The Mayne Inheritance
Written by Rosamond Siemon.
St. Lucia (Australia): University of Queensland Press
ISBN 0-7022-3422-2
5.1" x 7.8," 218 pp., 28 b. & w. illus.
$A 20.00; New paperback edition 2003
Reviewed by Wilfred Niels Arnold
Email: warnold@kumc.edu
This little volume is notable on two counts. First,
it is a "Gothic tale of murder, madness and scandal" (quoted from
the cover) starting with the "success" of an Irish immigrant, Patrick
Mayne (1824-1865), and culminating with massive gifts to the City
of Brisbane and the State of Queensland. The latter were enabling
funds toward the magnificent site of the University of Queensland
Arts and Sciences campus (St. Lucia), as well as the land for its
Veterinary Establishment, and an endowment for the Medical School;
all provided by the youngest children, James (1861-1939) and Mary
(1958-1940), of this remarkable family.
Along the way we benefit from Rosamond Siemon's extensive readings
which suggest that the Mayne patriarch got his start by murder and
robbery, was prone to administering corporal punishment to local miscreants
on his own judgement, and amassed a fortune by hook or by crook. The
gruesome details of the killing are juxtaposed with various titillating
commercial misdeeds and political chicanery, all presented in a matter-of-fact
style which is at first disarming but possibly indicative of the hard
scrabble of frontier life in the British Colonies that would become
Australia and the particular states of Queensland and New South Wales.
Thus various men-about-the-pub are accused of murder or complicity,
more or less exonerated, and then another man is implicated on circumstantial
evidence and hanged for it. This rather large slice of life happens
in the space of a few sentences. One acknowledges her difficulty in
research at a distance but also wishes that Siemon would exert more
organized skepticism and attempt to distinguish the relative weights
of police and medical reports and newspaper stories plus anecdotes.
Her style wears thin as the paucity of facts overwhelms the narrative.
The implications of hanging an innocent man, the veracity and verification
of the deathbed confession by Patrick Mayne, even the taint of inherited
madness in the family, are never properly assessed let alone resolved.
And so it happened in August, while giving five lectures in Brisbane
on Vincent van Gogh, King George III, and acute intermittent porphyria,
that I was approached by Rosamond Siemon and her enthusiastic supporters
to give an opinion on the underlying illness of the Mayne family.
The short answer is that her book is full of unusual behaviors by
Mayne family members, but there is neither sign nor symptom. Accordingly,
there is nothing in print thus far that specifically supports or damages
a working hypothesis of porphyria; in contrast to the well-documented
cases of Vincent and George. Even the congenital fears supposedly
instilled in James and Mary Mayne, which Siemon attributes to their
electing not to have children, are less than adequately documented.
At the end of the day, what drives Dr. Simeon up the wall is the lack
of State and City recognition given to Dr. James Mayne and his sister
for their generosity and foresight. On this ground she is firm, has
plenty to say, and it all makes sense. Even the University's failure
to label its great hall "James Mayne Hall" (it was called simply Mayne
Hall) is interpreted by Simeon as a deliberate attempt to mislead
the public into "Main" hall and to help them lose track of the "scandalous"
donor family. That is certainly the current public habit and I believe
that she may be correct about the background intent. Wholesome attempts
by Rosamond and others to rectify this situation in the University
Senate are currently receiving inadequate support from the powers
that be.
Which brings me to the second count. "The Mayne Inheritance " has
become this year's subject of "One Book one Brisbane" and thus the
successor to last year's book "The True History of the Kelly Gang"
by Peter Carey. This program, which may be unique to Brisbane, is
sponsored by the City Council and its Libraries. It proclaims that
it wants as many Brisbane residents as possible simultaneously reading
the same book! (I leave readers of Leonardo Reviews to think about
the merits of this, without my interference.) So the reading "campaign
" was kicked off the second week of August and Brisbane library patrons
were even encouraged to buy a copy at half-price ($A10) with library
free membership. Local booksellers subsequently
complained, and I found that supplies had gone to zero after the first
day. It is with thinly disguised envy that we other authors congratulate
the great good fortune of Rosamond Simeon and University of Queensland
Press in this publicity and sales coup.