Elizabeth Perkins

himself. The importance of the role which the women are granted in this basically moral recovery is probably at the core of Jurgensen's concept of non-partriarchal male literature. From a female point of view I fail to see much benefit in this. I do not want to go as far as quoting Wilhelm Busch seriously: Und was Natur und Zeit getan, das seiht der Mensch als Bess'rung an. 2 One also does not need the experiences of a barmaid to be familiar with midlife repentance. It is quite a common feature and should not be over-rated. New male literature ought to be conceived as one of emanci- pation, not as another attempt to solve problems on other people's backs. Here I can only see old patterns revived. Who wants to be the guardian angel . NOTES 'On its book cover Manfred jurgensen's recently published German novel Versuchsperson is described as 'neue nicht-patriarchalische Maennerliteratur'. 2 "And what nature and time have done, man regards as a [moral] achievement." ELIZABETH PERKINS REVIEW Joan Priest, Scholars and Gentlemen: A Biography of the Mackerras Family. Brisbane: Boolarong, 1986. 328pp. $25.95. Joan Priest is an experienced biographer, her three earlier books, Virtue in Flying (1975), a life of the aviator Keith Virtue, Outback Airman (1979) written in collaboration with Harry Purvis, and The Thiess Story (1981) receiving warm responses from readers. Scholars and Gentlemen is a complex and demanding biography which Priest has organized with unifying directness. It is Priest's achievement that the reader has no difficulty in tracing through the pages the story of the remarkable Mackerras family, beginning with the musician Isaac Nathan who came to New South Wales in 1841. Nathan, who had earlier written music to accompany the best known of Byron's Hebrew Melodies, including the beautiful "She Walks in Beauty Like the Night", made an important contribution to the Sydney music world. He opened an academy of singing, by means of which he supported his six 109 children, and was also choirmaster of St Mary's Cathedral, composing many accompaniments to colonial themes, and becoming unofficially the colonial laureate of music. Isaac Nathan was the great-great grandfather of Catherine MacLaurin, who in 1924 married Alan Mackerras, and became the mother of two girls and five boys, including the conductor and com- poser, Sir Charles Mackerras. Alan Mackerras was the grandson of a hardworking Irish immigrant and his Dublin born wife, Louisa, who had a lively wit and "seems to have been mildly astonished to find herself married to such an august personage, whom she always addressed as Mr Creagh." Her daughter, Elizabeth, Ian's mother, had an early unhappy love affair, and then married a New Zealander, James Murray Mackerras who was about five years her junior, an unusual discrepancy in the relative ages of a married couple in those times. Ian was the first of her two children. For many readers Catherine will be the centre of Priest's study. She does not seem to be included in the title, since her career as a history scholar at Sydney University was cut short when Professor Wood awarded the University History medal to (Sir) Victor Windeyer, remark- ing to Catherine, "Your paper was as good as his, but I gave it to him because it's much more useful for a man." Indeed, none of the women who appear in these pages is really represented in the title, although the highly interesting account of the family begins and ends with Catherine, the first and last chapters concentrating on "Catherine and Alan." Nevertheless, the fourth child of Alan and Catherine Mackerras, the musician and teacherJoan, completed an original Masters Thesis on The Art of Bowing, An Enquiry into the History of Bowing Techniques in Violin Playing from c.1675 —c.1842 at Sydney University in 1966, as well as becoming a wife and mother of a talented family. Other women who have married into the family have had successful academic studies, even if they perhaps would not designate themselves scholars. Reading this book, which is definitely not interested in feminist politics, one feels it is perhaps not the right thing to note that where Charles, Alistair, Neil, Cohn and Malcolm each have a chapter to themselves, Joan and Elizabeth share a chapter with fewer pages than those given to any of the men. And yet one cannot help noting such things, for this account of a remarkable family which has contributed so much to Australian cultural, political, educational, diplomatic and legal progress, is also the account of Catherine's struggle to contain her enormous energy and ability within the domestic environment. As in all well-written and well-documented biographies, the story of generations becomes also a history of an era of sociological, cultural 110 and political development seen through a specific socio-economic and cultural milieu. The substance of Priest's research allows the reader interested in Australian intellectual and, in the widest sense, political history, to see the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present from the point of view of some of the men who directly helped to shape it. The rich substrata of family life depicted in the book add an essential but often neglected foundation to the public history. Although the Greek city states of the fifth century before Christ, which are still the paradigm of western political structures, attempted to demarcate stringently the boundaries between domestic and public life, it was never truly possible to make this separation, even for the Greeks. The appearance of demarcation was and is maintained, perhaps neces- sarily, but anyone who wishes to study the reality of a political and cultural epoch must study also the home life - or the lack of it - of the major figures of the period. The public life of the Mackerras family recorded by Priest does become more than a record, and the picture of the private life is complex and lively. Priest shows the importance of domestic life and family relationships by chronicling minor events and moments which contribute to the stability and security of men who take major public responsibilities in very different spheres. Priest's description of personalities and characters admirably captures the contradictions and idiosyncracies of human nature. Obviously the contradictions of the past generation are easier to discuss than those of the present, but the author's geniality does not prevent her from occasionally making a well-observed comment about the living. She has been fortunate in obtaining the confidence of so many members of the family, who good humouredly speak honestly about themselves and their relationships with others. Nothing in the book, however, could possibly disturb any reader. Gradually there is constructed the credible picture of family life which, as well as great successes and achievements, knows its due quota of pain and disappointment. This is a benign rather than an incisive account, but it rings true. Verbatim accounts from friends and colleagues vary the authorial narrative, and as Catherine is designated as an author as well as a matriarch, it would have been interesting to see a little more of her writing. The Mackerras family has inherited privilege, position and ability, but has never neglected the opportunities and responsibilities that privilege and position entail. Nor has it always placed its support behind the "establishment" from which it derives. In all areas of debate and sensitivity, Priest writes of controversial public and family matters without controversy. Without idealizing her subjects, she shows their many admirable human qualities, and the narrative of Scholars and Gentlemen could well inspire many readers, 111 who were not born with any special privileges, to overcome their own disadvantages. The picture may perhaps inspire male readers rather than female, and the latter may spend some time pondering over the implica- tions of Catherine's life. Boolarong Publications has produced a fine, well-designed volume with a multiplicity of well-placed photographs, cartoons and informal family snapshots. Scholars and Gentlemen is perhaps not the title that would most accurately indicate the sweep of family and public life included in this biography, but it does represent some of the preoccupa- tions and the lifestyle of the people who emerge warmly and humanly from its pages. Ross Clark, With Fires on Every Horizon. College Writers 1. Brisbane College of Advanced Education, 1986. 48 pp. $6.50. This is Ross Clark's second collection, Chameleon, published by Queensland Community Press appearing in 1982. With Fires on Every Horizon, launched at the Warana Festival in 1986, was given an interested reception, partly because it captures so well some aspects of Brisbane life and evokes something of the physical and intellectual climate of the sub-tropical city. Yet it is in no way a provincial collection. Clark's particular skill is in addressing the sensibility of those who think and reflect but who do not find thought and reflection a mere professional habit. These poems do not suggest that there is a moral or intellectual obligation on poets to evoke abstruse experiences or make deliberate metaphysical connections between different areas of living. Meditation seems to be a natural part of life, whether, as in "Searching for Angelo", it results in a quartet of poems on bike riders noted at traffic lights, or, as in "A Discarded World", in a series of lyrics occasioned by visiting a one-roomed school now converted into a museum. The last lines of "A Discarded World" show the speaker back at his "comforting desk" in a tertiary institution that teaches "the newest knowledge": "Remember, salvage nothing", says the final line.

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