Richard Campbell DOROTHY GREEN 1915-1991

Richard Campbell

DOROTHY GREEN 1915-1991

When Dorothy Green OAM, died in Canberra in February, after a distinguished career as a critic and poet, she was still in close contact with many of the women whom she had taught in the nineteen fifties, while co-principal at the Presbyterian Girls' School in Warwick, Queensland. Mrs Betty Crombie, the other co-princiapal, was a scientist who later became closely involved with Queensland arts as an instructor in ceramics and pottery. The two principals remained close friends and often met with former students, some of whom attended Dorothy Green in her last illness. In 1988, Dr Green was interviewed by Richard Campbell, the son of one of her first PGC students, as part of his school project to interview "someone whose life was especially interesting." Although many details of Dr Green's lfe have been recorded, the following interview shows how she presented and emphasised aspects of her life and work that she thought especially appropriate for a student's project. The interview is published here with the permission of Richard Campbell, who is now studying Agricultural Science at the University of New England.

Mrs Green is a writer, poet and critic. She has written several books and is especially interested in Australian Literature. Dorothy Auchterlonie was born in 1915, about a month after the first Anzac day. She was born in Sunderland in the county of Durham which is situated in the north east of England. Sunderland was the cradle of English civilization. The first monastery was built there and the same man who built this monastery brought glass blowers to Sunderland from Gaul. The first English writer, the venerable Bede, lived near the Sunderland monastery. Mrs Green returned to this area in recent years. This sense of history all around her had a large influence on her later life. Her father was Andrew Auchterlonie, from a farming community in the north of Scotland. Her mother's maiden name was Margerita Bess, and she was born in Queensland, while her father searched for gold. Margerita and her family then returned to England, and Mrs Green's mother and father first met in Sunderland. Her father died in the great influenaa epidemic that swept the world after the first world war. Her

111 first memories were of being carried into a bomb shelter. Mrs Green's mother remarried, and although this marriage wasn't too successful, it didn't break down. In England, Dorothy went to Redby Girls' School where she became interested in writing, music and history. This was because her History teacher used to take the class on lessons through the country. The subjects were the usual primary level subjects. For entertainment at the time people usually entertained themselves by singing around the piano, as most people of average earnings had a piano. The only time this pattern was disturbed was when a silent film came to the town. During the depression Mrs Green, at the age of 12, and her family, came to live in Australia. By this time Mrs Green had almost completed primary schooling and so she only spent one year in an Australian primary school. At this school she saw her first example of capital punishment, and it was then that she first became interested in civil rights. She went on to North Sydney High School. Here she was able to work to her full capacity as there were no restricting factors from bias against girl students. The students were encouraged to aim for excellence at all times. With the help of her teachers she was able to be confident and enjoy school. Outside the school at this time, there was a general bias against women in the community, but as her school was for girls only, she was protected from this attitude. At North Sydney she studied English, French, German and Latin. Other subjects she studied were History and Ancient History, and in the first three years she did Physics, Chemistry and Maths. Mrs Green recalled some memorable times during her school life. In England she greatly enjoyed her history walks in Newcastle and Sunderland. Here they were able to explore the ruins of the Norman Castle or visit Hadrian's Wall at Wallsend. In Botany they went wandering in the forest, or they would celebrate All Saints Day. In Australia there wasn't the same immenseness of history, but they did go out and their teachers took great interest in what they did. Mrs Green went to Sydney University as a night student and continued with English, French as well as Philosophy, one year of Psychology, and a year of Oriental History. Mrs Green had to work during university and became a pupil teacher in a private school in Ashfield at 10 shillings a week and went to live there. She was very lucky, as the head teacher helped her to get a place in the university. Here she had lectures and study at night, went to bed, and then got up and did her teaching. She was influenced at this time by family and friends, especially her mother. The

112 teachers from her old school also wrote to her from England. She felt that she had been on the whole brought up in a conservative fashion, and it wasn't until she had grown up that she realised that the world was badly organised from the point of view of justice. Her feeling for this sense of justice had seemed to come from her History teachers who were slowly filling her with stories and heroes who fought for justice, and so directing her attitudes towards justice. During her time in university the roles of women outside the school were very restricted and it was hard for females to get recognized in the community. In her school there were some female teachers who deserved to be professors, but because of their sex they were debarred from this. During university Mrs Green continued with music and belonged to the university choir which she enjoyed immensely, largely because of the excellence of the conductor. She also at this time was part of the St Thomas's Church choir. She took singing lessons from Brendon Dudley. Her singing included professional singing and solo parts in the Messiah. Her real desire in life was to become a professional singer but at this time if you didn't have money to go to London you couldn't become a professional singer. So she continued with her English and teaching. As her singing fell into the background, her teaching increased its importance and her singing changed from a vocation to being a hobby. It is this increase in teaching that Mrs Green regrets, because she was not able to fulfil her ambition to be a singer. She also took up Russian as another language and that helped greatly in her understanding of the principles of justice. At Sydney University, Mrs Green edited the university magazine, Hermes, and in recent years she has had occasion to look back on these magazines. She was pleased to find how revolutionary the discussion was of issues of the day. This editing had some influence on her future work, especially in journalism. Also at this time she was surprised to find that many people didn't know how to read and write, as this was second nature to her. After leaving the university Mrs Green continued with teaching at a private school, Redford Ravenswood Methodist Ladies' School, and taught for three years. At this school she and her life long friend, who were both honours graduates, were paid very low salaries. When they talked to the headmaster he wanted nothing to do with them, so they left. She had saved up enough to last for a while and finally got a job writing radio scripts. From her supervisor she learned how to do this, but as he didn't pay her, she left him. In the end she got a job on the Sydney Daily

113 Telegraph. Here she got double the pay she received for teaching at school, and she thought she was made when she got seven pounds a week. It was at this time that her interest in journalism really began. The war had begun, so women reporters were used to do all the jobs that men had previously done. As the war progressed, women increasingly took over the more important roles that were once done by men. This work was very hard but it was very good training for the intensive work she was to do later in life. After this she wrote to the ABC for a job. She was in luck again, because it was early in 1942 and the ABC were starting up an independent news service. She hadn't been in the Sydney department very long when they sent her to Brisbane to start an independent news service there. This was very exciting for her as General Macarthur had just been pushed out of the Philippines by the Japanese and had set up a base in Brisbane. This made it very exciting for Mrs Green as, in a way, she had the front row seats to the Pacific wars. She spent three years in Brisbane running the local news service and supplying the national network with stories. When she left Brisbane she left to get married to Henry McKenzie Green. He was Librarian of the University of Sydney and so was in charge of one of the great University libraries in Australia. When Mrs Green got married they first lived in Elizabeth Bay then they moved to a little house on the Blue Mountains. The interest of her husband that affected her work was his great involvement in Australian literature. His interest in this subject went back a long way in his own family. His grandfather was the Honourable James Norton who had commissioned the first bibliography on Australian Literature when he was Chairman of the public library in Sydney in the 1890's. His mother's family had always been interested in Australian literature and politics. They were very well known, and his great grandfather was one of the first lawyers in the colony. During Mr Green's spare time he researched and wrote about Australian literature in the great two volume work which took him all their married life to write, and was published in 1961 a year before he died. Mrs Green's interest in Australian Literature turned her interests from England to Australia. It was because of this that Mrs Green carried out a promise to rewrite her husband's History of Australian Literature if need be. This did turn out to be necessary, so Mrs Green spent a lot of her spare time in the rest of her life rewriting these books. She had to read and

114 write a great deal for this book, and she taught a course in Australian Literature when she came to Canberra. Before joining the university in Canberra, Mrs Green taught at a school in Queensland called the Presbyterian Girls' College, Warwick. Here she had been hoping to settle down to an easy life but this didn't work Out. This was because the school had fallen into some confusion because of various things connected with an unsuitable headmistress. She ended up becoming co-principal with a friend on the staff. They ran the school for about six years together. This task was very hard and tiring, working long hours every day of the week. Eventually they realised that they couldn't go on at the pace they were going. This work was very interesting and many of the girls who left this school went on to do great things. When she became sure that she couldn't keep up the pace she joined the Monash University in Melbourne when it was just starting in 1961. About three years later she came to Canberra and taught English and Australian Literature at the Australian National University. By this time she had started writing literary criticism in a serious way and turned again to writing poetry. In 1972 she resigned to write full time. She was fortunate enough to get a literature grant to start on the revised edition of her husband's two volumes on Australian Literature and to do some writing of her own. In 1976 when the Fraser Government came to power the grant ran out and was not renewed. So she was forced to go back to university teaching at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. The four years she spent there were the happiest years of her teaching life. It was to her a very special place to teach and she holds many fond memories of her work there. Before teaching at Duntroon she wrote much of her revised edition of the History of Australian Literature and she managed to get as far as Henry Handel Richardson. At this point she decided that Richardson was getting a hard time from male critics and that their view was wrong. Mrs Green decided to reseaith and write a book on Henry Handel Richardson and so got side tracked on this subject for a while. She was able to use a great deal of new material and feels it was most worthwhile. This book, Ulysses Bound, was published in 1973. After this she continued writing her revision of Australian Literature as well as reviews and articles. She finished the book on Australian Literature in 1980 but was frustrated when her publishers sat on the book for five years, and it wasn't until she placed pressure on the publishers that the book was finally published in 1985.

115 Throughout her career Mrs Green has published articles and essays in prominent papers and magazines. Many of these are listed in her book of essays, The Music of Love, 1984. She has written several volumes of poetry. She has also contributed to many books on Australian Literature. She continues her writing and in August this year [19881 a printed version of some recent lectures will appear. Mrs Green became interested in politics while at the university. Many fellow students were members of the Labor Club and she and other students were strongly influenced by Professor John Anderson who was very active in politics and was seen as very radical. Mrs Green feels that the university was able to be more independent of public opinion in those days. Though she read a lot about politics at this time she did not belong to any particular party. It was the Vietnam War that made her feel that she had to do more than read and talk about politics. She joined the Moratorium Marches that took place during the Vietnam War and attended meetings and demonstrations against the war. She is an active member of the World Council of Churches Committee for Peace. Languages have been another area of interest to Mrs Green. She has continued to use those learned at school, especially French, when she has travelled abroad. Before she travelled to Yugoslavia, she did a crash course in Serbo-Croat and regrets that she hasn't been able to follow this up with further study. She feels very strongly that if one knows Latin and has a flair for languages, then it is easy to pick up most European languages. It means that it is possible to make sense of what is presented in the local newspapers and to pick up everyday conversation. At present Mrs Green is writing and researching in particular areas of Australian Literature. She also continues with her poetry writing. She has always been very generous in helping and encouraging other people in her areas of interest and in even wider fields. I appreciate the time she has spent helping me with this interview and in preparing this biography.

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Dorothy Green with Professor Henry Heselune after receiving an Honorary PhD at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Duniroon, University of New South Wales

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