Gerald Dillon, A Perfect Library, 1936

Gerald Dillon (1897–[after 1952]), the Irish-Australian freelance journalist who, in 1934, wrote an article on Haywood's Female Spectator for the Australian Woman’s Mirror (see my post on this here), also wrote an article on the "perfect library"—by which he meant, the perfect public library. In a 2021 post on Dillon's journalism (here), I rashly stated that I would "soon" post that essay. Five years later is a little late for "soon"; but, here we are.

While I don't agree with all of Dillon's sentiments (and I explicitly disavow either keeping volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary on the floor, or resting your weary feet on them), it is an amusing fantasy—especially in light of recent moves to strip libraries of books, and convert them into wayfaring stops / coffee lounges.

[Gerald Dillon, "A Perfect Library," The Bulletin, vol. 57, no. 2593 (16 September 1936): 2b–c [occupying one and a half a columns of "The Red Page"—and appearing in the same issue as the first "10-page Instalment of 'All That Swagger'" by Miles Franklin] (here)]

* * * * *

A Perfect Library

I read the other day of a lady, a potential frequenter of public libraries, who was actually too fearful to enter any of them without introduction, without guidance.
  I can well imagine her trying to summon up courage to enter one of the tomb-like buildings in which we harbor public books. Of course she would never get in. The whole external atmosphere is too stupendously chilling. I feel quite certain that hundreds of citizens often make pilgrimage to these ghastly-looking public libraries: and, of course, they never get any farther than the threshold— simply because these libraries do not look like places in which one could read.
  I rejoiced, to the limits of rejoicing, the other day when there came into one of these places a smallish boy who was part of a family—"looking round." I suppose books, even in a library, look just the same to a smallish boy as books anywhere else. On the outside, at any rate. So this smallish boy very intelligently essayed to have a look inside one of the books. He approached the vast shelves, took out a book, and was returning to a table to read it when he was intercepted by an attendant, who whispered, with bated breath, that it was against the rules to take books from the shelves. Then she pointed to a notice which read:—

Please Do Not Touch the Books.

  I never heard what the smallish boy said in reply. Doubtless he thought, reminiscently, of the zoo:

Please Do Not Make Faces at the Triantiwantigon,

and probably he accounted for this eccentricity at the library by deciding that maybe at feeding-time he would be allowed to look at the books to see what they contained. But I should love to know what that smallish boy really thought of our absurd adult world!
  I have often dreamed about the perfect public library, which, in the first place, always has a notice like this above the door:

PUBLIC BOOK HOUSE.
COME RIGHT INSIDE—NO CHARGE.
YOU MAY SLEEP IF YOU WISH, BUT WE WOULD RATHER NOT.
HERE YOU CAN CONTRACT LIFELONG PARTNERSHIPS.
THE HELPERS WILL INTRODUCE YOU.
THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR.

  The book attendants in this perfect public library welcome you at the entrance. In secluded nooks they seek out the lonelier patrons—of course we allow conversation in the perfect public library, because we are all so tremendously buoyant, with, the good fare provided.
  Nothing is inaccessible. The place is warm in winter and cool in summer. There are most delightful balconies on which you can sit out and read. You can get meals there too—at very reduced rates, of course. All the pens provided can be written with, and the ink is kept entirely separate from the water with which they scrub the floors. The library never shuts. You can sit there all night reading if you wish. The walls are hung with the most delightful pictures, for the perfect public library is also the perfect art gallery and the perfect museum rolled into one, but the museum atmosphere has been done away with. They have also done away with the gaol atmosphere and the public-institution atmosphere. In fact, this perfect public library is so perfect that all the folks have taken to going in there. In some parts of the library you can always happen on an interesting talk about books. There are halls there in which real Australian poets give readings of their own verse. Well-attended readings, too. And real Australian authors discuss their books at other times, and invite criticism from the audience—which is but grudgingly given, because the folks are so tremendously patriotic.
  And it was while I was dreaming this dream one night that I saw that ageing, lonely and book-eager woman come in. She had come right up in the lift, but the attendants saw that she was obviously unbookish looking and a little bit astray. At the threshold the principal book-assistant went forward and led her to the nearest armchair. Then he said in such a kindly voice: "Put your feet right up there"—motioning to some copies of the Oxford Dictionary which were lying on the floor—and then, after he had brought her a cup of tea, he said: "Well, where would you like to begin?" And she said: "Well, maybe I won’t live long enough to get through all—I mean all the literature I’m dying to read." And he replied: "Fear not, madam, from this day forward you have entered on a new lease of life."

GERALD DILLON.

The Scientific Silverfish and Moth Destroyer, ca. 1928

I recently bought the volume on the right above (The Works of Théophile Gautier), which is from the same series, and in the same binding, as the volume on the left (The Complete Romances of Voltaire … Eight Volumes in One). I have had the Voltaire since 1999, and regularly use its version of Candide in my teaching, and have long wanted more versions of Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, since it is such an important and early representation of a female vampire, so I was very happy with this find.

The local bookshop that had the Gautier, had five more of these Walter Black volumes in the same soft leather bindings—Zola, Maupassant, Boccaccio, Balzac, and a Voltaire—but the prices were too high for me to buy any others, just for the sake of their matching bindings. Looking on eBay, I discovered someone else in Australia had nine volumes of this series (below), in the same bindings, for less than I paid for my Gautier (the listing is here), but I have so far resisted starting yet-another collection front.

Inside my Gautier, I found a card (above and below), which—at first glance—I took to be an abandoned bookmark. A closer look revealed that, although this may actually have been used as a bookmark, the purpose of the card was to "Scientifically Destroy" silverfish and moths.

As you can see above, the text reads:

THE SCIENTIFIC
SILVERFISH & MOTH DESTROYER.
—————
SIMPLY PLACE CARDS IN OR NEAR
ARTICLES TO BE PROTECTED.
—————
CONTENTS: 14 CARDS 1/- PER PACKET
DUGGAN'S 194 LIT. COLLINS ST. MELBOURNE, C.1.

The verso of the card has had some sort of insecticide painted onto it—you can see the brush strokes.

* * * * *

I was not surprised that I could find no record of these cards; but I was surprised that I was unable to find out anything very concrete about Duggan’s of Little Collins Street, Melbourne. This Facebook post suggests that Duggan's might have been a 1940s dry-cleaning business, which was bought out by Fletcher Jones, the Australian "clothing manufacturer and retailer" (which shut down only in January of this year; "Fletcher Jones to Close All Stores After Nearly 100 Years in Australian Retail," 17 January 2026, online here).

If Duggan's was a dry cleaner, I suspect that these cards were intended to be slipped into the pockets of freshly dry-cleaned coats and trousers, rather than books. But it seems to have done a sterling job anyway: the Gautier remains in lovely condition.

* * * * *

[UPDATE 8 April 2026: I am grateful to a very helpful, regular reader (PP), who ran a quick search on the address, 194 Little Collins Street, in the State Library of Victoria, Sands and McDougall directory series online (here). Although the State Library of Victoria series only includes directories from every fifth year, Duggan's makes no appearance. Only three types of businesses are recorded as operating from this address between 1910 and 1960. These businesses are: hairdresser: Walter Higginbotham (1910, 1915), Percy J. McGrath (1920); watchmaker and jeweller: T. A. Hansen (1925, 1930); tea rooms: Mrs H. M. Eddy (1935, 1940), Miss L. Buckland (1945, 1950), L. Halmson (1955), C. Coleman (1960).

As PP notes, "there is no record of a dry cleaning business at the address." It is possible—if Duggan's had a franchise in Melbourne—that it dates to a period between these five-year intervals, or between these settled buisness occupations, and that a search of the individual directories for this period would locate it. But it is also possible, as PP continues, that, "as with many circulating libraries and other businesses, the operators at the premises were merely a drop-off and collection point." Although my ignorance on the subject is close to comprehensive, I am going to assume that a watchmaker and jeweler would be a poor match for a dry cleaning drop-off and collection point, so my bet is on the tea-rooms of either Mrs Eddy or Miss Buckland, since the only evidence for a Duggan's dry-cleaning business (albeit in the western-districts of Victoria) dates from the 1940s.

Gerald Dillon, freelance journalist

Gerald Aloysius Dillon (29 June 1897–[after 1952]), Irish-Australian soldier and freelance journalist, contributed an article on "'The Female Spectator': Mrs. Eliza Heywood's Periodical" to Australian Woman's Mirror in March of 1934. I said in my post on that article (here), that Dillon contributed a series of roughly fifty bookish essays to the Australian Woman’s Mirror, "many about women or women writers such Joanna Southcott, Ouida, Angella Burdett, Sidney Webb and Katherine Mansfield (probably his most famous essay)." I also said that "I have not been able to find out as much about Dillon as I would like"—but what I have found is below.

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The AustLit entry for Dillon states "Gerald Dillon was a freelance writer from Sydney," and list only six of his works: one, a self-published book (Why Editors Regret: First Aid for the Free-Lance Gerald Dillon (Sydney, 1929)), the Katherine Mansfield essay mentioned above, and four pieces of his journalism that seem to have been selected more-or-less at random.

After a pretty extensive search online, I located quite a bit more information than AustLit offers. My three main sources of biographical information (reproduced below) are a series of entries for him (and his brothers) in The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook from 1930–52 (vol. 23 (1930): 134; 29 (1936): 131; 34 (1941): 130; 35 (1952): 118), a brief article about Dillon published in The wireless weekly: the hundred per cent Australian radio journal, Vol. 36 No. 28 (12 July 1941): 3b (this article supplied the only photograh I could find of Gerald Dillon), and a National Archives entry.



The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook entries are all much the same, the 1930 edition reading

[1930–52] "Dillon, Gerald Aloysius—b.1897, y.s. [youngest son] of late Theobald Augustus Dillon, co Roscommon; edu. Downside and R.M.C. [Royal Military College, Sandhurst]; Sec.Lieut 6 (Inniskillg) Dgns [Dragoons] 1916; resigned as Lieut 1921; served Great War; at present engaged in journalism. Author of Why Editors Regret: Box 2876N. G.P.O., Sydney, N.S.W."

The yearbooks contain entries for two bothers, which provide more details of the family:
  Gerald's father was Theobald, of Mount Dillon, co. Roscommon,
  his mother was Bertha, daughter of Nicholas Mulhall of Boyle, co. Roscommon;
  his eldest brother went to Trinity College Cambridge (B.A.), was Capt. in the Connaught Rangers (Special Reserve); served in WW1, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1922;
  the second brother, Capt. John Jospeph Dillon (b. 19 Feb. 1896), went to Sandhurst, like Gerald, was a Lieutenant in the Connaught Rangers (Special Reserve); was twice wounded in WW1, winning the Military Cross, rising to Captain in 1927 in the Royal Army Service Corps.

[1941] FILLED LIFE WITH TRAVEL
Gerald Dillon, well known for his talks on 2FC and 2BL [Sydney radio stations], has had a life crammed with travel and adventure.
  An Irishman, born in Dublin in 1897, he spent six years at an English public school before returning to Dublin to study law.
  In 1916 he abandoned law to enter Sandhurst. Graduating there with a commission in the Dragoons, he served in France in the last war.
  After the war, feeling an urge to travel, he resigned his commission in the Army, and visited Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, and Tahiti before settling for several years in Papua as a plantation manager.
  Gerald Dillon’s variety of experience has given him plenty of material for broadcasting. He is also well known as a freelance journalist, and on one occasion he turned to authorship.
His anecdotes of life among the wild and woolly natives of Papua have proved very happy entertainment for radio audiences.

[1939–48] WW2 Service record [National Archives of Australia: Citizen Military Forces Personnel Dossier]

DILLON GERALD ALOYSIUS
Service Number - N279151
Date of birth - 29 Jun 1897
Place of birth - DUBLIN IRELAND
Place of enlistment - PADDINGTON NSW
Next of Kin - Unknown
Contents date range: 1939–1948
Item ID: 6194595
Location: Canberra
Access status: Open

[Honouringveterans.org (here) adds: "Rank: Corporal"]

Beyond The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook and the anonymous "Filled Life With travel," Trove fills in many details concerning Dillon's freelance and radio work. However, although there are hundreds of entries for Dillon on Trove, they add little about his personal life. Apparently, he lived in "Verona," Waruda St., Kirribilli, Sydney, before WW2, but I was unable to find any record after the 1952 Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook. If we are to judge by the lack of a Next of Kin in his WW2 Military Forces Personnel Dossier, it appears he did not marry. He seems to have died obscurely, and alone, with no memorial or death notice.

* * * * *

Dillon's self-published 58-page booklet, Why Editors Regret was reasonably-well received, being reviewed in half a dozen journals throughout Australia. Although most major libraries in Australia have a copy, I have been unable to look into one due to the lock-down, but the reviews contain a number of details, so I will finish this post by transcribing three the longer reviews, and provide links to three others. The reviews below are organised chronologically.

"Franziska" [Frances Zabel], The Australian Woman's Mirror, Vol. 5 No. 48 (22 October 1929): 24c, 41b "Let's Talk about Books" (here)

Editors would have far fewer regrets if this little book were read by all those Australians seeking to break into freelance journalism The author, who can speak from experience of the ups and downs of freelancing, gives much practical advice to the budding writer and covers a wide field—what editors want, the article, book reviews, verse, the paragraph, the short story, writing for children, and so on. A foreword has been written by the editor of the Bulletin and there are special contributions by the editor of Aussie, the editor of the Mirror, Katharine Susannah Prichard, J. H. M. Abbott Professor Brennan, Edward Perugini, W. E. FitzHenry and others. Apart from a few typographical errors that should not have crept into a literary handbook, the little volume is well-produced, and it should do something toward realising the expressed purpose of Mr. Dillon the lightening of the heavy burthen which weighs on those who wander without proper sense of direction in the fugitive byways of literature.

The Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 2594 (30 Oct 1929): 5a–b (here)

Why Editors Regret
  They don’t; but the harmless fiction makes a catchy title, and prospective or potential freelances who spend half a crown on Gerald Dillon’s booklet of that name should not have any regrets, either. Editors do not regret, because theirs is the most impersonal job on earth; they buy what they want, they turn down what they don’t want. The best friend in the world ceases to be a friend when he translates himself into a piece of paper with words on it. Having done that, the best friend is a bit of copy and nothing else.
  Mr. Dillon has strong support: Bert F. Toy, editor of the Woman's Mirror, and writer here of a most compact and in formative article; Walter Jago, editor of Aussie—not very informative, but a good blow where one has been long asked for; Katharine Susannah Prichard—so so; Harold Mercer—amusing and encouraging (he says, “One bit of misleading information may destroy a growing reputation painfully built up" (and he writes sermons for sick clergymen); C. J. Brennan—an excellent page on light verse; Hugh McCrae—Hugh McCrae; Edward Perugini—one or two acute remarks on serious verse; J. H. M. Abbott—on "historical background" in fiction ("There are 700 possible separate characters available amongst the convicts of the first fleet.” May he be spared to use the five of them that he has not used already!); Edyth Bavin, wife of the N.S.W. Premier—on “writing for children," which she herself does charmingly; W. E. FitzHenry, who has grown up in The Bulletin office and knows as much about marketing paper with words on it as the next man, and his brother. A guiding foreword by S. H. Prior, editor of The Bulletin, and seven articles by Mr. Dillon covering pretty well the whole field of freelancing complete the bill of contents.

The Capricornian (Thu 5 Dec 1929): 12a: BOOKS RECEIVED (here)

S. A. Rosa, The Labor Daily (Sat 7 Dec 1929): 9g. LITERARY JOTTINGS (here)

The Advertiser (Sat 8 Feb 1930): 14f "LITERARY BEGINNERS" (here)

The West Australian (5 Jul 1930): 5d (here)

"WHY EDITORS REGRET."
(By J.P.)

A small booklet with the above title came recently before my notice, and I found it interesting to read because of the elementary hints and tips it contains for those who practice free-lance journalism in Australia. That it is written for Australians is its chief virtue. This booklet, largely the work of Mr. Gerald Dillon, but containing some brief contributions by other well-known journalists and authors, fills a want that, I imagine, many writers in Australia have felt: it sets down some guidance that should explain to the disappointed just why and how editors 'regret' when they return manuscripts. For instance: 'What the editor wants is the sort of matter he publishes' … 'Get a typewriter' … 'Never fold your manuscript more than once' … 'Enclose a stamped addressed envelope for return' … 'Never use single spacing in typing' … 'Never send a covering letter with a manuscript'—these are the first essentials to the equipment of the freelance; indeed, I think they are guides that will take him over half his journey to acceptance of his manuscript.
  The book discusses the usual methods of writing newspaper articles, short stories, serials, verse, juvenile matter and paragraphs—the last subject to some purpose, which is perhaps not unnatural in a laud where paragraph writing has become a habit rather than a practice. These discussions are slight, and the symposium to which various well-known writers have contributed is notable for its general evasion of the book's requirements. Katharine Susannah Prichard has 'nothing very much to say as to 'why the editor regrets,' except that he doesn't when he says so.' The truth is that editors often do regret: and the editor of 'Aussie' has here something to say about why they regret. Hugh MacRae says. 'I cannot see how any freelance journalist could benefit by anything I might have to say.' J. H. M. Abbott dismisses 'The Historical Back ground,' of the short story, in two paragraphs, and Edyth Bavin 'Writing for Children' in two shorter paragraphs. Perhaps the soundest and most useful article is that by the Editor of 'The Australian Woman's Mirror' on 'The Woman Free Lance.' and it is a pity that the other contributors had not approached their task with the same seriousness and desire to help, when a thorough-going handbook for the local freelance might have been the result.
  This booklet should, though, be useful to the beginner, who will soon find that his experience does not tally with Mr. Dillon's in several matters. It is said that there is practically no market in Australia for articles of the discursive essayist type: and 'The local market for short stories is practically unlimited.' With good essays on almost all subjects appearing regularly in our leading papers. I wonder what shade of meaning Mr. Dillon in tends for his word 'discursive.' As for the short story market, this is decidedly limited, because it is over-supplied, and this for the reason that short-story writing ' is the one branch of literature in which, more than in any other with the possible exception of verse, local writers have squandered their energies.

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Four final notes: [1] In a recent essay by Martin Griffiths ("Katherine Mansfield’s Australia," Tinakori: Critical Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society Issue 4 (Summer 2020): 60–70) Dillon is mistakenly described thusly (ibid. 63) "New-Zealand-born commentator Gerald Dillon." [2] it is nice to see a Frances Zabel review of Dillon's book. For my post on Mrs Zabel, see here. [3] I was delighted to find that Dillon wrote an article on "A Perfect Library," which I will post soon. [4] "Verona" near "Astoria" in Waruda St., Kirribilli was a boarding house (according to Anne Watson, The Art of Roland Wakelin (1975), 2.22), but a "superior" one, according to a 1930 advertisement (offering "Superior Single Rooms, fireplace, balcony, glorious views, from 15/.").

[UPDATE 2026.04.23: I have finally posted Dillon article on "A Perfect Library": see here]

Catterall and Cowley in Sydney, 1835

When I was visiting Sydney during a university holiday in 1989, I bought a copy of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley, 6th ed. (London: J. M. for Henry Herringman, 1680). As the photos in this blog post show, the book is in very poor condition, very badly foxed, no frontispiece, boards taped on with duct-tape. Despite its age, it would also not even now be considered a rare book—ESTC (r14069 = Wing C6654), records thirty-nine copies. But, since I had rarely seen a seventeenth-century literary folio at anything approaching a price I could afford in 1989, and I felt protective of the poor, damaged thing, I coughed up A$110 for it.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia Inflation Calculator, I paid the equivalent of about A$250 in today’s terms. The fact that there is a nicer copy online now, rebound, with the frontispiece, for about A$150 (here) tells you everything you need to know about the rise of the internet (supply) and the passing of the Baby Boomer generation (demand) on Antiquarian book prices. In fact, there are thirty-one copies of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley, printed between 1668 and 1700, on ABE at the moment, priced from USD75. Notwithstanding the fact that I would have been better off financially if I had invested my $150 in almost any other way—including Batman memorabilia—I am glad I bought this book. I was glad before antiquarian book prices collapsed, and I was glad afterwards.

The reason I was very glad to have my very own seventeenth-century folio of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley—no matter how battered—when I bought it was because it made my first experience of reading Cowley uncommonly memorable … and romantic. In fact, the more my copy of Cowley showed the passage of three hundred years the better it served my purpose. I read Cowley by candle-light, during the winter of 1989. I discovered in this way that it takes a lot of candles to be able to read a badly foxed seventeenth-century folio with ease, and that a lot of candles generates a lot of wax, which is hard to remove from carpet, and a lot of heat, which will warm up even a very large and otherwise-unheated room in a cold Hobart winter. My landlord was not happy about the wax, or the soot-covered walls, but the experience of reading Cowley night-after-night, in the dark of winter, was so perfect that I will remember it with pleasure for ever.

The reason I am very glad to have my very own seventeenth-century folio of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley—no matter how battered—now, is because, since the internet makes provenance research so much easier, I am now able to identify the person who owned this book in 1835. As you can see below, Joseph Catterall inscribed his name on the front fixed endpaper, and dated the inscription to 1835. The inscription is position above a patch of glue residue, indicating that a bookplate has been removed, but the relationship between the two is unclear: whether the inscription pre- or post-dates the bookplate, or whether the bookplate belonged to Catterall, is unknown.

* * * * *

Although, in 1989, I had no easy way of discovering who Catterall might have been, Professor Google now informs me a good deal about him. Joseph Catterall (1812–82), the youngest son of Paul Catterall, late of Lytham, in the county of Lancashire, Esq., was educated at private schools and at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He was twenty-two when he inscribed his book. He married—in Sydney, in the same year—Georgiana Anne Sweetman, who was aged twenty. This establishes that my copy of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley has been in Australia for more than half of the book's existence (183 of 338 years), and for four fifths of the modern history of Australia (183 of 230 years). Catterall is considered “Australian Royalty”; at least, he features (here) on a website of that name. In reality, he seems to have been an all-round arsehole. The marriage ceremony was performed by the great Australian, John Dunmore Lang—the “Scottish-born Australian Presbyterian minister, writer, politician and activist” (Wikipedia)—an early advocate for the end of transportation, Australian nationalism and an Australian republic (and, therefore, all-round Australian legend, if not genuine "Australian Royalty" too).

According to Lang, Joseph and Georgiana—“a person of prepossessing appearance, … of a respectable family, and of good education” (i.e., the child a free settlers)—“had been living for some time previous in a state of concubinage.” Since Georgiana was pregnant, Lang was willing to lend his services to enable Joseph “to do his utmost to repair the wrong which I supposed he had done her”—i.e., perform a marriage—and the marriage took place “either shortly before or shortly after the birth of their first child.” Their daughter, Georgiana Ann Catterall, was born 16 February 1835 and died two months and thirteen days later. A second child, James Dillon Catterall, was born and died on 17 January 1836. Shortly thereafter, it appears, Catterall “left his wife in new South Wales, and proceeded via India” to England.

Once he had retuned to England, he instituted a suit against Georgiana, to “obtain a decree of nullity of marriage.” He argued that, although he was married to Georgiana by Lang, “an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland,” neither he or his wife were members of the Church, nor did they sign a declaration to that effect. The relevance of this is that an act had been passed in the colony “to remove doubts as to the validity of certain marriages” which he interpreted to imply that, for these reasons, his marriage was “null and void for non-compliance” with the act. This case was disputed and, apparently, abandoned. Later, Catterall filed for the marriage to be dissolved “on the ground of alleged adultery on the part of his wife.” Although Lang stated in 1846 that Catterall failed a second time, on the basis that the House of Lords had no power to examine witnesses in New South Wales to test the validity of his claim, he was in fact granted the divorce in 1847 on the basis that his wife had given birth to another child one year after Catterall left Sydney. (Seemingly, John Sydney Catterall, who was born in 1837.)

Lang’s 1846 account of Catterall is colourful and unflattering. Referring to him fleeing his responsibilities and his lack of success in putting aside an inconvenient marriage, Lang writes:

I do not think [Catterall] either deserves or is likely to meet with much sympathy … for when a young man marries a young woman whom he has previously seduced, or who has otherwise lost her character beforehand, he may be supposed to have made up his mind to undergo the very calamity which Mrs. Catterall alleges has befallen him, and which he so feelingly deplores. … Mr. Catterall, it will be recollected by the older colonists, is a person who has been before the public in this colony long ago. He had a farm somewhere in Argyle a few months before his marriage, with a farm house and other building upon it, in which he was residing with his paramour, when a ferocious attack was made upon it by armed bushrangers. He had a very brave man, known as an overseer at the time, of the name of Shepherd; who, in defence of the person and property of his master (who remained all the while within doors, within hearing of the shots), gallantly stood the fire of the bushrangers, by whom, if I recollect aright, he was severely wounded, and succeeded in beating them off. Mr. Shepherd got great credit on the occasion, for it was one of the most heroic actions that had been performed in the colony; but Mr. Catterall got about as much sympathy as he is likely to get now under the failure of his repeated attempts to set aside his colonial marriage.

And so it seems, Catterall was a coward, as well as a cad. What stands out for me in this passage is the reference to “a farm somewhere in Argyle a few months before his marriage … in which he was residing with his paramour [i.e., Georgiana].” Argyle County was (according to Wikipedia, one of the original Nineteen Counties in New South Wales, in the area around Goulburn, 195 kilometres (121 miles) south-west of Sydney. Georgiana—who also appears on the “Australian Royalty” website (here)—was, in November 1828, a thirteen-year-old “servant, to W. Cordeaux Esq, Minto,” in the Southern Tablelands, 48 kilometres (30 miles) south-west of Sydney. It is not clear how long she stayed in Minto, and how she ended up ninety miles away seven years later.

Lang said that he did not know if “Catterall had seduced the young woman in the first instance, or whether she had been of indifferent character previous to their acquaintance”—but it appears that Georgiana’s social standing was low, and her vulnerability high, prior to finding herself in “a state of concubinage” with Catterall (i.e., she was a servant); while his social standing was high, and his vulnerability low (as a university-educated, Gentleman adventurer). Consequently, I am inclined to blame Catterall for their situation, and her fate.

It is not known what hardships Georgiana endured after the cad-coward Catterall departed, but I gather that he left behind some of his belongings from the fact that more than a century and a half after he slunk away, his copy of The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley remained in Sydney. We can’t know whether Georgiana sold this book and his other belongings in the 1840s to pay for food and shelter, or clung to it in the hope he would return, or because she wished to pass it down to her descendants. I do know that her fifth child, Effield “Frank” Catterall survived into adulthood and that his four daughters—one married—mourned his death in 1892. (The cad’s two children died in infancy, while Georgiana’s two other children disappear from the records after their birth.) So it is possible that Cowley remained in the family for a lengthy period.

Unfortunately, if anyone other than Catterall left a name on the volume, it is no longer there. All that remains other than Catterall’s inscription, and the residue of a long-removed bookplate, are the marks of booksellers. From the number of prices inscribed onto the endpaper, it seems that this book circulated in the Sydney second-hand book market for some time. One of the partly-erased prices is in pounds, which dates it to before Valentine’s Day 1966, when Australia adopted a decimal currency. Not surprisingly, after almost thirty years, I have a pretty weak memory of buying this book. All I recall is buying it from a down-market antique shop in the city. A temporary-looking, run-down, second-floor shop—dusty, with stained walls and peeling plaster, and filled with a mass of not-very enticing antiques. And I think I paid the $110 asked of it, partly because I felt an obligation to rescue the book from immanent destruction. Given all the pleasure it has bought me, I am glad that I did.

Censorship in Australian Libraries

Last night I read Clair Williams and Ken Dillon's Brought to Book: Censorship & School Libraries in Australia (1993). I was particularly interested in the chapter on "Censorship and the Philosophy of Librarianship," thinking it might make a nice counterpoint to the pieces I have been reading from the early 20th century on bad, improper, poisonous, pernicious and beastly books (see here). Unexpectedly, while I find the earnest rantings of Canon Rawnsley et al. rather amusing, I found Williams and Dillon very annoying indeed.

Williams and Dillon contrast the "liberal tradition" (and intellectual freedom) with the tradition of "social responsibility," favouring the latter. In fact they state that "absolute intellectual freedom is both undesirable and unattainable" (43), cautioning that some "naive" and "problematic" philosophical pronouncements "define intellectual freedom in terms that suggest not liberalism but libertarianism" (51). Although they recognise that "notions of intellectual freedom and free speech do not readily permit of half-measures" they, nevertheless, recommend half-measures, stating that "Absolute intellectual freedom … should obviously be rejected on moral and practical grounds."

Well, it isn't obvious to me why intellectual freedom is "naive," "problematic," and "should obviously be rejected." And Williams and Dillon are not that keen on enlightening any libertarian who doesn't agree with them on philosophical and moral grounds.

They offer only one practical difficulty: life may get difficult for a librarian committed to intellectual freedom: "Financial support may be withdrawn, jobs may be jeopardised or lost …" Sensing, perhaps, how pathetic this sounds, Williams and Dillon quickly move on to the main objection:

Advocates of absolute intellectual freedom tend to favour the demand theory of librarianship rather than the value theory. The demand theory says that the librarian should simply provide material that is demanded (what the user wants) while the value theory dictates that the librarian should provide material of value (what the user needs).

The strongest criticism of the demand theory that Williams and Dillon can muster is that "it can seem to reduce the librarian to a mere functionary dispensing commodities." Yes, that is it. Ego. It would hurt the feelings of librarians to recognise that they could be replaced "by junior administrative assistants." Far better than this, it seems, is to foster a system in which one group of people (librarians) decides what another group (every other human being, not a librarian) "needs." Failure to accept this manifest destiny of librarians is "self-effacement of the most paralysing kind" (53).

Personally, I am not happy handing over the choice of what I "need" to an un-elected group whose strongest motives are ego and sloth: namely, (1) maintaining their own sense of self-importance and (2) the desire to avoid being inconvenienced. Nor do I trust the "social responsibility" model that justifies librarians—who are prone to "elitist, middle-class ideas of literary value"—in deciding which "attitudes and ideas are positive and socially beneficial," so as "to promote social change." As Williams and Dillon explain: "the value theory of librarianship is favoured by … literary elitists; those who wish to censor material … because of their sexual, religious and political content; and those who have a commitment to social responsibility" (the latter being criticised as "left wing authoritarianism or social engineering")

As one of those pesky libertarians who favours a laissez faire approach I recognise that my right to free speech depends on the right of everyone else to free speech, including those whose opinions I most strongly disagree with or consider "anti-social." Williams and Dillon can't bring themselves to expand on this, though it is central to their rejection of "an indiscriminate openness," but they mention racist, sexist and fascist, material. In other words, the presence of Fanny Hill in a library is contingent on the presence on the same library of The Turner Diaries. For me, this is a price worth paying.

(Curiously, what they don't mention are the only two "practical" grounds I can see for limiting the scope of library collections: budgetary and legal restraints. But they are subjects for another day.)

Williams and Dillon conclude their chapter with the following statement: "even vocal defenders of intellectual freedom often happily accept the denial of such freedom to minors and find this contradiction unworthy of comment" (55). You might expect Williams and Dillon to elaborate on this question, in a book on "School Libraries in Australia," in a section titled "Children's rights," following such a criticism, but you'd be disappointed. They don't.