The Sabbatical Report: On being a citizen of this world

The opportunity to spend 50 nights in London came at a crossroads in my life. I thought it would be a kind of swansong, wrapping up my English research to focus on something closer to home: Australian archives, Australian themes, more easily achievable. That’s not going to happen. 

 

An archive at the end of a gravel driveway in Canberra does not have the same energy as an archive reached by way of the cobblestones of  the ancient Clare Market, and a 150 yard journey passing through five hundred years of history in bricks and stone, and half a million people.

 It is more than 50 years since I left London as a child. I thought it was symbolic to spend one night of Sabbatical here for every year I have been away. It would lay to rest the inexplicable yearning, because whichever side of the world I am on, I ache for the other side. I would be satiated.

I have observed this call of home in others and regarded it as misplaced ethnocentrism, as though something in the old world is intrinsically superior to the new. These, I thought, are the emotions of ungrateful and unsettled people. I am deeply attached to the Australian landscape and the seasons of the place where I live, its ancient culture. But it has taken a lifetime to discover all this. But then, although I don’t believe I am ethnocentric, I love London more now, than ever before. Not satiated.

The Sabbatical Report: Crouching women, trousered sisters and fractured memories

I closed my research on the theatrical agent Richard Warner with his death in 1914, by writing an academic paper that was published, done and dusted. I could not find a marriage for his daughter Miriam, and the most informative records are only released when they are 100 years old. I had originally intended to write a book on all of the Warners and their interminable retinue of relations: actors, agents, comedians, musicians, operatic singers, and some marvellous identities called Principal Boys in the Music Halls - we might think of them as cross-dressers today - but that idea was shelved.

But the whole topic of Warner Brothers came alive again after I met up with cousins in London (2C3R is the term – some of them are 3C4R – indicating how far removed they are from the mainline of my own family tree). Miriam lived on! Family branches tend to research their own interesting character and preserve their legend, which helps the big picture. Meeting  much removed cousins has been such a joy for me....and most informative!