LISTS AND LABELS COMPILED BY J. L. HERRERA DEDICATED TO: My mother-in-law Aida de Pastenes Coronado And with Thanks to: Ellen Naef, Cheryl Perriman, Patrick Herrera, Isla MacGregor, Ken Carroll, Brenda Dudkowiak, Karen Tian, Julio Herrera, Louise Byrne and Chris and Janet at the Hobart Book Shop INTRODUCTION One day I was browsing in a box of second-hand books and the majority of them seemed to be of the ‘101 Things to…Insert: Do, Read, Eat, See, Feel, Watch…Before You Die’ type. I gave up and went away. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to read. And as I don’t know whether I am going to die next week or in thirty years time it hardly seems relevant. If next week I would rather spend my time reading some old favourites. If in thirty years who knows what books I will feel passionate about in that time—or even just mildly curious about. And when it gets to 1001 Movies to Watch I begin to feel there wouldn’t be any life outside the watching … But the thing which jumped out at me was just how ubiquitous such books of lists have become. Is this the way of the future? I like to put things down neatly as a way of organizing a chaotic mind, things to be done before, things to be bought, things I said I would do and haven’t … but that is everyday life, I don’t want that sort of bloodless logic to take over the wonderful anarchic way I go about my reading. And yet someone who puts writers under their birthdays and then writes about them might be assumed to be a person of bloodless logic, mightn’t she, and all this bleating about chaos and anarchy mere red herrings or window dressing or an attempt to reinvent a certain type of personality. So this is a book, for me, with some unexpected choices.. Yes, people and birthdays are there but no, calm careful choices are not always my guiding principle. This is, occasionally, a book of blindfolds and pins. I am not sure if this method will take off. Your next holiday? Hand me that map and a pin! Ah … North Korea … yes, well … Yet as the book unfolded and those careless choices drew me this way and that I realized there was another aspect to it: that I also felt a secret delight when I felt I was bringing a forgotten writer back from wherever forgotten writers go … So may your reading, no matter how you choose it, always bring you excitement, joy, windows into new worlds, doors into new experiences, steps back, steps forward … J. L. Herrera Hobart 2019 I briefly mentioned Nikola Tesla in A Vague Survey. The other day I came upon Robert Lomas’ The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century: Nikola Tesla, Forgotten Genius of Electricity which is well worth reading. And in A Vague Survey I looked at ancestors at the time of the Battle of the Boyne and thought I hadn’t done my sums very well! The number of male relatives would be at least 128 not 62! 2 LISTS AND LABELS January 1: Joe Orton Maria Edgeworth January 2: Isaac Asimov Henry Kingsley Queenie Sunderland * * * * * English girl Queenie Sunderland wrote an attractive little memoir of her marriage to an Anzac, Ted Sunderland, in 1918, in Bride of an Anzac, and the decision to come half-way round the world to start a new life with him on a farm near Dubbo. She was 100 when she put down her memories which probably explains their shorthand nature. But behind their brevity and lack of depth are interesting little snippets about life in the early 20th century. She met famous fliers like Charles Kingsford-Smith and famous cricketers like Don Bradman. But it is her little anecdotes which stay in the mind. She faced a severe drought when she arrived on the farm. They went to great trouble making supports for the cows too weak to stand up. “I tagged along and was given the job of holding a wheat bag while it was being cut open on one side and across the bottom. Fred had cut some stakes. I held the bag while the men fastened a stake securely in each corner. It looked like a wide canvas stretcher on long legs. The bag was placed underneath the cow and the stakes were driven into the ground until the animal was able to stand at its own normal height, supported by the sling.” And then she tells a stranger story. “I had only been in Australia a few weeks when I was privileged to see a sight of a lifetime. We were just about to commence our mid-day dinner on this particular occasion, when Fred jumped up and bid us to follow him very quietly out to the front verandah. Through the open door he had seen some big birds (like large cranes) land in the paddocks in front of us. The flock had formed into a ring and were dancing in and out with graceful and varied movements. They were Brolgas and seldom witnessed in their “coroboree” dance.” She ends with a little poem ‘Three Centuries’ in which she says, “The Anzacs came in 1916 Gallipoli hero(e)s all I was destined to meet a special one He was big and handsome and tall I’ll admit he was a charmer He swept me off my feet Ten months later we married My trust in him was complete” * * * * * Nina Murdoch’s ‘Warbride’ was included in Jennifer Strauss’s Australian Love Poems. There has been wrong done since the world began, That young men should go out and die in war, And lie face down in the dust for a brief span, And be not good to look at any more. It is the old men with their crafty eyes And greedy fingers and their feeble lungs, 3 Make mischief in the world and are called wise, And bring war on us with their garrulous tongues. It is the old men hid in secret rooms, Feign wisdom while they sign our peace away, And turn fair meadows into reeking tombs, And passionate bridegrooms into bloodied clay. It is the old men should be sent to fight! The old men grown so wise they have forgot The touch of mouth on mouth in the still night, The tenderness that wedded lovers wot; The dreams that dwell in the eyes of a young bride; The secret beauty of things said and done; The hope of children coming, and the pride Of little homes and gardens in the sun. It is the old men that have nought to lose, And nought to pray for but their gasping breath, Should bear this ill of the world, and so choose Out of their beds to meet their master, Death. This is the bitterest wrong the world wide, That young men on the battlefield should rot, And I be widowed who was scarce a bride, While prattling old men sit at ease and plot. * * * * * When Mrs Patrick MacGill (Margaret Gibbons) wrote An Anzac’s Bride she was writing a novel rather than a memoir and I wondered if she had made it a happy story of romance and contentment or a sad story of loss and regret. Her first novel was The Rose of Glenconnel of which the publisher said, “Mrs. Patrick MacGill in her first novel tells the story of Rose Moran who, at the age of twelve months, is left an orphan in the mining and lumber camp of Glenconnel in the Yukon. The rough men of the West decide to adopt her and she becomes known as the Rose of Glenconnel, growing up into a beautiful and fearless girl of the wilds. When she is sixteen Dick Bryce enters her life and precipitates her into a series of adventures and hair-breadth escapes from which she is extricated only by her own fearlessness.” The publisher brought her first book out as written by Mrs Patrick MacGill but her second as by Margaret Gibbons with her married name in brackets and on the spine. I suspect the publisher, Herbert Jenkins, hoped that her first book could ride on her husband’s fame but that he eventually found she could stand alone as a novelist. Patrick MacGill, an Irishman from Donegal, brought out his book The Big Push in 1916, a book of poems Soldier Songs in 1917 and an unexpected book The Diggers in 1919. He wrote other war books including The Red Horizon and an autobiography Children of the Dead End. He dedicates The Big Push ‘To Margaret’ If we forget the Fairies, And tread upon their rings, God will perchance forget us, And think of other things. When we forget you, Fairies, 4 Who guard our spirit’s light: God will forget the morrow And Day forget the Night. He went to the war with the London Irish Rifles as a stretcher-bearer but when someone asked what he had done in peacetime he said he dug drains, an occupation which earned him the title of the ‘navvy poet’. His Irishness runs through the book. Before I joined the Army I lived in Donegal, Where every night the Fairies, Would hold their carnival. But now I’m out in Flanders Where men like wheat-ears fall, And it’s Death and not the Fairies Who is holding carnival. —“It was so very quiet lying there. The grasses nodded together, whispering to one another.