The Mayne Inheritance Read online

  As the decade slipped by James was occasionally reminded that sixty years of family stress had taken their toll. He began facing the one great certainty of life. Of his two older sisters, Rosanna, now in her mid-seventies, existed in a turbulent mental state. She required constant restraint and imposed heavy demands on the concerned Sisters of Mercy. Mary Emelia, in her mid-sixties, was not endowed with the ability to handle business affairs, nor motivated to try. It is likely that her genetic inheritance was a lower than average intelligence and that time or medication had left her dull and listless. Both sisters could outlive him. Neither was capable of dealing with their wealth. Despite their recent largess, he and Mary Emelia were still the possessors of an ever-growing fortune. For a man as responsible as James, its ultimate disposition was a matter of great concern.

  12

  Maynes and the University of Queensland

  By 1922, the University at George Street was so short of space it was bursting at its dilapidated seams. Some buildings had not been painted since 1910, and white-ant infestation rendered others decidedly hazardous. In September, Parliament had confirmed that 170 acres at Victoria Park, close to the Brisbane Hospital, had now been vested in the University. But the joy of the proponents of that site was shortlived. Their dreams of noble buildings were grievously dashed with the 1925 announcement of the cost of levelling the site before any building could begin. It was estimated at a then astronomical £89,000, which soon soared to £130,000. It was clear to many—and the press was adamant—that to proceed at Victoria Park would be a costly mistake. The disappointment, and the urgent need to move the University from George Street put heat and vigour into the reopened debate about where the University should be built. The other two optional sites came back into contention: 122 acres at Yeronga or 274 acres at St Lucia.

  In October of that year, when the debate was at its height, the geologist Fred Whitehouse returned from Cambridge with a Ph.D., joined the staff at the University, and, in his continued friendship with James, resumed long riverside walks. It is most likely that the clamour of the debate had set James mulling over ideas for a new bequest. Forty-four years later, when Dr Whitehouse was protesting to the University about lack of recognition for James Mayne, he said that in their discussions James was firmly against Victoria Park because it was not possible to row there. Whitehouse wrote: ‘‘He and I discussed what river sites were available. He was greatly taken with the nearest of those, the river pocket at St Lucia.’’

  It is tempting to see the persuasive hand of Fred in the next moves that influenced James. They were close friends and Fred was also deeply interested in the future of his University. He was a very able organiser and an active writer who knew the power of the printed word. On 7 January 1926, the Daily Mail devoted a leading article to the needs of the young, makeshift University at George Street. The urgency was not just for the Government to provide adequate buildings, but for endowments by wealthy citizens to facilitate the establishment of additional faculties.

  Fred would have known much of James’ thinking; most likely he decided it was time to give a push to those ideas by urging Eric Tommerup, the editor of the student magazine Galmahra to publish what they hoped would prove a catalyst. The May issue of Galmahra, to which Fred was a contributor and which he was to edit the following year, aptly headed an item ‘‘A Futurist Ramble’’. Referring to the Daily Mail article, it read: ‘‘Those lines might appeal to some aged and unmarried plutocrat who is anxious to dispose of his worldly goods in preparation for a life where finance makes less stringent demands … The University needs a permanent home … the need is great. It matters not whether the funds are made available from public or private sources but without them, the University cannot play its proper part in the development of Queensland.’’

  This was followed in July by the news that the University Senate had formally created a Chair of Agriculture and that the Faculty was under consideration. It was more than three years since the Maynes had gifted their Moggill land; although nothing much was being done with it, at last the Maynes could enjoy the satisfying thought that their gift was a factor in the Senate decision.

  The long walks to rural St Lucia were a time for contemplation. James’ memories of undergraduate days at the University of Sydney were of lack of space and no quiet river banks where students could stroll while arguing the problems that exercised their minds, as they did at the British universities, which he had visited. In this pastoral riverside setting, depressing family thoughts and the hurt caused by the carrion feeders of gossip could be laid aside. He could unwind in the peace of the quiet, benign farming area as he strolled with his friend. In a sense it became his refuge from an unsatisfying life. He had always had the ability and drive to be an achiever, but at sixty-four he felt no sense of personal enrichment. All he had was money. He knew that his once promising life was useless, as empty as the vast expanse of clear light that arched above them from Highgate Hill to distant Mt Coot-tha.

  In James’ mind, St Lucia became his place. He could afford to direct its future—give Brisbane its university site. A glance into the distance showed the gently rising slope of the peninsula cradled in the long, curving reaches of the river. It promised the ideal site: acres of flat land for sport and recreation, the river for rowing and swimming, and cleared high land where buildings could rise. With still vivid mental pictures of the 1893 raging floods and the family’s relief as their brand-new home stood safe on the rise, he could be confident that this was a unique site where the University could economically maximise the use of all the land and erect buildings above any future threat of flood.

  With or without the journalistic efforts of Fred Whitehouse, it was only a few weeks after the Galmahra publication that James arrived at his decision. With Mary Emelia’s agreement and his agent’s assistance, he ascertained the available area at St Lucia and its market price. Then, bowler-hatted and with a bright flower in his buttonhole, he called at the City Hall and asked to see the Mayor, William Jolly.

  The two had never met. When James began to talk about St Lucia and the urgency of a permanent university site, Jolly cautiously remarked, ‘‘But that will cost a lot of money’’.

  To his astonishment, James answered, ‘‘Even if it costs £100,000 my sister and I wish to make the gift.’’ That discussion, in early September 1926, was private. Jolly was invited to ‘‘Moorlands’’ for further discussions. It was assumed that the cost of resuming the land would be some £50,000. The question arose: ‘‘What if the University declines your offer?’’ There was no vacillation in James’ intention to benefit the community. ‘‘The people of Brisbane could have it as a public park,’’ he replied.

  By 16 October, to Jolly’s dismay, the University Senate released to the press his private advice to them that an anonymous donor had offered to purchase the St Lucia land so that Queensland could have a permanent home for its University. Two weeks later, with nothing decided, the name of Mayne was divulged. James and Mary Emelia featured in a welter of positive publicity; but if they imagined that a grateful University Senate would say ‘‘thank you’’ and welcome this second magnificent gift, they were to be disappointed.

  One group, powerful in the academic and medical world and unable to visualise a viable university more than a stone’s throw from its teaching hospital, threw up several spurious arguments as to why St Lucia was unsuitable. It was too far out in the bush. Students would not travel the distance. The river mists were unhealthy; students could die of asthma or pneumonia.

  The Lord Mayor, having now formed a genuine friendship with James, mounted a pro-St Lucia argument, saying, ‘‘This is a site unequalled for a university in any city in Australia or in the world.’’ The Student’s Union, fed up with deplorable conditions and the selfishness of the medical group, and casting a hungry eye on the space for sporting facilities, backed the Mayor’s opinion. In what must have been music to James’ ears, the Union President, Colin Nash, pointed out that via
West End, St Lucia was only 1 1/4 miles from Victoria Bridge and far more suitable than Victoria Park, with its noisy rail traffic. Nash asked whether it was a good policy to seriously endanger the ultimate development of all other faculties by granting an advantage to the Faculty of Medicine.

  In mid-December James was invited to meet the Senate to present his views. The result? Subject to a variety of conditions and by the narrowest margin of one vote, it was agreed to accept the land. The ultimate cost was £80,000, well up on the original estimate of £50,000, but as Alderman Jolly recalled, ‘‘That was all right, Dr Mayne paid the balance as if he had been expecting to do so’’.

  A very pleased Fred Whitehouse, now editor of Galmahra, wrote glowingly of the site and praised ‘‘the wise move and the generosity of Dr Mayne, one of the University’s best friends’’. The Queenslander managed to get a short interview with Mary Emelia in which she hoped that the health-giving breezes of St Lucia would benefit the students. ‘‘Cooking,’’ she said, ‘‘is the most important of all branches of knowledge for a woman’’—she would like to see it as a subject for a university career. No photograph was taken; without comment, the article was illustrated with one taken when she was nineteen and quite good-looking.

  The publicity died away. Everything remained very tenuous. Negotiations, sometimes quite acrimonious, between the Brisbane City Council and the University Senate dragged on. Over the next few years the Senate minutes are studded with the on-and-off arguments about the St Lucia site. The City Council declined to hand over the Mayne gift until the Senate gave a firm declaration that the new University would be built there and the 170 acres at Victoria Park handed back to the Council. This assurance was not given until 1930. On 16 May 1930, the press recorded the public handing-over with James and the Mayor shaking hands. It is an indication of the indecision that continued to reign that four years later, the Courier Mail (23 July 1934) noted that the University was twenty-five years old and said: ‘‘If the government should decide upon St Lucia as a future site…’’

  It is to be wondered if (then as now) the University in fact wanted the valuable gift, but would have preferred the donors to have been other than the Maynes. Doubtless James hoped that as the University grew and became a principal institution within the State, the endowment would restore some long-term merit to his family name. Unfortunately, the University Senate was (and continued to be) singularly insensitive in the matter of honouring the Maynes. Malcolm Thomis, in A Place of Light & Learning wrote: ‘‘It was a pity that Dr Mayne’s magnificent generosity, a munificence universally applauded, should have been followed by this wrangle. It was a pity, too, that this man should have been required to wait almost four years before the gift was finally received. The whole process must have been less than encouraging to other prospective donors in the community.’’

  It was more than four years before the gift site saw any building. Plans were drawn and redrawn and the arguments rolled on. Eleven years after the gift offer was made to Alderman Jolly, the foundation stone was laid on 6 March 1937. Sadly, for the Maynes, the 693 acres of Moggill land, which they had given in 1923 to facilitate the Faculty of Agriculture, was also still awaiting use by the University. It says something for the commitment of James that he and his sister did not waver from their intention of benefiting the community by assisting the University. This also says something about the quality of James’ friendship. Dr Sandford Jackson, who was President of the Queensland branch of the British Medical Association, was one of the fiercest opponents of the St Lucia site during the long years of the great debate, yet he and James remained lifelong friends.

  In 1926 the disclosure of the Maynes’ offer had come as something of a shock to Archbishop Duhig. However, he was one of the university senators who favoured building on the St Lucia site and publicly approved the Maynes’ generosity. He also stepped up his visits to ‘‘Moorlands’’. On one occasion, when the Mayor was visiting with his young son, Norman, the Archbishop was seen coming up the driveway. Jolly gathered up his son, saying, ‘‘We’ll go now, Dr Mayne’’—but James responded: ‘‘Oh Jolly, don’t leave me with that awful man.’’

  James’ dislike of his Archbishop was long-standing and ongoing, but Duhig continued to visit. In July 1927 the Archbishop wrote to James and a group of thirty-eight wealthy Catholics requesting generous financial help for his new project, the Holy Name Cathedral. It was to be built on the commanding site of ‘‘Dara’’, once owned by Patrick Mayne and since 1891 the charming, three-storied Italianate home of the archbishops. Like Archbishop Dunne, James believed it was more important to provide good education for young Catholics than to erect prestigious buildings. He could not approve the waste of knocking down such a gracious building to put another in its place, especially with the threat of economic depression sapping business confidence. He thought that St Stephen’s Cathedral with its magnificent stained-glass windows was quite adequate. The Archbishop’s letter attracted a good response, and those civic leaders who gave most generously received Papal knighthoods in 1929. The Maynes, who gave nothing, went unhonoured.

  It is hard to know whether James’ lack of response to the financially embarrassed Archbishop and his building appeal made Duhig give vent to anger against him, or whether Rosanna, now almost eighty and very ill at All Hallows’, had become too much of a burden on the sisters and they wanted her moved. Undoubtedly her mental instability had loaded an extra cross on her carers. Late in 1929, Duhig wrote to James indicating that it was time he took over the care of his sister.

  Neither the elderly James nor Mary Emelia was able to nurse a woman with advanced senile decay, kept under physical restraint. It would be a matter of shifting Rosanna from the care of the religious order at All Hallows’, her home for sixty-six years, to some other institution. ‘‘Moorlands’’ had never been her home. James’ reply to Duhig, written in the third person, was curt and final. With reference to Sister Mary Mel he ‘‘sees no reason to meet him and talk over her problems as he has no interest or control over her affairs.’’ The Sisters of Mercy who continued to give her loving care were well rewarded; when Rosanna died in March 1934, her share of Patrick’s estate passed to the Order. It consisted of valuable inner city land at the corner of Albert and Elizabeth Streets and the corner of Creek and Adelaide Streets; an allotment with a thirty-seven foot frontage to Edward Street; and a similar sized allotment fronting Adelaide Street. In suburbia there were two parcels of land totalling almost six acres at Mayne Junction, and eleven allotments at Ithaca. On the fast developing highway to Ipswich were thirty-two acres two roods which had been Patrick’s stock-holding yard in the Gailes area. Its total value in 1892 was £39,964. Its value in 1996 was conservatively estimated to be $25,000,000.

  By the mid-1930s nothing in the Maynes’ life had changed except the onset of old age and its attendant weaknesses. The bursts of public applause in 1923 and 1926 had fizzled out, although there had been a minor splutter in 1930 when press photographs acknowledged the handing-over of the St Lucia site. The students toasted James’ name in their ‘‘Varsity Students’ Song’’ and the Arts students sang hopefully of soon being home on Dr Mayne’s land. Such songs were part of a large repertoire, sung with gusto on happy occasions. Mayne was but one of many names they included.

  Out in the wider world, people found it easy to forget those gifts which benefited the community and which James undoubtedly had hoped would restore their good name. Their life easily slipped back to being the property of gossips. In 1932, James leased a prime Queen Street site for fifty years to Capital Theatres so that they could build their ornate picture palace, The Regent. It showed the new ‘‘talkies’’ to an excited audience, but we do not know if the much maligned Maynes ever sought escape in that celluloid world. Their preferred leisure activity seemed to remain those private picnics to the Moggill land where James Pacey continued to farm—now as caretaker and tenant of the University. A car had replaced the carriage and James and his si
ster would sometimes drive to Sandgate to try to recapture dreams of youthful pleasure. The short time their mother had lived there with her children was the brightest jewel in James’ memory. He spoke of it fondly and frequently. Those memories could only have glowed in his mind if his childhood relationship with his mother had been a loving one. We know she could be tough as steel when the occasion demanded; but the tough-tender, complex man who was James may have reflected a tenderness that was part of her character. One recorded trip was to Victoria Point to call on Dr Ernest Sandford Jackson, who had retired and thrown his energy into creating a large garden. In 1934 Jackson wrote of his pleasure when James and four ladies had called and enthused over his horticultural efforts. One of the ladies could have been Mary Emelia; the identity of the other three is unknown.

  The University Senate, now committed to build at St Lucia, was making positive plans. Melville Haysom was commissioned to paint James’ portrait. Presumably it was to be hung in some place of honour. As with William Jolly, the meeting with Haysom resulted in a friendship. Those who were prepared to look beyond the veil of gossip and take the trouble to get to know James found a genuine, likeable man. The life-sized portrait, brings out what Haysom saw in James during the sittings at his studio in Fortitude Valley. It shows an ageing, alert face with sparse white hair. The cleft chin and strongly marked brows over the blue eyes add to the strength of the face, but it is in those eyes and the gentle set of the mouth that Haysom has captured the caring essence of the man. The face gives no hint of the endless tragedy; the lips suggest humour which, in public, was probably never allowed free rein. It is the open face of a good man, someone you would like to know. Haysom painted James sitting in his black academic robes trimmed with white fur, and on his lap is a white plan titled: ‘‘Proposed University Site’’. At the top of the plan is his personal device, a winged heart over the words sursum corda.