Introduction
by Ross Williams
We have called them “Memoirs”, but they are more like memories; snippets that have come almost randomly to mind and been jotted down, perhaps to be edited at a later date and published.
Two pages entitled “Faces of Friends” have been labelled “Preface”, probably by my grandfather A L (Len ) Bennett1; I assume it was him because the word is in written in blue editing pencil and I can remember, as a child, finding a seemingly endless supply of these red-blue pencils around my grandmother’s house. The red-blue pencils were used by editors; the red end would be used to mark mistakes and to circle or strike errors, while the blue end would be used to make notations, comments, or insertions. After my grandfather left school, he worked for a time in the office of the Evening News, his father at that time being the managing proprietor, and afterwards at The Camden News, and he submitted copy to various newspapers throughout his life. He appears to have picked up and retained the journalistic habit of using a red-blue pencil.
The memories are written on scrap paper; the back of letters, accounts etc.; whether this was as a result of war time shortage of paper, or just a lifelong habit of thrift perhaps resulting from her newspaper associations (many newspaper offices required reporters to re-use the other side of “copy paper”) we will never know, but we have as a result been able to determine when they were written. One of the memories was written on the back of a circular letter from the Returned Soldiers Association of New South Wales, dated 5 May 1916, after the first anniversary of “Anzac Day”, seeking donations for a “Memorial to the immortal ‘Anzacs,’”. Emily died only a year and a half later, in November 1917, so it is quite possible that she was still working on them up to the time of her death. She was in her late 60’s, having been born in London in 1849 and she was in poor health. This is reflected in her hand-writing; part of the challenge in transcribing them.
An earlier attempt has been made to edit them, involving quite a bit of cutting and “pasting”, but this was never completed and they appear as fragments, some grouped together under headings such as “balls, banquets and receptions”, locations – e.g. “William Street”, “Manly”, “Mosman” etc., or institutions – e.g. “Pitt Street Church”, “The Garden Palace” & etc.
We are working our way through them and will publish them piece-meal as we transcribe them and at a later stage look at the possibility of rearranging them to tell a more coherent story. But, they have remained hidden for over 100 years and deserve to see the light of day!
Follow the links in the list below to start your journey through Emily’s memories