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 soldiers in hospitals.
For perhaps the first time, Cynthia had the opportunity to make friends outside her family circle. She learnt that her mother’s taste, like the family’s insistence on etiquette, belonged to a world before the Great War. On her first night in the dormitory, she found that her exquisite nightdress with its high collar was out-of-date; most of the girls wore pyjamas to bed.
In the post-war years, presiding over a much larger establishment, Miss Morres clung to the idea of her school’s traditions:
… foremost in the mind of us all is the necessity of putting duty and service to others before our own personal interests … A Hermitage girl is known by her good manners, her courtesy, her consideration and respect.
A Hermitage girl’s goal in society was to become
the womanly woman who makes her first thought the happiness of the home, who carries with her an atmosphere of refinement in speech and dress and who realizes that what the woman is the nation is.1
It is not hard to imagine Cynthia satirising her headmistress, enchanting her friends and scandalising the rest by her mimicry.
Eager to learn of life beyond the secluded privacy of Mount Pleasant and the confinement of boarding school, Cynthia rebelled against the strict conformity expected of her. It was summed up on the playing fields in a militaristic sporting spirit. Earlier in the century, Elsie Morres had been eager to introduce physical education for girls, making local history when she introduced bloomers for gymnastics in 1906.2 In the 1920s, Protestant girls’ schools grew a ‘mania’ for competitive games, especially hockey and baseball.3
Cynthia only played as a substitute at baseball. She would not join the Bible class, excel in the schoolroom and become Dux of the school like Margaret, or embrace its traditions, the sporting spirit and join the uniformed Girl Guides marching their colours like Barbara. Cynthia would hold no office in the school where her sisters had been Head Prefects. The only teaching she seems to have enjoyed came from her Elocution teacher, Carrie Haese, who shared her love of English