The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress

In The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress, Sue Williams has written another work of historical fiction set in the early days of the new Colony of New South Wales. Philip Gidley King initially sailed with the First Fleet to the new colony at Sydney Harbour but was then sent with a small party of convicts to establish another settlement at Norfolk Island.

This novel deals with his relationship with Ann Inett, one of the female convicts also sent to Norfolk Island. Ann becomes Gidley King's housekeeper and eventually his mistress. They have two sons. Then Gidley King returns to England to provide a report about the new colony to officials. Before returning to New South Wales, with a promotion, he marries Anna Josepha Coombe who returns to the colony with him. 

The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress describes the relationship that develops between the two women and their families and their life in the colony. It is an account of the early years of colonial life in New South Wales, especially the tensions developing between the Governor and his supporters and the Military. 

That Bligh Girl

That Bligh Girl by Sue Williams explores the life of Mary Bligh, daughter of William Bligh who was the fourth Governor of New South Wales. Captain Bligh had also been involved in the Mutiny on the Bounty. Generally her father was known for being stubborn, self important and generally being difficult to get along with if another person disagreed with his viewpoint.

When her father was appointed governor of New South Wales in 1806, Mary had recently married John Putland and they were planning to move to Ireland. Instead, they both found themselves aboard a fleet of ships on their way to New South Wales. Needless to say William Bligh managed to have disagreements with Captain Short as to who was in charge of the fleet. It was a long voyage.

 In this work of historical fiction Sue Williams tells us the story of Mary and of her maid, Meg, as they adapt to a new life in the colony. Much of Mary's time is spent trying to diffuse situations created by her father. Then on January 26, 1808 the military in the colony rebels against their leader in what was later referred to as The Rum Rebellion. After Captain Bligh agrees to return to England he instead sailed to Van Diemen's Land where he remained for twelve months.

Like her previous work of historical fiction, Elizabeth & Elizabeth, Sue Williams creates a world showing what life was like, particularly for women, in the new British colony. Having family who lived in New South Wales during the period described in the book, I enjoyed reading the descriptions of life and challenges in the new colony as portrayed by the author. Another excellent book by Sue Williams.

Information about Mary Bligh:

Mary Bligh O'Connell - Riverstone & District Historical Society & Museum

The Bookbinder of Jericho

During the COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne I did a great deal of reading but the book that I enjoyed reading the most was The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. The recently published companion to this novel, the Bookbinder of Jericho, is another book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Peggy and Maude are twins who have worked in the bindery at Oxford University Press since they were twelve. Their normal role is to fold each printed page into sections and then compile all the folded sections together to form a book. After a while the job can become monotonous but Peggy has been warned that her job is to fold the books, not read them. If, however, pages or sections of a book were damaged Peggy would take the copy home to add to the library that her mother had created on the canal boat on which the girls lived. Peggy's mother wanted Peggy to stay on at school however Peggy decided that it was her responsibility to keep an eye on Maude who was special. 

The book is set in Jericho, a district of Oxford. Parts of the university were next to the entrance to the bindery. 1914 and the advent of the First World War changed the lives of the people living and working in Jericho. Many of the men and boys at the bindery left to join the army. Some of the women left the bindery to work in ammunition factories. This placed extra strain on those left behind working in the bindery. 

Tilda joined the VAD and worked in hospitals initially at home and later at Étaples, the principal depôt and transit camp for the British Expeditionary Force in France and also the point to which the wounded were transported. Her letters to Peggy provide background to the horrors occuring in France and Belgium.

The war also provided additional opportunities for women to help the war effort from home. Peggy and Gwen volunteered for an hour or two several times a week at a hospital set up in Oxford where they wrote letters and read to soldiers who were far from home. Peggy later worked part-time with other women in community gardens where vegetables were grown to help feed the local community. When there was an outbreak of Spanish Flu, Peggy and Gwen joined the Red Cross to help those suffering from this disease that had crept into England with soldiers returning from France.

When a group of refugees from Belgium arrive in Jericho there is a mixed reaction from the locals as  English families lose their sons and fathers when fighting overseas. As the war continues and numbers of deaths and injured grows community attitudes to war change. The plight of the Belgians becomes one of the themes of the book.

The role and status of women in the community is another theme of the book. The suffrage movement had been growing before the war and it was hoped that women, especially as they had been so involved in helping the war effort, would achieve the right to vote. At the end of the war it was announced that some, but not all women would be able to vote if they wanted to. The fight for universal suffrage would have to continue.

Living in a university city it was obvious that the education system also favoured men. Although some women were able to study subjects at university they were not allowed to be awarded a degree. Many obstacle were also placed in the path of women wishing to enter the univerity unless they wre wealthy or knew people in high places.

The Bookbinder of Jericho provides an insight of what it was like for women and families on the homefront during the First World War. Many of the issues at the time were ones that we take for granted today, especially in Australia. The novel is also Peggy's story and how she adapted to the many changes and challenges to be faced at this time in order to decide how she really wanted to live her life. This is a book really worth reading.

Elizabeth & Elizabeth

Elizabeth & Elizabeth by Sue Williams is a novel based on the story of two women who were prominent figures in the early European settlement of Sydney. Both Elizabeths were married to dominant men - Governor Lachlan Macquarie and John Macarthur.

Lachlan Macquarie was governor of the Colony of NSW from January 1810 until February 1822. During that twelve years, the settlement changed from a collection of ramshackle buildings to a town with planned streets and architectually designed public buildings. It was no longer just a convict settlement but also a community for free settlers to live - those who had arrived from overseas and decided to make their home in the colony plus the convicts who had served their sentence. He also ensured that emancipists (former convicts) were actively involved in the new colony and were treated as equals with free settlers. Elizabeth Macquarie actively supported the changes that were made to improve life in the Colony.

John Macarthur arrived in NSW as an officer in the army and stayed. After been given large land grants he specialised in establishing sheep farming in the Colony. He also became actively involved in political issues and on two occasions returned to England in order to defend himself for some of his actions, including his involvement in the plot to remove Governor Bligh from office. In his absence Elizabeth Macarthur successfully ran and expanded the family business. 

During Macquarie's time in NSW both the Elizabeths became friends and supported each other in their endeavours to improve life in the Colony, particularly when not everyone (including John Macarthur) approved the changes introduced by the Macquaries.

Although a work of fiction, the book is based on historical fact and provides a picture of life in the Colony at the time. The names of many of the inhabitants of Sydney appear throughout the book including Simeon Lord, my great x 3 grandfather. The novel also explores how women at the time could play an active part in business and community activities but needed to ensure that their activities were not seen to usurp the role played by their husbands.

Other books on this period include:

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (novel about Elizabeth Macarthur)

Mrs M by Luke Slattery (novel about Elizabeth Macquarie)

One Italian Summer

 

An account of a family's summer in Italy when Pip and Shannon decided to take their two sons across the world to experience life in a different country. The parents are taking part as WWOOFers - Willing Workers on Organic Farms - hoping that the experience gained will assist them with projects back home.

The family stays at four different organic farms experiencing a range of jobs including helping with bees, picking fruit, weeding vegetable gardens, tending vines as well as squeezing peaches for juice, baking bread and making pasta. In return for helping on the farms they are provided with free full board. The type of accommodation varies but learning to adapt to different environments is part of the experience. Meeting and working with people with different ideas and practices is also part of the holiday. 

Between each work experience the family become tourists visiting Rome, Venice, the Amafli Coast and Lucca. While in Italy the boys have some school work to do but much of their time is trying new experiences, learning to communicate in another language and enjoying lots of gelato and pizza, pasta and bread.

Before leaving the Adelaide Hills for Italy, Pip and Shannon hoped that the experience that they would gain overseas would help them sustainably farm their five acres of land when they returned. Shannon held on to that dream and continues farming but Pip realised that she needs other work as well. She returned to work part time but at her husband's suggestion wrote this book, One Italian Summer, recording their experiences. Since then Pip Williams has written the award winning novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, one of the best books that I read last year. Hopefully there will be many more books to come.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

This is a book about words. Words that formed the Oxford English Dictionary created between 1857 when a meeting of the Philological Society proposed a new dictionary of the English language and 1928 when volume 12 was published. The production of the twelve volumes was largely the work of a men though a few women were granted permission to assist. Not surpisingly the decision to accept words and their definitions omitted many words used by women.

Pip Williams incorporates names of people and events relating to the creation of the dictionary into her novel which recounts the life of a family involved in working at the Scriptorium, one of the locations in Oxford where suggested terms for the dictionary were evaluated.

Esme, who is six when the novel begins, spends part of each day playing under the table in the Scriptorium while her father and the other men go about their work. Esme develops a love for words and eventually becomes a member of the dictionary team. However, over time, Esme realises the necessity to also collect current words, used largely by women of the lower classes, which have not made it into literature but are equally important as part of the English language. She keeps a collection of these words with their definitions and quotations and eventually they form a dictionary of lost words.

The time period in the novel covers the endeavours of the suffragists and the suffragets to gain the vote for all women in England which is not achieved until 1928. The First World War also looms largely in the second part of the novel. The book is also a study of attitudes of men towards women and the attempts of some women to overcome these attitudes. The book also reflects on the class structure early in the twentieth century as well as being a story of love and relationships.

This beautifully written book provides a celebration of words which will cause the reader to consider the evolution of language over time and the need for inclusiveness of language. 

This was a Monash University Alumni Book Club Book in 2023.

Attrib. and other stories

The second book used in the How to Read a Novel course is Attrib. and other stories by Eley Williams. This book won the James Tait Black prize for fiction 2017.

Eley Williams has written a collection of short stories concerned with aspects of language and how it is used, or not used, to communicate and / or to convey feelings. There are seventeen short stories in this collection and three very different stories were used for study in the course.

Smote (or when I find I cannot kiss you in front of a print by Bridget Riley) (pp 45-54).  Bridget Riley is a British artist who, from the 1960s, painted in a style known as Op Art - lots of lines, circles or swirls. The painting in this story is Movement in Squares. Viewing such paintings can be disorienting to some viewers and this is the affect that occurs when two women visit a galley and one tries to summon the courage to kiss her partner but is completely distracted by the effects of the painting. The way the painting distracts the viewer is conveyed in one sentence which is six pages long. The effect of reading this passage provided me with a headache as I could envisage the affect that it had on the narrator.

Concision (pp 69-74) describes a long distance phone call where the person at the other end hangs up. We are only shown the thoughts and feelings of the person on our end of the line as they examine the attributes of the physical phone (long before mobiles) and how these may add to the finality of the end of the relationship.

The physical description of the phone consumes the attention of the narrator: 'The body of the telephone is black and squat and it is shiny. ... The table on which my squat-liquorice shiny telephone sits has been in position by the window for so long that its legs have notched crop circles into the carpet. I tried to work out the total number of hours I must have sat in this precise position over the years. I must have perched on the arm of this sofa by the phone like this for weeks, making sure not to struggle or draw lines in the sand.' (p 71)

Spines (pp 149-158) portrays the reactions of the members of a family who find a small hedgehog swimming in the pool of their holiday house in France. The actions, or lack of actions, of the three humans in this story provoked a strong reaction from those taking the course.

There are several other stories about animals in this collection - a rat in Mischief (pp 137-148), a whale stranded on a beach - Bulk (pp 107-120) and another story concerning a person's reaction to finding a bee in a bedroom - Bs (pp 55-58).

The Alphabet (pp 11-24) deals with the thoughts of a person with Aphasia and the awareness of the encroachment of the condition on their life. Platform (pp 121-126) also looks back at the end of a relationship but in this case examines objects found in a photo taken the previous year producing an onflow of ideas and wordplay.

Most of the stories in this book are written in the first person leaving the reader to often read between the lines to work out what may be going on.  All in all this is an interesting and thought provoking collection of short stories on the challenges of communication as well as different ways of using words. It will be interesting to read other works by this author in the future.