Ned Kelly's boot and other relics

As part of my work on Ned Kelly, Joel and I rode down to the State Library. We walked through part of their relatively new permanent exhibition, past the medieval manuscripts, and early Chaucer prints, and took the lift up to the fifth floor. I had never actually seen the Kelly armour, but there it was in a glass case, complete with his rifle and ... a single, tall, cuban-heeled boot. The armour I had seen in a hundred reproductions and images, but this single boot is particularly haunting. It looks as if it has been cut open. It was probably pretty-much blood filled by the time they captured Kelly, who had, despite the armour made of plough-shares, been shot twenty-seven times, mostly in the leg.



The boot is on loan to the Library from the descendants of Jesse Dowsett, to whom it was awarded as a trophy for his role in Kelly's capture. Unlike the extraordinary and iconic armour, shown below in Joel's dramatic floor-view shot, this boot is both an ordinary item of the everyday, while also a semi-sacred relic.

If the armour seems unreal (poised, as I think it is, between influences drawn from medieval romance, the Chinese armour the gang would have seen at the Prince of Wales' birthday parade in Beechworth, and an enchantment with an industrial modernism), the boot belongs to a different order altogether. It's a bushman's riding boot that has been kept as a souvenir of the notorious outlaw, but unlike the armour or the death mask, hasn't been replicated a thousand times. I've only started my work on Kelly (and his associations with Robin Hood), but this is the first time I've seen the boot. Its preservation speaks volumes about the iconic status of Kelly, and the mystique and veneration in which he is held. "Oh yes," said our landlady in Milawa a few weeks ago, "Saint Ned!" And indeed, it looked very much like a saint's relic.



It was a day of firsts, actually. That thing about touring the world and not seeing the things in your own city? One of Melbourne's great tourist attractions is the old Melbourne gaol, where Kelly was hanged in 1880. I must have passed it a thousand times without going in, but today we did. It's a most creepy place indeed, so much so that I forgot to take photos, really, apart from this image of a perspex woman's silhouette that I think is supposed to haunt you; and this three-tiered belt they would considerately strap around you to protect your kidneys while they flogged you.


The gaol has three levels of cells, arranged along either side of a long corridor. The cells are of course tiny, with enormous bluestone flagstones on the floor. Most of them were open; many with displays about the various men and women who'd been imprisoned there: the two Aboriginal men who were the gaol's first hanged men; the Philipino; the Spaniard (who realised he was going to be hanged only ten minutes before the executioner came for him); the Chinese; the women accused of baby-farming and infanticide, and of course, Kelly and his mother, Ellen, who was allowed to visit her son shortly before his death. She was working in the prison laundry when he was hanged. As we walked in and out of these cells, I got quite jumpy. It was bad enough seeing a life-sized figure of a prisoner standing or sitting in his cell; but the spookiest moment was walking into a cell with a narrow mattress on the floor and a grey blanket, not folded up, but in a heap, as if someone had just got up. I found myself almost apologising for intruding, and backing out again.

There was also a two-actor show, dramatising scenes from Kelly's life, that was surprisingly good.
After this we did the tour of the old watch-house, that was used as recently as the 1990s. A young female sergeant marched us in, separated men from women, and locked us up in a cell and turned out the lights. Even with the good-humoured women and children in my group, it was still pretty scary, as was the large padded cell they showed us, too.

Hoping for a good night's sleep tonight, then.

Travel sickness

Well, I certainly intended to blog this trip properly, but it didn't really start as expected. I found it very hard to leave my home and family this time; and it's taken the best part of a week in England to throw off a dark cloud of anxiety and depression. I won't go into all the ins and outs and whys and wherefores, but it is not to be recommended, travelling in such a state. It's certainly not conducive to blogging.

Anyway, I've caught up with my sister's family, and some dear friends, and eventually moved myself into a rather nicer hotel than I was before, and things have looked up a bit. I'm now in Leeds, catching up on the blog instead of trying to finish my paper for tomorrow.

I am experiencing a bit of déjà vu this time, actually, as last time I was in London, in April last year, I remember blogging about feeling homesick, and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the archive.

Similarly, this year, I'm really conscious that my work on the Order of the Garter has to steer quite a difficult line between the extensive records, and the conceptual work that has the capacity to make it a more interesting book. I finally spoke to someone at the College of Arms today, and I will go there next week, but it seems unlikely they have anything on the issues I'm most concerned with. I'm so accustomed to working in places like the British Library, and the National Archives, that it takes a while to realise places like the College, and the Royal Archives at Windsor work with quite a different brief, and mission. That is, the research of Australian academics is not their highest priority, and there are real limit to what they can make available.

That's ok: I have plenty of material, and enough to shape the book around. Found a nice thing in the National Archives in Kew yesterday; a letter from the English ambassador in St Petersburg in 1742, reporting that the Czarina would quite like to be offered the Garter. Here's the quote:

Your Lordship cannot conceive how much the Czarina is pleased with these Distinctions; and I am sure, that nothing in the world would be more agreeable to Her than if the King would send Her the Order of the Garter. I do not know whether it be practicable, but if it can be done, I am persuaded it would have a very good effect. The Czarina frequently appears in Man’s Clothes, and the new Ornament of the Garter would, I am sure, please Her above all things.

Looks like another quote for the Queer Garter section.

What else have I done?

• my nephew's school music concert in St Mary le Bow (if you're born within sound of their bells you're a true cockney)
• several days combing through Garter books and papers in the British Library, transcribing these verses from Gilbert West's Garter masque of 1771:
  

I.
O the glorious Installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the King and Queen,
Such a scene,
Valour he Sir,
Virtue she Sir,
Which our hearts will ever win;
Sweet her face it
With such graced,
Shew what goodness dwells within.


II. O the glorious Installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the noble Knights!
Charming fights!
Feathers wagging,
Velvet dragging,
Trailing, sailing on the ground;
Loud in talking,
Proud in walking,
Nodding, ogling, smirking round—
O the glorious, &c.

• Had dinner in Walthamstow with my friend Mac
• Saw Leonard Bernstein's Candide at the Coliseum theatre
• Booked a ticket to La Bohème for next Sunday
• Went for a late-night fox-watching walk with David and Rita around Coram Fields
• Bought leather jacket on sale to fend off summer wind and rain
• Went to church to hear my nephew sing at Temple Church, where he is a chorister
• And just now, had a fabulous Indian meal with a lovely bunch of medievalists.

I'll try and get a bit more detail happening in the blog soon, now that my spirits are back on a bit more of an even keel.

Doing Things in Groups

If you had asked me, say, four years ago, whether I preferred doing things in groups, or on my own, I would have answered resoundingly with a preference for the latter. Exercise, research and singing would have been three obvious categories for me where solitude was the preferable state.

But over the last few years, I have come to see the fun of working and teaching collaboratively. I still prefer to walk or run (in the rare intervals when I have calves and ankles that will sustain such activity) or swim on my own: that kind of exercise is meditative for me. But now that I am getting stronger at tennis, I am starting to enjoy the communality of playing doubles.

These days, I'm working on three big research projects. One, the book on the Order of the Garter, is a solitary project. I've just finished a draft of Chapter Five (yay me!). Another is a co-authored book and related projects on theories of medievalism with Tom. The third is our collaborative project on Australian medievalism: I love this team, and working with Louise, Andrew and John, and also Toby and Anne. I'm also thinking about cooking up another international collaboration on the teaching of medieval studies and medievalism...

Today, too, I took part in three joyous group activities.

First up, the Middle English reading group. We are reading Havelok the Dane, for an hour, every fortnight. It's hysterical and fun, even on days, like today, when I've been too busy to do any preparation. Anyone in Melbourne want to join in? Email me.

Second, we held the first of our methodology workshops for research students. Now that the old Department of English has become part of the new School of Culture and Communication, our students are part of an enormous cohort that straddles "English", Theatre, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Publishing, Media and Communication, Art History, Arts Management, Cinema Studies and parts of the old School of Creative Arts. So when we hold School-based "work in progress" days for students, they are talking into a ferociously interdisciplinary context. And while that's tremendously interesting, there was the danger of losing a degree of focus, so we have decided to hold regular methodology workshops for graduate students in English, Creative Writing and Publishing, and today's was the first. It was wonderful to have two terrific presentations from John and Anne, PhD students approaching the first major hurdle — confirmation — of their candidature. Heaps of people turned up: perhaps 25? People concentrating hard, thinking and talking and asking and answering questions, with a tremendous spirit of collegiality and co-operation. Really, an ideal example of supportive and collegial work. Frankly, I was unspeakably proud of our students.

Third, our weekly tennis fixture. I play with a group of women from this newly aggregated school, plus the partner of one of our male colleagues, plus a woman from another school who's just come through the fiery trials of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and is grapping with the rigours of hormone therapy. And sometimes Joel comes along, as he did today. The poor boy is still sick. He nearly made it to school today, but couldn't in the end get up from the breakfast table to get dressed. But he dragged his aching knees and his barking cough onto the court this afternoon and had about a fifteen-minute hit with me and Denise. We all love our tennis. You might look at us and think we are very uneven, and not all that good, often, and mock us for not being able, or not caring enough, to keep score properly, but you could not dispute the pleasure we serve up (!) to each other. Even Joel caught the spirit and was cheerfully talking about going back to school tomorrow (he's missed 7 days, which is a lot for a thirteen-year-old).

So... groups? I'm converted!

But what's missing from this picture? "Exercise, research and singing..." I wonder, could I really find a choir to join???

It must be cancer season

Every day, it seems, there are more and more news reports about cancer and cancer treatments. Within the last week, Melbourne researchers have reported finding that a "positive attitude", while it might make the rigours of cancer treatment more bearable, has no impact on the spread of the disease.

Also, news of a possible screening test for ovarian cancer (women taking Tamoxifen have a higher risk of developing this cancer, which is hard to detect in its early stages).

There's been a reported drop in the number of breast cancer cases, coinciding with a drop in hormone therapy use for menopausal symptoms.

And today, news from a team of Canadian researchers at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference linking vitamin D deficiencies to the more rapid spread of breast cancer.

That's four articles in four days, practically, all on breast cancer, and three out of four from Australian researchers. What an extraordinary amount of research into this disease — or perhaps it's just the disease that is regarded as newsworthy.

It's a bit hard to know how to respond to these developments. I'm grateful, of course, that such research has made my own outlook so good. For the record, I'm now in the twentieth month of a five year treatment plan. In five months I'll have my second annual mammogram and ultrasound, but I see my oncologist every three months and the general consensus is that I'm doing very well. I've cut down on my consumption of alcohol and processed meats; and generally improved my diet. I'm exercising regularly; and meditating occasionally; and trying to keep my stress levels down (though in the current climate at my university, about which I think I have been extraordinarily discreet on this blog, that is exceptionally difficult).

Many of these developments are coming too late for me, of course, though I've always liked the idea of getting a little vitamin D from the sun. Australians find it hard to balance the need for vitamin D against the need to guard against skin cancer, which is rife here.

My own prognosis is so good I'm not really at all on the lookout for alternative treatments or needing to hunt down the latest research. But I can imagine how people with more advanced cancers must greet this kind of research; and how people with much rarer conditions must despair at the uneven distribution of research funds.

At the very least, though, I now have a cancer antenna. People sometimes make a special point of telling me about their friends and relations who have cancer, though I'm still not always strong enough to doanything about this. But there is also a lovely solidarity amongst people I know with cancer. I feel closer, I think, than I would otherwise have done, to three friends in particular: Peter, Trish and Alison. And actually, special congratulations to Alison, who's just finished radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and who joined our Tuesday tennis group at work and played throughout her radiotherapy treatment. And to Trish (Crawford), too, a much-loved figure in early modern and women's history who was presented with a festschrift on just one of the fields in which she works at the Perth conference last week. Trish is an inspirational figure to many historians and feminist scholars, and was one of the first people to comment on an academic paper I gave (on Christine de Pisan, in 1985, I think). She's an inspiration to me now, for facing the difficulties of advanced breast cancer with courage and dignity and as clear an intellect as an academic scholar, or anyone, really, could wish.