Libraries & librarians

Children’s Librarians—Igniting the Reading Spark

/ Tessa Wooldridge / 6 Comments

‘Long hours spent alone in her bedroom had encouraged in Sylvia the habit of reading … On Saturday mornings, while her father read the papers and her mother made a martyr of herself over the household chores, Sylvia got in the way of walking down to the library, unescorted.’

This portrayal of a young Sylvia Blackwell, from Salley Vickers’ 2018 novel The Librarian, could just as easily describe me (if not, quite, my parents). The ‘long hours spent alone’ in my bedroom not only included reading but also cataloguing my book collection. Like Sylvia, I was a librarian in the making. And ‘unescorted’ Saturday walks to the library were a regular feature of my life in late primary school years.

Children’s librarians – real and fictional

Cover image (trade pbk) courtesy of Penguin Australia

In Vickers’ novel, set in 1958, the youthful Sylvia Blackwell is influenced by a thoughtful and energetic librarian. In her turn, Sylvia becomes that influential guide for her young charges in the fictional English town of East Mole.

The guiding librarian of my youth was Miss Euphemia (Pheme) Tanner, children’s librarian at the Bendigo Library, Victoria.

Euphemia Catherine Tanner was born in 1914, the year her parents, May Smith and Francis Tanner, married. In mid-1915, her father enlisted for service in World War I. He was killed in action in France the following year.

Training for life

Pheme Tanner grew up in Bendigo, living with her mother and her maternal grandparents. In his 1995 publication, Miss Tanner: Pied Piper of Bendigo, Jeffrey Prentice writes that Pheme had a ‘closeted childhood’ and ‘turned to reading’ for companionship. She attended Gravel Hill State School and proceeded from there to the Bendigo School of Domestic Arts.

The Arts School, established in 1916, was welcomed with gusto by the Bendigonian. The paper’s columnist wrote that ‘just as boys were able to learn trades at State technical schools, their sisters will be able to learn … everything connected with the work of a house and will fit themselves for that grand female profession – the oldest and the best and women’s true vocation and life work – the care of a husband and a home … It is safe to say they will prove prizes in the matrimonial lottery for the happy men fortunate enough to secure them as wives.’

Whether or not Pheme wished to be ‘secured’, I do not know. She did not, however, enter the ‘matrimonial lottery’.

After a stint working as a domestic, she became the part-time librarian at the Legacy Junior Library in Bendigo. That library closed in 1944 and its 600 books and furnishings were donated to the Bendigo Children’s Library. Pheme was appointed librarian there in 1946.

A career in books

Pheme’s experience as a children’s librarian parallels that of the fictional Sylvia Blackwell. In Vickers’ novel, Sylvia’s initial survey of the children’s section of the East Mole Library ‘revealed an outdated collection, much of which would hardly pass for children’s reading in the twentieth century’. Likewise, when Pheme Tanner scanned Bendigo’s children’s collection in 1946 she saw it was ‘in a sorry state with some of the 8,000 books not suitable for borrowers and many in disrepair’ (Prentice, 24).

Another link between Pheme and Sylvia is their approach to drawing children into the library building. Both solicited the help of local schools, inviting classrooms of children to come to the library and sample its wares. Pheme Tanner went one step further. She invited interested school children to ‘work’ at the library on Saturday mornings.

RAECO book slips and pockets

So it was that, twenty years after Miss Tanner took up her position as children’s librarian, I began my ‘career in books’. On Saturday mornings, I took my unescorted walk to the Bendigo Library. Once there, I stamped ‘Date Due’ slips, slotted the borrower cards from returned books into their rightful back-of-book pockets, and gathered up higgledy-piggledy piles of books for re-shelving in their proper Dewey Decimal home.

Miss Tanner permitted her gaggle of volunteers a mid-morning break. We gathered in an airless, bookless room for a few minutes to slurp on free icy poles. (Although the job of purchasing the icy poles was a coveted one, it never appealed to me. Why would I want to leave the company of books?) At the library’s midday closing, I departed with my pay (10c) and a bundle of reading for the coming week.

Cover image from Jeffrey Prentice’s Miss Tanner: Pied Piper of Bendigo

Pheme Tanner, one of the first full-time children’s librarians in Australia, continued in her role at the Bendigo Library until 1979. I have no knowledge of her personal feelings towards the thousands of children who passed through the doors of her domain. I suspect she might not have shared the gushing sentiment of Sylvia Blackwell who ‘at times, experienced surges of overwhelming love for her little customers’, but she would have shared Sylvia’s delight in observing those children ‘prospecting the shelves for new finds, or sitting spread-legged on the floor, absorbed in exploring the varied kingdoms to which the books she had chosen for them had opened doors.’

What Did Pheme Read?

Mt Alvernia Hospital, Bendigo, 1965. John Collins, photographer.
Copyright, State Library of Victoria.

But what of Pheme’s own reading life? Sadly, no clues about her non-professional reading remain. Apparently the retired librarian destroyed most of her personal papers shortly before her death, ‘in lonely circumstances’ at Bendigo’s Mt Alvernia Hospital (Prentice, 10). Her ‘personal library of reference books’ was purchased by children’s literature specialist Jeffrey Prentice who was intrigued to discover ‘a fine and informative’ collection on ‘children’s literature, library practice, bookselling and printing’ (Prentice, 5).

Living different lives

Salley Vickers, whose novel The Librarian was inspired by her own experience ‘as a young girl with a superb local library and a remarkable children’s librarian’, told a Perth Writer’s Festival audience: ‘I think all my characters are based on myself, but not my life. I write in order to live those different lives. I don’t regard those as less lived than the real life.’

My hope is that, within the physical confines of the Bendigo Library and among the pages of so many books, Euphemia Catherine Tanner lived ‘different lives’. Lives no less lived than her life as a children’s librarian, and certainly more expansive than her pre-ordained role as a prize in the matrimonial lottery.

Links and sources

Cover image (pbk) courtesy of Penguin Australia

In her author’s note for The Librarian, Vickers writes that the real-life Miss Blackwell of her youth ‘had a fierce dislike of Enid Blyton and I have given this prejudice to her namesake [Sylvia Blackwell]’. Pheme Tanner shared this disapproval (Prentice, 29). I suspect, too, that Pheme and the Miss Blackwells (both real and fictional) would have found common ground among the book orders for their respective children’s libraries. Vickers includes a list of ‘Recommended reading from East Mole Library’ at the end of The Librarian. It includes two Australian authors: P. L. Travers for her Mary Poppins books and Norman Lindsay for The Magic Pudding.

Footnote

After Pheme Tanner’s death in 1993, La Trobe University (which has a campus in Bendigo) established the biennial Pheme Tanner Award ‘for outstanding personal contribution to children’s literature’.

Recipients include authors Craig Smith (2011), and Christobel Mattingley (1999), illustrator Noela Young (1995), and librarian and former president of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Bronwen Bennett (2008).

Pheme Tanner, c. 1938. Image from Miss Tanner: Pied Piper of Bendigo (1995) by Jeffrey Prentice

G. A. Henty and Australia—Part III: A Final Reckoning

/ Tessa Wooldridge / 2 Comments

English novelist G. A. Henty (1832-1902) prided himself on the accuracy of his novels, so how did a man who never set foot on Australia’s shores write a believable book (A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia) about colonial New South Wales, a book peppered with stories of bushrangers, border police, white settlers and Indigenous Australians?

 ‘His method was simplicity itself’

The answer? ‘His method was simplicity itself. When he had decided upon a subject he sent to the London Library for a batch of books dealing with the period, and read it up’ (‘Anglo-Australian Notes’, The Express and Telegraph [Adelaide], 26 December 1902: 4).

The London Library: © Copyright Bill Johnson. Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Henty was one of a sizeable cohort of literary figures (including George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry James) who were all members of The London Library. The library opened at 49 Pall Mall in 1841 and moved to its present location in St James’s Square four years later.

The library’s borrowing records for the 19th century are scant and there remains no information on the specific books Henty borrowed, but a glance through the library’s printed catalogue from 1888—a year or so after Henty’s Australian novel was published—provides some clues about the books he may have had sent to his address at 103 Upper Richmond, Putney.

Catalogue of the London Library / Robert Harrison. The Library: St James’s Square, London, 1888

Henty probably consulted William Westgarth’s Australia Felix (1848) and William Howitt’s A Boy’s Adventures in the Wilds of Australia (1855). He may also have drawn inspiration and information from Rosamond and Florence Hill’s travel journal What We Saw in Australia (1875) and G. W. Rusden’s detailed, three volume History of Australia (1883).

Henty’s Modis Operandi—‘I get a man to do them for me’

Having borrowed his batch of books for preliminary reading, Henty would write his story ‘with the most useful of these open in front of him’, sometimes quoting from them verbatim (Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. 1984 edn, p. 245).

‘Writing’ in Henty’s case did not entail putting his own pen to paper. When once quizzed by a staff member from the boys’ magazine Chums, Henty explained: ‘I do not write any of my books myself. I get a man to do them for me—an amanuensis … it all comes out of my head, but he does all the actual writing’. In this manner, Henty could achieve an output of 6,500 words a day, never seeing the work ‘until it comes to me from the printers in the shape of proof-sheets. My amanuensis sits at the table, and I sit near him, or lie on the sofa, and dictate the stories which I publish’ (George Alfred Henty: The Story of an Active Life by George Manville Fenn, p. 316).

Ah, the life of a 19th century English gentleman novelist!

Henty Transported to Australia

First instalment. Weekly Times, 11 April 1891: 5.

A Final Reckoning was the 29th of Henty’s nearly 100 books. Advertisements for the novel began appearing in Australian newspapers in the lead-up to Christmas 1886; five years later, many of those same newspapers began a serialisation of Henty’s Australian tale.

What was this Antipodean adventure about? A Final Reckoning is the story of Reuben Whitney, son of a deceased miller and shopkeeping mother. Reuben is a bright lad, hampered by his family’s reduced circumstances, but keen to learn. Just as his prospects are improving, he is accused of stealing from the home of the local squire (although the squire’s daughter, Kate Ellison, trusts steadfastly in Reuben’s plea of innocence throughout his trial). Justice prevails and Reuben is acquitted. Nevertheless, he determines to make his way to Australia for a fresh start.

Reuben gains passage on a Sydney-bound ship carrying convicts, wardens, marines, and a handful of paying passengers. An act of bravery on his part, while the ship is docked in Cape Town, leads to an offer employment at journey’s end. Reuben joins the New South Wales police and is tasked with protecting white settlers from the dangers of ‘natives’ and bushrangers.

Among those he ultimately protects is the English squire’s daughter (now resident in New South Wales with her married sister).

Reuben saves Kate, suffering ‘a flesh wound’ in the process. (1887 edn, p. 335)

Reuben wins Kate’s hand in marriage, settles in Sydney, and becomes one of fledgling city’s leading citizens. After 20 years, he sells up, returns to England, and buys an estate near Lewes, a short distance from his childhood home.

Henty’s Picture of Australia

A cover image showing Jim and Reuben

What sort of colonial scene does Henty paint in A Final Reckoning? There is evidence in the novel that he has ‘done his homework’ (minor contradictions and errors aside). The book was dictated to Henty’s amanuensis in 1886, but the novel is set some 40 years earlier. Henty uses localised colonial terms such as ‘squatter’, ‘ticket-of-leave’, ‘bushranger’, ‘native tracker’ and ‘black gin’. There is even a variation of the classic children’s ‘lost in the bush’ tale.

Reading the book for the first time from a 21st-century vantage—as I was—it is Henty’s depiction of Indigenous Australians that is most discomforting. Some examples from the text will point to what I mean.

Before leaving for Australia, Reuben tries to persuade his mother to accompany him.  She refuses outright: ‘I am not going to tramp all over the world’, she says, ‘and settle down among black people in outlandish parts’ (94). The local schoolmaster attempts to soften her view: it is ‘not so bad a place as you fancy … Besides, every year the white population is increasing and the black diminishing’ (95).

On his arrival in New South Wales, Reuben’s ‘education’ is furthered by the colonists. He is told that ‘the natives are nearly all thieves’ (118) and that they ‘seldom stand up in a fair fight’ (175). They ‘kill from pure mischief and love of slaughter’ (198), they are cannibals (225), and have little or no regard for life’, except for those to whom they are attached (299). Native trackers, Reuben learns, ‘have the instinct of dogs’ (176) but, if treated well, ‘they get attached to you [and] are faithful to death’ (178).  One tracker, called ‘Jim’, works clandestinely among the bushrangers on Reuben’s behalf. Jim’s presence within the group is dismissed by the outlaws: ‘he minds us no more than if he had been a black monkey’ (304).

Jim (at left) with the bushrangers in their hideout

Henty’s books were read widely across the British Empire, well into the 20th century. Apparently they even reached the bookshelves of Adolf Hitler (‘Hitler’s Taste in Books.’ Morning Bulletin, 30 Jan 1943: 2). If he read them, I suspect the Fuhrer would have found nothing in Henty’s novels to disabuse him of his belief in racial superiority.

Links and Sources

The latter part of Henty’s life was spent at 33 Lavender Gardens, Battersea. A London County Council Blue Plaque acknowledges his residence there.

‘Commemorating a man who wrote great adventure stories: the plaque erected recently by the London County Council’ – Illustrated London News, 11 April 1953: 560