The Mayne Inheritance Page 16
An oft-told anecdote, which has a strong ring of truth, has it that the dominant J.D. Story, who, even before he became Vice Chancellor virtually ran the University, banished the portrait. Some say to a storeroom. It had been voted the most arresting picture in the 48th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Queensland Art Society; as a portrait it could hold its own with any on the campus. The reason for banishment must have been a rejection of the Maynes because of their reputation. James heard of the slight and sent a retainer to advise Mr Story that he was displeased. The retainer was forestalled by the Registrar, Mr Page-Hanify, who quietly had the portrait restored to its former place.
It was not to last. The painting again disappeared from general view. With the University’s restoration of the historic Customs House it was brought from obscurity at St Lucia and hung, untitled, unknown, and presumably unhonoured, in a small room on the top floor of that building. Perhaps the greatest indignity in that move was that the portrait was taken from the site which meant so much to James, the site he had given to the University, to be placed in a building which he would have avoided. It overlooks Kangaroo Point, where his father murdered Robert Cox. Patrick’s act destroyed the reputation of his whole family. In giving the St Lucia site James could have hoped to live that down.
During the sittings for the portrait, James talked about his childhood at Sandgate. There was clearly an empathy between the two men and Haysom and his wife both enjoyed visits to ‘‘Moorlands’’. It was Melville who showed James one of the rare acts of kindness he received in his adult life. The thank you letter shows the warmth and easy grace of the recipient.
Thank you for the beautiful painting of Sandgate, it was very good of you to do it for me. I will always appreciate the kindly thought as well as the very beautiful picture. As you know the memories of my childhood days at Sandgate are very dear to me, the best in my life in fact, though I have travelled round the world many times and seen all the best that was to be seen.
So you will understand that nothing else could have given me such pleasure or touched more tender thoughts. (11.7.1936.)
A year later, James heard that Haysom had shared a major prize in the State lottery, the Golden Casket, and won £1,000. His spontaneous letter to Mrs Haysom is an indication of the caring man:
We just cannot imagine what your feelings are, as I just cannot describe my own on hearing the good news. I do not know of a family to whom I would rather the good luck had gone and certainly not a more worthy one. In the excitement this morning I forgot to thank Noel [their ten-year-old son] for the lovely flowers, please tell him for me that I appreciate his charming gift. The violets are extra specially good, and such a lovely perfume which leaves no doubt in my mind that they are Toowoomba violets. We are looking forward to seeing you again very soon and will be able to tell you in person of our great joy in your good fortune. (12.8.1937.)
That young son, Noel, now a retired scientist, still remembers James as the kindly, gentle man who sat for a portrait in his father’s studio. He had not been jaundiced by parental prejudice and was able to know the delightful man who, elsewhere faced with a judgmental public, took refuge in a protective shell of indifference.
It is not surprising that with such a life, combined with the vulnerability of old age, James became somewhat eccentric. Where once his tolerance and understanding of human nature carried him through most difficult times, these were no longer his strengths. In old age, James was struggling to keep afloat in a sea of emptiness. Life was still a journey he had to make alone. Whisky helped. On occasions he was a lonely old man sitting in a state of refined intoxication; but he kept that under control. Mary Emelia, so long ago attractive and lively enough to be of concern to her brothers, was now overweight, sagging in face and figure, and sunk in apathy.
The family doctor for many years, the crusty, argumentative Sandford Jackson, now lived too far away at Victoria Point, so a series of doctors attended at ‘‘Moorlands’’. The eminent physician Dr Harry Windsor was summoned to attend for a time in 1936. He had no idea why he was chosen; a call came out of the blue. There was a set ritual. He had to telephone just before he went to ‘‘Moorlands’’, was met by the gardener at the gate, and the housekeeper at the front door. He was never taken into the house. He and James remained seated on the front veranda chatting about inconsequential things until it was time to leave. James’ health was not good in those last years, but he almost never discussed it with the doctor.
One December day when the conversation lapsed, Dr Windsor mentioned the news that King Edward had just announced his abdication, and remarked that he could not understand why the King wanted to marry a divorced woman. Both men were Catholics and this was against their religious teaching. James’ face became suffused with blood and he retorted, ‘‘You married men are always jealous of us bachelors.’’ The next day he sent a message asking Dr Windsor not to visit any more. One or two other medical practitioners were sacked in the same abrupt manner.
The former Lord Mayor, William Jolly, now Federal Member for Lilley, called occasionally, but the only two people with whom James felt completely at ease were his agent, Waverley Cameron, and Fred Whitehouse who understood him and cared. Fred was now coach of the University rowing team. In 1937, when the Australian Universities’ Eight Oar Race was to be held in Hobart, the Queensland crew had no suitable boat and insufficient money for the crew’s competition expenses. The lack of such a boat was not unusual. The top secondary schools and the universities could afford fours, but to own an eight was to own a great treasure. Fred’s request to James for help was met with £160 for a new boat and oars, with the money to ship it to Tasmania and a contribution towards the accommodation expenses of the coach and crew. Now seventy-six, James was a semi-invalid and not very sociable, but Fred took the crew to ‘‘Moorlands’’ to thank their donor. A manservant escorted the students upstairs to James’ room where they were given refreshments in what turned out to be a very jolly hour. Dr Don Robertson, one of that year’s crew, recalls that there was no sign of Mary Emelia, and that the ailing James had a large broad face, hanging jowls and not much hair.
The University boatshed was then at the Domain, near the city bend of the river at the George Street campus. After lectures, the crew usually rowed upstream in the evening light, and it was one of James’ late-life pleasures to hear the swish of oars and watch the silhouette as they glided along the metal-dark water past ‘‘Moorlands’’. Fred, their coach, was always close behind in a sleek speedboat, an acquisition which was also thought to have been financed by James.
On Saturday 6 March 1937, James and Mary Emelia took their final public curtain: the laying of the University of Queensland’s foundation stone at St Lucia. It was a bright sunny afternoon and both the ailing Maynes rose splendidly to the occasion. James was formal in silk top hat and morning suit with a white boutonnière, his large diamond pin flashing on his cravat, and a heavy gold chain anchoring his fob watch. His sister was encased in black, from the froth of ostrich feathers encircling her hat to the black lace coat fastened over her long black dress by her exquisite gold-and-diamond winged heart. It was the same Marian symbol that was carved into their staircase, on James’ portrait and many of his belongings, and now apparently also cherished by Mary Emelia. She, too, wore white flowers and flourished her gold-and-diamond bracelet as they sat in state on a dais erected on the vast treeless hillside. Harrison Bryan recorded that the stone was laid by the Premier, W. Forgan Smith, with the encouragement of the Chancellor, the assistance of Mr J. Hennessy the architect, and the blessing of Dr J. O’Neil Mayne, the donor. The leading figures in the ceremony had celebrated rather too freely beforehand; Bryan notes that as a result, the proceedings were somewhat more spirited than had been expected.
It is commonly accepted that as a result of those high spirits the foundation stone was set in the wrong place and had to be shifted overnight. And there were those who remembered that as the area cleared of celebrants and staf
f, the stone was left isolated, pathetic and indistinguishable in the empty acres of grassland. The stone certainly was moved, but the official story is that it was due to a later decision to change the alignment of the Forgan Smith building.
Although the munificence of both the Maynes provided the land and they were guests of honour at the ceremony, their name does not appear among the many others on the foundation stone. The purist James may not have minded the omission, for the geologists on the staff at that time (among whom were Harrison Bryan’s father and Dr Fred Whitehouse) did not approve of that first stone of what they hoped would be noble buildings. Harrison Bryan recalls, ‘‘it is an ersatz object produced by a company called Benedict Stone in which the Senate member, Archbishop Duhig, was known to have a considerable holding.’’
In his last years James was unable to walk the distance to St Lucia to enjoy the peace or dream of the University buildings which would rise there. He may have been too disheartened to care. The Government, burdened with loans, a deep economic depression, and a huge unemployed workforce, tightened its purse. The diehard opponents of St Lucia raised the site issue again. But theirs was a swan song. In March 1938, a year after the celebratory stone-laying, work began. James was now a very ill man, rarely leaving his room. He may never have seen the first fruits of his and Mary Emelia’s generosity as the blocks of delicately coloured sandstone were shaped to form the first building. He would, however, have been kept informed of progress by Fred Whitehouse.
One warm January day, two weeks before he died, James asked to be taken to Sandgate so that he could have a last look at the beach resort where he had run barefoot as a boy. In his long troubled life that had been a rare and short time when he had been carefree and happy. They had great difficulty getting him into the car, but he insisted. He died on 31 January 1939.
As James had feared, a severely demented Mary Emelia survived him, but the two had made their plans as watertight as they could. Responsible to the end, he had been determined to leave the name of Mayne in high regard with the community. In December 1937 he had ensured they made identical wills, leaving everything to the University. James left £113,334 gross to the Medical School. When his sister died on 12 August 1940, her estate, which included their home ‘‘Moorlands’’ and a collection of costly furniture and family treasures, brought their joint benefit to the Medical Faculty to almost £200,000. The money was for equipment, to establish and maintain chairs of medicine and surgery, to endow medical research, and grant scholarships within the medical school.
Much of their income-bearing estate lay in city and Arcade, which remains in the estate, continues to return an income. The enormous cedar dining-room suite at ‘‘Moorlands’’ became the Senate table and chairs, and the Steinway grand piano was used by the music students. Some furniture was later used in the Chancellor’s robing room; the rest found its way into the offices of senior staff, most of whom appreciated their decorative treasures. Today, very little, if any of it, survives on campus. Similarly, ‘‘Moorlands’’ is no longer a University property. The Senate could find no use for it and overruled James’ and Mary Emelia’s expressed wish that it should remain part of the University. It was sold in 1944.
However, James would have approved the eventual use of his home and gardens as part of Wesley Hospital, serving the people. Yet he and his sister had been denied the intention behind that gift. Like the other benefactions, they hoped it would stand as a permanent reminder to the community that despite malicious gossip, all but two of the Mayne family were worthy, decent people. With the exception of Rosanna’s share of her father’s will, the entire Mayne fortune, held together and expanded by their mother, Mary, then further expanded by her four youngest children, passed to the University of Queensland.
In the 1860s, had anyone asked the wealthy businessman Patrick Mayne what he had inherited, he would have proudly answered, ‘‘Nothing. I’m a self-made man, my children will be the inheritors.’’ They were, in every sense of the word. His genetic inheritance, potent and insidious, provided a legacy for his children which wrecked their lives mentally, morally and socially. No law exacted retribution from the criminals affected by that wilful gene, so freely handed on. That price was paid by the three youngest and innocent members of the family, persecuted by a vengeful public. Their memory remains besmirched today, almost sixty years after the death of the last member of the family. It is time their name was removed from the mire and given the place of honour which they deserve.
Epilogue
How strange is life? Patrick Mayne, one of Brisbane’s first aldermen and a confessed murderer, is commemorated by Mayne Road and Mayne Junction, both at Mayne between the eastern suburbs of Bowen Hills and Albion. Just beyond Lang Park, on the western side of the city, two more streets carry his name, and a nearby street that of his unstable eldest son. They are Mayneview Street, Patrick Street and Isaac Street, all lying between Given Terrace and Milton Road, where Patrick had one of his many stock-holding yards and where his herdsman, Jacob Schelling, came to an untimely end. Both father and son are also remembered by superb stained-glass windows in St Stephen’s Cathedral.
Although the last two innocent members of the Mayne family died over fifty years ago and gave their large fortune to benefit the people of Queensland, where were their names honoured? Until recently the slate was almost blank.
Until now their name has never been cleared. Countless false, lurid stories of male rape and murder still exist. So common is the story of the Maynes’ bizarre past that in 1975 the Taringa-based Popular Theatre Group sought details of the gory rumours in order to re-enact them as history. There is no evidence that the exercise ever got off the ground.
Over the years the force of the Maynes’ unsavoury reputation appeared to pose a difficulty for the University of Queensland in the matter of adequately honouring them. In recent times it has been further exacerbated. There is a widespread current story that James made his fortune as Brisbane’s chief abortionist. This, too, is a fabrication. Abortion is unlikely to have been much of a money-making practice in 1904, when James handed his resignation to the Hospital Board, nor would it in the early 1900s have made the sort of money the Maynes enjoyed. This story completely ignores the fact that as Resident Medical Officer and as Hospital Superintendent, James Mayne gave every penny of his salary to benefit the Brisbane General Hospital. In 1904 the responsible, humane James ceased to practise because he feared that if the family’s genetic mental instability should manifest itself in him, he might harm someone. The hope that one day he might, with confidence, resume his career led him to keep current his medical registration. That day did not come; he never again used his professional skills.
Archbishop Duhig, who failed to gain a share of the fortune for the Church, nevertheless acknowledged the genuine, benign man who was the real James Mayne. In delivering the panegyric at St Stephen’s Cathedral on 2 February 1939, he spoke of James as a noble and unselfish citizen who had given his professional services without monetary fee or reward, and whom he, personally, had known to perform many unpublished acts of kindness and generosity. On that occasion Mary Emelia, touched by Duhig’s unexpected warmth, rewarded the Archbishop with £100.
It must never be forgotten that the Mayne gifts to the University of Queensland came from two people; James provided two-thirds and Mary Emelia one-third of the total. She was a very willing partner in the drawing-up of the identical wills. Nevertheless, she was not the initiator. It was James who conceived the idea of benefiting the people through the University. He did all the planning and with her agreement made the execution of his plan sufficiently watertight so that their estates still provide great annual wealth for the Medical School. Mary Emelia’s diminished intellect and lack of interaction with the community made her easily forgotten as a benefactor—but James Mayne, the man whom the public knew and who continually spread largess, is almost equally neglected.
At the time of James’ death, when his bequests were m
ade known, the Chancellor of the University, Sir James Blair, stated that James was the University’s best friend. A spokesman for the University said: ‘‘The Senate will consider naming an outstanding section of the new university buildings after Dr Mayne’’ and added that they may place a life-sized portrait on the wall facing the entrance to the Great Hall, where all meetings would be held. Another stated: ‘‘James’ monument is the University buildings at St Lucia.’’
These fine eulogic words were rapidly forgotten by all but two loyal friends, Dr Fred Whitehouse and William Jolly. During the following years both men voiced their anger and disappointment at the University’s continued lack of recognition of the Maynes. There was nothing at the University to connect the name with the gift. The protests of the ageing William Jolly, no longer in politics, were of little avail. In 1954 Dr E.S. Meyers requested that recognition be given to the Maynes, and in 1959 the long-time Mayor of Brisbane, Sir John Chandler, added his public protest about the failure to honour them. University senators remained deaf.
In February 1969, thirty years after James’ death, Dr Fred Whitehouse put angry pen to paper. He wrote to Convocation requesting that ‘‘the Senate of the University be asked to establish, within its precincts at St Lucia, a fitting memorial to the late Dr J. O’Neil Mayne and Miss Mayne’’. In his long, hard-hitting letter he also reminded the Senate that after the war the Committee of the Boat Club had decided to call the new boatshed the Mayne Boat Shed. When the Senate erected the new shed, without any reference to the Boat Club it was named the ‘‘Eric Freeman’’. Similarly, the Council of the Men Graduates Association of the University had proposed that some ornamental gates into the University grounds be erected as a memorial to Dr and Miss Mayne. This, too, was never done.