The full caption is ‘South East View of a House Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Allen & Unwin, at Great Ayton which was Built by Capt. Cook’s Sydney, 2002; Jeff Sparrow & Jill Sparrow, Father which House He Sold previous to His Going ‘Contesting the Captain’, Radical Melbourne 2: to Live at Redcar’, reattributed from Samuel

Linda Young 139 Grimm to George Cuit by Cliff Thornton, but are now the south end. This paper refers to ‘Scenes in 18th century Cleveland drawn by the current orientation. George Cuit, 1743–1818’, Cleveland and Teeside 20 Unnumbered photo, ‘Captain Cook’s Cottage, Local History Society Bulletin, Winter, 2007, n.p. Great Ayton’, by Harold Hood FRPS, n.d., The drawing is illustration no. 41 in the Gott in the collection of Captain Cook Birthplace Collection (Yorkshire views), Wakefield Art Museum, Middlesborough Council: www. Gallery. It was first identified for its Australian captcook-ne.co.uk/ccne/exhibits/cotayton/ significance in Robert Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage, cotayton.jpg, accessed 19 November 2007. Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne: Conservation The same collection contains another photo Management Plan’, 1993, vol. 1, p. 8. dated 1920s, ‘Cook’s father’s house, Great 9 Rudiger Joppien & Bernard Smith, The Art of Ayton’: www.captcook-ne.co.uk/ccne/gallery/ Captain Cook’s Voyages, Yale University Press, gallery6.htm, accessed 30 June 2008. New Haven, 1985–88, vol. 2, p. 200. 21 Many unsourced photos in Grimwade Papers, 10 Now in the State Library of NSW, catalogued as Newspaper Cuttings 1933–34, Series 15/8, a ‘ditty box’: item DR2. University of Melbourne Archives. A grown- 11 It had been occupied for 20 years up to 1929 up Simpson child explained the move from by the Simpson family, according to two the cottage as due to it not being big enough children of the family who visited the cottage for a family of 11 — evidently because the in Melbourne in 2000: Australian, 27 October road widening was about to demolish half of 2000, p. 6; Age, 27 October 2000, p. 5. it: Australian, 27 October 2000, p. 6; Age, 12 Joyce Dixon, History under the Hammer: Why 27 October 2000, p. 5. did the Dixon Family Sell Captain Cook’s Cottage 22 Specification, p. 3, in Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: to Australia?, North York Moors Historical CMP’: vol. 2, p. 114. Society, York, 1996, pp. 4–5. 23 McCubbin, ‘Cooked to perfection’, p. 40. 13 Hermon Gill, Captain Cook’s Cottage: The 24 Salvador Munoz-Vinas, Contemporary Theory of History of Cook’s Cottage and Voyages of Conservation, Elsevier, Oxford, 2005, p. 94. Captain James Cook, Melbourne City Council, 25 David Phillips, Exhibiting Authenticity, Melbourne, 1957, pp. 8–12. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1997, 14 Dixon, History under the Hammer, p. 8. pp. 42–3. 15 Brierley, Rutherford & Syme, ‘Plans of Cooks’ 26 James Frazer, ‘Sympathetic magic’, in The Cottage, Great Ayton, 1933’, State Library of Golden Bough, part 1 ‘The principles of magic’, Victoria (SLV): H6128. Specification in Sands, 1890, www.gutenberg.org/etext/3623. ‘Cooks’ Cottage: CMP’, vol. 2, item 7.3.3, 27 See Robert N Bellah, ‘Civil religion in America’, pp. 112–17. Daedalus, vol. 96, no. 1, 1967, 1–21. 16 North Yorkshire County Record Office 28 Peter Howard, Heritage: Management, (NYCRO) Deed no. BC-21-35, 16.5.1772: Interpretation, Identity, Continuum, London, Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: CMP’: vol. 1, p. 7. The 2003, p. 227. Dixons and the Simpsons referred to the entire 29 Auction flyer (photocopy), National Trust building as one house. (Victoria) files: 1264. 17 It was first so interpreted by the Reverend 30 Gill, Captain Cook’s Cottage: The History of Cook’s George Young, Life and Voyages of Captain James Cottage and Voyages of Captain James Cook, Cook, Whittaker, Treacher & Co., London, p. 13. 1836, pp. 9–10. 31 KS Inglis, The Australian Colonists, Melbourne 18 Royal Commission on the Historical University Press, Melbourne, 1974, pp. 242–3. Monuments of England, Houses of the North 32 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, Routledge, York Moors, HMSO, London, 1987, p. 105. London, 2006, pp. 29–30. 19 When the cottage was reconstructed in Fitzroy 33 Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of Gardens, it was reoriented 90 degrees from the the Leisure Class, University of California Press, original. Thus the through-passage and the Berkeley, 1999, pp. 13–15. second half of the house were at the west end, 34 No evidence available in Australia explains

140 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage on what basis the saved portion of the 1978, and contrasting radically with the first house is ascribed to the Cook family. The booklet by Hermon Gill, Captain Cook’s Cottage, oldest documentary source is the sale in 1934, re-issued in 1957 and 1971. 1772, recording that it was owned by three 47 Miles Lewis & Alison Blake, ‘Captain Cook’s individuals, one of them being the senior James Cottage’, Urban Conservation Working Papers Cook; see Note 16. no. 25, Faculty of Architecture & Building, 35 Eric Mercer, English Vernacular Houses: A University of Melbourne, 1977; Cook’s Cottage, Study of Traditional Farmhouses and Cottages 1978. (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments 48 Lewis & Blake, 1977, p. 5. Also, ‘The Cooks England), HMSO, London, 1975, pp. 50, 59. and the cottage’ in Cook’s Cottage [new edition 36 BRS Specification, in Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: of Cottage booklet, with major revisions], CMP’: vol. 2, p. 114. Melbourne City Council, 1978, pp. 8–9. 37 Steven Lewis, ‘The man who collected 49 John P Rogan, ‘Report and recommendations’. ordinary life’, York Press, 19 April 2008, 50 Cook’s Cottage, 1978, pp. 17–18. www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/2209976. 51 Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and m5ec/?from=ec&to=2209976&l=the_man_ Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760, 2nd who_collected_ordinary_life, accessed 30 June ed., Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 2–3. 2008. 52 Mary Lewis, ‘Captain James Cook, FRS’, Cook’s 38 John P Rogan, ‘Report and recommendations Cottage, 1978, pp. 2–7. relating to Captain Cook’s Cottage, Melbourne’, 53 Article 3, ‘Australia ICOMOS guidelines 1976: National Trust (Victoria) file B1264/4; for the conservation of places of cultural John Rogan, ‘The furnishing of Cook’s Cottage’, significance (“Burra Charter”)’, Australia in Cook’s Cottage, National Trust (Victoria), ICOMOS Newsletter, vol. 2, no. 3, 1979, n. p. Melbourne, 1978, p. 17. (the first public printing). See Marilyn Truscott 39 Captain Cook’s family tree: www. & David Young, ‘Revising the Burra Charter’, captaincooksociety.com/ccsu67.htm, accessed Conservation and Management of Archaeological 2 July 2008. Cradles infest the bedrooms of Sites, vol. 4, 2000, 101–3. re-created domestic scenes, regardless of period 54 Healy, From the Ruins, p. 14. represented. 55 Item 5124 on the RNE: www.environment. 40 See www.dickensmuseum.com/ and www. gov.au/heritage/places/rne/index.html, accessed drjohnsonshouse.org/history.htm; accessed 10 June 2008. One wonders why representation 30 July 2008. of Great Ayton vernacular building is significant 41 Letter from Linton (Agent General) to Charles in Australian heritage. Thornton (antiques dealer), 29 August 1933: 56 The cottage is not listed in the Victorian Grimwade Papers Series 3, Box 4, Folder 3/3. Heritage Register beyond mention in the 42 Christopher Gilbert, English Vernacular inscription of Fitzroy Gardens in 1999. It is Furniture 1750–1900, Yale University Press, hard to tell whether this reflects the limits of New Haven CT, 1991, pp. 31–40. the VHR or doubt about the significance of the 43 Letters from Grimwade to the Town Clerk and cottage. the Premier, 1935–37: Grimwade Papers, Series 57 Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: CMP’: vol. 1, p. 1. 3, Box 4, Folder 3/1, Melbourne University 58 Healy’s analysis of the cottage occupies Chapter Archives. 1 in his book, From the Ruins of Colonialism: 44 Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: CMP’: vol. 1, pp. 24–5. History as Social Memory, Cambridge University 45 ‘Contents of Cook’s Cottage’, 17.4.1961: Press, Melbourne, 1997. National Trust (Victoria) file B1264/4. Alleged 59 Sands, ‘Cooks’ Cottage: CMP’: vol. 1, p. 79. Cook items included a tea caddy (the one now 60 See www.bundabergonthe.net/hinkler/ in the State Library of New South Wales?), a hinkler_house.htm, accessed 15 June 2008. The pair of boots (now returned to private owner), ur-specimen of a relocated house is the Santa and manuscript items. Casa of the Virgin Mary, flown by angels from 46 Fully presented in a new booklet, Cook’s Cottage, Nazareth to Croatia in 1291, and again in 1294

Linda Young 141 to Loreto in Italy. See: Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/13454b.htm, accessed 26 June 2008. 61 Discussions with Joan O’Grady, Consultation and Interpretation Coordinator, City of Melbourne, July 2008. 62 Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, ABC DVD, 2007. 63 Discussions with Christine Gibbins, then- manager of the cottage, November 2006. 64 Cooks’ Cottage Visitation 2004, City of Melbourne. 65 Non-visitors explained, in much smaller proportions, that they hadn’t visited because they’d been there before, it didn’t look very interesting, they hadn’t enough time, and no special reason; just one said he didn’t visit ‘because it wasn’t Cook’s house but his parents’. 66 MacCannell, The Tourist, p. 104. 67 David Lowenthal, ‘Authenticities past and present’, CRM: The Journal Of Heritage Stewardship, vol. 5, no. 1, Winter, 2008, p. 4.

Citation guide

Linda Young, ‘The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage’, reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008, 123–42.

Author Linda Young is a historian, curator and teacher. She is currently the course director, Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage, at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her professional interest in genres of heritage builds on curatorial and consultancy experience to generate her current research on international and Australian house museums and museum villages.

142 The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook’s cottage