Sir Zelman and the Literary Loony

In the later 1970s at Xavier Herbert’s request I attended a private dinner party in Cairns, where he contrived to meet the visiting Zelman Cowen, then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland (he had not yet been knighted). Xavier asked brashly across the table, as he had planned, that the university grant him an honorary degree. Zelman explained, not unkindly, that such decisions could not be made like that.

After the dinner party I went home with Xavier and his wife Sadie where, in a huff, he conducted a vigorous post-mortem of the party, angrily denouncing Zelman’s supposed high-handedness in not recognising his (Xavier’s) claims. Xavier’s championing of democracy and the underdog throughout his life cloaked a monster-ego, always vulnerable to imagined superior attitudes in others. Nevertheless, after the initial clash the two men went on to become unlikely friends.

I had visited Xavier on several occasions before this incident. After corresponding, he had invited me in 1972 to visit his home at Redlynch, a Cairns suburb, to read the manuscript of Poor Fellow My Country. It was then more than half completed, but at the age of seventy-one he had already spent years of labour on it and written a vast amount. He did not want criticism or guidance; indeed he had publicly denied such dependence, after accusations that P.R. Stephensen claimed to have substantially “edited” Capricornia. Yet Xavier had worked on the mammoth Poor Fellow My Country for so long and in such isolation that (as he admitted to me later) for all his apparent confidence, seemingly overweening at times, he wrote partly in fear of failure, like many other authors. What he needed, I soon sensed, was a sympathetic ear, a reader to tell him that he was engaged in a great work. For all its flaws, it proved to be such (as for instance Randolph Stow recognised in his TLS review in 1976). I felt I could honestly give him this assurance and as a result Xavier sent me the rest of the novel to read in batches, as he drafted it. I enjoyed the fascinating task of reading the latter part in serial instalments, along with numerous letters explaining what he was aiming at and how the work sometimes diverged from his intentions. It was important to him to receive encouragement from someone in academe, though as a “born writer” he affected to disdain “accoes”, as he sometimes called them.

Consequently Xavier made contact with members of the University of Queensland, especially the English Department, which I had joined in 1971. He promised to leave his substantial, lifelong collection of papers to the university’s Fryer Library, as he eventually did after some rigmarole of negotiations. The English Department also provided the physical support of gifts, such as a photocopier, for behind his vaunted independence he was a needy person.

On several occasions Xavier was to try to use what he saw as Jewish links (as he did later in contact with Jewish churchmen in Sydney in promoting Poor Fellow My Country) in advancing his interests. He was proud of the fact that his wife Sadie was a Jew and he liked to point it out to people. Sadie was from the London East End and though she was not a practising member of the Jewish faith, she and Xavier liked to keep small domestic observances, as with what she called a Jewish “Shabbas”, a simple fish meal on Fridays. Sadie was understated about her Jewish birth, but Xavier paraded it on occasions, feeling, in spite of his proud egalitarianism, that it helped to endorse his own sense of apartness, of having a special destiny. He was to use Sadie, with some success as it turned out, to help forge a bond with Zelman. Sadie could disparage Xavier’s parading, as in his over-emphasis on the Jewish character Rifkah in Poor Fellow My Country, partly based on her. She thought his near obsession with Rifkah was silly and could lead him out of his depth.

Amongst the correspondence is a request from Xavier for Zelman to assist him in his legal battle to take the publishing rights of Capricornia away from Angus & Robertson. Xavier, in his contriving way, said his request was “made out of friendship”, it was “not simply a seeking of legal advice … I can’t see myself going to lawyer—I who have had such fun with mocking litigation in my writing”—as he had done notably with the “Shouter”, a lawyer caricatured near the end of Capricornia. Xavier continues, often calling on his sense of humour: “I could go to no less a one than ‘a professor of Jewish Prudence’—who is also my friend.”

Later when apologising for his intemperate attack on Zelman’s accepting vice-regal honours, Xavier wrote in a draft letter: 

I see now that for a Jew, such honours have especial value [he went on to quote “render to Caesar …”] … perhaps the chief reason for my affection for you is that you are a Jew (I feel I can never really trust a non-Jew) … it would seem I had not realised how Jewish you really are. Hence my mistake in assuming you were just a lousy Aussie. 

Since Xavier frequently indulged flights of fancy and delusions in projecting likes and dislikes into racial stereotypes, as in Poor Fellow My Country, it is hard to know how seriously to take this. The letter’s apologetic tone must be taken into account. Perhaps, to see him in the best light, he was indirectly complimenting himself; he wanted to imply that it took a special kind of person to understand and appreciate him. Ironically he was right about this; his hubris could lead him to think that he was always right.

When faced with Xavier’s request for legal advice Zelman advised Xavier in a friendly way to engage a reliable lawyer to represent him in his dispute with Angus & Robertson, offering the name of one in Cairns. Once again Xavier was outraged at what seemed a fobbing-off. He wrote angrily to Zelman, distorting the situation: 

I should have liked your interest as my friend, the eminent jurist … Your response … was to advise me to consult a small-town solicitor and a LEBANESE, ye gods! … implying that I was seeking cheap legal advice … surely a gross insult … How lucky I was to neglect to tell you that the case was in the hands of the leading specialist in copyright Law in the Land, with our advocate none other than Thomas Hughes! … Otherwise I should have disregarded your pettiness.  

Xavier lost the case and with it no doubt considerable money. Zelman responded reasonably to Xavier’s criticism, careful not to become involved personally: “The reference to the copyright criticism puzzles me. I recall saying you would need to have a solicitor act for you; that I should bear reproach for that is beyond my comprehension.” 

In a letter of New Year’s Day 1976, Xavier reacted angrily, almost hysterically, to news of Zelman’s knighthood, as though he himself had been personally insulted or attacked. Xavier referred to “your acceptance of the Moth-Eaten Mantle of Bunyip Aristocracy”, and mounted a tirade against “the British imperium”: “my chief purpose in life is to smash the Power of the Crown in this country … [as it is] Australia’s greatest curse … a betrayal of our Democracy”. Xavier now felt it was impossible to accept an honorary degree and writer-in-residency from the University of Queensland, since it would be publicly known that he “held the VC in nothing but contempt—and he me, probably worse”. Xavier therefore proposed to write to the Registrar refusing the honours and dictating that Zelman, “his dear lost friend”, should explain why.

Zelman replied to this tirade—calling it, with restraint, “intemperate”—like the diplomat he was, wisely refusing to be drawn into a quarrel with Xavier (as Beatrice Davis later did, to her regret) or to let him dictate terms. Zelman replied that the residency and an honorary degree were matters for Xavier to refuse or accept, adding that he himself would do nothing, having reached the decision in due consultation. Zelman concluded in a dignified way, putting the matter in an impersonal light, though he could not forbear adding that among the hundreds of messages expressing pleasure in his award, Xavier’s was the only unhappy one. Zelman nevertheless concluded graciously, saying he hoped that in making up his mind Xavier would listen carefully to the advice of his friends at the university (the English Department).

On receiving Zelman’s letter Xavier quickly climbed down from his lofty position. “Thanks for your restrained reply to my execrable epistolary performance,” he wrote. “Now I can apologise. If this sounds erratic you don’t know me” (presumably as a self-styled “literary loony”). Ungraciously Xavier confirmed that it “was now clear for me to accept the proffered honours … without embarrassment”. Perhaps in amelioration of his previous attack, his tone was jocular, if barbed. Referring to Zelman’s news that Sir William Collins (head of the firm which was to publish Poor Fellow My Country) had sent his congratulations, Xavier quipped: “It makes me think there is some CIA Thing (Central Intelligence of the Aristocracy) that takes note of initiations and spreads word to whomever may be concerned to embrace a parvenu.” But revealingly, he said he could not help wondering what this “Central Intelligence” would say, “if by some mischance, it would happen to me—who’s this who has come among us and wants to join the Push, it’s ’Orrible ’Erbert, the Bastard from the Bush—eh?” (Xavier was in fact illegitimate but often assumed soubriquets such as bastard with its self-disparaging overtones, as a form of false self-abasement.) Xavier’s grievance still rankled. He signed off: “I shall always regard you with affection—if henceforth slight respect”, after alluding to his “hatred of the Imperium, any concession to which numbs me with shame”.

Xavier had linked his grievances to another imaginary slight from Zelman. Xavier had arranged to be invited to the University of Newcastle as writer-in-residence in 1976, before he was to take up his residency at Queensland, and now he played one off against the other by trying to bring the latter forward since, he said, he considered Queensland’s offer more important than Newcastle’s. On being asked his advice, Zelman refused to be manipulated, again leaving the decision up to Xavier and adding graciously that Newcastle was a “well established and respected university” and that in view of Xavier’s links with Queensland it would have “been a happy circumstance had our invitation preceded that of our sister University, but it did not happen this way”. Xavier distorted this detached advice into a slight, twisting Zelman’s words into an encouragement to: “Grab anything you can get, old boy, grab anything you can get”—supposedly “Zelman’s very words”. 

After Xavier’s apology to Zelman cleared the way for accepting his honours from the University of Queensland, their friendship steadily grew. Both began to sign off correspondence in terms of “affectionately”. Zelman wrote kindly to inquire about Xavier’s health after he had been sick, and they used informal, handwritten notes to communicate. Zelman included in his notes to Xavier brief news of his family, whom Xavier must have met or heard of on occasional visits to Brisbane. Xavier was “deeply touched” by Zelman’s condolences, sent informally from Yarralumla on news of Sadie’s death in 1979. Xavier requested a photograph of Zelman in his academic gown, which was duly supplied, and Zelman arranged for the painter Ray Crooke to undertake separate portraits of Xavier and himself, both in doctoral robes, along with one of Sadie looking handsomely matriarchal, with silver hair worn in braids on her head (her portrait being, I think, the most successful of the three). (All portraits are held by the University of Queensland. In the Fryer Library reading room at present hangs Ray Crooke’s original painting, a gift of Ken Wilder, one-time manager of Collins publishers, for the dust-jacket for Poor Fellow My Country. This original had to be reversed in the printing so that the Aboriginal figure, standing alone in a numinous bush landscape, should appear on the front.)

Xavier had condemned Zelman for his acceptance of “imperial” honours, but though a fervent supporter of Gough Whitlam and horrified by the dismissal of his government, Xavier soon welcomed in a private letter Zelman’s elevation to the governor-generalship. Drawing on his ingrained rationalising powers, Xavier re-made Zelman in his own image, believing that Zelman would emerge—“unconsciously”, necessarily, so as to preserve his integrity—as “the First Administrator of the True Commonwealth”. Xavier claimed that his need of Zelman’s friendship was now greater than that of any other, yet Xavier, a lifelong isolate, had never been able to maintain a lasting friendship. He who in his blind dependence and egotism had always successfully courted “patrons”, could claim, as he did, that no one of Zelman’s high status had ever filled this role.

What, then did Xavier hope to gain at this stage of his life when, following Sadie’s death in 1979, his life began to fall to pieces? When Xavier’s vast manuscript collection was officially handed over to the University of Queensland in April 1980, in a ceremony officiated by its vice-chancellor (as protocol demanded), Xavier arranged for Zelman to be invited, as a “friend of Xavier’s and Sadie’s” to “unveil” her portrait accompanying the papers. Xavier had personally asked Zelman in advance to do this and Zelman had agreed to do so when passing through Brisbane. The portrait was accompanied by a plaque with tributes to Sadie in English and Hebrew. This act of friendship on the part of both men was a generous one. Ironically, the seventy-nine-year-old Xavier was deteriorating mentally and physically in his agony of aloneness, and he would soon betray Sadie’s memorialisation, as his biographer (Frances de Groen) describes in distressing detail. 

Xavier’s glaring personal flaws have been exposed by many. The perceptive Randolph Stow, who had reviewed Poor Fellow My Country in the TLS as an Australian classic, if a deeply flawed one, condemned Herbert the man in a subsequent review of his biography (TLS, January 1, 1998). Stow castigated Herbert as “a congenital liar”, reiterating that he was a “monster”, but uncharacteristically not taking into account that even if so, he was a human one. Stow even went so far as to question whether Herbert deserved a biography, asking whether “the revelations do not detract from the work”.

This attitude is not uncommon. By not distinguishing authors as persons from their work as creators, readers can idealise and simplify authors in two ways: on the one hand by being disapproving and disillusioned when an admired subject is revealed to have feet of clay; or on the other hand, by expecting writers to be “good” or even superior people, to be admirable and freer of flaws than “ordinary” humans.

Stow of course understood these things and was partly hoping, as one of Herbert’s most appreciative critics, to protect his work. Yet while Stow condemned the Herbert of the biography he admitted that nevertheless “a core of reverence abides. His [Herbert’s] imagination, when fully activated, was of unusual intensity: a sort of rapture.” Not all Stow’s readers would have appreciated, however, that this rare achievement came at great cost to the writer’s personality. 

Comparisons between Sir Zelman Cowen and Xavier Herbert are not helpful, as their lives were so different. The pressures and demands on Zelman in the high offices he held were quite different from those on Herbert as writer. It is remarkable that they became friends. On the face of it, judging from the correspondence I have traced, Zelman appears in a positive light in his relations with Herbert, though they were not conducted over a long period (about five years, 1975 to 1980) and were carried on mainly by correspondence. When Xavier was quarrelsome and objectionable, Zelman treated him as the angry, spiteful child he was at heart, that is, in a patient, kind, yet firm way, not writing him off as others had understandably done. Most importantly, Zelman treated Xavier with the respect he felt due to someone who was a distinguished writer, if an aberrant person. How much Xavier appreciated this treatment, the kind he had always craved, it is impossible to say. Hopefully some part of him did understand.