Cynthia Nolan. M. E. McGuire

her father’s disapproval, Cynthia refused to return home for that first Christmas without Lila. This family gathering would be even more terrible than usual. Henry complained to John:

      I would not say one word to bring her against her Wish, if she concludes Woden more important than keeping in contact with her Family there is no more to be said.13

      She was back in March 1929, writing to John on the family notepaper. He had sent her two books for which she was grateful. She also thanked him for his letter and his ‘commendable constraint’ in writing not to curse but amuse her. She returns the favour: ‘I’ve been indulging in archaeology, if that’s the word for it, and found something genuinely antique in the way of artists — Tom Roberts my dear, too tottery …’

      A second antique artist was her mother’s friend, Charles Ritchie, a key figure in the Launceston Art Club that Lila had supported. Ritchie had asked Cynthia to sit for him without the ‘beastly modern hat’ she was wearing. In his portrait she looks more like her round-faced mother.

      So of course I went and continue to go and wander round the studio as he gets to know me — then I sit down among the cushions and sofas and eiderdowns and drink tea and eat tomato sandwiches and look at books while he trots round gathering chalks and talking of Augustus John and Chelsea … and Will Dyson … all very educational … I bring him armfuls of zinnias feeling just too inspiring and Lady Hamiltonish — of course I thought how marvellous because I will be his genius and will go down to posterity the same way she did.

      Her self-mockery anticipates and parodies the role she would one day play in the life of Sidney Nolan. Ritchie had instructed her to gaze on life and think of Piccadilly. She leaned forward with ‘a sparkling expression and lips parted’. Instead she thought Ritchie painted her as if ‘comatose’. Nevertheless, it was a portrait she kept.

      Visiting her mother’s old friend in his studio in Launceston was welcome. Life at Mount Pleasant was utterly changed. Henry was determined to seize his chance for happiness with a widow, Kate von Bibra. According to Kate, she and Henry had fallen in love when young but were denied marriage because she was the baker’s daughter, Kate Dean. Henry indulged his new wife — unlike Lila, she could make what changes she liked to the family home.

      Of the siblings, only Barbara readily supported her father, and gladly welcomed Kate and her two grown sons. Cynthia had sympathy only for the younger one of the trio, Kenneth, who dreamed of things other than wheat and wool. He admired her determination to leave home and travel second-class, and alone, to Europe.

      Sources include the Hermitage, Old Girls’ Association, school archive and the school magazine Coo-ee 1920–6; Cynthia’s letters to John; Reed Papers, March 1927 to August 1930, State Library of Victoria; Henry’s letters to John c.1920s.

      1 Miss Morres, Annual Reports 1924 and 1926, in Coo-ee.

      2 Ivan Southall, The Story of the Hermitage, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1956, p. 17.

      3 Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Solid Bluestone Foundations, Australia: Pan MacMillan, 1983, p. 141.

      4 Louise Hanson Dyer Papers, MS 10770, State Library of Victoria.

      5 Reported in Coo-ee, 1926.

      6 Cynthia Reed, Daddy Sowed a Wind, Sydney and London: Shakespeare Head, 1947, p. 60.

      7 Henry to John, letter, 13 June 1926.

      8 Thackeray, W. M., ‘Preface’, Pendennis, England: Penguin, 1972.

      9 Fred Ward, cited by Judith O’Callagan, p. 6.

      10 Cynthia Nolan, Open Negative: An American Memoir, p. 203.

      11 Table Talk, 26 August 1926, p. 17ff.

      12 Cynthia to Sunday, letter, c.March 1934.

      13 Henry to John, letter, 13 June 1926.