Maiden's granddaughter Lucy Brown Craig

At the age of 40, Margaret Flockton achieved a goal - a dream job with an ideal boss.

This was the botanist Joseph Maiden, with whom she worked for almost 25 years. She developed a close relationship with his family too, especially his daughter Mary. She taught Mary lithography and attended her 1911 society wedding to Dr Francis Brown Craig.

My new book Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory (available from Wakefield Press) mentions that the Maiden family suffered a distressing loss during the Second World War. Mary Maiden’s 19-year-old daughter Lucy Brown Craig disappeared on 12 April 1940 after she left her place of employment around 5pm to return home. 

Police at the time believed the report that "Miss Brown Craig left a tram at King's Cross on the night she disappeared, and that she walked down Darlinghurst Road with a young man of athletic build, who had a "toothbrush" moustache and wore a grey suit. This report was made by a man who knew the girl well. Police would like confirmation from others who may have seen the girl and the young man on the tram, or later." (Sydney Morning Herald, 24 April 1940, p 15, col a, with picture of Lucy on p 16.)

Despite huge media coverage, a year later Lucy was still missing and her fate, if known, was never revealed publicly.

That was my conclusion from my review of old newspapers in Trove. Lacking contact details for the Brown Craigs, I couldn't discover whether the mystery had ever been solved.

It seems that this story has recently attracted the attention of others and her fate is still unknown. Read this article of interest from True Crime Reader.

Whiteley Woes

Once again I have proof that, in a non-fiction book, you have to research every single line ... thoroughly. Here's what can happen if you don't.

For five years in the 1980s I lived at McMahons Pt in Sydney, the promontory which frames Lavender Bay on its western side. At that time, local residents informed me that the famous Australian artist Brett Whiteley and his wife were my 'neighbours', viz: "They live in that white house with the tower, along Lavender St, with a fabulous view of Lavender Bay." 

View of Sydney Harbour from Lavender St

My house at the time was further around Lavender Bay - the pinkish house behind the car parked in King George St, partially hidden by the foliage in the top right hand quadrant of the picture below.

Housing at bottom of King George St, McMahons Pt

I've always had a love affair with this area of Sydney. Back in the  mid 1970s, although I lived then at Mosman, I was co-founder of the Cameragal Montessori School facing Lavender St.  It's gratifying to know that the school still operates, forty years later.

Cameragal Montessori School

When engaged in the research for my book about the artist Margaret Flockton, I was delighted to discover that she too appreciated the scenic beauty of this area. When she and her artist parents arrived in Sydney in 1888 they moved into a house overlooking Lavender Bay. Naturally I searched for a suitable illustration of the harbour and found the following image in a newspaper of 1884, showing Lavender Bay in the centre, and Milsons Point on the left, half a century before it anchored the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In the foreground in 1884 was a white house with a tower overlooking Lavender Bay. Immediately I thought 'Ah, that white house with the tower must be what the Whiteley house looked like back then.' 

View of Lavender Bay & Sydney Harbour, 1884, from Supplement to ‘Illustrated Sydney News’, 25 October 1884

Having been a resident of Melbourne for the past thirty years, I blithely incorporated that assumption into the Flockton book without cross-checking it.  And I've referred to 'the Whiteley house' in talks on three separate occasions, without anyone disagreeing with me. 

BUT - at my fourth talk on Margaret Flockton, at the Stanton Library on 8 September 2016, an audience member told a friend of mine who was present that the house I described as Brett Whiteley’s house was NOT his house. Dismayed, I hastily reverted to researcher-mode and discovered that 1) his house was not built until 1907 and 2) he added his tower in the 1970s. It’s a pity that this knowledge came far too late for me to change the wording on p 61 of the Flockton book, which says: 

A century after the Flocktons settled there, the famous Australian artist Brett Whiteley lived and worked in the white house with the tower, in the left foreground of the image. At the time of writing, his widow Wendy still resided there. 

As an aside, Wendy Whiteley has achieved her own brand of fame for having created a magical 'secret garden', fully-accessible to the public, in the formerly-derelict strip of government-owned land running alongside her property. 

Part of Wendy Whiteley's Garden

Back to my book. I would have been correct had I written instead: 

A century after the Flocktons settled there, so did the famous Australian artist Brett Whiteley. He lived in a different 'white house with tower' to that pictured in the left foreground of the image, but it provided similar panoramic views across Lavender Bay. At the time of writing, his widow Wendy still resided there.

So ... if you're a non-fiction writer, you can be sure your sins [of omission] will find you out. It's a rare slip up on my part. Usually I pride myself on devotion to painstaking research.

Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory, published by Wakefield Press, will be launched by Professor The Honourable Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO at the Maiden Theatre, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney on 17 November 2016 at 4pm. 

Margaret Flockton book launch on 17 November 2016

Good things come to those who wait. That's what many patient people must believe as they've wondered when my book Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory will ever make its appearance. Most books do not have a protracted gestation period of more than twelve years.

After many trips up and down the Hume Highway and several trips to England, this book was completed several years ago. But books heavily illustrated with high-res art pictures obtained from many sources are a daunting proposition for publishers in today's market. Luckily my agent John Timlin knows a thing or two about placing books.

I'm delighted to say that Wakefield Press of Adelaide is publishing the book.

Their motto is 'We love good stories and publish beautiful books'. I've found that to be entirely true.  I hope you'll agree that they've done an excellent job.

And I have to thank botanical artist Catherine Wardrop, whose design of a farewell card for a colleague became the basis of a perfectly ideal cover for the book.

Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory will be launched by Professor the Hon Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney on 17 November at 4 pm. I'm nervously awaiting reader reaction - hopefully this is one book that you will be able to judge by its gorgeous cover.

Maggie Wheeler Remembers Aunt Mog

A lovely surprise has come my way, thanks to an email from Maggie Wheeler, who has just become aware of the forthcoming Margaret Flockton, A Fragrant Memory book.

It turns out that Maggie & I are third cousins and gr-gr-nieces of Margaret Flockton, who we both knew as Aunt Mog. I’m descended from Mog’s elder sister Dora (Dolly), and Maggie from Mog’s younger sister Phoebe. When Aunt Mog died in 1953 I was seven and my youngest sister was a baby, as was Maggie. My mother Julia was very busy with four small children, couldn’t drive, had no phone and my father was often away at the wool sales around Australia. It was all Mum could do to keep up with visits to her own mother. So, although Maggie’s mother Cynthia was bridesmaid at my mother Julia’s wedding, I don’t remember our families meeting when we were all children.

Maggie has added an extra dimension to the Margaret Flockton story. Unfortunately her contribution arrived too late for the book, which has gone to print, so it’s being made public here.

Maggie Wheeler begins: Aunt Mog died when I was six months old and her sister Phoebe, my great grandmother, died when I was seven.  I recall my mother Cynthia and her sister Veda talking about Aunt Mog. They believed that the name ‘Mog’ indicated that she wasn't very well treated by her family, although I never heard that she herself didn't like the name.

I am a botanist and when I was working in the Sydney Herbarium around 1979 and was replacing herbarium paper covers on specimens, I came across a letter from Aunt Mog. She was asking for equal pay - at that time I think she was receiving approx. 70% of the male rate. She got it. I put it back with the specimen, without taking a copy.

About ten years ago I spent several years working in Western Australia so I know many species from both sides of the continent. Some of the WA wheat belt still has Eucalyptus flocktonii growing there. It is a fairly widespread species in the southwest mallee country. Because the word 'floccus' has one meaning as ‘tufts of wool’, one of my co-workers took delight in teasing me by calling her a little sheep, knowing full well that she was anything but.

Recently I've noticed the Sydney Morning Herald's offering of a print of her partially-coloured drawing of the sandalwood plant (a.k.a. the Quandong, pictured below as a black & white lithograph Fusanus acuminatus). I've never seen it growing in Sydney but it's very common in the WA wheat belt, and I consider that it was done from fresh material. Did she travel there with Maiden? I doubt whether photos would have been good enough in those days, and I remember my Gran (Phyllis Flockton North née Clarke) frowning upon it. Gran was also a watercolour artist, and taught me.

Fusanus acuminatus, from the Forest Flora of NSW

Louise interjects: The literature confirms that this plant does not grow in the Sydney region but in the semi-arid areas of Australia, which is why you came across it in WA. I’m pretty sure Margaret did not go on any field trips with Maiden. Shipping records and news items attest to Maiden visiting WA with his wife, particularly a 3 month visit in the last quarter of 1909, but there’s no mention of Margaret in these shipping records. People did use the postal service widely to send fresh (specially-wrapped) specimens to the Botanic Garden and there must have been a system for drawing them straight away.

Maggie continues: I am attaching a photo of Aunt Mog's oil painting entitled ‘Sydney Carton’, bottom left hand corner.  The frame is as old as the painting I think, and every so often I repair the plasterwork again and touch it up. I had the painting cleaned and they put some sort of coating on it to prevent further dust damage. I've checked the painting front and back and it is unsigned. Not even initialled.  I have no reason to question its authenticity since I grew up with it, and my mother always said that it was Aunt Mog’s painting. The oil paints set (see below) were also full of the Rembrant type colours.

Sydney Carton, Margaret Flockton's copy of a photograph © Maggie Wheeler

Louise adds: The painting is obviously a copy of a striking theatrical photograph of the actor Martin Harvey, in character as Sydney Carton, the eventual hero of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The photo began to circulate in England in 1899. Somehow Aunt Mog obtained a copy (I don’t have any knowledge of her returning to England once she arrived in Australia) and she’s done a fantastic job as an artist, injecting her own dramatic form of expression into those eyes. I have another record of her as a copyist - Cayley’s birds, when she lived in Charters Towers in 1892. She made no secret of that exercise. She painted very few portraits but clearly she was very talented at it and should have done more of them.

Maggie continues: I also have a vase of hers with beautifully hand painted male and female butterflies with Christmas Bell flowers (Blandfordia grandiflora). It was a cultural thing for people to paint the butterflies with the plants that they were dependent on. On the bottom of the vase there is written Cethosia Cydippe (the eastern red lacewing butterfly) and what looks like 'M.F.'

Royal Worcester Butterflies Vase, © Maggie Wheeler

Royal Worcester Butterflies Vase Detail, © Maggie Wheeler

Royal Worcester Butterflies Vase Base, © Maggie Wheeler

Louise adds: The stamp on the bottom of the vase indicates that the art work was by Miss Flockton Clarke, Maggie’s grandmother Phyllis, who also did a series of cabinet plates for the Royal Worcester Porcelain Co – mostly mushrooms, but one butterfly plate. However, the wildflowers on the vase do look very similar to those painted by Aunt Mog and lithographed for the American Tobacco Co series.

Maggie continues: I've always felt somewhat close to Aunt Mog, having also done some painting and drawing. For two years I did some training at East Sydney Art School (now CAE), and had two exhibitions in early adulthood. I haven't painted seriously for many years but I do pick up a brush from time to time and I have a canvas nearly ready for when I feel like painting again. I've also had a long term interest in plants, particularly wildflowers, gardening for my granny when I was a child, then spending lots of time in the bush as a teenager, walking, running and on my horse, delighting in what was around me and eventually becoming a botanist.

As well as the family’s painting and gardening gene, I inherited Aunt Mog’s oil and watercolour paints, and have used them as my own, updated of course when required. In the picture you can't really see what colours of hers are still in the paint box, but I've found that many of the sepias are still usable. 

Margaret Flockton's Oil Paint Box, © Maggie Wheeler 

Margaret Flockton's Oil Paints, © Maggie Wheeler

I returned about 7 years ago to my property in the hills behind Mullumbimby in the Byron Shire, where I'm working on rainforest regeneration at present.

Note: Maggie Wheeler can be contacted via email.  

Footnote: My book 'Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory' was published by Wakefield Press in November 2016.

Serres Family Secrets

Dr George Young, physician, army surgeon and botanist, spent most of his adult life in the Caribbean prior to his death at Hammersmith, England in 1803. His wife Sarah also died at Hammersmith, in 1814. (See my earlier article on Dr Young.) Both had previously lived for many years on the Caribbean Island of St Vincent.

In her Will of 1812, signed with her mark, Sarah gave my infant Grand Daughter Maria Cruikshanks my Gold Watch and two Silver Table and six Tea Spoons to be handed over when Maria reached the age of sixteen years, but otherwise everything of Sarah’s was to be equally divided by and between my son Robert Serres and my said Grand Daughter Ann Serres.

Robert Serres was described in the 1812 Will as a shoemaker of Hammersmith. Ann Serres appeared to be beyond the age of sixteen years in 1812, suggesting she was born in the 1790s or earlier and in turn that her father Robert was born in the mid 1760s or earlier. Sarah’s Will thus implies that when she married Dr George Young in the mid to late 1760s she was a ‘widow’ (see later) with a son.

I can’t find a record of Sarah's marriage to George Young but, as he made much of 'legal issue' in his Will, it must have taken place. His Will mentioned his two estates on St Vincent, Sarah and their three children (George, William and Sarah). George Jnr was born in the late 1760s in an unknown place (possibly the same place as his parents' marriage) while the younger two were baptised on the Island of St Vincent in 1771 and 1772, when Sarah was in her late forties. When Dr George Young wrote his Will in 1802 he made no mention of a Serres step-son.

The only definite record I can find for the Serres family present in the Caribbean at this time is the artist Count Dominic de Serres, born in France c 1720. Whether he was a Catholic to begin with and later conformed to the official religion in England has yet to be clarified. He was definitely present in the Caribbean during the 1750s, as master of a merchant vessel trading between Spain and Havana in Cuba. He was captured by the English during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and then sailed with the Royal Navy on expeditions to Nova Scotia and Havana, employed as an artist. He moved to London and was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. (There's more in the Dictionary of National Biography.) Dominic died in London in 1793 as a married man with children, and I'd love to locate a copy of Dominic's Will, but where is it?

From 1813 the Slave Compensation Records mention Aché Serres and some of her children living on the island of Trinidad, relatively close to St Vincent. Aché appears to have been born around 1760, with her children arriving in the 1780s, but details of her birthplace, maiden name and husband's name are unknown to me. Her daughter Adelaide Serres married a man named Rochard from neighbouring Grenada and Aché's grandson Charles Rochard was a solicitor and Freemason in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Sarah, born around 1724, was in her 30s during the 1750s and might be connected in some way to Dominic de Serres or to the husband of Aché Serres, whoever he was. 

George & Sarah Young's daughter Sarah gave birth to their granddaughter Maria Isabella Cruikshank on the Island of St Vincent in March 1810. Maria was baptised at Hammersmith on  30 December 1810 in a double ceremony with her first cousin Martha Young, who was described as a Creole of St Vincent, aged 13, indicating that Martha's mother was a coloured woman. Maria was not so described, meaning that Maria’s parents and therefore her grandparents including Sarah must have been European. But Sarah Snr's identity remains a mystery.

Likewise, all the usual genealogical sources for the Caribbean and England which are easily accessible online reveal no evidence of Robert Serres or his daughter Ann Serres. They've have proved elusive, existing in 1812 but with no trace of them before or after that date. A lot more time than I have already spent poring over the parish records of St Paul, Hammersmith may yield the information I seek, or perhaps Trinidad's records might hold the key. I'm hoping that this post will unearth additional insights into the Serres family.

Note: Maria Cruikshank's granddaughter Margaret Flockton followed in the footsteps of her botanist forebear Dr George Young and became the first botanical artist employed by the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. 

FOOTNOTE: Margaret's story is told in my book 'Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory', published by Wakefield Press in 2016.

Frank Flockton's Art & Grandsons

Have just come across an interesting story about Margaret Flockton's father Frank. Read it on Harold Peacock's History Out There blog. Poor old Frank was nowhere near as good an artist as his daughter and I agree with Harold that Frank certainly did not understand the eucalypts.

While on the subject of Frank, I've just written a book about his Boulton grandsons, Brothers in Arms.  Two brothers, in different armies. Nigel Boulton, serving as a doctor in the British army, and Stephen Boulton, serving in the Australian artillery, wrote a unique set of letters to their mother during the Great War. The book's available from BookPOD.

My Boulton blog provides further background details about how the book 'Brothers in Arms' was written and about the Boulton boys as children. (Would you let your 10-yr-old travel on his own from Sydney to London by ship?)

Margaret Hope Fuels Hope

Four funerals and a wedding in my immediate family in recent months have deflected my attention from family history while I focused on my living and recently-bereaved relatives.

Meanwhile, my agent John Timlin has had no luck in finding a commercial publisher for 'A Fragrant Memory' - so far. Digital technology has forced massive change upon the publishing industry. Books like 'A Fragrant Memory', with a high pictorial content and appealing to a specialised audience rather than a mass market, are seen as expensive & troublesome ventures, especially when weighed against the likely number of paying customers within Australia. Margaret Flockton being English-born and bred, the book might better suit an English publisher, given that country's much larger population and long history of interest in botanic gardens and botanical art.

My gloom over this book has lifted slightly this week, with the 'encouraging' news that it took 130 years before Margaret Hope's book 'Wildflowers of Tasmania' was published. A partnership between the Australian Garden History Society and the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts in Hobart brought it to life. I trust my book will reach readers sooner than that!

Margaret Hope (1848-1934) is an interesting peer of Margaret Flockton's (1861-1953). She was born in Tasmania 13 years before Margaret Flockton's birth in England, and when she died in Hobart in 1934 she was hailed as a 'notable woman'. Both women loved Australian wildflowers but unlike English-born Margaret, Tasmanian-born Margaret was not a scientific botanical artist. However F.M Bailey, Queensland's Colonial Botanist, used her to illustrate his 1887 book 'Plants Reputed Poisonous and Injurious to Stock'. (Margaret Flockton had not yet arrived in Australia.)

My research for 'A Fragrant Memory' did not uncover any evidence of direct contact between the two Margarets, but they must have been well aware of each other's existence and life work.

I've heard through the grapevine that experienced author Carolyn Landon also had difficulties finding a publisher for her book Banksia Lady: Celia Rosser, Botanical Artist. Celia Rosser being a distinguished botanical artist still living in Victoria, Monash University Publishing has recently brought her biography to the public's attention. Here's hoping it's a great success.

FOOTNOTE: My book 'Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory' was published by Wakefield Press in 2016.