papers carried growing lists of local boys killed, wounded or missing.
At home, Cynthia discovered the delights and disadvantages of being among her siblings. She was experienced enough outdoors for John to include her on his bird-watching and egg-collecting adventures. They were often out on their ponies, exploring the surrounding countryside. When summer came they could fish, go boating or swim in the lake. She also had to endure the teasing older brothers seem to find irresistible.
They also spent time with their governess, Miss Greenfield, in the Big Room. (Years later, when John saw the elderly Miss Greenfield, she greeted him as ‘Master John’.)9 The Big Room made an ideal schoolroom, with a high-panelled wood ceilings and long narrow windows punctuating the whitewashed walls. Double doors led down into the enclosed courtyard garden, where the arbour was protected by garden walls and bathed by morning sun. The Big Room housed a harmonium and a piano, a desk Dick kept locked for his guns, and cabinets for John’s ornithological collection — specimens laid out on cottonwool with explanatory notes neatly appended. Books, maps, writing and art materials sat alongside the white marble bust of the patriarch in his prime.
Here, Miss Greenfield taught Barbara and Cynthia, and advised Margaret, who thought she might follow in her step-aunt’s footsteps and become a missionary. Of the daughters, serious-minded Margaret was most like her formidable grandmother, regarded as ‘the plain one’. Like her grandmother, she had a soft spot for the baby of the family and was always ready to take care of Cynthia.
In the new year of 1915, Margaret and Barbara left home to board at the Hermitage in Geelong, while John was enrolled at Geelong Grammar. Now Cynthia was alone at home, but would see her siblings every three months.
Dick returned home as the war was revealing itself as a catastrophe. He was eager to join his friends already fighting — it was, after all, what he had been educated for. However, he was rejected on medical grounds. Ten years older than Cynthia, the two were fast friends, and Cynthia loved to escape the house and go riding with him. Often arguing with his father over new farming methods, Dick left home, taking out his inheritance in farming in the northwest. His cousin Hudson was flying planes in combat.
Enlisting was out of the question for Henry at forty-six, but he was impatient to be doing something. There were rumours and allegations against the Red Cross about inefficiency and corruption impeding the work so many Australians supported. In the winter of 1916, Henry went to Egypt to investigate the claims. Launceston’s Examiner reported him as being back home in September, and conveyed his guarded defence of the Red Cross, which he felt was necessary for the war that was going so wrong.
Some of Henry’s discontent focused on the choices his older children were making. Coralie was bent on marrying a man of their class but one known to be a spendthrift. Dick had left to succeed on his own terms and Henry probably worried about his future. Margaret, who had graduated from the Hermitage as Dux of the school, now wanted to become a doctor, a profession only just opening up for women. Her headmistress Elsie Morres was an example to her of the new independent, professional woman.
Cynthia remained the only child at home until she was almost twelve, tutored by Miss Greenfield. She spent time outdoors, where she might have met with the head gardener Curtiss, to find out about his latest project, and visit newly born farm animals. Most of all, in the good weather, she loved reading in the seclusion of the landscaped tomb ground. She often accompanied her mother in the chauffeur-driven Daimler to Launceston. Lila had turned her attention to needy mothers, many widowed by the war, and their offspring, working for the Queen Victoria Hospital and a baby clinic cted to the Anglican St John’s Church. The town and countryside remained in a kind of stasis after the war’s end, frozen in the misery of lives lost and crippled. The war shadowed Cynthia’s childhood and her years at boarding school. She saw the walking wounded in town, while at home a gardening hand, Harold, had returned from the war, coughing, lungs poisoned by mustard gas.
In 1919, with the opening for women to graduate as doctors in Cambridge, Margaret at last persuaded her father to let her enter the profession. Coralie was engaged and soon to marry. Henry’s youngest daughter, like his eldest son, worried him. She disappeared for hours at a time, often taking some reading with her, and it angered him that she could forget to bring the books back inside.
It was 1920, and Henry decided it was time Cynthia learnt discipline. Henry’s letters to John make plain his fondness for capitalising words like ‘Duty’ and ‘Class’; he was big on discipline. When his children opened their presents on Christmas Day they had to fold the wrapping paper and roll the string in a neat ball before examining their gift.
Shortly before the beginning of the next school term, the Prince of Wales came to town. He was touring Australian cities and towns as royal tribute for the country’s contribution to the Great War. He was popularly dubbed the ‘digger prince’, but ‘playboy prince’ fitted him better. The plans made to entertain him in Launceston had been regularly updated in the newspapers. He was to stay at Mount Pleasant, tempted by the prospect of good hunting. Then the Examiner published the news that the Prince would stay in town at its leading hotel, the Brisbane, which was put entirely at the disposal of the royal party, free of charge by the grateful publican. At Mount Pleasant, Margaret Reed took great offence.
In June, Cynthia sailed to Melbourne with Barbara and John to begin at the Hermitage. The school was abuzz about the Prince and who had seen him. Armistice Day, Empire Day and Anzac Day dominated the school calendar.
Sources include the Reed Family File at Launceston Public Library; Trove digitised newspapers (trove.nla.com.au); Reed Papers, State Library of Victoria.
1 Hudson Fysh, Henry Reed: Van Diemen’s Land Pioneer, Hobart: Cat & Fiddle Press, 1973, pp. 148.
2 Henry Reed Sr, Incidents in an Eventful Life, London: Dunorlan Tracts, 1907, p. 175.
3 Louisa Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, London: J. Murray, 1852, p. 215.
4 John McPhee, The Art of John Glover, South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1980, p. 41.
5 Hudson Fysh, Henry Reed, p. 143–5.
6 Cynthia Nolan, Open Negative: An American Memoir, London: Macmillan, 1967, p. 78.
7 Excerpt from Cheltenham College Archives.
8 Cynthia Nolan, A Sight of China, London: Macmillan, 1969, p. 72.
9 Miss Greenfield, in Neil Douglas, A Far Cry, Karella Publications, 1979, p. 139. Douglas, a horticulturalist, was then an employee at Heide.
Chapter Two
The Secret Life of Girls
‘I was not educated, merely sent to school.’
— Daddy Sowed a Wind, dustjacket note, 1947
The Hermitage was Geelong’s Church of England Girls Grammar School, launched in 1906 to educate the sisters of the boys at their Boys Grammar School. Its headmistress, Miss Elsie Morres, belonged to the first generation of women able to gain professional qualifications at Melbourne University. She used her height to advantage, presenting an image of independent womanhood; she would have towered over Cynthia.
The Anglican Church had bought an Armytage family mansion on six acres to house the school and its teachers and boarders. It must have been odd to Cynthia that though the scale and design of her new environment was comparable to her own nineteenth century home, here there was no escape outside and little privacy inside. There was also a succession of missionaries and clergy visiting the school. Anzac Day and Armistice Day were rigorously observed, with services and donations from the girls for returned
