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Observer WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2012
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TWISTED
CHRISSIE RATINGS SUCCESS Page 66
LAWYER STRUCK OFF Page 9
Melbourne
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■ Winners And Losers star Melissa Bergland is to host the third season of Twisted Broadway to be staged at BMW Edge, Federation Square, from July 23. Melissa will be joined by co-host Rhonda Burchmore. The Melbourne cast includes Tim Campbell, Jaz Flowers, Sam Ludeman, Julie Goodwyn, Samantha Hagan, David Rogers Smith, Amy Lepamer, Matthew Robinson and Kellie Rode. Photo: Jeff Busby
‘TRAINWORLD’ RAILWAY HISTORY FEATURE - P47
Page 2 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 3
Victorian News
Melbourne
VICTORIAN SHOWBIZ LEGEND Observer news TO BE REMEMBERED fromSomethisgood newspaper FROM THE EDITOR
STATE LIBRARY AWARDS NEW FELLOWSHIPS
It’s All About You!
Melbourne
Observer In This 80-Page Edition
Mark Richardson: From The Heart ......... Page 4 Melbourne People: Been And Seen ........ Page 6 News: Lawyer ‘not fit and proper’ ........... Page 9 Di Rolle: I confess, I am a hoarder ....... Page 10 Melb. Confidential: Local gossip .......... Page 11 Long Shots: The Editor’s column .......... Page 12 Yvonne Lawrence: Life and Style .......... Page 15 Melb. Extra: Peter Falk profile ............ Page 18 TV Times: 7-Day program guide ........... Page 27 Victoria Pictorial: Nostalgic photos ...... Page 48 Radio Confidential: Ratings analysis ...... Page 66 Jim Sherlock Aaron Rourke Cheryl Threadgold Julie Houghton
Observer Showbiz
Latest News Flashes Around Victoria
Drug grower fined ■ Colac father-of-two Aaron Troy Mahoney, 34, has been fined $20,000 for cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis.
Facebook bully hits ■ A 17 year old Wangaratta girl became the victim of a traumatic cyber-bullying attack when someone hacked into her Facebook account and told her friends she was pregnant.
$50,000 fine for firm ■ Laharum Bulk Handling has received a $50,000 fine at Horsham Court after a worker's leg became entangled in an unguarded sweep auger
All bets off at Moe ■ Racing has ground to a halt at Moe Racing Club, with the decision made to cancel meetings in 2012-2013.
■ Fitzroy-born musician Jack O’Hagan, composer of Our Don Bradman and Along The Road To Gundagai, is to be remembered in a biography being penned by Melbourne author Jo Gilbert. The State Library of Victoria is providing a $12,500 fellowship for Ms Gilbert to document the life of O’Hagan, who worked in early Melbourne radio and theatre. State Librarian Sue Roberts said the name Jack O’Hagan risked being forgotten. “This biography will document his life and great legacy to Australian social culture and musical heritage from 19201968.” Ms Roberts announced a number of creative fellowships to researchers, writers, artists and scholars. Eight funded and two honorary Creative Fellowships were awarded from a strong and diverse field of more than 150 applicants. Fellows can undertake extended periods of concentrated work with the State Library collections, and provided with offices within the Library to work on their projects. Other awardees are: ■ Dr David Pear, Redmond Barry Fellowship. ■ Dr Stefan Schutt, Berry Family Fellowship. ■ Christine Johnson. Indigene: Australian Wildflowers, limited edition of fine art prints. ■ Angela Cavaleri. Canzone: Music As storytelling, series of large scale linocut prints. ■ Toby Horrocks, Through The Lens Of Peter Wille, biography. ■ Robert Clinch, The Rejected Manuscript, egg tempera painting. ■ Nicholas Jones, A Conspiracy Of Cartographers, series of book sculptures. ■ Kirsty Madden, Aluta Konyinua, political and oral history of free elections and resistance in Timor Leste and support for the East Timorese struggle in Melbourne. ■ Dr Ruth Pullen, Lost Treasure, a redefinition of the State Library’s collection of Eugene von Guérard’s drawings. Honorary fellowships have been awarded to: ■ Dr Lynette Russell, Ethnography And Victorian Culture, book manuscript. ■ Anne Marsden, The 1839 Melbourne Mechanics Institution, scholarly article.
Mike McColl Jones
Top 5 THE TOP 5 COMMENTS HEARD IN THE ROYAL BOX DURING THE RACES AT ASCOT. 5. "Philip, I couldn't look at another cucumber sandwich. Be a love and get me a burger with the lot!" 4. "Camilla, would you like some like some nice fresh oats?" 3. "Ma'am, that's why they call me a "Lady-in-Waiting" - I'm still waiting for the fiver you clipped me for on Thursday." 2. "Charles, would you please turn around a bit. I can't see the straight for your left ear." 1. "No Philip, she's a STRAPPER, not a Stripper!".
■ A business mentor offers this advice: “When the others are running, you walk. When the others are walking, you run.” News comes this past week that one of our Melbourne contemporaries, The Age, is to close its printing plant at Tullamarine, and axe 20 per cent of its editorial staff, as part of Fairfax Media’s move to sack 1900 employees. The Age is deliberately stopping distribution to many Victorian country newsagents. Fairfax will not guarantee that The Age will even continue as a print newspaper. Its Editor Paul Ramadge resigned on Monday.News Limited, publishers of the Herald Sun, is also cutting back on staff.
● Jack O’Hagan
● Sue Roberts
Cover price cut to $1.95 from next week Times are tough - especially for some newspapers. Times are tough for Victorian businesses generally. Economic times are tough - especially for self-funded retirees and pensioners. At the Melbourne Observer, we are taking the advice of the business mentor. It’s time to sprint. Over the past 10 years since we re-launched in 2002 as a 20-page weekly, the Observer has grown extraordinarily. We firmly intend to continue that growth. From next week’s edition, we are cutting our cover price to $1.95 to make it even more affordable. We are adding more features including the free 7-day TV Times program guide. For advertisers, we are reducing prices. There are opportunities out there. We are adding staff, not cutting back! We reckon this is the best way to serve our loyal readers and advertisers. We are keen to be of service to you. - Ash Long, Editor
Special Observer Reader Offer
Diana Trask - Oh Boy CD A newly released CD by one of Australia's popular singers $20 including post Diana was one of the first popular Australian singers to be successful in the USA but soon after many others followed: Helen Reddy, Olivia Newton-John and in recent times Keith Urban. Diana's success began on the Sing Along with Mitch TV Show from New York. Coming back to Australia she had a national hit TV show The Di Trask Show. A little later Diana moved to Nashville and a string of hit songs and albums in the country music field followed. Simply send the form below. All orders will be dispatched within two working days of cheque/ money order clearance. Please PRINT CLEARLY your name/address/phone number, and mail with cheque or money order to Trask Enterprises.
The songs on the Diana Trask Oh Boy CD include 1. Oh Boy 2. One Day At A Time 3. I Believe in You 4. Country Bumpkin 5. Blanket On The Ground 6. With Pen in Hand 7. We Agree That We Must Be In Love Duet with Dave Owens 8. Never Gonna' Be Alright 9. Country Girl is Comin Home 10. Time - Duet with Dave Owens To: Trask Enterprises PO Box 200, Canterbury, Vic 3126 Yes! Please send me the CD Diana Trask Oh Boy. I enclose my Cheque/Money Order for $20.00 Name: ....................................................................................................... Address: .................................................................................................... ......................................................... Phone: ............................................ $20 including Postage or Diana Trask Oh Boy can be purchased from www.dianatrask.com
Page 4 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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Mark Richardson ♥ Straight from the heart
E-Mail: mark@localmedia.com.au
MELBOURNE’S STREETS OF SERENADE ■ If I applied my Porch Thoughts Interview to Ronan Keating's lyrics, "You say it best, when you say nothing at all," I would end my column here. Full stop…see you next week! However, with Bryan Adams coming up after the radio commercials returning with "Everything I do," well, I am continuing because you guessed it, "I do it for you." Songs and lyrics continue to hold significant meaning for many of us. Songs (particularly love songs) have a way of reminding us of people, relationships, perhaps even transporting us back to our first kiss or to that 'special' chosen song played during the first dance as married couple. Enter Lionel Richie with "My endless love." In a Melbourne café, I overheard a conversation that a busker was part of what was described as, "The most romantic proposal I have ever seen. The busker was brilliant. The whole moment was magical." Being a romantic at heart, I decided to hunt the busker down for an interview. I was initially 'Chasing Cars' (thanks Snow Patrol) but hearing Kate Bush in my head singing, "Don't give up" I eventually discovered "a love struck" street performer, Chris Moore, who lent his musical talents to the marriage proposal outside the Crown Casino who sang "the streets a serenade." How did the marriage proposal come to be?
A couple of guys approached me outside the Crown Casino and requested I play a song for their mate who was planning to propose to his girlfriend. The couples' close friends formed two lines in front of me and as I played softly, the guy walked his girlfriend up between their friends where he kneeled and proposed. She was delighted and said, "YES!" They kissed. Everyone cheered. It was a beautiful moment in Melbourne. No doubt you know hundreds of love songs, what song did you perform? Have I Told You Lately, written by Weisman and Scott and performed by Van Morrison and Rod Stewart. Does the song hold significance to you? Yes. I've played it at many weddings, and I played it to my Mum while she was in a coma in Intensive Care last summer - in the same soft manner as I played it for the proposal. It made the nurses cry and helped her recover. She is happier than ever now. How did you feel being involved in the marriage proposal? It was absolutely one of the most beautiful moments in my life. Tears came to my eyes as it happened. I couldn't thank everyone enough for including me in such a romantic
BUSKING PORCH THOUGHTS
Porch Thought on 'couples' or 'relationship' songs? They usually define who people are as individuals and together as a couple. They are about expressing emotion through a lyrical story and describe how we feel about each other, particularly at the time of meeting and falling in love.
They are special and significant and never grow old. In years to come, no matter where it's heard, the song, "Have I told you lately," will forever have a special meaning for the couple, their friends, everyone who watched on and me. Love songs simply bond us. - Mark Richardson
What is your relationship song? ● Chris Moore event. Melbourne is alive with romance. I detect a New Zealand accent, when did you come to Melbourne? I moved here in April on the advice of Australian companies (who I performed for in NZ) suggesting I have a unique and entertaining corporate show that Australians would love. I love Melbourne and performed here years ago as a member of a New Zealand band. What is your corporate show about? It's called Come Together. It's an interactive musical that creates a lot of laughs with sing-a-long's where the audience become instant musicians as we unravel the musical journey from the Blues to Woodstock. Snippets of the songs tell the story and everyone learns the dance crazes. The show is popular in corporate environments creating team cohesiveness, it's like that 60s game show full of timeless classics. Check out my website chrismoore.co.nz for videos and reviews. What made you take up street performing? I went to the Christchurch Buskers festival in January and saw the skill set of the best street performers and their shows were similar to my corporate show. I wanted to develop my street performing skills. It's also an ideal opportunity to practise new songs. What do you think the value of street performing is to Melbourne? My particular style is interactive and it's great to get people playing along on tambourines, shakers, and blow up guitars. It creates happiness on the streets, especially for kids who are shy and instantly become uninhibited by dancing and singing. It's a great joy for me to be on the streets of Melbourne interacting with couples and their children I can't leave without asking your
● Richard and Lynne Franke. Sway - Michael Buble
● Chris and Michelle Bain You Say It Best Ronan Keating
● Mia De Rose and Ig Ridis Two Hearts Phil Collins
● Nigel and Brooke Leslie The Last Hurrah - Mighty, Mighty Bosstones
● Brad and Joyce Matheson. What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
● Norma and Max Reynolds - Love Is A Many Splendoured thing - Frank Sinatra
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Page 6 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Lola Welsh baptised
● Fr Gerard Dowling
Christine’s big night
● Christine Unsworth ■ A night to thank Christine Unsworth for 16 years leading the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal was held at the Medallion Club Lounge at Etihad Stadium on Friday. John Deeks was MC, and speakers included Peter Blunden, Gordon Bennett and David Mann. Also seen were Graeme Hill, Don Kinsey, Lillian and Richard Frank, Philip Brady and Gill Andrew.
■ Fr Gerard Dowling officiated at the baptism of Lola Welsh, daughter of Lauren and Matt Welsh, and granddaughter of Bert and Patti Newton, at Our Lady of Victories Basilica at Camberwell. Guests included John Farrar and Pat Carroll, now of Malibu, John and Sue McIntosh, Bruce and Jill Mansfield, John and Sarah Mansfield, John and Laurel McTernan.
People Melbourne
Send news to editor@melbourneobserver.com.au
Fax: 1-800 231 312
Importance of Being Earnest
● Aimee Sanderson (Gwendolen), Francis Hutson (Lady Bracknell) and Taryn Eva (Cecily) in Heidelberg Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Local Theatre coverage is on Page 72. Photo: Patricia Tyler
Birthday at Melba
■ Elisabeth Long of Rowville was at Melba Restaurant this week for an early celebration of her father Adam’s 40 th birthday today (Wed.). They are pictured with Linda Long and Joash Long.
Ben Vereen performs at The Ath
● Broadway star Ben Vereen performed at The Athenaeum Theatre on Saturday. Seen at the big night were Philip Brady and Gill Andrew, Kevin and Cate Trask, Pam Barnes, Chris Ryan, and Di Rolle.
● Observer Editor Ash Long was at Nine in the 70s ■ A Nine Network reunion will be held at the Aero Bar and Restaurant, Moorabbin Airport, on Friday, August 10, from 6pm until 1am. It is being organised by Braden Chatfield.
Art world fanciers at NGV
● The Napoleon: Revolution to Empire exhibition continues until October 7 at the National Gallery of Victoria. Pictured are art world fanciers Coral Knowles and Suzanne Carbone.
Miles of smiles
● Angela and Keith McGowan are touring through Queensland ■ It has been almost 12 months since Keith McGowan retired from the 3AW microphone ... and the year since has been full of travelling experiences. This week sees the McGowans heading for Magnetic Island near Townsville, having reached Mackay on Sunday night.They were impressed with cattle capital Rockhampton. Last week saw Angela celebrate her birthday at the hot springs at Moree. The pair have also visited Goondiwindi, home of Gunsynd, and Miles where this photo was taken.
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p +61 7 5492 666 free ph 1800 068 798 e info@norfolks.com.au www.norfolks.com.au 32 Queen of Colonies Parade, Moffat Beach, Caloundra, Qld
Page 8 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 9
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Observer
Breaking News
LAWYER GUILTY OF MISCONDUCT Briefs
Jekyll and Hyde
Listen to the Melbourne Observer on your radio WEDNESDAYS 12.45AM. Cheryl Threadgold, community theatre writer, reports on 3AW. www.3aw.com.au
PR job
1.15AM. Jim Sherlock discusses movies/ DVDs with Andrew McLaren. www.3aw.com.au
● Grant Hackett ■ The Nine Network used is flagship 60 Minutes program this week in a bid to rehabilitate the image of Olympic Games commentator Grant Hackett, who drunkedly trashed his Southbank apartment, but denied physically assaulting his wife CandiceAlley.
Redundant
● Sylvia Bradshaw ■ Former Melbourne executives have been made redundant by News Limited. Sylvia Bradshaw, former CEO of the Leader Newspapers chain, has been made redundant from her Gold Coast Bulletin job. Ex-Ediror Wayne Buttner has lost his job as Geelong Advertiser boss.
Green flip ■ Darebin Council is quitting the Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action, saving $50,000 dues.
■ Melbourne lawyer Robert Rushford is being refused a practising certificate before 2019, and will not be able to hold trust monies before 2022. The seven-year practising certificate ban was put into effect when Legal Services Commissioner Michael McGarvie’s decision was confirmed by Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Senior Member Jonathan Smithers. Rushford had been found guilty of five charges of misconduct under the Legal Practice Act, and 13 charges of professional misconduct under the Legal Profession Act. Rushford has also been ordered to pay $11,815.50 legal costs of the Legal Services Commissioner. VCAT was told that Rushford was admitted to legal practice in 1994, but has not held a practising certificate since 2005.
Serious problems VCAT was told that Rushford failed to account for trust monies since 1004, failed to provide information and files required by law and Tribunal orders, that there were trust account deficiencies, and breaches of trust accounting requirements. Rushford sold his legal practice - which included First Choice Conveyancing - in 2004 to Ronald Makin and Michael Kavangah. Shortly afterwards serious problems came to light. Rushford has previously faced VCAT Senior Member Howell, and Judge Iain Ross, about his conduct. In 2004, Rushford was found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct, reprimanded and fined $1200 by the Legal Profession Tribunal. In 2006, Rushford pleaded guilty to further charges of unsatisfactory conduct.
10AM. Editor Ash Long talks with Denis Scanlan on The Pulse 94.7 www.947thepulse.com 10PM. Rob Foenander presents Country Crossroads on Casey 97.7 FM www.3ser.org.au
THURSDAYS 9.15AM. Editor Ash Long talks with Bob and Judy Phillips on 3RPP. www.rppfm.com.au
● Leighton Irwin ■ Melbourne youth theatre company, ARC Theatre, presents its 2012 musical production Jekyll And Hyde, to be performed at the Banyule Theatre, Buckingham Drive, Heidelberg, on July 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 at 8.00pm and July 14 at 2.00pm. Jekyll and Hyde's classic concept of a good-intentioned scientist who creates a potion that brings out his evil and homicidal alter-ego has been the inspiration for countless stories, movies and TV shows since the tale was originally written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. In 1990 Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical hit the stage, its popularity making it one of the longest running shows on Broadway from 1997-2001. ● Turn To Page 63
FLIGHT CENTRE REFUNDS
■ Flight Centre Ltd has been ordered to pay refunds to six customers whose travel did not match with what actually occurred. Six passengers took action in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after their group holiday to Canada and Alaska last year did not go to plan. Denis Christopher Price, Irene Price, Nigel Brownscombe, Megan Helms, Ross Johnston and Joy Johnston booked the Rockies Explorer and Alaska cruise through the travel agency.
Melbourne Observations with Matt Bissett-Johnson
The group claimed a refund of $9999 representing return air fares and one day’s travel, because the Australian Pacific Touring (APT) journey did not include a full-day at
Skagway as advertised. The group said Ms Danielle Watson, then of Flight Centre, failed to inform them of this variation to the package. Ms K Window, Risk Manager for Flight Centre, argued that a NSW legal decision should mean that Flight Centre should not have to pay a refund. VCAT member Anna Dea said the omission of Skagway represented only one day of a 19-day tour. There were no complaints about the rest of the tour. She ordered a $250 refund to each customer.
Teacher struck off ■ Victorian teacher, Steven Thompson, 43, has been found by the Victorian Institute of Teaching to have been guilty of serious misconduct and not fit to teach. Disciplinary Proceedings Committee Chairman Anne Sarros says Thompson’s registration to teach has been cancelled. The VIT may find a teacher has engaged in serious misconduct, has been seriously incompetent and/or is not fit to teach and may cancel the registration of the teacher.
10PM. Kevin Trask presents The Time Tunnel with Walter Williams www.4bc.com.au
FRIDAYS AM. Ted Ryan talks racing with Denis Scanlan on The Pulse 94.7 www.947thepulse.com 2.30PM. Jim Sherlock talks movies/DVDs with Denis Walter on 3AW www.3aw.com.au
SUNDAYS 9AM. Mike McColl Jones talks the Top 5 with Bob Phillips on 3RPP. www.rppfm.com.au 12 NOON. Kevin Trask presents That’s Entertainment on 96.5FM. www.innerfm.org.au 8.20PM. Kevin Trask presents The Time Tunnel on Remember When. www.3aw.com.au
MONDAYS 2PM. Yvonne Lawrence presents Life And Style on 3WBC 94.1FM www.3wbc.org.au 8PM. Len Baker presents Harness Review on 97.9FM www.979fm.net 10PM. Kevin Trask presents Memories Are Made Of This on 4BC www.4bc.com.au
TUESDAYS 6AM. Rob Foenander presents The Big Breakfast on 88.3 Southern FM www.southernfm.com.au
ALSO BE LISTENING FOR Julie Houghton discusses the arts on 3MBS-FM, 3MBS Digital, Online www.3mbs.org.au Di Rolle discusses Melbourne entertainment on 3AW, overnights. www.3aw.com.au
AND WATCH FOR Country Crossroads TV show on Aurora Channel 183, Foxtel www.aurora.tv
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Page 10 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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To
80 years of the ABC
Di Movers and Shakers
■ For all that is said about Facebook, during an earthquake it is a godsend. Going straight to the computer during last week’s earthquake activity in Melbourne I felt so bonded with people on line. In what was a good half-hour of hilarity and the quickest of very creative ‘jokes’ online it was something that got us through what was a scary time and also the perilous thought that another one could strike at any moment. Facebook is a necessity in those times when we can connect with each other so quickly. I felt so looked after, communicating with Facebook friends online, and laughing at the brilliance of the comments and the almost delirious take on the whole activity. Sleeping on the couch that night I knew that Facebook wasn’t far away. I know of lots of people who slept on the couch that night – just in case we were moved another inch during the night!
Amy Winehouse ■ July 23 will mark one year since the death of superstar singer Amy Winehouse. Not a week doesn’t go by that I don’t play some Amy Winehouse in my house. Her legion of worldwide fans, including me, travelled with her as she hit the top of the charts with her album Back To Black and then sadly witnessed her fall from grace. Her death was mourned worldwide and Amy Winehouse – Love Me Tomorrow is a final tribute to an amazing artist on the one – year anniversary of her untimely passing. For all her fans of her soulful music, this full colour commemoration of Amy’s life is a must have momento of a truly unique talent. Next week I will give five readers of my column a chance to win a copy of this wonderful glossy bookazine. Published by Wilkinson Publishing you can find out more about the book by visiting www.wilkinsonpublishing.com.au
● Amy Winehouse
I love my job!
■ One of the things I really enjoy is sitting and reading “words” and listening to the ABC Radio. To mark the ABC’s 80th anniversary on July 1, ABC Classic FM is broadcasting a major new feature series that looks at the story of the ABC and classical music. Writer broadcaster Martin Buzacott has called his series Resurrection Symphonies. In the 80 years of the ABC’s history, not a day has passed without classical music on the air. It was there from day one – July 1, 1932, when a concert was broadcast live from the NSW Conservatorium of Music. In the decades that followed, the ABC spread enjoyment and knowledge of classical music to listeners around Australia. ● Turn To Page 15
For I CONFESS, I AM A HOARDER
■ After last week’s Victorian earthquake, I was moved in a much more profound way on hearing of the demise of the newspaper - something I cannot bear to even think about. Being a publicist, we love our print media and to see an article in print promoting a show and telling a story is gold to PR people! Besides I happen to be a newspaper hoarder, a little something I don’t tell too many people. I put it down to my job. However watching episodes of Hoarders on television I believe it stems back to something much darker and deeper. I wrote a year or so ago about the famous Collyer Brothers in New York. Thomas Lusk Collyer and Langley Wakeman Collyer, known as the Collyer Brothers, two American brothers became famous because of their bizarre nature and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighbourhood rumours swirled around the rarely seen men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street) in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items including piles of newspapers with booby traps set up in corridors and doorway s to protect against intruders. Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they lived, surrounded by over 140 tons of collected items they had amassed over several decades.
with leading Melbourne publicist DI ROLLE
● Hoarding newspapers I am nowhere near Hoarders with piles the Collyer Brothers of paper are not hoardsituation but it has in- ing paper in the way terested me why I that a bottle hoarder is keep newspapers and hoarding bottles. books, and I set out to They are hoarding find why. the words. This is difI was told - to my ferent. Friends and absolute amazement - family see a pile of old that it is not newspa- newspapers. They pers I am collecting it and researchers who is words. And that spoke to me describe made perfect sense to old newspapers as me. ‘paper’ What I also found I being the word out was that in the lists hoarder, sees a pile of of what hoarders com- words. It was so clear monly keep paper is to me when it was exone of the most fre- plained. quent. Is there the funniThese are paper est article ever written things, newspapers, in that newspaper, Is magazines, paper there information I packaging and books, need one day in that and what do they all newspaper. have in common? What about that Words. magazine it has a wonWords and text are derful article about the most common way Oprah’s library in her we have in remember- home, more words! ing things. The list of possibiliI write lists, I write ties are endless. In orand keep letters, and I der to be sure I have re-read books. I read to read every single three books at once. A word. word clot/clog is a stubThen having read born unpleasant lump it, say ‘ I need to save Most people do not this in case I need to enjoy dealing with read it again’. word materials. Filing and paperwork are regarded as boring. But, central for everyone is that those word things are part of ■ How can I place a being a responsible value on all those words. adult. One of the things Throwing them away, particularly that really disturbs me without reading them is that there will never completely, feels child- be enough time for me ish and irresponsible. to read all the books I want to read. So they pile up.
row. It actually is a fact that there is not enough time for me to read all the books and newspapers in the world. It would take many many years. I think of this constantly and was a blessing when I was told I was a word hoarder! So imagine my panic when I heard during the week that the newspaper may go. Being a word hoarder I need to let go of the words. Being a publicist, imagine how difficult that is going to be. The paper is just the supporting medium. One of the things I clutter are many books and articles on de-cluttering. I also write notes constantly, anyone who goes out for dinner with me is used to me taking notes on serviettes and tablecloths. Writing this, I think the sooner we stop newspapers the better – I am turning into a batty old lady!
Alan and Diana ■ I am so glad I didn’t miss Australian Story on Monday night. It was one of the best episodes of the series I have seen. I am an avid Australian Story watcher, and am always touched by the stories
● Mairi Nicholson of ABC Classic FM
Victorian of the Year ■ Here is a reminder that the Victorian of the Year for 2012 will be announced on Saturday (June 30) this year. I will be interested to see who the winner is this year. they choose. Their stories are beautifully produced and crafted with such care and respect to their subjects, Monday night was exceptional, the conclusion of the story will be on Monday (July 2) at 8pm on ABC1. It is the story of Diana Bliss. I knew Diana Bliss not well, but once met never forgotten, beautiful Diana Bliss. Her Hour Upon the Stage. Australia Story, is must viewing. It is now four months since the sudden death of Diana Bliss created headlines around the world. It was a tragic and unexpected end for a woman who appeared to ‘have it all’ crowned by an effervescent and positive personality and a smile that lit up a room. I always admired her. She was married to her long time love, the controversial businessman Alan Bond. She lived through the highs of the America's Cup victory and the disgrace of his imprisonment for fraud. Living and working between
Valued words
● Alan Bond and Diana Bliss
London, New York, Australia as an acclaimed theatre producer, Diana Bliss won London’s Olivier Award and six Tony nominations for her most successful production, Australian Story’s first exclusive with Diana Bliss aired in February 1997 when Alan Bond was jailed for the greatest corporate fraud in Australian history. Now the program looks at her 30-year relationship with Bond featuring exclusive new interviews with family, friends and those closest to her, who speak about her descent into depression and the shock of her death in January. The edition features never-beforeseen footage, interviews with Diana Bliss and photographs from private family albums. Part one included footage from the recent invite-only Tribute to Diana Bliss at the Royal Court Theatre in London. It was a long way from the quiet country parsonage where she grew up. Her long time friend Johanna Johns says Diana was “just a simple Australian girl and she led a very very complicated life”. In the two-part special, her family and friends tell her story and reveal the extent of the private torment behind the glittering existence. I counted my blessings when I watched it.
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012- Page 11
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Confidential Melbourne
Talk is cheap, gossip is priceless
PAY DAY LENDER BANNED BY ASIC
Bitch Melbourne’s Secrets
Matthew remembered
● Matthew Newton ■ A brief mention aboutson Matthew Newton was made by Bert Newton at Saturday’s after-Baptism celebrations for granddaughter Lola Welsh at Georges, Camberwell. The 73-year-old TV host’s speech make a single reference to Matthew, “in absentia”. A party attendee said guests avoided mention of the ‘elephant-in-the-room’, who is facing battery charges in America. Matthew Newton is due to front Court on July 25, although there may be some proceedings this week.
Jetting to America
● Alan Fletcher and Jennifer Hansen ■ It is still amazing what a simple ‘thank you’ message can achieve. Neighbours star Alan Kennedy, who plays Dr Karl Kennedy, posted a ‘thanks’ message directed at Virgin Australian staff at the weekend. “Thank you VirginAustralia for looking after the Fletcher family so well!” The Fletchers are spending three weeks in the United States.
■ The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has banned Victor Manatakis, of Doncaster, from engaging in credit activities for five years after an ASIC investigation found his payday lending business was an unlicensed credit provider. Manatakis was the former director of Billpal Pty Ltd, which was the operator of payday lending business, Cashpal. ASIC found that between August and October 2011, Mr Manatakis’ Billpal engaged in credit activities relating to credit contracts without an Australian credit licence. Under national consumer credit laws, individuals or businesses who engage in consumer credit activities are required to hold a credit licence, or be an authorised representative of a credit licence holder. ASIC found that on each occasion Billpal entered into a Cashpal credit contract it was in breach of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. This Act is designed to protect consumers and ensure ethical and professional standards in the finance industry. ASIC Commissioner Peter Kell said that, ‘engaging or utilising the services of unlicensed credit operators puts the public at risk.’ “People in the consumer credit industry need to be aware of the licensing requirements and the implications they will face if they fail to meet these requirements,” Mr Kell said. Manatakis has the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision. ■ Hume City Councillors are denying claims of ‘rorting’, after two of them attended a manager’s conference in Perth.
Rumour Mill
Whispers
Mayne game
Hear It Here First
Oh what a feeling!
■ More than 370 consumers have been refunded a total of $635,860 after they were overcharged premiums on their consumer credit insurance when purchasing a car from several Toyota motor vehicle dealerships in Australia.
Cheaper to defame? ■ Victorian AttorneyGeneral Robert Clark has given official notice that the maximum damages amount that may be awarded for non-economic loss in defamation proceedings is $339,000. Mr Clark advertised in last Thursday’s Victoria Government Gazette with details of the maximum payouits under theDefamation Act 2005, effective from July 1. It is understood that libel proceedings in the Magistrates’ Court have a $40,000 limit.
● Robert Clark
● Stephen Mayne ■ Manningham Councillor Stephen Mayne is standing as an independent candidate for the by-election of the Melbourne seat caused by the resignation of Bronwyn Pike. His preferences to the Greens may decide the outcome. ■ Mayne is also likely to stand for the Melbourne City Council. Meanwhile, he has criticised fellow Manningham Councillor Jessica Villarreal. He says residents are entitled to engaged local councillors.
$25,000
$292,000 BACK-PAY FOR WORKERS IN MELB. NORTH, NORTH-WEST
■ Dozens of workers in Melbourne's north and north-western suburbs have been back-paid a total of $292,900 following intervention by the Fair Work Ombudsman. The largest recovery was $114,200 for an education professional at Thornbury. The male employee in his 50s lodged a complaint with Fair Work Ombudsman after he was underpaid termination entitlements. After a Fair Work inspector contacted the business and explained its obligations, the employee was promptly reimbursed all money owed without the need for further action against the employer. Other recent recoveries include: ■ $47,100 for 35 Brunswick factory workers underpaid the minimum hourly rate, ■ $36,900 for a Tullamarine maintenance worker underpaid the minimum hourly rate, ■ $22,700 for 15 retail workers at Watsonia underpaid the minimum hourly rate, penalty rates and allowances, ■ $21,200 for 94 construction industry workers at Deer Park under-
paid travel allowances, ■ $8000 for a Preston retail worker not paid wages and underpaid annual leave and superannuation entitlements, ■ $6800 for a Kealba hospitality worker not paid for all hours worked and underpaid penalty rates, ■ $6700 for a Tullamarine clerk underpaid the minimum hourly rate, penalty rates, and annual leave and personal leave entitlements, ■ $6500 for a Deer Park apprentice underpaid the minimum hourly rate, penalty rates and annual leave entitlements, ■ $6100 for a Bundoora mechanic underpaid annual leave entitlements on termination, ■ $5800 for a Fitzroy North professional underpaid the minimum hourly rate, penalty rates and wages in lieu of notice, ■ $5800 for a Tullamarine storeman underpaid the minimum hourly rate and long service leave entitlements, and ■ $5100 for an Airport West professional underpaid wages in lieu of notice.
Short & Sharp ■ More than 2000 Moonee Valley residents are facing $244 penalties for failing to renew their pet registrations. ■ Ongoing 24-hour patrols of the Eastern and Monash Freeways have seen almost 1000 drivers nabbed for offences. ■ Grant Timothy Moore, 25, of Brighton East, has been jailed for 17 months, after stabbing an Indian student, Baljinder Singh, at Carnegie. Moore admitting drinking more than 20 beers before the attack. ■ Samatha Trajanoski, 28, of Clayton, has blamed a drug addiction for her $20,000 crime spree on local business. Trajanoksi has been jailed. ■ Parvovirus is on the rise in the Melbourne south-eastern municipality of Casey.
E-Mail: Editor@MelbourneObserver.com.au
● Tony Briffa ■ Hobsons Bay Council has paid out $25,000 in lawyers’ bills for a legal stoush involving Mayor Cr Tony Briffa and e-mails that he sent.
Dropped
● Belinda Clarkson ■ Heidelberg Magistrate Michael Smith has dismissed conflict of interest charges against Nillumbik’s CrBelindaClarkson.
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Page 12 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 Melbourne
Observer
Ash on Wednesday
‘READ ALL ABOUT IT!’
Pharma ... and the Saxton Speakers Bureau promotes that you can even hire him to talk about successful business growth. It is Mr Corbett that has led the Fairfax Board defence to block investor Gina Rinehart, who now holds 18 per cent equity in the media group, from gaining directorships.
Long Shots
Going for Gold
Our Doors are Open!
Basketball champ Larry Sengstock speaks at Freemasons Victoria CBD Luncheon
● Freemasons Victoria CBD Luncheon guest speaker, Larry Sengstock with Grand Master, Bob Jones. For Larry Sengstock, former CEO of Basketball Australia and NBL basketball champ in his own right, the upcoming Olympic games in London (30 days away) won't just be a good excuse to stay in on a cold night, but it will be the "Greatest Show on Earth … for me anyway," says Larry, who recently spoke at Freemasons Victoria's CBD Luncheon. Larry spoke with humour and intelligence and offered interesting insights into his four-time Olympic experience: Moscow in 1980, Los Angeles in 1984, Seoul in 1988, and his last, in Barcelona in 1992. Each experience was as different as the countries they were held in. The first games Larry attended was in Moscow in 1980. It was a time where the country known as the Soviet Union sat firmly behind the Iron Curtin and denim jeans were bought on the Black Market, deemed prized possessions. The second games held in Los Angeles couldn't be more different. "There was a party going on in LA and the Olympics just happened to be on," remembers Larry. "This was the start of the Olympics as we know it today, but due to the continued boycotting, some countries didn't attend so it wasn't a full Olympic Games." In 1988, the Games were held in Asia for the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Games and Larry remembers it as the "greatest Olympic Games". "The team came fourth - we finally cracked it. We had been on the brink and we finally did it when we beat Spain," says Larry. "It was also the start of the 'Dream Team'. The US got so angry that they didn't win so at the next Olympics they sent their Dream Team. It was also the first Olympic Games were all countries were represented." Larry's last games were in 1992 in Barcelona. Larry recalls these Games as the most commercial he had ever attended; big companies were coming in as sponsors. "The Games started to take on the glitz and glamour that's associated with today's Olympic Games - more commercial but still a fantastic event. "Next is London. As an athlete, you really wonder where the last four years disappear to," says Larry. "I still remember the 1980 Opening Ceremony, my first Games. We made sure that we marched regardless of whether we played or not, because it was such a fantastic experience. Today, Larry says that the Olympics Games is big business but should it get bigger? As a former athlete and administrator, this is his concern. "The Olympics have to be about the athletes no matter how big it gets. The focus should be on athletes and if this continues at least we have some control over how big it can get," says Larry. We'll find out in 30 days. The next Freemasons Victoria CBD Luncheon will be held September 11 at Morgans at 401 Collins St, Melbourne. The guest speaker will be Paul Little of Little Properties. Stay tuned for more details soon.
To find out more about Freemasonry, how to become a member, or attend upcoming public events, please visit www.freemasonsvic.net.au or 'Like' our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ freemasonsvic for the most up to date information.
● Greg Hywood ■ Greg Hywood, the $30,000-a-week boss at Fairfax Media, did Melbourne a great disservice this past week when he announced the ongoing demise of The Age newspaper. Hywood announced the closure of The Age printing plant, a cut to the newspaper’s editorial army by 20 per cent, and the loss of 1900 jobs. Hywood talked about turning The Age into a ‘compact’ (tabloid) newspaper, 10-20 years too late. Papers launched with the Australian Stock Exchange flag that the print edition of Melbourne’s broadsheet could easily close ... and soon. Nowhere in the documents, detailing the disruption to the lives of 1900 employee families, does Hywood talk of taking a single cent less in his $1.6 million base salary. He is reportedly in line to score a 150 per cent bonus if the jobs cuts work.
editor@ melbourneobserver.com.au
with Ash Long, Editor “For the cause that lacks assistance, ‘Gainst the wrongs that need resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do”
the insolvent business for £2000, two years later, inviting his reluctant brother David Syme to take a halfshare. David Syme took over on Ebenezer’s death, and commenced a 50-year career.
Chairman
Challenge
158 years
● Ebenezer Syme ■ Ordinarily, it would be a matter of corporate shame if you were the first executive to lose nerve and surrender a newspaper heritage datingback to 1854. These days,.instead, it is more likely that the move will be rewarded with a hefty bonus. The Cooke brothers John and Henry launched The Age on October 17, 1854. Ebenezer Syme bought
Courage
● David Syme ■ Every era has its commercial challenges. David Syme confronted light circulation by halving the cover price from 6d (5 cents) to 3d (3 cents). Historian C E Sayers notes: "This essay in newspaper publicity marked him as an entrepreneur of courage and yielded immediate results.” When faced with an advertising ‘black ban’ in the 1860s, he further reduced the cover price to 2d, then 1d, increasing its circulation to 15,000. The greater circulation brought back profitable advertising and for the first time The Age began to prosper.
● Roger Corbett decline. It was met with hostility, with a Board member slamming a broadsheet on the table, saying Australian consumers would always use it to buy homes and cars. Conversion to a tabloid format has been long ignored. Instead of creating blueprints to making better newspapers, the focus has been on cutting staff, and sending vital local work interstate and overseas. Instead of using David Syme’s statregy of creating a more appealing product, the 21st Century ‘answer’ has been to gut the enterprise.
● Graham Perkin ■ Over its 158-year history, The Age has faced economic depressions (1890s and 1930s), world wars, natural disasters and more. In our lifetime, it was led by our great newspaper people, such as the legendary Editor, Graham Perkin. Yet over the past decade, The Age has fallen away in its size and influence. Fairfax Media has been led by people such as management consultant Fred Hilmer, and grocer Roger Corbett. Since the early 2000s, the share price has beome just one-tenth of it was. From more than $6 to less than 60 cents.
■ Fairfax Chairman Roger Corbett, a grocer, who has not worked previously in newspapers, was paid $412,000 for his efforts last year. Good work if you can get it. He supplements this by holding directorships of the Reserve Bank, WalMart, Prime Ag, Mayne
The future?
● Gina Rinehart ■ It seems incongruous that the Fairfax board, as it sinks, is rejecting the participation of the world’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart. Most Age/Fairfax proprietors - from David Syme and John Fairfax onwards - have had their own political agenda to push. They have been able to combine clearly signposted comment alongside responsible and factual news reporting. Nothing could be as bad as the disastrous Fairfax management of the past 10 years.
Ourselves ■ Observer harness racing columnist Len Baker’s page does not appear this week. Len is taking a break in the Northern Territory. ■ Bon voyage to arts writer Julie Houghton who flew out on Monday for a holiday in the United Kingdom. ■ Best wishes to theatre correspondent Cheryl Threadgold on her travels to America. ■ The Observer Readers Club page has moved this week to Page 34.
Observer Treasury
Leadership? Thought For The Week
■ In recent years, Fairfax Media leadership has had touches of absurdity. Newspaperman Eric Beecher tells how he was invited to prepare a 33page document on how Fairfax could arrest its
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT COURT REPORTS Contents of Court Lists are intended for information purposes only. The lists are extracted from Court Lists, as supplied to the public, by the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria, often one week prior to publication date; for current Court lists, please contact the Court. Further details of cases are available at www.magistratescourt.vic.gov.au The Melbourne Observer shall in no event accept any liability for loss or damage suffered by any person or body due to information provided. The information is provided on the basis that persons accessing it undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of its content. No inference of a party’s guilt or innocence should be made by publication of their name as a defendant. Court schedules may be changed at any time for any reason, including withdrawal of the action by the Plaintiff/Applicant. E&OE.
■ “The wheel was man’s greatest invention until he got behind it.”
Observer Curmudgeon
■ “When men catch up, they have a bit of fun by insulting each other but they don’t really mean it. When women catch up, they compliment each other. But they don’t really mean it either.”
Text For The Week
■ “"Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you." - Deuteronomy 31:6
Free reader ads are available in the Melbourne Trader section of the ‘Melbourne Observer’
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 13
Buying Guide
Page 14 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 15
Melbourne
Observer Life & Style
News Briefs
SCARED THE LIFE OUT OF ME
Trouble
■ Did the earth move for you last week? It did for us and it scared the life out of me. Peter and I decided to have an early night and watch an episode of The Bill that I had recorded during the week. There we were sitting up in bed with Moosh the cat already asleep for the night in his favourite spot on the doona. It was suppertime, so just as I pressed the remote to ‘play’, every thing happened at once, and like Charlie Brown’s friend Lucy, I thought the sky was falling. We heard rumbling, and then the house started to shake and shake and shake. At the same time the phone was ringing, the cat was scared stiff and I spilt a cup of coffee all over the doona. Moosh alerted me that something was happening because he woke up suddenly, sat up with his ears lying flat on his head and his whiskers bristling. He heard it seconds before we did. It was terrifying.
Yvonne’s Column
■ Making a grab for Moosh to comfort him, I upset the coffee all over the bed and it immediately started to soak into the doona before I could leap into action and get it off the bed. And then it started; the awful shaking that became worse by the second. I wondered if we should make a run for it and get under the dining table. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I thought I’d read that the safest place to be when an earthquake starts is under a table. Fortunately it only lasted about 30 seconds, but it seems a very long time when you don’t really know what is happening. The last time I felt an earth tremor like that was when I was doing an air shift at 3AW in Latrobe Street and there was digging under the building for the City underground rail link.
Comforting call from Philip ■ In those days presenters were alone in the studio and you were in the building at night without another living soul to keep you company. There was no introduction to the tremor. The vinyl record jumped off the turntable and then the noise and shaking began. Thinking it was the work under the station I opened the microphone and apologised to listeners for the record being cut short and the noise, but I also said that I felt insecure. Philip Brady was the first to phone me and tell me what had really happened. He said he would stay on the line and keep me company if I felt scared. Obviously, Philip had experienced tremors before. I often think of Philip and remember his kindness to me that night, a lone female broadcaster trying to keep listeners interested. Does Philip remember that night? I wonder. Melbourne
■ Still, when one considers the alternative, how can we grumble about a bit of icy cold weather? Once I would have welcomed the Queen’s Birthday Weekend because it was the opening of the ski season. What a time we had. But that was a few years ago and the bones aren’t up to swishing down the slopes any more, in fact, they are not up to much of anything anymore. We are still having problems with Telstra, and I’m sure a lot of the problems started with my complaint to the overseas call centre. He was prepared to blame everything on the floods in Australia, even though we were living in an area not prone to flooding. Would you believe that when the Telstra technician came after my threats to the fellow at the call centre, ready to get the phone working even if it took him a week of solid work?
Telstra’s blame game
Awful shaking
Observer
More Telstra problems
with Yvonne Lawrence yvonne.lawrence@bigpond.com
Feeling of vulnerability ■ Of course, all thought of any topic, other than the earth tremor was impossible for the rest of the night. It’s amazing what goes through your head when you think that your house is going to fall down around you. Those poor people in Christchurch. How vulnerable they must still feel. There are a few very small cracks in a couple of our walls, but I think they are due to the drought, and not the shaking of the earth. I suppose people who live in earthquake zones become used to it, and know what to do at the first sound of a rattle and shake. But would you ever get over it? Would things ever be the same again?
Such a fright ■ Whilst the house was rattling on its foundations, The Bill was forgotten, and any thought of returning to normal conversation was the last thing on our mind. There should be warnings in the newspapers and on television telling people what to do when the first tremor starts. We are inexperienced and so, it’s a frightening happening to us. I felt for those people who are living alone. How thankful was I – and that includes Moosh – that with all that was happening when the first rumble started, I had my husband to keep me grounded. The cold weather has really got into my bones. I usually welcome the winter, but I think it is colder this year than I have ever experienced at this time.
Di Rolle Column
■ It actually took him less than10 minutes to find that there was nothing wrong with our phone. I tried the interstate numbers that were not available to me and got through every time. Somehow, someone, somewhere had pressed the wrong button and had sent us into limbo. Our phone was missing ‘something’. I say ‘something’ because I couldn’t understand what had happened although the technician did try and explain. He was extremely annoyed and embarrassed because he realizsd that both of us had wasted valuable time needlessly. I was very upset because I had been unable to contact my sister or any of her family in Sydney and find out how she was after open-heart surgery. It was also worrying because I felt very isolated due to the inefficiency on the part of our provider.
Action in the kitchen ■ Meantime, Peter is having himself an enjoyable time in the kitchen trying out new winter recipes. Everything has a life, even my blender, which I inherited from mum. It decided to give up the ghost and a new one was required. Peter did his research, and finally settled on a state of the art blender by a true and tried Australian manufacturer – at a bargain price. He is cooking up a storm. I’m looking forward to the spring weather when I will enjoy a smoothie again. You know, I may never go into the kitchen ever again. Peter is turning into a regular Gabriel Gaté with his French cooking. I know they sometimes have coffee at the same coffee house and I wonder if Peter is getting pointers from him? Keep warm. - Yvonne Contact: Melbourne Observer P.O, Box 1278, Research 3095
● From Page 10
80 YEARS OF THE ABC ■ It also built the six major state orchestras we know today, and became central to our national music culture. . Resurrection Symphonies is set against the changing fortunes of our national life, from the troubles of the 1930s and the war years, through the decades of post-war prosperity and youth revolution, to the radical changes of our era of economic reform and globalism. ABC Classic FM presenter Mairi Nicholson says, “I was bowled over by the first program. “It brought tears to my eyes and made me laugh out loud too. I particularly loved the way the series tells this this terrific Australian story so vividly in music as well as words.” The series is studded with archi-
val gems, from the visiting celebrities of the pre-war era to landmark performances of major symphonic words.These include Sir Thomas Beecham conducting in Brisbane City Hall in 1940, the first performance of John Anthill’s Corrroboree in 1946, and Stravinsky conducting the Sydney Symphony in1961. It’s a story driven by some extraordinary personalities from the world of music and broadcasting, including the key figures of Sir Bernard Heinze and Sir Charles Moses. There are also interviews with some of the rising post-war generation of Australian composers - Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale and Nigel Butterley – as they first came to prominence.
“The history of ABC music –making has been a cycle of potential de struction followed by extraordinary renewal,” says Martin. “I wondered which piece of music most exemplified this cycle, and Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony fitted the bill. “It’s a work that has emerged time and again at critical moments in the history of the ABC music-making, at times of renewal and of excitement, and at times of hardship and even death.” Resurrection Symphonies is broadcast on ABC Classic FM at 12.05pm on Saturday (June 30), and on Sunday (July 1). Audio of the series will be availableon the ABC Classic website.
● Frank Penhalluriack ■ ‘Rebel trader’, Caulfield hardware retailer Frank Penhalluriack, is in strife for displaying “too many” community noticeboards outside his store. Glen Eira Council has imposed two $611 fines. Mr Penhalluriack is a Councillor for Glen Eira.
Drive ban
● Cr Ann Potter ■ Hume City’s Cr Ann Potter has lost her driver’s licence for six months after blowing .058 She plans to appeal the suspension.
Drug deals ■ Former Cranbourne boxer Daniel ‘Porky’ Lovett has been sent to jail for six months, after being convicted of drug trafficking. He was found with amphetamines after being caught for speeding.
Inaugural concerts in Melbourne ■ Forte piano expert, Dr Julie Haskell, concert pianist, examiner and teacher, is presenting an inaugural recital series of the Melbourne FortePiano Ensemble. Joining her are musicians from Ludovico's Band; all world-leading performers on period instruments who are in Melbourne to perform in the Victorian Opera production of Mozart's The Marriage Of Figaro' at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne in July-August. Julie is determined to set Melbourne on the map as an Australian centre for period chamber music. "In Europe, performances on period instruments form an integral part of the musical concert life, but although there is a vibrant early music scene in Melbourne, up to now, there has been a lack of period performance on classical instruments," Dr Haskell said. combine with the classical oboes, natural horns and gut strings to provide a performance that is unexpectedly sensitive and expressive yet dynamic and exciting. The MFPE will be in residence at VCASS in July, and is presenting two concerts: ■ The Melbourne FortePiano Ensemble @ VCASS. 57 Miles St, Southbank. Wednesday, July 25, 6pm ■ Melbourne FortePiano Ensemble @ Parkville. Wyselaskie Auditorium, Centre for Theology and Ministry, 29 College Cres, Parkville. Tuesday, July 31, 6pm. - Julie Houghton
Page 16 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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Buying Guide
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 17
Craft
Angel Starshine Silk Scarf, available as kit only, price is $38.45 (this includes p&h with Aust), alternative colour choices available on Website.
Hearts and Flowers Patchwork Baby Blanket, available as kit only, priced at $68.50 (includes P & H within Aust). Please check website, www.woolshed.com.au, for other blanket kits and products, or ring Woolshed @ Manuka: 02 6295 0061
Page 18 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012
■ One of my absolute favourite television characters is Lieutenant Columbo. I have been watching Columbo since the 1970s and I have seen the episodes many times. I still enjoy watching Peter Falk play this complex sleuth with his famous line - "Oh, Just one more thing." Am I alone on this or are there others that are fans of Columbo? Peter Falk was born to Jewish parents in New York City in 1927. At the age of three his cancerous right eye was surgically removed and he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life. Peter served for a year as a ship's cook in the Navy during the war years. Although he had dabbled in non-professional acting in his teenage years, Peter completed several degrees at university before returning to appearing in plays and deciding to become a professional actor in 1956. He acted in ‘off Broadway’ plays before making his official Broadway debut in Alexander Ostrovsky's Diary Of A Scoundrel. He made some small film appearances before landing the role of a tough gangster in Murder, Inc. in 1960 which resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Peter received the same nomination the following year for his role in the film Pocketful Of Miracles. He starred in many television productions and won an Emmy Award. He demonstrated his comedic talents in films
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Whatever Happened To ... Peter Falk By Kevin Trask of 3AW and 96.5 Inner FM such as It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Robin And The Seven Hoods and The Great Race. In 1968 Peter Falk made his first appearance as Lt. Columbo in a telemovie titled Prescription Murder. He used his own crumpled trench coat to create the wonderful character who drove an old car and smoked cigars. The Columbo series did not begin until 1971 and the first instalment Ransom For A Dead Man was actually the second pilot. One of the early episodes was directed by a very young Steven Spielberg. There were 68 episodes produced over a period of 32 years. Lt. Columbo became a beloved character throughout the world.
● Peter Falk There was a great line up of guest stars and many actors such as Robert Culp, Patrick McGoohan and Jack Cassidy appeared in several episodes. The formula for the series was that the viewers see the murderer commit the crime and then set up an alibi. Lt. Columbo eventually arrives on the crime scene and befriends the murder. He seems vague but slowly gathers clues to trap and expose the killer right at the end of each episode. The running gag was that we never got to see his wife. Peter won four Emmy Awards for his role as Lt. Columbo. His famous quote, "Just one more thing" was used as the title for his 2006 memoir which I have recently read - I couldn't put it down. Peter starred in several Broadway plays including the Neil Simon comedy Prisoner Of Second Avenue. His later films included The Princess Bride, Murder by Death, The Cheap Detective and
Wings Of Desire. His favourite comedy film was The In-Laws in which he co-starred with his long time friend Alan Arkin. There is a hilarious clip on YouTube from 1977 where Peter appears as Lt Columbo at a Dean Martin Roast for Frank Sinatra. In 1996 the American TV Guide magazine ranked him number 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list. Peter Falk was married twice and had two adopted daughters. After Columbo finished it was announced that his famous battered trench coat was in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington but Peter insisted that the coat was hanging in his closet at home. He was an accomplished artist. Sadly in his later years Peter developed dementia. Peter Falk passed away at his home on June 23, 2011, at the age of 83, as a result of cardiorespiratory arrest. I think the public loved Columbo because he seemed to be an ordinary down to earth type of character who did not appear to be clever but underneath he was a modest Sherlock Holmes. - Kevin Trask The Time Tunnel - with Bruce & PhilSundays at 8.20pm on 3AW That's Entertainment - 96.5FM Sundays at 12 Noon 96.5FM is streaming on the internet. To listen, go to www.innerfm.org.au and follow the prompts.
DAZZLING STONE: BEST I’VE SEEN
■ Every so often one comes across a person of integrity, and worthy of admiration. Although I had only a passing acquaintance with Peter Rowe, I had often heard Keith McGowan wax lyrical about him as being a good bloke. So when my prize winners Jim and Leeann and I dropped in to see him last week, I was really unprepared for what I encountered. He began his career in Coober Pedy as a miner, as did so many other colleagues, but he moved around a little. On several occasions he decided to change his direction, and in the process needed to teach himself further skills, and then hone them. He decided he wanted to be a potter, so he taught himself this art, and opened his Underground Pottery shop. This he has let lapse, having decided to move on. But he still has hundreds of pots floating around in his workshop and old showroom - indeed wonderful works of art. So he thereafter became a mailman! And not just any mailman, but a mailman extraordinaire! So he runs the Mail Run, twice a week delivering to Outback cattle stations. But in the process became a tour guide extraordinaire, taking tourists on the run. And in between all this, he's become a wonderful Outback photographer, the equal of whom I've never seen. A talented man. And, a good bloke!
■ There are always social and political Aboriginal issues bubbling below the surface. Recently Land Rights stuff has caused some discord at Coober Pedy, as it has at Mintabie, as I recently noted. Lake Eyre is about to experience a change - back to the Aboriginal name, just like the Rock and the Olgas. This doesn't make much difference in a practical sense. But when Coober Pedy tourism people see their livelihoods threatened, they bristle a bit. Boating has been banned on the lake, and there's talk of banning joy flights. And the Breakaways, having featured in many movies such as Priscilla and Mad Max, are no longer permitted to be filmed. The hip pocket feels these actions.
The Outback Legend
with Nick Le Souef Lightning Ridge Opals 175 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Phone 9654 4444 www.opals.net.au I can look at the parlous state of child sexual abuse which still occurs in the APY lands, the perpetual abuse of women, and the appalling state of illiteracy and school attendance, and think that there are far more pressing issues than naming a lake. And then all Aboriginal kids have all their educational expenses paid for them - white kids don't - and when a hungry white child strays into the free breakfast canteen at the Coober Pedy school, he is ejected. That's racism. In reverse. ■ In Melbourne there are always indications, some subtle, some glaring, of the "Keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome. Whether it's the size of the house, or its suburb, or the number and breed of automobiles parked outside, it's always there to some degree. And the obligatory inspection of the new home by old friends upon their first visit. Granted husbands generally couldn't care less about this - they'd rather just keep drinking - but they wouldn't dare express this! However all this stuff never hap-
pens in Coober Pedy. I was driving around the other day, and reflected on the total egalitarianism of the town. There are humpies and dugouts everywhere, with plenty of old cars and derelict machinery lying about (spare parts for operating machines). And there's nothing like a financial snobby syndrome. Your next door neighbour may find a million dollars tomorrow, but he won't advertise the fact, for several practical reasons. So the dusty old ute parked outside can belie a few million bucks stashed away within! Some spend subtly but wisely; for others it's wine women and song! ■ I hadn't seen my uncle, Bill Mules, for a couple of years, but I caught up with him at a Christmas party many years ago. I was an impoverished Monash student, and he had just returned from a trip to Coober Pedy, in the vicinity of where he had worked with the CSIRO in his youth. He was regaling me with tales of miners, working for themselves , regularly extracting then hundreds of thousands of then quid from the ground. I steered my little Morris Minor home that night. But I couldn't sleep, just thinking about an E-type. That's for me! Shortly thereafter I summoned a couple of Monash mates, Mike Headberry and Pete McIntyre, and off we trotted to the closest opal field, Andamooka, to make our fortunes. We didn't, but the opal bug bit me! So last week as I was tootling down the Stuart Highway, I thought I'd better pop in. It was only 100 k'm off the road, and I've never really needed an excuse to drop in. Besides, my mate Peter Taubers, who runs the Post Office and an opal shop called The Bottle House, which is obviously made out of bottles, had reportedly just cut a magnificent stone. My mate Momo told me it was the best he'd ever seen, so I had to see it. I found Peter, and he produced his gem. It wasn't actually one stone, but two - it had been broken in excavation. He had cut them both. Every opal the world over is adjudged by three criteria.Firstly its pattern - big splashes of colour are better than tiny dots. Then the colour - red is the best, then orange, green and blue. But the most important aspect is the brightness of the colour. The brighter
● Peter Rowe’s ‘Mail Run’ leaves from Coober Pedy the better. This stone had it all. And who's seen the stone agrees. It has huge, dazzling flashes of brilmore to boot. liant red. I have often heard laymen comAt 38 carats, Peter has called it ment on a beautiful gem: "It looks as ‘The Desert Aurora’ - very approprithough it's got a light shining in it!" ate. This is the only stone I've ever seen He reckons it's worth about which fits that bill for me. $400,000, but I reckon that's too It's by far the best opal I've ever cheap! seen, and I have spent 49 years look- Nick Le Souef ing at them! Every other opal person ‘The Outback Legend’
From The Outer
Melbourne
Observer
kojak@ mmnet.com.au
With John Pasquarelli
■ Mentors can play a huge part in one's life. My father came from Northern Italy to the Ingham canefields before WWI as a young boy and 'Weary' Dunlop became his mentor at Melbourne University where the two men graduated in medicine. When I went to PNG in 1960 on the Sepik River, one of my mentors was Johnny Young, born in Cooktown who went with his family to PNG before WWI. A teenaged Young was picked up by a troopship at Samarai and became a crack shot and machine gunner in WWI. Gassed, he survived and returned to be a marine engineer, prospector and native labour recruiter and in the early stages of WWII he and his native crew hid out on the Ramu River until Australian commandos took him to Brisbane where he helped with reading aerial photos. It was an honour to know so many coastwatchers who returned to PNG after the war and now most of them have gone. Many of their mates were killed by the Japs and betrayed by treacherous natives - some being beheaded ironically on beautiful tropical beaches far from their homes and loved ones. Against the real men that I knew, the antics of many of our politicians are simply shameful. - John Pasquarelli: kojak@mmnet.com.au
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Observer Classic Books
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Only a rather obscure note was found among the Bishop’s papers, which may bear some relation to this matter, and which is couched in these terms, “The question is, to decide whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital.”
CHAPTER VI
The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said to him, “Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it. Then he spoke of something else. He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,— only,” he added, “ours must be tranquil.”
CHAPTER VIII PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
CHAPTER VII CRAVATTE
It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a man the Bishop of D—— was. After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, who had infested the gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the remnant of Gaspard Bes’s troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid himself in the caverns of the Joug-del’Aigle, and thence he descended towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and Ubayette. He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the countryside. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose. “Therefore,” said the Bishop, “I intend to go without escort.” “You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!” exclaimed the mayor. “I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall set out in an hour.” “Set out?” “Set out.” “Alone?” “Alone.” “Monseigneur, you will not do that!” “There exists yonder in the mountains,” said the Bishop, “a tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?” “But the brigands, Monseigneur?” “Hold,” said the Bishop, “I must think of that. You are right. I may meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God.” “But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!” “Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?” “They will rob you, Monseigneur.” “I have nothing.” “They will kill you.” “An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! To what purpose?” “Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!” “I should beg alms of them for my poor.” “Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!” “Monsieur le maire,” said the Bishop, “is that really all? I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.” They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He
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● Victor Hugo set out, accompanied only by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited about the country-side, and caused great consternation. He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the mountain on muleback, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound at the residence of his “good friends,” the shepherds. He remained there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament, teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he resolved to chant a Te Deum pontifically. He mentioned it to the cure. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace. “Bah!” said the Bishop. “Let us announce our Te Deum from the pulpit, nevertheless, Monsieur le Cure. Things will arrange themselves.” They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly. While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop’s cross, a magnificent crosier,— all the pontifical vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d’Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written, “From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.” “Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?” said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, “To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.” “Monseigneur,” murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. “God — or the Devil.”
The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, and repeated with authority, “God!” When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as at a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest’s house in Chastelar he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were waiting for him, and he said to his sister: “Well! was I in the right? The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I have brought back the treasure of a cathedral.” That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: “Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.” Then, turning to his sister: “Sister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account.” However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the same things at the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day. As to what became of “the treasure” of the cathedral of Embrun, we should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of very handsome things, very tempting things, and things which were very well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed; it only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it to take a short trip in the direction of the poor. However, we make no assertions on this point.
The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way, heedless of those things which present obstacles, and which are called conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his sons, his sons-inlaw, his relations, and even to his friends, having wisely seized upon, in life, good sides, good opportunities, good windfalls. Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was intelligent, and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple of Epicurus; while he was, in reality, only a product of Pigault–Lebrun. He laughed willingly and pleasantly over infinite and eternal things, and at the “Crotchets of that good old fellow the Bishop.” He even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in the presence of M. Myriel himself, who listened to him. On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what, Count** [this senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect. At dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still perfectly dignified, exclaimed:— “Egad, Bishop, let’s have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own.” “And you are right,” replied the Bishop. “As one makes one’s philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator.” The senator was encouraged, and went on:— “Let us be good fellows.” “Good devils even,” said the Bishop. “I declare to you,” continued the senator, “that the Marquis d’Argens, Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the philosophers in my library gilded on the edges.” “Like yourself, Count,” interposed the Bishop. The senator resumed:— “I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham’s eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies the fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. ’Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people’s noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don’t believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a hand-
Continued on Page 32
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Observer Classic Books From Page 31 ful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men’s shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I’m not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our tomorrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paul — it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don’t let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are down,— for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good. God. That is the least he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the populace.” The Bishop clapped his hands. “That’s talking!” he exclaimed. “What an excellent and really marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it can have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does not stupidly allow one’s self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d’Arc. Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness,— places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,— and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that is! I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor.”
CHAPTER IX: THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop of D——, and of the
manner in which those two sainted women subordinated their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even, which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop, without his even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them, we cannot do better than transcribe in this place a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession. D——, Dec. 16, 18 —. MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking of you. It is our established custom; but there is another reason besides. Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madam Magloire has made some discoveries; now our two chambers hung with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a chateau in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper. There were things beneath. My drawing-room, which contains no furniture, and which we use for spreading out the linen after washing, is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling which was formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours. This was covered with a cloth while this was the hospital. And the woodwork was of the era of our grandmothers. But my room is the one you ought to see. Madam Magloire has discovered, under at least ten thicknesses of paper pasted on top, some paintings, which without being good are very tolerable. The subject is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans, and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train. Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber will be a regular museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic two wooden pier-tables of ancient fashion. They asked us two crowns of six francs each to regild them, but it is much better to give the money to the poor; and they are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a round table of mahogany. I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country is trying in the winter, and we really must do something for those who are in need. We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You see that these are great treats. My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened. Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother’s room. He fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery, he says. He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He exposes himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have us even seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him. He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night. Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would not take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well, and said, “This is the way I have been robbed!” And then he opened a trunk full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the thieves had given him. When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding him a little, taking care, however, not to speak except when the carriage was making a noise, so that no one might hear me. At first I used to say to myself, “There are no dangers which will stop him; he is terrible.” Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire, I enter my chamber, I pray for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the good God with my brother and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more trouble than it did me to accustom herself to what she terms his imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this house, he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us to fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is stronger than we.
The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells here. This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to the care of Providence. That is the way one has to do with a man who possesses grandeur of soul. I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very good royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom was a seigneur de Rochefort. The last was Guy– Etienne-Alexandre, and was commander of a regiment, and something in the light horse of Bretagne. His daughter, Marie–Louise, married Adrien–Charles de Gramont, son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards, and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq. Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative, Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing to me. She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me. That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper is at an end, and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes. Baptistine. P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who had on knee-caps, and he said, “What has he got on his knees?” He is a charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the room, like a carriage, and saying, “Hu!” As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to mould themselves to the Bishop’s ways with that special feminine genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself. The Bishop of D—— , in spite of the gentle and candid air which never deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They trembled, but they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action once entered upon. At certain moments, without his having occasion to mention it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all probability, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain cares may be put under constraint. Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no longer watched over him. They confided him to God. Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother’s end would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.
CHAPTER X THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains infested with bandits. In the country near D——a man lived quite alone. This man, we will state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G—— Member of the Convention, G—— was mentioned with a sort of horror in the little world of D—— A member of the Convention — can you imagine such a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other thou, and when they said “citizen.” This man was almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a quasi-regicide. He
had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such a man had not been brought before a provost’s court, on the return of the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture. Was G——a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of exile, and had been able to remain in France. He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman. Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, “There is a soul yonder which is lonely.” And he added, deep in his own mind, “I owe him a visit.” But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him after a moment’s reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement. Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No. But what a sheep! The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction; then he returned. Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over night.—“Thank God!” some added. The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out. The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs, entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern. It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed against the outside. Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the armchair of the peasants, there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun. Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was offering the old man a jar of milk. While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: “Thank you,” he said, “I need nothing.” And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the child. The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the surprise which a man can still feel after a long life. “This is the first time since I have been here,” said he, “that any one has entered here. Who are you, sir?” The Bishop answered:— “My name is Bienvenu Myriel.” “Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the people call Monseigneur Welcome?” “I am.” The old man resumed with a half-smile “In that case, you are my bishop?” “Something of that sort.” “Enter, sir.” The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the Bishop did not take it. - Continued on Page 49
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From Page 32 The Bishop confined himself to the remark:— “I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not seem to me to be ill.” “Monsieur,” replied the old man, “I am going to recover.” He paused, and then said:— “I shall die three hours hence.” Then he continued:— “I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; today, the chill has ascended to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it does not fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at that moment. One has one’s caprices; I should have liked to last until the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair. One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by starlight.” The old man turned to the shepherd lad:— “Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired.” The child entered the hut. The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking to himself:— “I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors.” The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at “His Grace,” was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and he was almost tempted to retort “citizen.” He was assailed by a fancy for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably, the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe. Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to dust. The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not refrain from examining the member of the Convention with an attention which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G——, calm, his body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist. The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless. It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light. G——, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below. There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt. “I congratulate you,” said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand. “You did not vote for the death of the king, after all.” The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning underlying the words “after all.” He replied. The smile had quite disappeared from his face. “Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant.” It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity. “What do you mean to say?” resumed the
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - Page 49
Observer Classic Books Bishop. “I mean to say that man has a tyrant,— ignorance. I voted for the death of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man should be governed only by science.” “And conscience,” added the Bishop. “It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within us.” Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language, which was very new to him. The member of the Convention resumed:— “So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said ‘no.’ I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy.” “Mixed joy,” said the Bishop. “You may say troubled joy, and today, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.” “You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.” “Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.” The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:— “Yes? ‘93!” The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation:— “Ah, there you go; ‘93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.” The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the matter. He replied:— “The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt should commit no error.” And he added, regarding the member of the Convention steadily the while, “Louis XVII.?” The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop’s arm. “Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Greve, until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime of having been grandson of Louis XV.” “Monsieur,” said the Bishop, “I like not this conjunction of names.” “Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?” A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come, and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken. The conventionary resumed:— “Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried, ‘Sinite parvulos,’ he made no distinc-
tion between the little children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august in rags as in fleurs de lys.” “That is true,” said the Bishop in a low voice. “I persist,” continued the conventionary G—— “You have mentioned Louis XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than ‘93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.” “I weep for all,” said the Bishop. “Equally!” exclaimed conventionary G——; “and if the balance must incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer.” Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces of the death agony. It was almost an explosion. “Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside, and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of imposing on that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no information as to your moral personality. In short, I repeat my question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,— the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,— who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,— revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me. To whom do I speak? Who are you?” The Bishop hung his head and replied, “Vermis sum — I am a worm.” “A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary. It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be humble. The Bishop resumed mildly:— “So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ‘93 was not inexorable.” The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep away a cloud. “Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me. I have just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them in the future.” “I thank you,” said the Bishop. G—— resumed. “Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we? What were you saying to me? That ‘93 was inexorable?” “Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop. “What think
you of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?” “What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?” The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic. The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:— “Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing. Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, ‘93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier–Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to Lamoignon–Baville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx–Tavannes, if you please? Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan–Coupe-Tete is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, ‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying.” And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his thoughts in these tranquil words:— “Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized,— that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.” The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the beginning:— “Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.” The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:— “O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!” The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock. After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:— “The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I . That I of the infinite is God.” The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in death. The supreme moment was approaching. The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man. “This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be regrettable if we had met in vain?” - Continued on Page 50
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From Page 49 The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom was imprinted on his countenance. “Bishop,” said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, “I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eightysix years old; I am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?” “Your blessing,” said the Bishop. And he knelt down. When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had become august. He had just expired.
The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about member of the Convention G——; he contented himself with pointing heavenward. From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling towards all children and sufferers. Any allusion to “that old wretch of a G——” caused him to fall into a singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did not count for something in his approach to perfection. This “pastoral visit” naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of comment in all the little local coteries. “Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried off by the devil.” One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him, “Monseigneur, people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!”—“Oh! oh! that’s a coarse color,” replied the Bishop. “It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.”
CHAPTER XII A RESTRICTION We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical bishop,” or a “patriotic cure.” His meeting, which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G ——, left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all. Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.
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Let us, then, go back a few years. Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre–Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D—— He was interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: “I embarrassed them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door.” On another occasion he said, “What would you have? Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.” The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’” Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one’s own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can
one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty. This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D—— thought. It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the “ideas of the century” on certain delicate points. He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days. Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate. Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding what is called “political opinions” with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect. To Be Continued Next Issue
Observer Crossword Solution No 28 J U V E N I O Y E E U C A L Y A O R S A L I N E L L E I M P L O R A W I I N V I T E A L S S C U L P T W S A E V E N T F D R D I N C L I N S A O H E R E T I R M T O N S P E C I T H R E T Y P E E E A S I D E A S N T H C H E Y D A Y X H E S P R A I N E B A E L L I P S X E R P L A C E B A R V N O N F A T D E I S H R I L L O N E I M P E A C E X H B R O A D E U C R U N I T E S N N V M A D W O M E I K T R A P E Z
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