in 1837; and also took an “ad eundem” (the same degree) from Oxford University in 1848. His MA from Oxford was awarded in recognition of a series of lectures he delivered under the auspices of the historian James Anthony Froude. He then left academia and returned to London to continue as a barrister at the Central Criminal Court. In 1853 the Duke of Newcastle appointed him Advocate-General of Western Australia. He arrived in Perth in January 1854 and held this posting for five years. Next he was Chief Justice for a year, but resigned after a dispute with the Governor Sir Arthur Kennedy in 1859, and then moved to Melbourne to resume his career as a barrister. This proved disastrous. Local barristers, such as Charles James Dawson, Richard Davies Ireland, Archibald Michie and Butler Cole Aspinall were very able, much more practical than Birnie, and made mincemeat of him in the courtroom. A standing joke amongst them was that Birnie was the caricature, as distinct from character, who by ridiculously quoting Shakespeare and Scott to juries, confused rather than convinced, and bewildered rather than befriended. These jibes made him a laughing stock with solicitors as well. Briefs became less frequent, and he was soon obliged to prosecute for the Crown, in faraway places, where others would not go, such as Sandhurst (now Bendigo) in 1861 and Portland in 1862. Eventually he fled this succession of failures by quitting the law. His great passion had always been the dissemination of knowledge and he decided to indulge himself by becoming a public speaker on historical and literary subjects. In no time he was keenly sought after to deliver lectures in most of the principal towns of Victoria. But, more often than not, he did this gratis to raise money for charities, or for churches and schools, and his lot became a non-ending struggle to eke out a living by writing literary reviews and theatre critiques. One such review - that of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s “Ashtaroth” in the “Colonial Monthly” of November 1867 - merits special attention. It so moved Gordon that he commented, “Birnie has found out beauties of which I myself was unaware.” It proved the start of a close friendship between the two that ended tragically when the unfortunate poet killed himself in 1870. By this time Birnie had his own problems and seemed destined for the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum. Then, at the eleventh hour, a reprieve! He got an article published in the “Australasian” which totally changed his life. He was paid two pounds and given a regular contract for a series of twice-weekly miscellaneous essays, which created such a continuous interest amongst his readership as to sustain the author for the last eighteen years of his life. It was during this period that I shared digs with him. I loved him. He was a friend of liberty, a promoter of culture, and a strong supporter of increased leisure time for the working classes. He described himself as a very liberal Anglican who strongly opposed religious fanaticism. A staunch anti-Sabbatarian he argued strongly, both in the press and from the platform, for opening the Library and the Picture Gallery on a Sunday. Although in his eighty-first year, the circumstances of his death were particularly sad, given his great intellect. He suffered an acute dementia syndrome, which fortunately progressed rapidly to death in two quick months. The journalist Frank Myers described it as follows. “He died on top first, poor Birnie, and they took him out to Yarra Bend (the mental asylum) to get ready for the undertakers”. I think I was more sympathetic.
The many friends of Mr. Richard Birnie, essayist and barrister-at-law, will learn with regret that the severest calamity which can befall a human being has overtaken him on the verge of eighty years of age. His cultivated intellect has given way. As in the case of Swift, the venerable tree has begun to wither at the summit. Ten days ago he complained to the writer, who casually met him in Collins Street, that he felt quite at a loss for a subject for his next essay in the Australasian. Soon afterwards it was painfully apparent that this was the premonition of disorder of the brain. Only his wonderful memory, so capacious and retentive, seemed to be still struggling against eclipse; and freely asserting itself by quotations from favourite authors and references to familiar persons. But it bore a pathetic resemblance to the last flutter of life in the pulse of poor Le Fevre, in that beautiful episode by Sterne; and like him, I ask, “Shall I go on” - but with the same answer “No!”
My biographer tells me that J. F. Archibald is best remembered today as founding the “Bulletin” magazine, and as the benefactor who bequeathed one tenth of his assets to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in order to establish the Archibald Prize. This perpetual annual award was donated for “the best portrait preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics”. JF was born at Kildare, near Geelong, but grew up in Warrnambool.
His father, Joseph Archibald, was a sergeant of police, who lost his wife in childbirth before JF was five years old and then went to work as a mounted policeman on the goldfields. JF and his two surviving younger siblings remained in the family home in Warrnambool in the care of their grandmother and a spinster aunt.
As a small boy JF attended the local Roman Catholic and National Schools. But Joseph Archibald, in 1868, finding his son’s education somewhat deficient in Latin, had him transferred to Henry Kemmis’ new Grammar School, which prepared more privileged boys for university entrance or a career in commerce. JF quit school in 1870 to be apprenticed to “Fairfax and Laurie”, the printers and lessees of the Warrnambool Examiner, and two years later, when that firm founded the Warrnambool Standard, he moved on with them. It was after a couple of years at the Standard that J.F. first considered journalism as a permanent career and he decided to try his luck out in the big city. So in January 1875, JF, young and confident, went to Melbourne, in the hope of one day becoming the editor of the Argus, his favourite newspaper. To his dismay his services weren’t wanted there. After weeks of searching, and despite his dual skills of reporter and compositor, the best he could find was a temporary position as an extra hand in the composing room of the Evening Herald. The Editor, Sam Winter, tried to encourage him with some casual police-court reporting, but JF found this boring and transferred in quick succession to the Echo and then to the Daily Telegraph, hoping to find more interesting work. He liked Howard Willoughby, the Editor of the Telegraph, but his new job as a court reporter and parliamentary roundsman was no less tedious. Worse now he resented being overworked, up to seventeen hours a day, and underpaid. By April 1876 JF found himself totally disillusioned with newspapers and took a job as a clerk with the Victorian Education Department instead. This lasted two years until he was dismissed in a staff cutback. Initially he had lodged with a Breton couple, the Vengeons, who ran a boarding house in Emerald Hill, but later moved to our place in Princes Street, Fitzroy. In 1878 he went to Maryborough in Queensland to work as a clerk for an engineering firm. That too wasn’t to his liking. By 1879 he was in Sydney on the staff of the Evening News where he met John Haynes with whom he founded “The Bulletin” in January 1880.
Birnie gave JF and myself a really good time. His column “The Essayist” had lifted him out of the doldrums and made him one of Melbourne’s best-known literary figures. An eccentric, his courtly manners even then were described as belonging to an English gentleman of a former age. Slightly lame with a wicked eye, a ruddy complexion, and witty conversation, he was genial and keenly intelligent. JF was staggered to hear us converse in English, French and German and then branch off into Hebrew as well. Birnie told us about his wife Ellen who had died barren in 1858. She had been an actress of whom his family had disapproved and he now reluctantly admitted that she was difficult to live with. He would proudly boast that “she had the highest pitched voice of any English soprano” and then laughingly joke that she used it for screaming more than singing. Birnie was truly remarkable, a veritable walking encyclopaedia of literature, possessed of a prodigious memory. He could recite by heart for hours at a time, Scott, Byron, Shelley or anything else he had read. His mind was a plethora of anecdotes and stories. He coped well with old age. I remember a letter he showed me that he wrote to Georgiana McCrae in 1877. “To the infirmities of age or any other cause I plead not guilty. Head, stomach, liver, biceps and instep are in fettle to control a whiskey-toddy or digest a haggis, and to certainly still confront life’s troubles and cads, with spirits that brave adversity.” Perhaps we helped keep him young. When we three dined out together he would frequently clean us out of money by drinking us under the table. The next morning we were hung over but he would rise totally sober at dawn and lecture us on the evils of drink. Then he would don his gloves, light his pipe (a beautifully coloured cutty of Barrett’s twist) and leave for the Treasury Gardens with a volume of Catullus’ poems in his pocket.
Marcus