Vale Lee Shrubb

Lee Shrubb, who was Executive Editor of Quadrant from 1977 to 1983, died on May 15, aged ninety-five. Her son Joshua writes:

Lee was born in Vienna, and came to Australia with her family as refugees from Nazism. They left on the night of the Anschluss, their train rolling out of Austria literally as the German tanks rolled in, and Lee had vivid memories of that night. She loved Australia, with its sunshine and freedom, space and security, and the welcome it gave her and many others from many different places and cultures. She retained a lifelong commitment to the values of cultural freedom and liberal democracy that Australia represented to her.

Through her years at Quadrant, Elwyn (Jack) Lynn was officially Editor, while Lee was Assistant Editor then Executive Editor, but Lee did most of the work. She sweet-talked existing, new and prospective contributors, pulled their submissions into shape, selected the contents of each issue (leaving room for poetry and fiction chosen by Vivian Smith) and supervised its production. In those pre-computer days that meant chivvying typesetters, dragging the proofreader from the pub, and finding an alternative when the printing house burned down.

Lee believed that as Australia’s leading intellectual magazine, Quadrant should present a variety of voices and topics.

She gave more prominence to the arts, a blossoming area of Australian life in those years, and to education, of which she understood the importance as a former teacher, as well as a wide range of articles on world affairs, politics, economics, history and society. One of her proudest achievements was the creation of the China issue in November 1978, Quadrant’s first single-topic special edition, which provided a wealth of insights about that communist state at a time when Maoism was widely romanticised across the Left. She introduced the idea of the Christmas double issue, and subscriptions grew under her editorship. Lee was also instrumental in producing the volume Quadrant: Twenty-Five Years, a collection of items from the magazine to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary.

Many years later, Quadrant also published some of Lee’s recollections of her childhood. This became the basis for her delightful memoir, Happy Lee Ever After. This charming, funny and moving book offers a remarkable record of life as a middle-class Jewish child in the Vienna of the 1930s, and of growing up as a refugee child in the Sydney of the 1940s, progressing from running wild around Bondi, through the stiff boarding school experience of Frensham to the lively intellectual circles of post-war Sydney University. It deserves to be more widely read:

Happy Lee Ever After: A Memoir
by Lee Shrubb
Amazon, 2019, 148 pages, $10.82
Purchase

Lee is remembered by her many friends for her wit, wisdom and warmth. She was a great conversationalist, clever, funny, engaging, thoughtful and always interested in other people. She had strong convictions and wasn’t afraid to express them, but she was always willing to engage with other points of view and maintained friendships across a wide range of people. Her energy and unquenchable optimism brightened every room she entered.

Lee’s husband Peter, who was a member of Quadrant’s board for many years and author of several novels and a book of short stories, died in 2018. She is survived by her three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She will be much missed.

One of the many pieces Lee Schrubb wrote for Quadrant, the following memoir appeared in the May 2003 issue, with the title “Bondi 1938–42, or Oy, How I Didn’t Suffer”.

I arrived in Bondi in April 1938 from Vienna. I was eight years old and the only thing I could say in English following my father’s unsuccessful attempts to teach me more from a book was, “You turn on the tap to get hot water.” Not very relevant to general conversation. Still, thus equipped, I started at Bondi Beach Public School.

I stood out like a sore thumb in my lisle knee-socks and street clothes. I was put into third class and sat there till play-lunch time. I saw chil­dren eating so I ate my lunch. I don’t remember any other gaffe. The chil­dren found me as interesting as some sort of creature from outer space, and what I remember most are cries of “Bags sit next to her.”

Soon I got a school uniform, and my grandmother knitted me a school jumper (no one in those days bought knitwear), and no matter what you hear of refugee children suffering because of their rye bread and salami sandwiches, I didn’t suffer at all. For one thing in 1938 there was no salami or rye bread, because there were not yet any reffos to provide them, and for another, my grandmother was a pearl, and she thought that if a child had to have sandwiches for lunch (not her idea of Viennese cuisine), then they’d better be good ones—so, between two sheets of greaseproof paper she laid squares of Smalls Club chocolate and banged them into shards and then laid them thickly between two slices of white buttered bread. These sandwiches could be swapped for any sandwich in the school. I ate spaghetti sandwiches and made lots of friends.

We lived in a block of flats in Sir Thomas Mitchell Road, one of a pair of two-storey dark red brick affairs, separated by about a twelve-foot concrete passage. The kids in the flats were also most kind to me. I remember Shirley from downstairs sitting on the low fence with me and her Animals of the World book, teaching me English. “Elephant,” she pointed. “Elephant,” I duti­fully repeated. It wasn’t hard; the German word is Elefant. I was a sociable child, and I picked up the lan­guage in no time. I ran about with a pack of kids and to me it was a tremendous improvement on being taken to the park with a nanny and being watched for suitable behaviour.

What about those years? No one we knew had much money. Our rent was 37/6 a week and we children all pretty well knew the cost of everything, because we were always being told: every summer I got three tub-frocks from David Jones and they cost five shillings each; my only pair of non-school shoes cost eighteen shillings and there was hell to pay when one of them split while I was rope-skipping. And so on. I got a penny a day to spend, and ninepence on a Saturday: six­pence for the flicks and threepence for fun. We children thought quite hard about how to allocate our funds and knew well the cost of every sweet and treat. And I was pretty well off financially; there were children who got no pocket money; there were still a few boys who came to school barefoot.

One of the things I most liked having was a mack­intosh, sou’wester and gum boots. They were wonder­ful, one could plosh about in puddles quite beautifully. They only came in one colour, black, so we were all as well-dressed as each other.

What did we do then? School was unisex. Well, the boys were in the other half of the building and had their own playground. We never saw them. We learnt tables and fractions and long division and all that; in English we did spelling and grammar and composition and poetry. The teacher would say, “Get out your Mastering the Mother Tongue,” and I’d get out this brown book. It never occurred to me that the title meant anything. Still, we could all parse, use apostro­phes and tell who’s from whose and so forth. We learnt some good poems then. And of course we could do the northern rivers of New South Wales, and the Great Dividing Range, and we knew quite a bit of Australian history and all about levels of government; and we had singing and drawing and played tunnel-ball and good­ness knows what I’ve forgotten.

At the end of it all came the Primary Final, where your life hung in the balance. Then there were only a few academic high schools, so the highest good (if you wanted an academic future) was Sydney High, then Fort Street, then down to Crown Street and then Woollahra Domestic Science School. At least I think so. Anyway, Sydney High was the laurel wreath.

Sex education was unheard of, especially at school. We knew a little, of course; for instance, we knew that ladies wearing smocks were going to have babies, and thus waited in vain for years for Mrs Colbron, who always did her housework in a willow-patterned smock, to add to her family of three girls. We quite failed to note that very large Mrs Brennan, on the ground floor, added yet another template Brennan to the world without ever wearing anything but a tie­-around-the-waist overall thing. Beyond that, my mother once explained sex to me via a birds-and-bees analogy she must have got out of a book; the result was that for a while I was afraid to sit in the same row as the boys in the pictures, lest semen, like pollen, land on me and make the world’s perhaps first ten-year-old mother.

What did we do out of school? Lots. In summer there was always the beach, of course. Apart from swimming and tearing about, there was vigilance to be exer­cised; were there any empty lemonade bottles lying about? They were worth a penny each, returned to the shop up the road. If one got six, one could have a ham­burger! Were there any rubber surf-o-planes lying about unattended? They cost sixpence a half-hour to hire, and it was sweet indeed to find one and shoot the waves and veer around obstacles on one. (I finally got a little one of my own in 1941; it cost 17/6, I was told.)

On Saturday mornings my friend Dot and I, members of the Bondi Ladies’ Swimming Club, raced in our categories. I wasn’t much of a swimmer, but I loved my BLSC Speedo cozzie. Saturday arvos were for going to the pictures. We had a choice of three: Kings, Six-Ways and Bondi Road. The parents got a lot of peace for their ninepence. We were gone for hours. Two features, shorts, news, serial, community singing, preview glimpses. No wonder that before the picture started, a huge slide appeared on screen with the words “Silence is Golden”. Meant nothing to us, of course. We always had a good time. Indeed, it was many years before I realised it was possible to say something other than, “Gee it was beaut, wann’t it?” when coming out of the pictures.

We also clambered around the rocks, and down to Tamarama to whizz around on its razzle-dazzle. There was also sport to be had, trying to get into the Kings on a weekday interval with an old pass-out. I saw Tom Thumb four times that way before I was so foolish as to mention it to my mother. (“Stealing,” she called it. Never tell them anything, I thought.) Sneaking in under the canvas to open-air films was also good sport.

In the winter-time it was good to clamber into the locked-up Amus-U little park, and try to ride, or at least rattle, the chained-up bucket swings. There were always building sites to scamper about in and pinch a few useless things from, or one might find lucky peo­ple who owned billy-carts or bicycles and cadge a ride. I myself finally owned a slightly ratty scooter; I sat well forward with my feet tucked up, while Dot ped­alled. There was always a good deal of street life. We played games on the verge in front of the building; chasings, statues, French and English, O’Grady says, cowboys and much else. This often involved boys as well. Cracker night was a great street bonfire affair.

Much horse-and-cart busyness went on: milkman, baker and iceman all came by cart, and for us children it was vital to follow the iceman in order to pick up ice-chips from the street and suck them.

Clothes prop men, saucepan menders, knife sharpeners, rabbitohs and others made their appearances. Furniture removalist vans were of particular interest—it’s always nice to know how the other half lives.

Sometimes, if our parents were generous, Dot and I would set off for the Ice Palais for skating; at other times we “studied” tap-dancing at Bondi Junction, which meant we had to silva-frost an old pair of shoes and get taps put on. I wasn’t much good, but I didn’t mind. Actually, I wasn’t much good at any sport, but I had such good friends, I never knew—they always just waited for me if I got stuck or fell off or over—we all just laughed. I was about fourteen before I realised I was no athlete.

The war didn’t have a great impact on us children, except as an opportunity for fund-raising—scratch concerts for hapless parents and neighbours to have to pay admission to and suffer, or, even better, lots of toffee and coconut­-ice making and buying and eating. That’s about how the children helped the war effort.

Of course for reffos the knowledge of the terrible outlook for families and friends left behind was always there. Getting entry permits was terribly hard. My flirty mother achieved what she claimed was a record: six­teen permits, though by the time she got them, it was already too late for some. She also said it was much easier to extract a guarantee from ordinary Australians than from the Jewish Board, which seemed unenthusi­astic about the prospect of too many peculiar refugees.

Still, as time went by many more refugees did arrive, and Bondi became quite cosmopolitan. A gen­tleman used to come around with a suitcase full of salamis and sausages—bliss. A delicatessen began to offer brandy prunes and other goodies. My grand­mother was not the only stupendous cook, but there were a lot of reffos with incomplete families, and fam­ilies like ours consequently had enormous Sunday din­ners and social gatherings on the beach. The locals weren’t mad about all that foreign jabber or all those people stretched out, covered in Nivea cream and not surfing, but it was all right. Groups of Poles and Hungarians and Austrians, ice-cream boys with their dry-ice boxes of ice-cream buckets, umbrellas, wig­wams, kids and colour all made Bondi a wonderful place.

We hardly knew anyone with a car or a phone. The tram was our taxi. Everyone walked more, talked to neighbours more (or feuded with them) and no one was fearful. From the age of ten I went off to Girl Guides in Bellevue Hill; I walked there and walked home again at about nine o’clock. I still remember the brightness of the stars.

I don’t want to romanticise the time and place.

Many people had serious hardships to contend with; but some things were simpler. We improved our English by listening to the radio: Dr Mac (Dr Dreck, my father called him), Martin’s Corner, Lux Radio Theatre, The Witch’s Tales (shudder) and much else. I patronised the Six-Ways lending library for a few pence a week and gradually worked my way through the fiction wall, sort of from Edgar Rice Burroughs to P.C. Wren. There was also much comic-swapping, but none of us had a great many books and thus valued those we had; similarly with, say, shoes or clothes. Times have changed.

Do you know the old reffo joke:

“How are you getting on, Hymie?”
“Very vell. I now travel in Jesus.”
“Vot? You travel in Jesus? Vot happen?”
“Nussink. I got Edam and Emmenthaler and Gouda.”
“Ah, sank God.”

Vale Lee Shrubb. April 28, 1929 – May 15, 2024.