Alfred Deakin's Childhood: Books, a Boy and his Mother

Abstract

Alfred Deakin experienced himself as divided between an inner and outer self. He remembered himself as an unhappy child who sought solace in books and fantasy, creating an inner chamber of day-dreaming and escape. Historians have puzzled over this fruitlessly but on the basis of psychoanalytic theory and new evidence about his mother Sarah I argue that one possible source of Deakin's complex psychology is his mother's depression in the early years of her migration when Deakin was a young child. Also formative for Deakin was his parents' active participation in mid-Victorian literary culture and their unusually strong commitment to their children's education.

Notes

^*For research on the family history of Sarah Bill, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Nicola Thomas of the Gwent Family History Society.

¹Red bound book, 6 and 29 May 1910, Alfred Deakin Papers, 1540/3/281, National Library of Australia (NLA), Canberra. Also in Autobiographical Notes, 1540/3/300. This is a typewritten compilation of extracts from Deakin's private notebooks and journals made after his death by Ivy and Herbert Brookes. It is unpaginated though extracts are dated.

²Autobiographical Notes, 4 and 5 November 1910, 1540/3/300.

³Clue 240, 24 May 1888, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

⁴Clue 240, Clue 310, 8 January 1889, Deakin Papers.

⁵‘The boke of praer and praes’, 24 February 1904, Deakin Papers, 1540/5/1014.

⁶Walter Murdoch, Alfred Deakin: A Sketch (London: Constable & Co, 1923), v.

⁷John La Nauze, Alfred Deakin: A Biography, 2 vols (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1965), 79.

⁸John La Nauze, Alfred Deakin: A Biography, 2 vols (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1965), 77.

⁹John Rickard, A Family Romance: The Deakins at Home (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996).

¹⁰Al Gabay, The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2.

¹¹Judith Brett, ‘The Tasks of Political Biography’ in Political Lives, ed. J. Brett (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997).

¹⁴‘Books and a Boy.’

¹²‘Books and a Boy’, Deakin Papers, 1540/4/112-403.

¹³Autobiographical Notes, 3 September 1910, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

¹⁵Autobiographical Notes, 6 January 1908, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

¹⁶Louis James, The Victorian Novel (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 4–7.

¹⁷George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (New York: Collier Books edition, 1962), 339.

¹⁸James, 4.

¹⁹‘Books and a Boy.’

²⁰Autobiographical Notes, 5 November 1910, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

²¹Autobiographical Notes, 4 am, 6 May 1911, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

²³Clue 143, 21 September 1886, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/302.

²²Autobiographical Notes, 27 July 1884, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/303.

²⁴Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock Books, 1971).

²⁵Autobiographical Notes, 6 November1910, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300.

²⁶‘Books and a Boy’.

²⁷Eric Richards, Britannia's Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (London: Hambeldon and London, 2004), 149–52.

²⁸Rickard, 4.

²⁹Autobiographical Notes, 5 June 1910, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300.

³⁰Parish register for St Nicholas, Grosmont, Monmouthshire, Marriages 1837–1900, transcribed by David Woolven, 24 March 1991. Copy held at Parish and supplied by Vicar Jean Prosser, 23 June 2010.

³¹Register of Deaths in the District of South Yarra, 21 December 1892, no. 2466, Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Melbourne, Victoria.

³²James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration, 1830–1914 (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 31.

³³Richards, 296.

³⁴Rickard, 5.

³⁵Sands and McDougall Melbourne Directories, 1854–1860. Tanner's Melbourne Directory for 1859 (Melbourne: John Tanner, 1859).

³⁶Cutten History Committee of the Fitzroy History Society, Fitzroy: Melbourne's First Suburb (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1989).

³⁷Marcus Clarke, ‘What to do with our Boys’, Australasian 5 March 1870. Reprinted in A Colonial City, High and Low Life: Selected Journalism of Marcus Clarke, edited by L. T. Hergenhan (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1972), 73.

³⁸Bob Bessant, Schooling in the Colony and State of Victoria (Melbourne: La Trobe Centre for Comparative Studies in Education, 1983), 17.

³⁹Rickard, 14–15.

⁴⁰Parents of AD by Katie Deakin, Deakin Papers 1540/19/367.

⁴¹My recollections of my only brother, Catherine Deakin Papers, 4913/1, NLA, Canberra.

⁴²Autobiographical Notes, 5 June 1910, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300.

⁴³Michael Cannon, Melbourne After the Gold Rush (Melbourne: Loch Haven Books, 1993), 402–8; Report Central Board of Health (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1860).

⁴⁴David Lewis Bill, Deaths of the District of Collingwood, 1859, registration number 183, Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Melbourne, Victoria. The certifying doctor was Thomas Embling who was at that time in private practice in Gore Street.

⁴⁵Portrait of his mother, written on the day of her death, 3/6/1908, The Medley, 32–5, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300. Also in La Nauze, 10–3.

⁴⁶Peter McDonald, Lado Ruzicka and Patricia Pine, ‘Marriage, Fertility and Mortality’ in Australians: Historical Statistics, ed. Wray Vamplew (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, 1987), 55, This source gives the live birth rates for women born in Australia born between1841–46 who are younger than Sarah Deakin and I have been unable to find an earlier source. I am thus using this as indicative of fertility rates in the 1850s. The often commented-on drop in fertility which ushered in the smaller families of the twentieth century did not occur till much later in the nineteenth century.

⁴⁷Autobiographical Notes, 5 June 1910, Deakin Papers, 1540/3/300.

⁴⁹Clue XV, 4/11/1910; Clue XXXIV 14/2/1913, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300. The poem was published in 1849 and was Queen Victoria's favourite, giving her solace after the death of Prince Albert.

⁴⁸Winnicott, Playing, 130–9.

⁵⁰For nineteenth century immigrants’ letters see David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); for two accounts of more recent experiences of migration see A. James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson, Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), and M. L. Kovacs and A. J. Cropley, Immigrants and Society: Alienation and Assimilation (Sydney: McGraw Hill, 1975).

⁵¹The photo is in the Alfred Deakin papers, 1540/19/585, Picture Portrait Negative 00003042, National Library of Australia.

⁵²La Nauze, 9.

⁵³Portrait of his mother, written on the day of her death, 3/6/1908, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300.

⁵⁴Portrait of his mother, written on the day of her death, 3/6/1908, Deakin Papers 1540/3/300.

⁵⁵The parents of AD by Catherine Deakin, Deakin Papers 1540/17/369.

⁵⁶Rickard, 20.

⁵⁷AD-CD, 30/4/87, Deakin Papers 1540/19/54,

⁵⁸La Nauze, 4; Murdoch, 4.

⁵⁹Inscriptions on the tombstones of Richard and Ann Bill, and of William and Sarah Bill are given in Joseph Bradney, A History of Monmouthshire from the Coming of the Normans into Wales down to the Present Time. vol. 1 (London: Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1907), 312–13. Richard Bill died 1 March 1812 and his wife Ann in 1824 aged 87. William Bill died 11 September 1852 aged 69 and his wife Sarah on 26 April 1855 aged 60.

⁶⁰ The New Monthly Magazine, 1 August 1815: 82. His name is spelt ‘Bills’.

⁶¹Baptism number 137, Register of Baptisms, 1813–1899, Parish Records, St Teilo's Larnarth, Gwent County Records Office, Cwmbran, Wales.

⁶²Parish Meeting 10 October 1821, Larnarth [sic] Parish Account Book. Note that in the nineteenth century many records spell the name of the village as Larnarth. I have preserved this spelling where appropriate.

⁶³Overseers’ Accounts, Larnarth Parish Account Book, Gwent County Records office. William Bill was overseer in 1817–18, 1828–29 and deputy overseer in 1824–5. He is last mentioned in the parish accounts in 1833. The surmise that it is William's hand is based on comparison of the handwriting with a signature of attendance at a parish meeting, on the fact that the accounts of different overseers are in different hands, and on the small size of the parish, which would make it less likely that there was a scribe available.

⁶⁴Phillip Morgan, A Grosmont Miscellany: Some Notes on its Social History (Great Malvern: Capella Archive, 2008), 11.

⁶⁵Their burials are recorded as those of out of county strays from the parish of Kendle Church just across the border in Herefordshire. Burials 443 and 455, Parish register for St Teilo, Llanarth, Monmouthshire, Burials 1813–1895. Transcribed by David Woolven, Copy in Gwent County Records Office.

⁶⁶1841 Welsh Census, HO 107/748/5. The family is mistakenly spelt ‘Bills’.

⁶⁷Two notebooks. Catherine Deakin Papers, 4913, folders 9 and 10.

⁶⁸Linda H. Peterson, ‘Domestic and Idyllic’ in R. Cronin, A. Chapman and A. Harrison, A Companion to Victorian Poetry (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 42–58.

⁶⁹Cited in Richard Broome, The Victorians: Arriving (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon, 1984), xii.

⁷⁰Leon and Rebecca Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 14.

⁷¹Richards, 296.

⁷²Richards, 20–1

⁷³Catherine Deakin Papers, NLA 4913/2/11.

⁷⁴See note 56.