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The danger and drama
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Painter, Poet and
Pu blic Ser vant
Jennifer Moran examines the
legacy of George Gordon McCrae
(1833–1927), one of Australia’s
first verse novelists
T
he danger and drama
of life at sea captured
the imagination of
young George Gordon
McCrae (just seven years
old when his family sailed
for Australia in 1840) as
the captain of the Argyle,
John Gatenby, went to the
rescue of the brig Joachim
of Trieste, which had
foundered in a fierce gale
in the Bay of Biscay.
‘It was broad daylight,
and I, a small boy, was
lashed to the mizzen-mast
so as to see the wreck as
safely as possible. It was
blowing “great guns”, and
a tremendous sea on. I saw
her forefoot rise out of the
water, then perhaps half is not remembered as an artist, but he wrote above:
her keel, and down she went, uncomfortably that he had begun ‘drawing ships correctly George Gordon McCrae
(1833–1927)
close to us, stern foremost.’ after seeing Mr Oswald Walters Brierly’. A Life on the Ocean Wave,
McCrae later described the rescue in his Twenty-five years later, Brierly, by then Sir SS Macedon c.1870
Recollections of Melbourne and Port Phillip Oswald, impressed by McCrae’s sketches of pen, ink and watercolour
Bay in the Early Forties, published in the HMS Galatea, showed them to the Duke of 186.0 x 30.7 cm
Pictures Collection
Victorian Historical Magazine in 1911 and Edinburgh, who asked for two of the works.
nla.pic-an6330410
1912 and collected in booklet form in 1987 The admiration was mutual: the McCrae
by Sullivan’s Cove, Adelaide. By the time of family had in their collection Brierly’s below left:
writing, his lifelong passion for boats had painting of the schooner Wanderer, a ship George Gordon McCrae
(1833–1927)
resulted in dozens of drawings and paintings owned by Benjamin Boyd, who ran steamers
HMS Galatea 1867
of sailing ships, steamers and dinghies. McCrae between Melbourne and Sydney and had set pen and ink; 11.2 x 18.1 cm
up Boyd Town on Twofold Bay in southern Pictures Collection
New South Wales. (Brierly had been in nla.pic-an6330441
charge of Boyd’s whaling operations there
for a time.)
McCrae’s album of drawings (1839–1903),
held in the National Library’s Pictures
Collection, gathers many of his sketches,
pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours—
featuring not only ships, but also people
(famous visitors or historical figures),
significant events, observed scenes, his
designs for book covers, and illustrations
September 2008 15
that a life in Australia would offer his family
opportunity and interest. He went ahead
of the family, to establish a legal office in
Melbourne, and Georgiana followed two
years later, on the Argyle, with the four
boys. The family lived briefly in Melbourne
where, McCrae later recalled, he witnessed
the hanging procession of three bushrangers
from Collins Street gaol to the
new prison at Batman’s Hill,
and saw a corroboree in
the bush at the back
of Flagstaff Hill. The
family soon moved to
Mayfield, built on the
Yarra. A few years
later, McCrae’s father
took on Arthur’s Seat,
a cattle property near
above: for his published Dromana.
George Gordon McCrae books. His skills as In Melbourne it was
(1833–1927)
Rescue from the Sea c.1882
a draughtsman were Georgiana, a talented
pen, ink and crayon honed through some artist and dedicated and
10.0 x 15.0 cm years in the Melbourne erudite diarist, who taught the
Pictures Collection Patents Office, where—wrote his boys, but at Arthur’s Seat the tutor John
nla.pic-an6335759
son, the poet Hugh McCrae, in a 1935 McLure supervised their schooling. Letters
George Gordon McCrae memoir, My Father and My Father’s Friends— from the boys to Georgiana recount some
(1833–1927) he ‘drew machinery in detail … collapsible of their early experiences there. (Letters
Design for Humane Society’s perambulators, buckets with double bottoms to Georgiana from Her Four Sons, edited
Medal c.1882
to them, omnibus brakes, artificial ear by George Gordon McCrae, is held in the
pen, ink and wash
8 cm diameter drums, windmills, gas-ovens, tricycles, hat Library’s collection.) At Arthur’s Seat, McCrae
Pictures Collection irons’ and more. took up fishing and messing about in boats
nla.pic-an6335762 Some of the drawings in the album date and his love of nature was nurtured as he
from George Gordon McCrae’s childhood. discovered the bush and its fauna and flora.
below:
George Gordon McCrae His father, Andrew Murison McCrae, had With his schooling finished, the young
(1833–1927) been a solicitor in Scotland. Andrew had McCrae had a flurry of short-lasting jobs—as
Sailing Ship c.1880 married Georgiana, daughter of the Marquis a surveyor, in a merchant store, and in a
pen, ink and watercolour of Huntly (later the Duke of Gordon), and bank, before joining the civil service in
15.6 x 18.7 cm
Pictures Collection they had four sons, George Gordon being 1854, where he stayed until retiring in 1893
nla.pic-an6308203 the eldest. Andrew McCrae was persuaded as Deputy Registrar-General. But his more
interesting legacy was produced
in his private time—his verse
narratives The Man in the Iron
Mask, Story of Balladeadro,
Mamba (‘The Bright-eyed’);
his poetry collections, The
Fleet and Convoy and Other
Verses and A Rosebud from
the Garden of the Taj; and his
novel, John Rous.
George McCrae was part of
the vibrant group of writers
who established a literary
community in mid-19th
century Melbourne. With
Marcus Clarke (‘my father’s most
16 National Library of Australia News
irresponsible friend’, according to Hugh earlier that year, it had been his intention above:
McCrae) he was a founding member of the ‘to bring out a mythological tradition of the George Gordon McCrae (1833–1927)
Botanical Gardens, Melbourne
Yorick Club. Other members included Adam aborigines, the grandest and, perhaps, the c.1870
Lindsay Gordon, Henry Clarence Kendall, most startling that they possess. I found, watercolour; 15.7 x 28.9 cm
John Shillinglaw (who had the added however, upon reflection, that a considerable Pictures Collection
attraction for McCrae of being shipping time would be required to enable me to nla.pic-an6330398
master at the Port of Melbourne) and Dr do even ordinary justice to my theme, and below:
Patrick Moloney. being desirous meanwhile of keeping alive George Gordon McCrae (1833–1927)
McCrae’s workroom was ‘full of cupboards the public interest in aboriginal tradition and Design for cover, Balladeadro
and manuscripts, and ships, and pipes, and story, I have been induced to put forth the c.1867
pen and ink; 25.0 x 19.3 cm
knives, and bits of tobacco,’ Hugh McCrae present volume.’
Pictures Collection
recalled. ‘It had very bad gas-light; and I’ve How faithfully McCrae followed stories nla.pic-an6326811
seen George at work on a poem, with his he might have been told is not
nose on a level with his nib, writing divinely.’ clear. What is more certain
George’s imaginative life was fuelled by is that the discipline of
his curiosity about the world he lived in—the writing in verse was as
customs and stories of the Aboriginal people fascinating to him as the
of Victoria, his interest in the flora and narratives he chose to tell.
fauna of Australia, his travels back to his For The Man in the Iron
homeland and abroad (on leave in 1864, he Mask: A Poetical Romance
visited England, Scotland, France, Mauritius (George Robertson,
and the Seychelles), and the musical 1873), McCrae chose
performances and burgeoning theatre of from amongst the several
the colony. He woke his children by playing theories of the time to
either My Pretty Jane or Sally in Our Alley, make his masked man
alternatively on different ocarinas (a basso the twin brother of Louis
and a soprano) according to Hugh McCrae, Quatorze. As McCrae
and he ‘even translated, onomatopoeically, wrote in his preface:
bird language, spoken down the chimney
into my sister’s room’.
The story of the mysterious
In his preface to Mamba (‘The Bright
prisoner in the Iron Mask has
eyed’): An Aboriginal Reminiscence (H.T.
been already, as everyone
Dwight, 1867), McCrae wrote that after is aware, presented to the
the publication of Story of Balladeadro
September 2008 17
Indigenous Australians might seem
constrained by a kind colonial sensibility,
and though he is not known as well as his
friend Marcus Clarke, George McCrae’s
contemporaries admired his work greatly.
The Library’s McCrae album offers
something more personal than the literary
judgments of his time or ours—whimsical
insights into McCrae’s character; his
wicked humour (witness ‘His Serene
Transparency the “Dook”’, ‘Andre Chenier’s
Chloe with her Chloes On, Dedicated to the
Antigymnogynists of Melbourne’, and the
political cartoons); and a commitment to
the cultural life of Victoria (drawings for
plays, designs for medals). There is also an
indication of the frustrated public servant
thrilled to be escaping, as in his depiction
of the Norfolk, homeward bound, alongside
a banner bearing the word, ‘Libertad’, and
captioned ‘one year’s leave on ½ pay’, along
with McCrae’s further note, ‘A bit of my old
office blotting pad 1864.’
Jennifer MorAn is a writer and editor for
several journals and newspapers
above:
world under a variety of aspects, and
George Gordon McCrae
has formed at widely distant epochs a
(1833–1927)
fertile theme alike for the dramatist,
His Serene Transparency, the
the novel-writer, and the historian
Dook 1867
… I do not think, however, that any
pen and ink; 17.9 x 11.0 cm
one has been beforehand with me in
Pictures Collection
adapting this narrative as the basis and
nla.pic-an6326798
framework of a poem in the English
right:
language.
George Gordon McCrae
(1833–1927)
McCrae published only one
Norfolk, Homeward Bound
1864 prose novel. In John Rous (The
pen, ink and crayon Specialty Press, 1918), subtitled
22.1 x 13.3 cm A Queen Anne Story in an
Pictures Collection
Australian Setting, McCrae gave
nla.pic-an6330435
his protagonist some of his own
passions, ‘showing in simple words
the passage of a not uneventful
life animated throughout by an
inborn and unconquerable love
of the sea and a most ardent
patriotism’. It is illustrated not by
McCrae, but by Lionel Lindsay.
Though some of his writing
seems quaint now, and overblown,
and though his attitude to
18 National Library of Australia News
