Memoirs of Toowong

17 J.B. Fewmgs 'Memoirs of Toowong' — A Mirror of a Man by Helen Gregory Presented at a meeting of the Society, 24 August, 1989 John Bowden Fewings' Memoirs of Toowong, a manuscript held in the John Oxley Library, has frequently been used as source material on the history of Toowong. The manuscript has, however, much more to offer than reminiscences on the development of this early Brisbane suburb; it also reveals a great deal about Fewings as an historical character in his own right. Rather than concentrating on the manuscript as an historical source, this paper investigates what the Memoirs reveal about Fewings himself. Fewings clearly stated his aim in writing the Memoirs. He wanted to describe the place where he lived and some of the people he knew in his adopted country to his cousin and sister who still lived in England. In doing this, Fewings reflected his own background and education, his personality and experiences. Many famiUar Victorian values are also expressed in his writing. His devotion to reUgion, his admiration for correct behaviour, his belief in social order, his espousal of the importance of education and the power of knowledge define a middle class man steeped in the social and literary values of his time. There is a Romantic aura about much of Fewings' descriptive writing and an attachment to the ideal of rustic virtue subtly permeates the Memoirs. Fewings was, indeed, a country man. He was born near the village of Meshaw in the heart of the Devon countryside. His family had several centuries' attachment to its native soil. His father, John Fewings, was a farmer who came from Bishops Nympton, some three mUes from Meshaw. He married Mary Ann Bowden from Chittlehampton, another nearby vUlage.' John Bowden Fewings was born on 30 June 1832 when the family occupied Prescott Farm, a ninety-eight acre holding.^ Fewings' affectionate nostalgia for his childhood surroundings as well as his fondness for his home in Toowong demonstrate a strong sense of place. He remembered the farm fondly in Letter I: Fragrant gardens, balmy orchards, verdant meadows, waving cornfields, spacious moorland, perennial streamlets . Prescott Farm was situated in a high rainfall area between 300 and 700 feet above sea level. There was Uttle level ground and the farmland was interspersed by marshes and a multitude of streams.' The streams appear to have made a deep impression on Fewings in his boyhood. Many of the metaphors and other descriptive devices in 18 the Memoirs are based on water. In Letter I, for instance, he indulges in a 'flood of pleasurable recollections'. He also saw 'Devon' streams in Brisbane. In Letter II, the passage, two or three perennial streams with sparkling cascades up and down them and deep semi-covered pools here and there the habitat of the roach, dace, grayling, pike, and other varieties of the finny tribe . which, as part of a description of the Brisbane River area, is an unlikely picture of the usually sluggish tributary creeks of the Brisbane River. The fish species are northern Europe varieties. EngUsh 'briers' are mentioned in another passage. Toowong's natural environment provided one of its most powerful attractions and Fewings described it in great detail. As he explained, 'the transfer of the associations and sentiments of 'Home', from the land of our birth and childhood to the land of our adoption is easy, unobserved, and complete'. Despite this link between the old world and the new, he seemed homesick after 30 years in Queensland: To those of us whose early lives were passed in climes far remote from the sunny land of the emu and the kangaroo . the memory of the sparkling scenes and joyousness of childhood and adolescence will cleave with unabated tenacity and freshness." Fewings' childhood family life also influenced the Memoirs. He was the third of the five surviving children of John and Mary Ann Fewings. The first surviving son, Thomas, born in 1826, became a labourer and then a farmer.^ Mary Ann, the beloved only sister to whom Fewings wrote the last letter in the Memoirs, was three years his senior. Mary Ann married a farmer, William Nott. They lived at Prescott Farm with their four children until the 1870s when they moved to nearby Parsonage Farm where Mary Ann died in 1907 aged seventy-seven.* There were two younger brothers, Robert, born in 1834 who became a baiUff on a large estate and Henry born in 1836, who moved to Beera Farm near Romansleigh after his marriage.^ Fewings ideaUsed, even idoUsed, his mother. In an autobiographical piece in T.W.H. Leavitt's Australian Representative Men, he praised her 'great energy of character' and stressed that she 'always supervised every detail of household work and strenuously opposed procrastination'.* When Fewings wrote about women in the Memoirs, these are the qualities he praised. Anne Drew, an early Toowong settler and founder of the Brisbane Female Refuge, is described as 'cutting her way through the fogs and dust and verbiage surrounding any question'. The wives of artisans and labourers are complimented for running 'clean and tidy' houses. These households are described as 'blessed with a husband of sobriety and industry supplemented by the efforts of a busy, thrifty, tidy wife'.' 19 Fewings described his father as esteemed by his employees and neighbours for his 'kindly disposition and charitable actions' and as a 'successful farmer and grazier'.'" This tends to leave an impression far more grandiose than the reality. For instance, John Fewings (Senior) signed his wiU with a cross which indicates that he could not write. His status as a leaseholder does suggest, however, that he was one of the more affluent yeoman farmers who managed to survive the Enclosure movement which reached the Meshaw area in the 1830s. Although Fewings Senior employed four men, he did not own his land. He leased the farm from the Vicar of Meshaw. In the Memoirs, Fewings Junior exuded middle class superiority which was not reaUy appropriate to his background. There are many indications that Fewings valued his contacts with eminent members of the Brisbane community very highly. His tendency to drop names amounted almost to compulsive snobbery. The houses he described in detaU were chosen, to use his words, 'according to their antiquity, their conspicuousness, [and] the notability of their occupiers'. There are, for example, long accounts of the life-styles of W.L.G. Drew, Chairman of the Public Service Board and Alexander Archer, brother of the pioneers of Gracemere in the Rockhampton district. On the other hand, he categorised the homes of artisans and labourers as places 'where want and squalor would most likely be found if any existed'." Class superiority extended to Fewings' description of people. He employed terms conveying an almost mediaeval grandeur to stress the importance of prominent Toowong householders. The businessman, Frank Rogers, for example, is a 'seignoir' [sic] and Sir Thomas Mcllwraith is described as the 'Knight' of Auchenflower.'^ The descriptions of people in the higher social echelon attempt to capture their personalities. Sir Arthur Palmer, the 'pure merino' who became a Premier, is, for example, portrayed heroically: He can slay an ox, work a team of bullocks, drive four in hand, pass an Act of Parliament, govern a Colony, mend a rent in his child's frock, and soothe the pillow of the dying.'' His descriptions of workers are less easUy managed. Like the 'clean and tidy housewife', they are described either as stereotypes or as though they are characters in a play. The cosy fireside scene which was rudely interrupted by a snake emerging from the woodpile is one instance: The father, lighting his pipe and taking his newspaper sat near the fire on one side with his legs crossed, while the mother sat on the other side with the infant in her arms. The little phenomenon having partaken of the last complement of mammalian refreshment for the day, rolled over with a sigh of repletion into his mother's lap and went to sleep . 20 On the other hand, the account of Mr. J.W Todd's house and garden is not stilted or unnatural and is the most complete and detailed in the Memoirs. It is possible that this ease in writing flowed from Fewings' long acquaintance with the Todd family and because they belonged to the social group with which Fewings was most comfortable. Todd was an auctioneer and avid member of St. Thomas parish of which Fewings was a founder. HIS EDUCATION Religion was an important factor throughout Fewings' life. The Fewings family were loyal Churchgoers in Meshaw. WUUam Heberden Karslake, Vicar of Meshaw, lessor of the Fewings' farm was Fewings' first teacher at the village school in Meshaw. Parish schools dominated elementary education in rural England in the middle third of the century and offered the 'three Rs', varying degrees of education in natural history and heavy doses of religious instruction. Fewings described the education this system had provided him as 'somewhat meagre'.'^ Fewings presumably showed some academic promise in his youth as Karslake sponsored his admission on a scholarship to the Diocesan Training College at Exeter in February 1849, when he was sixteen. Karslake was a member of the Diocesan Board of Education and served as an Inspector of Schools. At this time, Fewings set himself a long range goal — to offer himself for ordination into the Church of England priesthood.'* The Exeter Training College was one of the new training colleges which mushroomed under the aegis of the Church of England during the early 1840s. Government assistance for the erection of buildings spurred many dioceses, including Exeter, to found their own training coUeges.

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