Image caption, below
A response to Comment 3 here: Snipe from the trenches … or enlarge the vision
Dear Bazzabee ,
How pleasant to be involved in a sensible discourse, a few minor corrections to your blog. The Executive Council of 1825 predates the Legislative Council 1828 as noted below in material taken from Part II of my Series from which I quote:
The separation of the governments of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land was confirmed at the first sitting of the four-man Executive Council at Government House, Hobart on the 29/30th December 1825, as a result Government House required new rooms. The first problem was to source cedar from New South Wales to be used in the construction of the Government House furniture and for fitting out these two rooms In February 1826, 276 cedar planks arrived per ship Medway from Sydney in return for sheep shipped to Sydney to replace those lost in the wet season the previous year. (Letter, Book of dispatches sent to the Secretary of State, Arthur to Bathurst, GO25/3, p 26)
A separate Meeting Room for the Executive Council was to be added to the eastern end of Government House and by 30 December 1826 Major Kirkwood, the acting Engineer costed the joinery work for this addition at £149. (AOT, CSO 1/11/169, p1) The builder, John Jackson, on 5 February 1827 estimated the cedar required ‘to complete the addition to Government House at 3,000 feet straight to be got as soon as possible as it will require some time to season.’ (AOT, CSO 1/11/169, p9) By 19 March 1827, Jackson agreed ‘to finish the joiner’s work of the Long Room and the two new rooms built as a wing to the Main Government House for the sum of £73-0-0.’ (AOT, CSO 1/11/169, p19)
Arthur wrote to those involved
“We congratulate the Engineer with the Superintendents, who have so ably cooperated with him, on the diligence and workmanship displayed in the additions just completed at the Government House. The rooms have been very judiciously and economically planned so as readily to be converted into Public Offices, which it is understood they will be as soon as the Government House in the Domain is completed. The convenience arising from the several Government Offices being in one central spot is most desirable.”
A table and four chairs had been ordered for the Executive Council Office under the auspices of the then Chief Engineer, Major Turton. In a letter to Commandant Butler of Macquarie Harbour on 8 August 1827, Arthur’s private secretary Parramore refers to this specific order (HTG 28 Jul 1827, p2, c2)
“… regarding the Engineers requisition for different articles of furniture the Lt Governor thinks it would be better, as you have no cabinetmakers at the settlement, to send the materials to Hobart Town for [the] purpose of being made into furniture here … The wood of the table His Excellency thinks extremely pretty and would be glad if you [could] send any you can obtain of the same description.”
John Lee Archer the Government architect received his first directive from Arthur on 25 August 1827 re the furnishing of the Executive Council meeting room:
“regarding the anteroom at Gov House a table has already been required 4 chairs are also wanted … ordered by the late Major Turton (AOT, GO53/2, p122) 8 months ago not yet supplied request the contractor to state the delay.”
I suggest that the four chairs may have been partly made, but were redesigned and finished by Archer and survive as a result with individual variations. Of these four chairs for the Executive Council three survive, one at the TMAG and two others in the Penitentiary Chapel. The Executive Council table is still in the Governor’s Office at Government House.
Maybe my knowledge of this somewhat esoteric matter acquired wearing my hat as a dealer in Australian antiques may benefit me as a candidate for today’s Legislative Council.
With regard to our previous thread and ‘gazing’, what part did Lady Franklin play and how was she mocked?
She is quoted as:
“Government House, Hobart Town, contained a famous sanctum which was certainly more like a museum or a menagerie than the boudoir of a lady, snales [sic], toads, stuffed birds and animals, weapons of savages, specimens of wood and stone fossils, and, last though not least, a juvenile lubra [Mathinna] arrayed in bright scarlet being the staple articles of furniture.” (The description of Lady Franklin’s sanctum taken from an unpublished manuscript by Robert Crooke, ‘The Convict, a Tale Founded on Fact’, 1886 quoted by Mrs Fitzpatrick. P 211 published in ‘Portrait of Jane, A life of Lady Franklin by Frances J. Woodward.)
Sir John Franklin had no children by his second wife Lady Jane, and these quotes would suggest that her interests were less than familial:
“Lady Franklin’s attempts to introduce evening parties in the ‘conversazione’ style were highly unpopular with the pretty Tasmanians, who declared that they ‘had no idea of being asked to an evening party, and then stuck up in rooms full of pictures and books, of shells and stones, and other rubbish, with nothing to do but hear people talk, lectures, or else sit mute as mice listening to what was called good music. Why could not Lady Franklin have a military band in, and the carpets out, and give dances, instead of such stupid preaching about philosophy and science, and a parcel of stuff that nobody could understand… (Ibid. p236 – 237)
Lady Franklin’s intellectual interests found a practical expression in the autumn of 1839 when she bought 130 acres of land near Hobart. Her stepdaughter reported:
“We are told by several people who have visited [it] that it is the most beautiful spot they have ever seen. It is a valley clothed with myrtle, fern, sassafras and mimosa trees, and through which runs a clear mountain stream…. Mama wishes to give it a name, but has not yet decided upon one.” The problem was put before the scientific society itself: There was some difficulty Jane thought in making out business for the evening, but is was helped by my setting the gentlemen to fix at last a name derived from the Greek for my mountain garden. The Dictionaries, Greek, Latin & French were searched, much criticism bestowed on the names already selected & at last a wholly new one fixed on which [seemed] to all unexceptionable in its derivation & not amiss in sound. This was Ancanthe, or the Vale of Flowers” (Ibid. p224)
By the end of March 1842 Lady Franklin was free to carry out with her husband a most formidable expedition, an overland journey to the disused penal settlement, of Macquarie Harbour.. The only Europeans who had attempted the journey before them were convicts who had perished on the way back after escaping from this Penal Settlement, only one is known to have to have survived the overland journey, the cannibal convict, Alexander Pearce.
As a result of the successful completion of this overland trip Lady Franklin had a walking stick made for Dr Arnold, out of a Huon pine grown on the banks of the Franklin, ‘with the date of our passage of that frightful river engraved on top of it’ – but this was September 1842, and Arnold the headmaster of Rugby School and their advisor over Ancanthe and other educational schemes was dead.
These quotes intimate that Lady Franklin’s interests in exploration, the natural world, collecting and historical display were considerable. I suggest that they would be reflected in the interiors to Government House and its furnishings a matter concluded with the construction of the Museum at Acanthe to which some of her important Tasmanian collections were eventually removed.
Acanthe is still standing but under assault from the brain dead (Gwenda Sheridan, TT: Ancanthe and all that will be lost).
Image caption, An Executive Council Chair: I suggest these chairs were made as a set of four for the repaired and revamped Executive Council Room created in the original Davey Government House with the later bow windows fitted by Governor Arthur. This is one of a pair surviving in the Penitentiary Chapel, another is in the TMAG. I suggest that they were in part designed by J Lee- Archer and made in the workshops of J W Woolley in 1827/28, possibly by the convicts Henry Wright or Henry Wood. The terminal point of the arms above the front legs have a Scottish form of scroll and quirk (the Scottish name for the fan decoration within the scroll) as found on the tops of the front legs of lobby tables in Edinburgh furniture. The triangular Huon pine lozenge veneered to the central panel which is possibly blackwood, below, the Crown which is centred by an ivory dot. An Irish motif is the fanned ends to the top rail. [Collection: The Penitentiary Chapel, Hobart, photographs courtesy Brian Rieusset, National Trust (Tasmania)].
John Hawkins is challenging Greg Hall as MLC for the seat of Western Tiers on May 5. Responsibility for election comment is taken by S. Webb, 59a West Parade, Deloraine.
