National News

Harold White joined the staff of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library as a cadet cataloguer in February 1923, a few weeks after leaving school. It was an important year in the history of the Library. In April the Commonwealth Government purchased at auction the personal journal of James Cook, kept during the voyage of the Endeavour in 1768–71. The journal has always been the most famous item in the Library’s collection. Later that year, the Library Committee adopted the term ‘Commonwealth National Library’ to distinguish the national collections and services from those offered to the Parliament. It remained a hybrid institution until the passing of the 1960 National Library of Australia Act and the opening of the Library building in 1968.

Manning Clark married Dymphna Lodewycks in 1939. In the following years they lived in Oxford, Tiverton, Geelong and Melbourne, before moving to Canberra in 1949. On 29 October 1953 they took up residence in a new house, designed by their friend Robin Boyd, in Tasmania Circle, Forrest. It was to be their home for the rest of their lives. It was not a particularly large house, and the Clarks and their six children must have found it cramped at times. The only upstairs room was Manning’s study, reached by a ladder from the entrance hall. It was in this room, with its view of Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain, that he wrote the six volumes of A History of Australia, several other books, and countless articles, reviews, lectures and speeches.

Drew Forsythe chasing chooks was not enough. I vividly remembered those moments at the Parade Theatre in 1972. To anchor a scene in rural Australia, the director had given two lordly roosters a brief strut on stage, and Drew was only just managing to keep their strut to the desired brevity. I needed, however, to remember more. The play was The Taming of the Shrew, and the setting, quite radically for the time, was Padua via Mudgee. Hence the chooks. John Bell, if memory served me correctly, did the taming, and Drew certainly did the chasing, but was Robin Lovejoy the director? The taxi was rapidly nearing the Mosman home of Lovejoy’s widow, Patricia, who had offered his paintings, photographs and papers to the National Library. Graeme Powell, the National Library’s Manuscript Librarian, and I were to assess the collection, and at such moments context is important. I had consulted the Library’s biography files and found information on Lovejoy’s career as one of Australia’s leading directors of theatre and opera from the 1950s to the 1970s, but had not found any mention of a production of the Shrew.