The Manliness of Radical Sentiment: The Case of George Napier Birks

Abstract

The life of Adelaide pharmacist, George Napier Birks, changed dramatically between 1884 and 1894. In the mid-1880s, he was a hypochondriac, and a highly religious retail-businessman who embodied mid-Victorian manliness. By 1894, he was roughing it as a member of William Lane's New Australia colony in Paraguay. In this article I explore the shifts in Birks’ gender identity that made this transformation possible. I show that he came to value a new range of feelings as a result of his involvement in Adelaide's radical circles—especially righteous passion and strong affection—and that this changed his understanding of himself as man. I also show that Birks’ relationship with his feminist wife Helen played a crucial role in his decision to go to Paraguay, as did his own tentative attempts to embrace feminist principles. Through a detailed discussion of George Napier and Helen Birks’ lives, my aim is to provide insights into the relationship between radical manliness and first-wave feminism in Adelaide. More broadly, my aim is to reconsider prevailing views about the relationship between Australian manliness and sentimentality. Birks provides us with an example of Australian manliness that was not based on toughness and anti-sentimentality. His case suggests that affection and sentiment were indeed more important to turn-of-the-twentieth century Australian men—and to understandings of manliness in this period—than usually believed.

Notes

¹George Napier Birks to Reverend W. Wilson, 26 September 1889, Birks Family Papers, ML MSS 2732, Letterbook 1888–91, 146, Mitchell Library, Sydney (all references to Birks’ Letterbooks in the following are from the Birks Family Papers).

²G.N. Birks to John Napier, 16 October 1880, Letterbook 1880–84, 51. On mid-Victorian Evangelical manliness, see Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1750–1850, rev. ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), Chapters 3, 4, 6 and 7; John Tosh, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); David Alderson, Mansex Fine: Religion, Manliness and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 15–45; and J.A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds, Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), Chapters 2, 3, and 11.

³Birks to Charles Birks, 21 September 1884, Letterbook 1884–85, 51.

⁴Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 16–18.

⁵Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 100–09; Verity Burgmann, ‘In Our Time’: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885–1905 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 147–49; Susan Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women: A Biography of Catherine Helen Spence (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1985), 151–53; Melissa Bellanta, ‘Feminism, Mateship and the Brotherhood of Man in 1890s Adelaide’, History Australia, 5.1 (April 2008): 7.1–7.14.

⁶On New Australia's appeal to Forward Movement members such as the Sibbalds, W.H. Pope, and Joe Gilmore, see: Gavin Souter, A Peculiar People: William Lane's Australian Utopians in Paraguay (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1991), 27–28. On Murtho, see Melissa Bellanta, ‘An Ideal Synthesis: Agrarianism and the Utopian Imagination in Australia, 1884–1900’ (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2005, 174–209; Scates, A New Australia, 133–35; Elsie Birks Papers, D2681(L), Mortlock Library, Adelaide.

⁷Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London: Virago, 1992), 9; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 20–22.

⁸Since an array of terminology exists in this commentary, it is necessary to note my definitions of key terms here. I use the term ‘manhood’ to refer generically to understandings of what it meant to be a man—whatever they happen to be at any given place or time. I use the terms ‘manliness’ and ‘masculinity’ in a more specifically historical way. ‘Manliness’ refers to a code of conduct current in the Victorian era. ‘Masculinity’ refers to a set of ideas that emerged at the turn of the century, which placed more emphasis on men's lifestyle, physique, and biological urges. For a similar distinction, see Marilyn Lake, ‘Translating Needs into Rights: The Discursive Imperative of the Australian White Man, 1901–30’, in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh, eds, Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 199–219.

⁹Birks Family Tree, Helen Chartier Papers, PRG 263/8, Mortlock Library; George Vause Birks, Diary, 9 August–7 December 1893, D 4889(L), Mortlock Library.

¹⁰Martin Woods, ‘Birks, Rosetta Jane (1856–1911)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (hereafter ADB) (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), supp. vol., 31–33; Birks to Emily Crooks, 17 October 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 451.

¹¹Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 25–27.

¹²Woods, ‘Birks’; Birks to Emily Crooks, 17 October 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 451.

¹³S. Cockburn and Suzanne Edgar, ‘Thomas, William Kyffin (1821–1878)’, ADB, vol. 6, 263–64.

¹⁴Tosh, A Man's Place, 1–8; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 148–69.

¹⁵Birks to Mrs Gamble, 7 February 1880, Letterbook 1880–84, 8; Birks to Emily Crooks, 7 December 1886, Letterbook 1886–88, 78; Birks to Charles Birks, 21 September 1884, Letterbook 1880–84, 50–51.

¹⁶Birks Family Tree; Greg McCarthy and Margaret Phillips, ‘Crooks, Alexander (1847–1943)’, ADB, supp. vol., 87–88; Souter, A Peculiar People, 134.

¹⁷Woods, ‘Birks’, 31–33; Birks to Emily Crooks, 17 October 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 451; Birks to John Napier, 24 January 1880, Letterbook 1880–84, 1; Birks to John Napier, 23 June 1885, Letterbook 1885–86, 8.

¹⁸Birks to John Napier, 8 December 1883, Letterbook 1880–84, 218; George Frederick Birks to John, 1 July 1939, 4, Birks Family Papers.

¹⁹Birks to Charles Birks, 21 September 1884, Letterbook 1880–84, 50–51; Birks to A. Dungey, 3 November 1888, Letterbook 1886–88, 489; Birks to Charles Birks, 18 July 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 301.

²⁰Scates, A New Australia, 12–18; Melissa Bellanta, ‘Transcending Class? Australia's Single Taxers in the Early 1890s’, Labour History 92 (2007): 17–30.

²¹Birks to Emily Crooks, 15 November 1886, Letterbook 1886–88, 52.

²²Birks to Emily Crooks, 24 March 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 163.

²³Birks to Emily Crooks, 14 October 1888, Letterbook 1886–88, 480; Birks to John Napier, 7 January 1882, Letterbook 1880–84, 138.

²⁴Birks to Richard Charles, 25 September 1889; Birks to Reverend W. Wilson, 26 September 1889, Letterbook 1888–91, 145–46.

²⁵R.B. Walker, ‘Gilmore, Hugh (1842–1891)’, ADB, vol. 4, 253–53; Scates, A New Australia, 106–08. Once Gilmore died, the central figures of the Forward Movement were J. Medway Day and Catherine Helen Spence: Margaret Allen, ‘Day, John Medway (1838–1905)’, ADB, supp. vol., 97; Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues, 151–53.

²⁶Birks to Henry George, 15 February 1891, Letterbook 1888–91, 403–04.

²⁷Birks to Emily Crooks, 24 March 1893, Letterbook 1891–99, 170; Birks to R. Lewis, 22 September 1892, Letterbook 1891–94, 115.

²⁸Birks to J. Pool, 14 July 1890, Letterbook 1888–91, 301; Birks to Richard Charles, 11 September 1890, Letterbook 1888–91, 333.

²⁹Tosh, A Man's Place, 170–94; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 192–214.

³⁰Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 22.

³¹Stephen Garton, ‘The Scales of Suffering: Love, Death and Victorian Masculinity’, Social History 27 (2002): 53–54.

³²Martin Crotty, Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870–1920 (Melbourne; Melbourne University Press, 2001), Chapters 5 and 7; Robert Dixon, Writing the Colonial Adventure: Gender, Race and Empire in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

³³Marilyn Lake, ‘Fellow Feeling: A Transnational Perspective on Conceptions of Civil Society and Citizenship in “White Men's Countries”, 1890–1910’, in Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde, eds, Civil Society, Public Space and Gender Justice: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008); Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought, 1890–1960 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984).

³⁴Stephen Yeo, ‘A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1880–1896’, History Workshop 4 (1977), 5–56; Scates, A New Australia, 29, 176.

³⁵Birks to William Lane, undated, Letterbook 1891–94, 183.

³⁶Helen Birks to Fred Birks, 21 June 1894, Chartier Papers, PRG 263/2.

³⁷Birks to Richard Charles, 11 September 1890 and 30 January 1891; Birks to Henry George, 5 May 1891, Letterbook 1888–91, 333, 39, 437.

³⁸Helen Jones, In Her Own Name: Women in South Australian History (Netley, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 1986), 25–26, 86.

³⁹Birks to Charles Birks, 18 July 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 301.

⁴⁰Birks to John Napier Birks, 29 July 1890, Letterbook 1888–91, 311; Birks to Miss Walker, 30 Sept 1893, and to Elizabeth Higgs, 24 April 1893, both Letterbook 1891–94, 248, 178.

⁴¹Birks to Higgs, ibid.

⁴²Susan Magarey, Passions of the First-Wave Feminists (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001), 98–115.

⁴³Alison MacKinnon and Carol Bacchi, ‘Sex, Resistance and Power: Sex Reform in South Australia c. 1905’, Australian Historical Studies 23, no. 90 (1988): 62–63.

⁴⁴Michael S. Kimmel, ‘The Contemporary “Crisis” of Masculinity’, in Harry Brod, ed., The Making of Masculinities (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 143; Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, 9; Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities, 103–05.

⁴⁵Angela V. John and Claire Eustace, eds, The Men's Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women's Suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920 (London: Routledge, 1997), (Tosh's chapter in this work is reprinted in his Manliness and Masculinities, 103–25); Eric Dwyce Taylor, ‘Chivalrous Men and Voting Women: The Role of Men and the Language of Masculinity in the 1911 California Woman Suffrage Campaign’, in Doris W. Ewing and Steven P. Schacht, eds, Feminism and Men: Reconstructing Gender Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 297–322. In Australia, see Patricia Grimshaw, ‘The “Equals and Comrades of Men”? Tocsin and the “Woman Question”’, in Susan Magarey, Sue Rowley and Susan Sheridan, eds, Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993): 100–13; Scates, A New Australia, 167–200.

⁴⁶For an American attempt to investigate the little-explored relationship between manhood and sentiment, see Mary Chapman and Glenn Hendler, eds, Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); cf. n. 33 above.

⁴⁷Helen Birks letters, Chartier Papers, PRG 263/2.

⁴⁸Birks to Mrs Gamble, 26 June 1885, Letterbook 1885–86, 12; Birks to Aunt Eason, 21 December 1890, Letterbook 1888–90, 382.

⁴⁹Tosh, A Man's Place, 60.

⁵⁰Birks to Rosie Birks, 6 September 1885, and to Emily Crooks, 25 July 1886, Letterbook 1885–86, 54, 312; Birks to Emily Crooks, 30 September 1888, Letterbook 1888–90, 471.

⁵¹Jones, In Her Own Name, 99.

⁵²Birks to W.J. Binney, 24 July 1892, Letterbook 1891–94, 87–88; Birks to R. Lewis, 24 September 1892, Letterbook 1891–94, 114; Anne Sibbald to Helen Birks, 26 April 1894, Chartier Papers.

⁵³Birks to Harry Taylor, 25 June 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 199–200, Allen, ‘Day’, 97.

⁵⁴Birks to William Lane, undated; and to Harry Taylor, 23 November 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 183, 280.

⁵⁵Birks to Lane, ibid.

⁵⁸Birks to Emily Crooks, 24 March 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 170.

⁵⁶Birks to Aunt Eason, 7 March 1892 and 20 February 1893; and to Mrs Gamble, 15 March 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 45, 154, 159.

⁵⁷Birks to Emily Crooks, 24 March 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 170.

⁵⁹Birks to Emily Crooks, 1 August 1893, and to Harry Taylor, 23 November 1893, Letterbook 1891–94, 219, 280.

⁶⁰Birks to Harry Taylor, ibid.; Birks to William Lane, undated, Letterbook 1891–94, 183.

⁶¹Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge: New York, 1995); Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imaging of Masculinity (Routledge: London, 1994); Jock Phillips, A Man's Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male. A History (Auckland: Penguin, 1987), 81–130.

⁶²Marilyn Lake, ‘Socialism and Manhood: The Case of William Lane’, Labour History 50 (1986): 54–62; cf. Scates’ critique of this argument: Bruce Scates, ‘Socialism, Feminism and the Case of William Lane: A Reply to Marilyn Lake’, Labour History 59 (1990): 45–58.

⁶³Birks to William Lane, undated, and Birks to Emily Birks, 7 February 1894, Letterbook 1891–94, 183, 336.

⁶⁴See Birks’ letters in Helen Chartier Papers, PRG 263/1; Souter, A Peculiar People, 133–34, 137, 140.

⁶⁵Scates, A New Australia, 190–93; Souter, A Peculiar People, 137–38.

⁶⁶Souter, ibid., 133.

⁶⁷Eric Birks, ‘As a Boy in Paraguay’, Australian Quarterly 26 June 1935, 64.