Читать книгу The Five Walking Sticks - Henry R Lew - Страница 18

While lodging with Richard Birnie I met and befriended Margie, the young woman who my biographer refers to as Margaret Morris. Ours was a highly intimate tempestuous relationship that lasted several years, always very passionate, sometimes turbulent, and finally on again off again as we tried to achieve a suitable solution. She ignited a spark in my heart, gave me the ability to love again, and became my flame. She made me question the extent to which I valued my Jewish identity. She made me think about life without it. She reinforced my beliefs that man has a common humanity, which should be made to overide the conflicts that cultural differences create. She helped me become a protagonist for the conversion of gentiles into the Jewish religion. I thought it preferable that Jewish people multiply through intermarriage, rather than disappear as a result of it. She inadvertently threatened my livelihood as a Hebrew teacher and I thought of other careers such as writing and journalism. My first such job was as a law reporter attending court for the Age in 1876. She inspired a need from within me to write “Genius, Lunacy and Knavery” in 1876. This told the story of a man for whom Judaism had been the essence of life, but who gave it up for a gentile woman. It was also because of her that I wrote “The Jews in their Dispersions,” an essay which appeared in “Historical Sketch of Two Melbourne Synagogues” in 1877. It was how I convinced myself to remain Jewish. She taught me the wonders of fatherhood and the wilderness of losing a child. And I wrote the unfinished “Ben Israel” in 1878 to remind myself that I had been emotionally traumatised once before and despite this had managed to cope and proceed with the rest of my life.

I never imagined that Margaret Morris would be mentioned in my autobiography. I was wrong. That she does appear is entirely due to my biographer. He is like an investigative journalist who got a lead and followed it up relentlessly. He may tell you everything he knows but I have said enough and will not add to it. I believe that is how Margie would have wished it.

Margaret Morris remains enshrouded in mystery. Few details of her survive. There is nothing written in books and journals and public records concerning her are scanty and inconsistent. The truth remains a secret from even her closest traceable descendants. As for the way she thought only some twenty-five letters remain. A fragment of one, minus its beginning and end, one that she wrote to her eldest child Ada Morris Goodwin Dalton, will now be quoted from.

“….you may have on that score, what Dr. Moss has told you concerning Maurice Brodzky’s private life may be true, but to me he was my world, the father of my child and I loved him passionately, and although he left me to face the world unaided I never complained but just took things as a matter of course, and was always ready to respond to his call, and if there be such a place as heaven and a God above, my greatest happiness would be to be united again, although I have lost faith in that kind of thing many years ago, and to think that he died in poverty and in a far off country, truly Bobby Burns was right when he said….”

In another letter to an obviously questioning Ada, Margaret wrote, “you asked me a question, was so and so Editor of ‘Table Talk’; yes at one time, not when I first knew him, he was on the reporting staff of the ‘Herald,’ our evening paper” . My biographer picked up the error. She should have said ‘the Age, our morning paper’ but that is forgivable. At different times I worked for both and the letter was written half a century later.

The Margaret Morris story re-surfaced in 1988 when my biographer published his book on Horace Brodzky. This book received much attention in the media. It was featured on ABC TV’s “Seven Thirty Report - Summer Edition,” a highly rated news and features programme simultaneously transmitted all over Australia. My grand-daughter Bessie Hosking of Melbourne, and my great-grand-daughter Kathleen Gare of Perth, saw the programme, contacted my biographer and told him about Margaret Morris. Bessie even gave him an old newspaper photograph showing us Brodzkys selling fruit in San Francisco after the earthquake.

My biographer was told that Margaret Morris might have been a member of the prominent Gavan Duffy family, that she was well educated, possibly a teacher, that she had met and fallen in love with me, and that she had born me a child. We never married and our daughter, Ada, was fostered, at eighteen months of age, to a family named Goodwin, and lived with them in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, until her early twenties. She then went to Perth for a holiday, met her future husband, Ernest Henry Dalton, and remained there. This story however had further ramifications. It was suggested that after I married Florence Leon in 1882 I might have re-established my relationship with Margaret Morris and simultaneously fathered two families in Melbourne, a Jewish one and a Gentile one. Futhermore legend had it that both ladies knew each other, indeed liked each other, and that when we Brodzkys left for America in 1904, Margaret Morris came down to Port Melbourne to wave us goodbye.

Imagine my biographer’s excitement at the suggestion that Margaret Morris may have been a Gavan Duffy. He thought he had a scoop. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was Premier of Victoria when I arrived in Melbourne. He had been politically prominent there for years and prior to his own arrival, had been a member of the British House of Commons. He was even known to be sympathetic to Jews. In 1853 he had voted with Disraeli to introduce a bill to emancipate Jews from all civil disabilities. It passed the Commons, but was rejected, yet again, as several times previously, in the House of Lords. Duffy’s sons were high achievers. John Gavan Duffy became Attorney-General of Victoria. Sir Frank Gavan Duffy became Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Charles Gavan Duffy junior was one of the draftsmen of Australia’s Federal Constitution and George Gavan Duffy was Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and after that President of the Irish High Court. And Sir Charles Gavan Duffy had a daughter named Margaret. She was born in 1859 versus Margaret Morris, whose date of birth had been estimated as circa 1858. The investigations continued.

Margaret Gavan Duffy’s full name was Mary Margaret Harriet Gavan Duffy. Mary was shared with two of her sisters Mary Lillian and Mary Mabel and she did not use it. She didn’t use Margaret either, preferring Harriet. Harriet returned to Europe with her father, nursed him there throughout his final years, and was at his bedside when he died on February 9^th 1903. The possibility that Margaret Morris was the daughter of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was thus excluded but she might still have been a more distant relative.

Margaret Morris’s death certificate lists her maiden name as Gaven but that could be a spelling error. The mother of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was named Anne Gavan and the mother of his second wife, Susan Hughes, the only wife he lived with in Australia, was Anne’s sister Susan Gavan. Sir Charles had married his first cousin. Somebody with the name Gavan could have been related to both Sir Charles and his second wife Susan.

Margaret Morris died at 18 Belmont Avenue, Kew, Melbourne, on July 16^th 1947. Her death certificate states her age as 93 years, which suggests she was born circa 1854. It also alleges that she was born in Melbourne, that at twenty years of age she married John William Morris, and that she had seven surviving children, Ada aged 70 years, Alice 62, Albert 60, Ruby 57, twins William and Henry 53 and Andrew 50. But on Ada’s birth certificate dated June 13^th 1876 Margaret gives her age as eighteen and on Alice’s birth certificate dated May 3^rd 1885 she gives her age as twenty-seven. These two documents are consistent with her having been born in 1858, which would make her 89 years old at the time of her death.

Margaret Morris’ birth certificate has not been conclusively found. Two possibilities include Margaret Gavan, Registration number 5293, born in Melbourne in 1858 and Margaret Duffy, Registration number 1970, born in Richmond, Tasmania in 1859. Margaret’s death certificate states her birthplace as Melbourne but the birth certificates of Ada and Alice state it as Hobart. In all three documents the informant is a complete stranger. In the case of the death certificate it is an authorised agent. In the case of Ada’s birth certificate it is a messenger for the Lying-in Hospital, Carlton. And in the case of Alice’s birth certificate it is a porter for the Lying-in Hospital, Carlton. In the case of the twin’s birth certificates dated November 22^nd 1894, Margaret Morris is the informant. Here she lies about her age saying she is thirty, and not thirty-six, but she gives her birthplace as Melbourne. The Goodwins to whom Margaret fostered Ada were married in Melbourne in 1854, were living in Hobart when their natural daughter Eliza Emma Goodwin Bainbridge was born in 1855, and returned to Melbourne sometime prior to Eliza’s marriage to William Bainbridge in 1872. If Margaret was born in Hobart, she may have known the Goodwins from childhood.

Margaret’s certificate of marriage to John William Morris has never been found. Her death certificate states that she married him aged twenty. That would make the wedding date 1874, two years before Ada was born. On Alice’s birth certificate it is stated that Margaret Gavin, (a third spelling, Gavan, Gaven, Gavin.) aged 16, married William Morris, aged 19, a cabinet maker, at Forbes N.S.W. on 23^rd. January 1874. Alice is the only child that has William Morris listed as father on the birth certificate. On every other birth certificate found no father is listed.

No birth certificate specifically mentioning Ada Morris has been found but there is one for Ava Morris born at the Lying-in Hospital in Carlton, Melbourne on June 13th 1876, to mother Margaret Morris, father unknown. This certificate is definitely Ada’s. June 13th was her birthday. There is a surviving note that reads, “With best love to little Ada from her mother on her seventh birthday June 13^th 1883.”

On analysing this information my biographer felt a need to ask himself the following questions. Did Margaret Gavan, Gaven or Gavin really marry John William Morris in 1874 and then have a child with Maurice Brodzky in 1876? Did John William Morris exist at all or is Morris really a corruption of Maurice (Brodzky)? If John William Morris did exist and he was the husband of Margaret Morris why is he mentioned as father on only one of her seven children’s birth certificates and why is no father listed on any other. Why is there no mention of John William Morris or any other husband in Margaret’s surviving letters? Was Maurice Brodzky the father of all of Margaret’s children?

Of one fact my biographer was certain. Ada Goodwin Dalton was the daughter of Maurice Brodzky and Margaret Morris. Her mother Margaret Morris and her half brother Horace Brodzky both confirmed it. Horace corresponded with Ada for more than twenty years, and she helped him out in times of difficulty with money and gifts. Ada’s daughter Majorie and her husband Cyril Kent visited Horace in London in 1933. There are three surviving letters from Horace to Ada to confirm this. They are dated June 4^th, September 26^th, and December 22^nd. Of particular interest to Ada, Horace writes, “I am glad you are pleased with the photo of my father. It is a very good photo of him and taken by myself in New York. He was a good man but very impractical. He helped everyone and I am sure never hurt anyone. In return he got little or no help and died penniless. When I say penniless I don’t exaggerate. He had not a single penny to pay for the expenses that were necessary at his death”.

What my biographer could not understand was that if Ada made the effort to correspond with her half-brother Horace, why didn’t she also write to all of Margaret Morris’s other children, particularly if they were her full brothers and sisters? The only one she was in contact with was Alice Morris Lock.

As my biographer read Margaret’s letters he was reminded of a comment I had made about Emma Hertz, “that beauty of mind and body” were “happily joined and harmoniously blended.” I liked a girl with a mind as well as a body. A reading of Margie’s letters left him in no doubt as to her mind. She was a varied reader. Her tastes in poetry extended from Robbie Burns to Omar Khayyam. She read Victor Hugo and H. G. Wells. She quoted Robert Green Ingersoll, ‘the great agnostic,’ “The world is my country, mankind are my brethren, and to do good my religion.” She studied Marie Stopes on ‘birth control and wise parenthood’ and she strongly recommended “The Jungle” and “The Brass Check” by Upton Sinclair. She had a strong social conscience. She sympathised with the unemployed and those underpaid for their labour. She disagreed with the Russian Czar’s murder but felt that he had much to answer for. She wrote, “In 1905 Father Gapon led a deputation of starving workers to the Czar’s palace asking for bread. Nicholas ordered guns turned on them and men, women and children were blown to smithereens. They have now had their revenge.” She disliked liars, Governments that lie to their citizens on a variety of issues, and the lying Capitalist press. She had been a devout Catholic. “Sunday evening Vespers- the music is glorious. The 11 o’clock mass- there is nothing to compare with it. It’s all Latin. I remember every word of it.” Yet she comments at length about Easter being a pagan festival and states that “the Catholic Church today is distinctly pagan, the ritual, the priest’s vestments, the incense, the candles and the carrying of the effigy of the dead god.” She even goes so far as to say that “all the pagan gods were born of virgins, suffered an ignominious death, rose again and ascended into heaven just as Jesus did.” She was clearly a woman who had lost her faith. She regarded civilisation as a tenuous veil over the laws of the jungle, one that needed continuous nurturing. “You only have to attend the opening of a department store’s post-Christmas sales to verify that for yourself.” You name it; she definitely had an opinion on it. She was a strong forthright determined opinionated woman who had made up her mind not to reveal too much as to my role in her life.

Once Ada was fostered out it seemed pointless to prolong our relationship. I decided to quit Melbourne and start again as far away as possible. I chose Rockhampton in Queensland. It was as far as I could go without leaving Australia. I taught school there briefly for the very last time before joining the local newspaper. Rockhampton was some miles up the Fitzroy River and lay on the Tropic of Capricorn. It was not Vienna, not London, not Paris, and not Melbourne, and believe me it was not for Maurice. Its population was less than ten thousand and it was stinking hot. It was so bloody hot that the standard joke there, amongst its inhabitants, was that when you died and went to hell, you had to send back to Rockhampton for your unused blankets. Like JF I didn’t last long in Queensland. By 1879 I had moved to Sydney. I got a job as a reporter on the Sydney Evening News and on my first day, when I walked into the office, it was slap-bang straight into a fellow reporter named J.F. Archibald.