The Scales of Suffering - Garton

The Scales of Suffering: Love, Death and Victorian Masculinity
Author(s): Stephen Garton

Source: Social History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 40-58
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286836
Accessed: 14-05-2020 14:16 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Social History
This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 14 May 2020 14:16:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1Z Routledge
Social History Vol. 27 No. I January 2002 . Taylor & Francis Group
Stephen Garton
The scales of suffering: love, death and

Victorian masculinity
'I scarcely know how to begin this saddest of sad matters.... Dead - dead - my Annie - that
for ten years was my constant companion, inspiration and ideal - a perfect mother .... Dead -
what does it mean?'l The diaries of Dr John William Springthorpe open in 1897 with these
words. In all six large volumes, covering the years until 1930, follow. There is an earlier volume,
for the years 1883 to 1887, but it has infrequent entries and lapses after a few years. As the
opening phrases suggest, these later diaries constitute an unusual record. Page after page, day
after day, pained reflections on the death of his wife in childbirth - personal recollections,
imagined conversations, remembered dreams, poems, newspaper clippings, photographs and
drawings - a melange of texts which comprise a larger record of mourning. In fact there is no
other topic for over fifteen years, until a few comments on his war experience intrude into the
mourning ritual. These diaries represent an extraordinary and sustained meditation on death:
'my constant upholder, my best inspiration, my own true-hearted pure, whole-souled and
absolutely devoted sweetheart and wife . . . what can I say when I think of her loss'.2 In fact
he says quite a lot, thousands of words over many years devoted to inscribing its meaning.
These reflections, with their mordant sentimentality and stilted profusion of emotion, in
many ways seem typical of Victorian mourning.3 What mark them out as unusual are not
so much their strength but their duration, pages of almost daily entries, unceasing for almost
ten years, tapering off over another five years, with occasional bursts even twenty to thirty
years later. Moreover, they stand in marked contrast to the early public announcements, an
1 J. W. Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February I897, Ralph Houlbrooke (ed.), Death, Ritual and Bereave-
La Trobe Library (Melbourne), MS 9898. ment (London, 1989); Michael Wheeler, Death and
2 ibid. the Future in Victorian Literature and Society (Cam-
3 The literature on the history of death and bridge, I990); and Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian
mourning is now very extensive in Britain, Europe Family (Oxford, 1996). For an interesting study of
and America. There is the pioneering if contro- death and femininity in Victorian culture, and the
versial work of Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our ways in which the death of women could be con-
Death, trans. Helen Weaver (Harmondsworth, I983). structed within particular aesthetic tropes see Elisa-
Other works include John Morley, Death, Heaven beth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death,
and the Victorians (Pittsburgh, I971); D. E. Stannard Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester, 1992). The
(ed.), Death in America (Pennsylvania, 1975); D. E. major Australian works on death are G. M. Griffin
Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study of and Des Tobin, In the Midst of Life: The Australian
Religion, Culture, and Social Change (New York, Response to Death (Melbourne, 1982) and Rudolf
1977); J. S. Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death Brasch, Permanent Addresses:Australians Down Under
(Detroit, 1972); James J. Farrell, Inventing the Ameri- (Sydney, I987).
can Way of Death 183-1920 (Philadelphia, I982);
Social History ISSN 0307-1022 print/ISSN 1470-1200 online © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 0. IO80/03071020I I0094I92
January 2002 The scales of suffering 41
unusually stark and simple notice in the major Melbourne papers -'Springthorpe: on the 23
January at Camelot, Collins Street east, Annie wife of J. W. Springthorpe MD'- and there was
no funeral notice or bereavement card as was common.4 The disjuncture between private grief
and public reticence, however, was overcome in spectacular fashion, a few years later, with the
completion of a grand mausoleum for his late wife in Kew Cemetery in Melbourne.
It is tempting, then, to see Springthorpe as an instance of pathological mourning. Indeed the
length of the mourning process, its intensity and the fact that it was nineteen years before he
married again, might situate Springthorpe as one of those 'rare and sad victims of chronic and
abnormal grief'.5 It is not surprising that mourning diaries have been read as pathological. Their
form as episodic, notational and in these instances endlessly repetitious (almost figurative of
Freud's analysis of the death instinct as the capacity to repeat) fosters a sense of pathology.
Springthorpe's diary, however, allows us to glimpse formal structures beyond the episodic and
repetitious. There are patterns in the writing which suggest that it is not so much disordered,
emotional or diseased, but instead a peculiar performance, drawing on a rich repertoire of
cultural currents - Romanticism, rationalism, spiritualism, superstition, Buddhism, liberal
Protestantism - shaping and rendering explicable intense mourning.6 To read these diaries as
merely expressive of some individual pathology is to miss something important about the self-
consciousness of this type of writing, even though diaries in their very form would appear to
be the genre least amenable to being shaped by broader considerations about a 'whole life'.
Such diaries could be both expressive and patterned, and in this way they shaped, transformed
and gave meaning to mourning. And these transforming processes were partly individual but
also grounded in more general mentalities or forms of collective imagination.7
Moreover, this private grief failed to interrupt a thriving public career. The sharp distinction
forged between public and private in this text and lived experience make Springthorpe's diaries
an interesting vehicle for exploring patterns of Victorian masculinity. Historians of masculinity
and manliness, notably John Tosh, have urged us to see the public and the private spheres as perme-
able and interdependent domains, integral to the social order. By the late nineteenth century,
however, there seems to have been a shift towards a greater distinction between the public and the
private for professional men, with a consequent pull towards a homosocial and imperial world of
adventure and manly achievement, and a related denigration of home as routine and feminine.8
4 The Age and the Argus, 25 January 1897. 7 See Michel Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities,
5 Jalland, op. cit., 338. The arguments about trans. by Eamon O'Flaherty (Cambridge, I990),
'pathological mourning' arise from wider psycho- I-I2.
logical theorizing which generally argues this arises 8 See John Tosh, 'What should his
when the mourner remains fixed in the phase of with masculinity? Reflections on
numbness, disorganization, yearning and despair, century Britain', History Workshop Jou
unable to readjust to society. See Sigmund Freud, (1994), 79-202 and A Man's Place: Mas
'Mourning and melancholia' in James Strachey the Middle-Class Home in Victorian En
(ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Haven, 1999), 145-94. See also the a
Sigmund Freud, vol. I4 (London, 1957), 237-58; John Michael Roper and John Tosh (eds), M
Bowlby, Loss: Sadness and Depression (New York, tions: Masculinities in Britain since 18
1980), 8I-IIi; C. M. Parkes, Bereavement: Studies of I99I); Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adv
Grief in Adult Life (London, 1972). Man's World (London, 1991); Mark C. C
6 Pat Jalland, in her forthcoming study Australian Ritual and Manhood in Victorian Am
Ways of Death (chap. io), also argues that Spring- Haven, 1989); and Norman Vance, The Si
thorpe was not, despite appearances, a typical case of Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness
pathological grief. I am very grateful that Professor Literature and Religious Thought (Cambr
Jalland let me read her unpublished manuscript.
42 Social History VOL. 27 : NO. 1
These currents were amplified in the colonial context by a pervasive cross-class masculinist
culture, which paraded the virtues of a rugged, frontier, mateship ethos, in opposition to the
enervating influences of women, domesticity and city life. Australian men were idealized as
laconic, practical, bachelors, confronting a hostile environment.9 Springthorpe's diaries and
memorialization of his wife affirmed an older faith in the domestic sphere as the seat of a 'true
self', and represented a social protest against prevailing codes of colonial masculinity, embroil-
ing him in complex class and gender struggles. His mourning provides oblique but interesting
ways into key dimensions of Victorian masculinity, suggesting that the general shifts in Victorian
culture were more complex and contradictory than revisionist accounts have supposed.
J. W. Springthorpe was a significant figure in Australia's emerging professional middle class.

Born in Wolverhampton (Staffordshire) in 1855, he migrated with his family to Australia as an
infant. Educated at Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, he won a number of
prizes and exhibitions, graduating MA, MB, BS in 1879 and MD in I884. His first position was
medical officer at the Beechworth Hospital for the Insane and in I88I he travelled to England,
becoming the first Australian graduate to be admitted to the Royal College of Physicians. On
his return to Melbourne in late 1883 he established a thriving private practice in Collins Street,
later becoming a pathologist at the Alfred Hospital, physician at Melbourne Hospital and
lecturer in therapeutics, dietetics and hygiene at the University of Melbourne. He received
professional honours and responsibilities aplenty - President of the Victorian Branch of the
British Medical Association (1891), President of the Hygiene Section of the Australasian
Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting (1895) and the Australasian Medical
Congress (1896) and President of the Melbourne Medical Association (I900). Despite his busy
private practice and professional responsibilities he edited the Australasian Medical Gazette (the
leading colonial medical journal) for a number of years and wrote over thirty research papers
and a two-volume textbook, Therapeutics, Dietetics and Hygiene (1914). In addition, he helped
establish the Trained Nurses Association, was Chairman of the Masseur's Registration Board,
worked with the Saint John's Ambulance, and was active in the care of epileptics and the insane,
mothercraft training, child health and welfare and mental hygiene campaigns.l(
Here is a solid and respectable professional career, characteristic of other Australian progres-
sives.11 Although in the small and hothouse atmosphere of many of these organizations he
inevitably alienated some like-minded reformers, Springthorpe none the less remained a widely
respected doctor and social reformer. The range and scope of his activities also point to more
9 There is a very extensive literature on this. See, 10 Details of his life are from Bryan Egan, 'John
for example, Richard White, Inventing Australia: William Springthorpe' in John Ritchie (ed.), Aus-
Images and Identity 1688-1980 (Sydney, I981), 63-109; tralian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12 (Melbourne,
Graeme Davison,'Sydney and the bush: an urban I990), 38-9 and 'Obituary', Medical Journal of Aus-
context for the Australian legend', Historical Studies, tralia, I July I933, 26-8.
xvll, 71 (October 1978); Marilyn Lake,'The poli- l The literature on Victorian social reform on
tics of respectability: identifying the masculinist both sides of the Atlantic is very extensive. A useful
context', Historical Studies, xxii, 86 (April 1986), account of the broader context of reform in turn of
II6-31; Marilyn Lake,'Socialism and manhood: the the century Australia is Michael Roe, Nine Aus-
case of William Lane', Labour History, L (May 1986), tralian Progressives: Vitalism and Bourgeois Social
54-62. Thought in Australia 189o-196o (St Lucia, 1981), 7-23.
typical middle-class Victorian values, notably the masculine commitment to the work ethic and
the belief that one's worth was measured by public service.12 Springthorpe was also active in
liberal Protestant circles. Born and buried a Methodist, he nevertheless lectured to Congrega-
tionalist and Anglican 'social questions' groups, urging the cause of medical, social and moral
hygiene. He was an avid supporter of Charles Strong, a controversial figure in liberal church
circles, who preached the virtues of ecumenical theology and the importance of the Christian
social mission.13 For both Strong and Springthorpe, science and religion were not antithetical
but complementary, science serving to confirm religion, not as dogma but as an evolving and
socially relevant practice. Equally, religion served to justify science as an effort to realize the
laws of God's creation and his plan for'man's' destiny.
Springthorpe was clearly an earnest and worthy reformer, seemingly certain of his own social
mission, unceasing in his efforts, stolid but lively of demeanour (or so his obituarists suggest)
and part of that vast army of middle-class reformers, usually unremarkable in person but collec-
tively so influential, who did much to change the face of Victorian society. But what of the
private man? The intensity and duration of his mourning certainly marks him out as unusual.
This impression is reinforced by the changing nature of'death rituals' by the 189os. As many
have noted, the high point of the Victorian 'cult of death' was the I85os and by the I88os there
was a vigorous and influential middle-class and liberal Christian reform movement urging the
simplification of mourning ritual, some even advocating cremation. The consequence was the
gradual disappearance, clearly evident by the I890s, of excessive public displays of grief and
mourning.14 Springthorpe's mourning ran against the tide, but like so many of his fellow
middle-class professional colleagues, he lived the codes of Victorian masculine culture which
demanded self-control and public rectitude, allowing him to juggle private despair and public
achievement.15
12 Again the literature on Victorian codes of self- (Kensington, I986), 28-54.

control and the work ethic is also extensive. A 14 See Ralph Houlbrooke, 'Introduction' and
number of these works draw a useful distinction Jennifer Leaney,'Ashes to ashes: cremation and the
between 'manliness' as an explicit code of conduct
celebration of death in nineteenth century Britain'
and'masculinity' as the embodiment of these codes.
in Houlbrooke (ed.), op. cit., 20-2 and 118-20; Aries,
A few illuminating accounts include Tosh, 'What op. cit., 561-75; and Farrell, op. cit.; 95-105. For
should historians do with masculinity', op. cit., similar developments in Australia see Simon
Cooke,'Death, body and soul: the cremation debate
I79-202; J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian
and Edwardian Public School (Cambridge, 1981); in New South Wales, I863-I925', Australian His-
torical Studies, XXIV, 97 (October 1991), 323-39.
Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor
in Modern France (New York, 1993); and John15 In addition to the works on masculinity and
Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth
manliness already cited, see Peter Stearns, BeA Man!
Movements, 1883-1940 (London, I977). Males in Modern Society (New York, 1979); J. A.
13 Threatened with a heresy charge by the Pres-
Mangan and James Walvin, Manliness and Morality:
byterian church, Strong resigned to form his ownMiddle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America
18oo-194o (New York, 1987); M. C. Carnes and
Australian church, attracting many of Melbourne's
liberal church elite to his fold. For a brief account Clyde Griffin, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of
of Strong see C. R. Badger,'Charles Strong' in BedeMasculinity in Victorian America (Chicago, 1990); and
David G. Pugh, Sons of Liberty: The Masculine Mind
Nairn (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 6
(Melbourne, 1976), 208-9. The broader religiousin Nineteenth Century America (Westport, Conn.,
and intellectual context for these developments is1983). For a useful overview of some of the Ameri-
illuminated by F B. Smith, 'Religion and Free- can historiography on masculinity see Bryce Trais-
thought in Melbourne I870-I890', unpublished
ter, 'Academic Viagra: the rise of American
M.A. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1960; and Jillmasculinity studies', American Quarterly, LII, 2 (une
Roe, Beyond Belief: Theosophy in Australia i879-19392000), 274-304.
44 Social History VOL. 27 : NO. I
II
Springthorpe's first diary, the single volume before his mature series, begins in August 1883,
when he was twenty-eight. At the time he was in England furthering his studies, although his
return to Australia was only a few months away. Its purpose is clear:
I have long wanted some such thing - not to jot down failures or to rail against myself -
but to keep myself in self-communion. I find meditation becomes reverie unless I have
someone to talk to or confide in. I want this to supply that want. Here I want to talk to
myself... and for this I must try to banish self-consciousness - and be perfectly true and
honest with myself.16
Springthorpe's reasons for writing a diary were not uncommon. Journals, memoirs, diaries
and autobiographies became an important part of new technologies of the self emerging in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, marking the emergence of possessive individualist
subjectivities.17 The nature, origin and particular rhetorical strategies of these forms of writing
have been the focus of much critical historical investigation, and these analyses provide essential
caveats for the use of Springthorpe's text. It clearly is not a privileged site for historical truth
but a text in which a self is invented. Moreover, what distinguishes the diary from other means
for inventing the self, such as the autobiography, is the lack of narrative closure. Diaries are
usually a series of repetitive representations of the self rather than a retrospective narrative that
orders the self in a teleological structure. As Felicity Nussbaum has argued, the diary is not a
classical realist text but a journal of existence, in this way both producing and reflecting
individuals who believe they are the centre and source of meaning.18 This meaning was an
imagined'truth' of the self, a 'reality' for the private self in opposition to the 'social perform-
ances' required of the public self. The diary was a daily monitor of one's success in maintain-
ing the integrity of the private self, not a map of its inevitable triumph (or failure).
Springthorpe's desire to use his diary as a means of self-government was conventional, but
there are other aspects of his diary that were unusual. As a number of scholars have argued, by
the nineteenth century the private diary was largely the preserve of middle-class women and
although women's diaries were characterized by tensions between the writing of a private self
and a desire for a public record, men were increasingly inclined to publish their autobiogra-
phies, travel journals and diaries, rendering them as public documents.19 This performative
16 Springthorpe Diaries, 25 August 1883. biography in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century England
17 For the relevant arguments about the nature of (New Haven, I984); and George P Landow (ed.),
self-representation in diaries and autobiographies, Approaches to Victorian Autobiography (Athens, 1979).
and the differences between them, see Regina 18 Nussbaum, op. cit., 22-8.
Gagnier, Subjectivities:A History of Self-Representation 19 See, for example, Shari Benstock (ed.), The
in Britain 1832-1920 (Oxford, 1991); Felicity A. Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobio-
Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and graphical Writings (London, 1988); Judy Simons,
Ideology in Eighteenth Century England (Baltimore, Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny
1989); James Olney, Metaphors of the Sef (Princeton, Burney to Virginia Woolf (London, 1990); Harriet
N.J., I975); Paul J. Eakin, Fiction as Autobiography: Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen's
Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton, N.J., Private Diaries (New Brunswick, 1988); and Judy
1985); Robert Elbaz, The Changing Nature of the Self. Nolte Lensink,'Expanding the boundaries of criti-
A Critical Study of the Autobiographical Discourse cism: the diary as female autobiography', Wimen's
(London, 1988); Paul Jay, Being in the Text: Self- Studies, xiv, i (1987), 39-53. For the shifts in mas-
Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes culine modes of self-representation see Nussbaum,
(Ithaca, 1984); A. O. J. Cockshut, The Art of Auto- op. cit., 24 and Gagnier, op. cit., 47-8.
mode suggests a retreat from the idea of a private self or at least its sublimation in preference
to a public record of masculine achievement; a sense perhaps that the increasing codification
of a 'muscular Christian' ethos inhibited the invention and expression of a potentially disruptive
private self.20 Springthorpe held no such reserve, preferring the locked and private diary, even
if expensively bound, as the means of self-expression. More than this, Springthorpe hoped that
the diary would be a partner in an internal dialogue -'someone to talk to and confide in'. This
comment is that of a lonely young man far from companions and family, but it is also a clue
to his sense that an 'other' was vital for the formation of self. Far from being a means of
constructing a private self away from the chaos of social intercourse, for Springthorpe the diary
was a means of creating and engaging with society. In it he could re-create those social dialogues
that helped form the boundaries of his self, allowing the diary to be his 'mirror'. Thus the diary
was not a respite from the public world but an utterly social site.
The entries in Springthorpe's first youthful diary are a series of moral and spiritual aspir-
ations as well as confession and self-admonishment for his failures, conventional forms of
Victorian masculine self-government.21 Statements such as 'I try to make my life Christ-like'
or 'I want my life to be first true and then earnest in myself' are quickly followed by 'I have
been wandering away from spiritual things' or 'I have been nearer actively impure than previ-
ously in my history'. Much of it is a discourse on the tension between his'animal appetites and
passions', admittedly 'constitutionally strong as they are in men', and his concern with moral
restraint; his appetites 'utterly checked for twelve months'. But the entries are far from frequent,
suggesting that the battle between appetites and morality was by no means one-sided or as
tortuous as some of his admonishments imply. Moreover, they are less than the frank confessions
expected of a private record. There are veiled hints of 'impurity', 'falling off', 'unworthiness'
and a 'lack of constancy', which preface his resolve to be pure in the future, and point to
occasional 'indulgence' in the periods between his diary entries.22 But the details of these
'failings' are not recorded, pointing to the narcissistic functions of the journal; in seeing the
diary as a mirror, Springthorpe sought to mist over the darker images.
These personal reflections took on new meaning in I885 and I886 during the period of
his courtship of Annie Constance Inglis, a woman of eighteen, twelve years younger than
Springthorpe. In the diary he begins to chart the course of their courtship and his confessions
and admonishments are now centred on his worthiness for marriage and earnest protestations
of his love. His sense of unworthiness is exacerbated by the fact that he was engaged to another
woman and one of his close friends had expressed a keen interest in Annie.23 There were social
risks involved in breaking off one engagement and undermining another man's chances, but
convention was flouted because Annie embodied his ideal of the perfect woman and wife.
20 On the retreat of some Victorians from self- in addition to those already cited, see Peter
absorption see Gagnier, op. cit., 239. On the more Middleton, The Inward Gaze: Masculinity and Subjec-
general male retreat from 'domesticity' see Tosh, tivity in Modern Culture (London, 1992); Lynne
'What should historians do with masculinity',op. cit., Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing
I87-9 and A Man's Place, op. cit., 170-94. On the Men (London, I99o); and R. W. Connell, Masculini-
powerful influence of the 'muscular Christian' ethos ties (St Leonards, 1995).
see Mangan and Walvin, op.cit., 1-S and Vance, op. cit. 22 Springthorpe Diaries, I September I883, 17
21 For some interesting sociological and theoreti- September 1883, 15 March I885.
cal insights into the formation of male subjectivity, 23 ibid., 25 March I885-26 December 1886.
Like many Victorian contemporaries his desire was shaped by the 'naturalness' of the distinct
'characters' and 'capacities' of the sexes.24 In his different moments of expectant lover, mourning
husband and scholar, Springthorpe praised the distinctive virtues of'woman'. In the course of
their relationship we can also map a shift in the anthropology of their union - from one between
different but complementary natures to a more overtly patriarchal and patronizing sense of her
as sister, child and mother.
In 1884, in a lecture 'A Perfect Woman', read before the Melbourne Shakespeare Society, he
claimed that 'woman is a compound of sweet essences - beauty, modesty, tenderness, grace,
sweetness, self-sacrifice and tact', she must be both 'womanly and wise' and her true mission
was'helpmate of man'. By these criteria the most'noble' of Shakespeare's women was Rosalind.
These conventional rhapsodies on the nature of'woman' were echoed in the diaries. But there
are other virtues necessary for'woman'. For the scholar, women must'retain the womanly while
acquiring the intellectual' and although he qualifies this with the claim that for him the
womanly intellectual should have 'wisdom rather than knowledge and charm rather than logic'
there is sense that the ideal woman should have a measure of intelligence. In the diaries he
remarks on Annie's self-reliance and individuality, and while these are threatening qualities they
are also attractive ones. There are tensions here between the ideal of female charms and their
capacity for individuality and wisdom, between their otherness and their sameness, and in the
interstices of these tensions lay Springthorpe's desire.25
Many of these claims about the nature and capacities of'woman' bear a striking resemblance
to such classic Victorian texts on the distinctive characters of the sexes as Ruskin's 'Of Queen's
Gardens' and the poems of Tennyson.26 These Romantic and Victorian notions of the 'perfect
woman' were embedded in a larger middle-class culture which embraced the 'helpmate'
ideal. Historians have charted the prevalence of the ideal of companionate marriage in
Victorian culture, tracing its lineage back to chivalrous conventions, and ideas of sensibility and
domesticity emerging in the eighteenth century. Middle-class women ideally supported and
sustained the 'public' face of men, but the companionate ideal often made men more, not less,
in E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds),

24 The literature on the separate spheres is also
vast. A few useful accounts include Martha Vicinus The Works of John Ruskin, vol. 18 (London, 1905),
(ed.), The Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian109-44. For the place of this essay in the broader
Women (Bloomington, 1977); Sandra Burmancontext of Ruskin's work see John Dixon Hunt,
(ed.), Fit Workfor Women (London, 1979); LudmillaThe Wider Sea: A Life of John Ruskin (London,
Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science1982); Derrick Leo, Ruskin: The Great Victorian
and Medicine between the Eighteenth Century and the (London, I969); and George P. Landow, The Aes-
Twentieth Century (Hemel Hempstead, I989); Marythetic and Critical Theories ofJohn Ruskin (Princeton,
Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideology of Gender1971). On Tennyson's ambivalent responses to
in Mid- Victorian England (Chicago, 1988); and Carol women's advancement, at once both supportive
and yet patronizing and patriarchal, see Joanna
Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of
Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985). Richardson, The Pre-eminent Victorian: A Study of
25 J. W. Springthorpe, 'A Perfect Woman', paper Tennyson (London, 1962); Isobel Armstrong, Vic-
read before the Melbourne Shakespeare Society, 7torian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics (London,
November I884, 2-12. Some relevant diary entries1993), 252-83 and William E. Buckler, The Victorian
include Springthorpe Diaries, ii July 1885, 20Imagination: Essays in Aesthetic Exploration (New
March 1886. York, 1980), 36-226.
26 For Ruskin see 'Of Queen's Gardens' (1865)
demanding and assertive in the domestic sphere.27 Springthorpe certainly embraced the belief,
in both his public and private writings, that a woman through marriage became an integral part
of man's complete self-realization. In public he saw'womanhood's excellencies' contributing
to 'man's possibilities' and in private he saw his forthcoming union with Annie as'my salvation,
my purification, my ennoblement, my rescue from self'.28 It is here that we can glimpse a deeper
sense to the 'helpmate' ideal, as the crucial means for achieving manhood, with all its Victorian
connotations of manliness, chivalry, self-control and patriarchal authority. Woman became the
means for making the male self, rendering the diary unnecessary.
Springthorpe's early enthusiasm for the 'helpmate' ideal, however, undergoes a subtle shift in
emphasis in his later reflections (after her death) on his 'ideal' wife. His memorial poem,'In
Memoriam', with its echoes of Tennyson's influential consolation on the possibility of life after
death, praises'a maiden, not too bright or good','a phantom of delight ... to haunt, to startle
and waylay'.29 There is an undoubted consistency between the youthful lover's and the middle-
aged widower's sense of the virtues of women, but in the latter there is a discernible decline
in desire for womanly intelligence and independence. In fact Springthorpe seems to have lost
his youthful enthusiasm for a partnership of different but equal people, stressing a more
conventional ideal of a wife as someone to support, delight and complement male subjectivity.
He seems to have embraced, more fully than before, widespread Victorian ideals of compan-
ionate marriage, with their complex and contradictory imperatives towards partnership and
subordination.30 Now a 'perfect woman [was] nobly planned to warm, to comfort and to
command'.31 In his intense private musing after his bereavement there has also been a marked
shift in the tenor of the relationship; from two people of different qualities enhancing each
other to a sense of her'girlish delight', her'sisterly affection' and her virtue as a mother.32 Rather
than separate spheres and companionate marriage being monolithic cultural discourses, the
shifts in Springthorpe's attitudes indicate some of the ways particular marriages embodied and
lived Victorian ideals and how these could evolve during the course of the union.
These changes were to come. In January 1887 Springthorpe and Annie were married and
27 See Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Domestic Relations in Eighteenth Century England
Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle (New York, 1978); and Randolf Trumbach, Sex and
Class, 1780-1850 (London, 1987) and Mark the Gender Revolution Volume One: Heterosexuality and
Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and thethe Third Gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago,
English Gentleman (New Haven, 1981). On the1998).
darker sides of the chivalrous and companionate 28 Springthorpe, 'A Perfect Woman', 4 and
ideals see Anna Clark, Women's Silence, Men's Vio-Springthorpe Diaries, 28 May I886.
lence: Sexual Assault in England, 1770-1845 (London, 29 J. W. Springthorpe, In Memoriam -Annie Con-
1987) and A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Com-stance Springthorpe (Melbourne, 1897).
panionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life 30 These dimensions of Victorian marriage
(London, 1992). Carnes and Griffin argue that the(partnership and subordination) are analysed in
companionate ideal was rare before 1900, but thisilluminating ways in such studies as Davidoff and
seems to be more appropriate to the American Hall, op. cit.; Hammerton, op. cit.; M. Jeanne Peter-
context. See Carnes and Griffin, Meanings for son, Family, Love and Work in the Lives of Victorian
Manhood, op. cit., 81-2. In Britain the idea ofGentlewomen (Bloomington, 1989); Pat Jalland,
partnership and companionship has a longerWomen, Marriage and Politics, 1860-1914 (Oxford,
lineage, back to at least the late eighteenth century. 1986); Barbara Caine, Destined to be Wives:The Sisters
See, for example, G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Cultureof Beatrice Webb (Oxford, I986); and John Tosh, A
of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-CenturyMan's Place, op. cit., 53-I23.
Britain (Chicago, 1992); Randolf Trumbach, The 31 Springthorpe, In Memoriam, op. cit.
Rise of the Egalitarian Family:Aristocratic Kinship and 32 Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February 1897.
Springthorpe was transported by the 'bliss' of
frank and coyly reticent in his account. The i
relationship, was already apparent in his deligh
But she also affirms his masculinity by 'look
showing that she loves men'. After breakfast t
said I won't repeat', 'if only you could see A
Springthorpe's most explicit address to an aud
was a performance, an address to some othe
creating a completeness that required no dialo
necessity to write. There were no further entr
birth and death of children, three of the fou
The death of his wife in January I897 create
III
The tenor of Springthorpe's diary of mourning has been glimpsed, but the intensity and
duration of these reflections are difficult to grasp at such a distance. Two years after his wife's
death he was still filling his diary with 'Oh sweet, sweet, sweet, how your loss pains'. Two years
later he cried out'Death! Death! How much greater are the dead than the living- in all respects.'
In July 1903 he reflected: 'It is now six and a half years after your disappearance - the old sweet-
ness still lingers on ... memories - innumerable and holy throng in.' And so it continues. In
April I906 he wrote'the only one who understood me - and loved me through it... my sweet
now vanished almost ten years. Oh! how I miss her.' Even twenty-six years after the tragic event,
on the anniversary of her death, he could still write 'what a blow . . . never forgotten since'.34
In fact from I897 until 1914 the diary is not a strict record of existence but a register of grief
and mourning. Springthorpe clearly wants us to see mourning as the sum total of his private
self, with every entry about Annie's death.
Springthorpe might appear to be suffering from'pathological mourning', and by any reason-
able account Springthorpe's protracted mourning was unusual. But the question of its pathol-
ogy is more problematic than the duration of the mourning might suggest. Far from grief
inhibiting his activity Springthorpe takes up his pen and begins to write lengthy accounts of
his feelings almost immediately. Within a few months he wrote and produced the elaborate
case-bound'In Memoriam' book, complete with poems, reminiscences, photographs and repro-
ductions of Rossetti's painting'Dante's Dream', and before a year is out he had begun plans for
her memorial. Moreover, although there does appear to be some pause in his public activity in
the late I89os, particularly the publication of medical research, he continues to go to work,
although he professes no interest in it, and by I900 is again taking on new reform and
professional responsibilities.35 The interruption that mourning caused in his activity and career
was far less than its duration. This may represent successful male sublimation, and it does, but
it runs against the grain of his journal, pointing once again to Springthorpe's capacity to use
33 ibid.,27 January 1887-6 February 1887. Medical Congress, President of the Melbourne
34 ibid., I4 February 1899, 28 January 1901, 26 Medical Association in 1900 and President of the
July 1903, IO April I906, 23 January 1923. Council of the Victorian Trained Nurses Associ-
35 For example he became Vice-President of the ation in 190o.
Hygiene Section at the 1899 Brisbane Australasian
the diary to construct another self simultaneously engaged with society and yet independent
of his public persona.
His grief is given expression through descriptions of daily events, memories, poems, dreams,
conversations and visual images. He acknowledges his loss frequently; Annie was the most
wonderful companion, wife and mother, the only woman who understood him and her loss is
irreparable. Sometimes this idealization takes on bizarre visual forms. At a number of places in
the diaries Springthorpe pasted in small reproductions of paintings of Joan of Arc, or Guine-
vere accompanied by Lancelot (Springthorpe and Annie's house was called Camelot), or
pictures of wood nymphs, and in each case he has cut out the face of Annie from a family
photograph and pasted it over the face of the woman in the painting.36 Here we can glimpse
some of the complex cultural currents in Springthorpe's mourning. His frequent recourse to
images of Joan of Arc conjures images of Annie as noble martyr to a greater cause (although
whether this was merely his marriage, love as an abstract or the perpetuation of the lineage
through birth is unclear).Wood nymphs suggest recourse to bucolic romantic images of'natural'
innocence, or might indicate darker themes of magical spirits and the power of nature. The
most important cultural influence, however, seems to be Tennyson. This is apparent in Spring-
thorpe's allusion in his memorial book to Tennyson's 'In Memoriam', with its hopeful message
of immortality of the spirit, something that appealed directly to Springthorpe's liberal Protes-
tantism. More interesting are the echoes of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King', through the frequent
deployment of images and references to Lancelot and Guinevere. Here Springthorpe seems to
be struggling to represent his union as a supreme but guilty love, brought to a tragic end. Rather
than seeing himself as Arthur, Springthorpe seems to suggest that he is the true but guilty lover,
betrayed by fate and sin. How this tapped into deeper feelings about his marriage is unclear but
it suggests a tortured, romantic and tragic sensibility, and perhaps a sense that past wrongs (the
fraught circumstances of their courtship, perhaps) or deep pleasures have to be punished in the
end. Perhaps there is also a hint here that guilt and pleasure were intertwined, awaiting fate to
extract an appropriate price for transcendent love. These things cannot be pinned down with
any certainty in such a complex text but there are enough hints and cultural references to point
to some of the sources that inspired Springthorpe's specific representations of love. Despite
Springthorpe's pre-eminence as a professional and a rational man of science, his visual and
written vocabulary came from deeper romantic and emotional imaginings.37
36 Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February 1897, 14 57-176; Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (London,

February 1899, 17 June 1900. 1972), 211-76; Owen Schur, Victorian Pastoral:
37 Tennyson is a contested figure in modern Tennyson, Hardy and the Subversion of Forms (Colum-
scholarship. He has been seen as conservative, bus, I989), 21-156; Alan Sinfield, Alfred Tennyson
radical, romantic, Victorian and proto-modern. (Oxford, 1986); and Colin Graham, Ideologies of Epic:
There are ways in which he developed a variety of Nation, Empire and Victorian Epic Poetry (Manchester,
major traditions within Victorian culture over a 1998), 25-46. For a study of the importance of
long career. Springthorpe, in his own private writ- Arthurian legend more generally within Victorian
ings, seems to respond most directly to the roman- culture, particularly in Tennyson's work, see
tic and Victorian elements of Tennyson. For studies Stephen Knight, Arthurian Literature and Society
of Tennyson, and a variety of critical perspectives (London, 1983), 149-86. For a more general study
on his work, assessments of his influence on Vic- of the specific meanings and evolution of the
torian culture, as well as specific studies of 'In Lancelot and Guinevere legend see Lori J. Walters
Memoriam' and 'Idylls of the King', see Ward Hell- (ed.), Lancelot and Guinevere:A Casebook (New York,
strom, On the Poems of Tennyson (Gainesville, 1972); 1996).
Richardson, The Pre-eminent Victorian, op. cit.,
These rich cultural allusions, however, are often undercut by a rather shallow, although under-
standable, narcissistic dimension to his ruminations. He bemoans at length the consequences of
Annie's death; the loneliness and meaninglessness of life, his 'vegetative life', without her. As
she had been the means for his sense of completeness, her death fractured his self and writing
was an effort to sustain himself. This is most apparent in his reminiscences of the past; their
times of domestic happiness and shared pleasures. Soon after Annie's death he recalls their first
meetings and courtship, glossing over the feelings of guilt and unworthiness that dominated his
contemporary diary entries.38 But he continues sporadically to recall incidents and feelings
throughout the following years. These memories obscure the boundary between past and
present and allow a momentary healing reverie.
But Springthorpe's romantic sentiments about the tragic consequences of guilt and ecstasy
had deep roots in his life. This is most apparent in his dream work, which was fraught with
tension and anxiety. In one he dreamt that to save her life Annie had to marry Fred (the man
who had been courting her when Springthorpe sought her hand).39 It is a risky enterprise
attempting to interpret dreams at such a distance (though difficult to resist), without access to
the individual associations so central to dream analysis, but the dream seems to suggest an
unconscious wish to escape mourning by constructing a dramaturgy involving her marriage to
someone else. Other dreams contained a more frank erotic element, with references to 'loaded
white guns', although even here there were anxious moments, when Annie replies to his
proposal of marriage,'Don't be in such a hurry'.4" The phallic sense of the 'loaded white gun'
seems clear, but the hint of delayed fulfilment undercuts the pleasure of the dream. In much
of his dream work Springthorpe seems to be disentangling the knots of desire. In another dream
he calls his wife 'Playfair Peggie', and by 1904 he has a series of dreams where he proposes
marriage to Annie and then panics because he remembers that he is already married.41 This
anxiety is resolved when he realizes that Annie and his previous wife are one and the same, but
the play of wishing around a second marriage is a strong element in these dreams.
Although his unconscious seems to be negotiating the work of disengagement, Springthorpe
remains firm in his commitment to the 'everlasting' nature of their love. In memory, dream,
poem, memorial and picture he seeks to maintain her presence in his life. But there was a much
more direct sense in which Springthorpe sustained his marriage. He believed that his wife was
actively present in his day-to-day existence. The emergence in the nineteenth century of a sense
of continuity between the 'real' world and the afterlife has been the focus of considerable
historical investigation. Diverse cultural currents, ranging from the decline in theological and
popular beliefs in hell, the rise of romantic conceptions of the vital force of nature, Tennyson's
faith in an afterlife, scientific naturalism and the increasing interest in Indian mysticism,
contributed to the belief that with death the spirit continued, in corporeal form, for eternity.42
This was fruitful terrain for the growth of a small but influential spiritualist movement that
38 Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February 1897. Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian
39 ibid.,7 August 1900. England (London, 1989); Janet Oppenheim, The
40 ibid., 25 May 1901. Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in
41 Springthorpe Diaries, 20 October 1900, i5 England 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 1985); and R.
October 1904, 20 November 1904. Lawrence Moore, In Search of the White Cross: Spiri-
42 See, for example, Morley, Death, Heaven and the tualism, Parapsychology and American Culture (New
Victorians, op. cit., 102-11; Aries, The Hour of Our York, 1977).
Death, op. cit., 454-68; Alex Owen, The Darkened
January 2002 The scales of suffering 5I
claimed to have the capacity and the techniques for communicating with the spirits of 'the
departed'. Spiritualism and alternative religious movements, such as theosophy, were active in
late nineteenth-century Australia.43 Sentimental theologies of the afterlife and popular spiritu-
alism have been seen as part of an attempt by women to assert cultural power. Heaven became
a continuation and glorification of the domestic sphere and equally women, because they were
closer to nature, were seen as more capable of communicating with spirits.44 Nevertheless, many
men were active believers in spiritualist ideas and Springthorpe was undoubtedly aware of these
currents of thought. But his attempts to put these ideas into practice were marked by doubt,
frustration and conflict. With his gradual abandonment of mourning his theological under-
standing of immortality underwent significant change.
As an active liberal churchgoer he worked and reworked the prevailing arguments concern-
ing immortality, eternity, salvation and resurrection in an effort to convince himself that his
'love' would continue in some fashion. Within a month of Annie's death he declared: 'Who
can thus limit us when freed from the limitations of the body.... There is then a personal
future - But what is it?'45 This sense of faith and doubt marked all his musing on the possi-
bility of an afterlife. In 1898 he wondered about the resurrection of the body: 'What does it
imply, what does it mean?' A few years later he maintained that: 'I hope and believe there is an
eternal goodness there as well as here and that there is a divine far off waiting for me'.46 Only
by sustaining himself with such a vision could Springthorpe hope to 'meet' Annie again. In
discussing the plans for his memorial he argued his preference for a four-sided temple because
of its signification of a deeper story of spiritual progress, from loss to memory to separation
and finally to reunion. But edging around these declarations of faith were uncomfortable doubts
-'what is it','who can know','where','why'- which threatened his faith, convincing him of
the insignificance of 'man' in the universe, making him anxious for a sign of the truth, some
affirmation of faith and divine purpose, some communication from Annie.47
In his daily existence Springthorpe searched for some direct spiritual contact. He negotiated
his doubts but also attempted to conjure her presence. There were two main forms of address
to Annie in his diary. The first was to write directly to her, using the present tense, to mask the
sense of her absence. He wrote to 'Mumpie' (presumably his term of affection), describing
recent events that might be of interest to her. He discussed how the children were faring at
school, the state of the garden, trips he had undertaken, people they knew and significant politi-
cal events, such as the death of Queen Victoria. Also he wrote to reassure her of his undying
love: 'Mumpie, though there has been much to distract ... throughout all, my lost sweetheart
... [you are] still the sweetest, dearest, present recollection'.48 The act of writing, then, became
a means of reifying Annie's spirit, making it a tangible and present force in his life.
43 Prominent citizens such as former Chief 44 See Ann Douglas,'Heaven our home: con-
Justice of New South Wales, William Charles solation literature in the northern United States
Windeyer, future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin I83-80' in Stannard, op. cit., 49-68 and Owen, op.
and leading feminist, Rose Scott, attended seances cit. For the broader beliefs about heaven see Colleen
more than once, and also had their palms read and McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History
astrological signs charted. See Roe, Beyond Belief, (New Haven, I988).
op. cit., 28-54; Al Gabay, The Mystic Life of A!fred 45 Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February I897.
Deakin (Melbourne, 1992); and Judith A. Allen, 46 ibid., ii August 1898, 28 January 1901.
Rose Scott: Vision and Revision in Australian Feminism 47 ibid., I9 December 1898, 28 January 1901.
(Melbourne, 1994), 101-4. 4 ibid., 12 January 1901.
These attempts to write Annie's existence were
mode of address. Throughout the diaries he atte
is marked by failure. He entreats her to return,
sweet - I have prepared the garden and planted i
Will you come Love? Will you come? Here I am
and present) betrays his doubts and confusions.
'[I] feel my best self only when looking skyw
beyond the vale' and a week later,'the vast deep
it was while the Gracious Presence is unfelt'.50
had no knowledge or communication, though
Lodge or Conan-Doyle'.51 His failure to commu
his theological understandings of life after death
the survival of the soul in corporeal form - rais
into some other form. His scientific backgroun
the spirit. He talks of people as insignificant
spiritual longing is but an effect of'the brain c
science, although he constantly despairs that h
Instead he comes to a new theological position.
Springthorpe seems to conceive of the soul as
rather as infinitesimal spiritual particles ever
present but unable to communicate.
The diary was largely a private record, despit
But Springthorpe gave a very public performa
to his wife, completed in I90I at a cost of mo
temple-style monument in imported Carrara
Doric columns, a tiled royal blue and malachite
the statements 'Light Evermore, Love Evermo
the pediments. Inside was a statuary group of th
Mackennal - a recumbent woman 'sweetly sle
unstrung lute dropped to the ground and at t
his hand to place a wreath of everlasting flow
dards this memorial was remarkable for its siz
Victoria's Albert Memorial in Kensington Gard
diary. The memorial was shorn of the guilt, do
troubled the private writings. The public dis
woman and a deep and abiding love. A memor
ocal statement that articulated acceptable senti
able to explore more complex emotions and fe
grief but impossible to convey in a public spac
49 ibid., I5 September 900o. public mem

50 ibid., I5 January I908 and 23 January I908. m
51 ibid., 23 January 1923. Australian
52 ibid., 5 September I902, 15 June I903. descr
53 This connection is drawn by Pat Jalland. Her
discussion of Springthorpe largely focuses on thi
January The scales of suffering
2002 53
6L ? :^L ;r ·;lf;;= ijg IJC i ·LI

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _ rr,
" 'I·
h-
r ___ __ __ pi-W·""' " ':

c e· . :a·
Figure i. Symbolic Marble Group by Bertram Mackennal, erected in the Boroondara Cemetary above
the vault of the wife of Dr. J. W. Springthorpe.
From T71e Australasian, 23 February 1901.
Although the memorial was generally praised by the colonial press, it quickly became known
as Melbourne's 'Taj Mahal'.54 This term was riddled with ambivalence. Signifying a deep and
abiding love, it also conjured up images of eastern potentates, excess, extravagance and superi-
ority. This ran against the tenor of Victorian mourning. More significantly, it challenged colonial
ideals of class and masculinity. In Australia class, gentility and respectability were more fragile
than at 'home'. Class boundaries were more fluid, and in the colonies the 'nouveau' were
numerous, significant and more likely to mix in 'the best circles', often to the embarrassment
of those from more established lineages. Moreover, manliness in Australia was much more a
working-class and egalitarian ideal than in England. This blurred the class distinctions between
men. As a consequence, class distinctions, and codes of respectability and gentility within the
54 The history of the memorial as the'Taj Mahal' Melbourne State Library, to Anon, 24 January I966,
is from T. A. Keeley, Acting Chief Librarian La Trobe Library Files,'Springthorpe Memorial'.
colonial middle class, were policed largely by women.55 Some historians have seen this as a
culture that bred a particularly virulent form of masculinism, which marginalized women.56
Regardless of the effects on women, the prevailing masculine ideals in the Australian colonies
were egalitarianism, fortitude, endurance, lack of ostentation, the avoidance of affect, stoicism
and a host of similar qualities, ones that crossed all classes.
Springthorpe saw this memorial as his chief form of consolation.57 It seems to have been a
significant component of his grieving process, one that gradually eased his adjustment to his
wife's death. But although it hid more complex feelings and did not solve the burden of
contemplation and reunion, the memorial was also a challenge to masculine codes of accept-
able behaviour. In asserting the importance of feelings and emotions, such as love and grief,
the memorial deliberately flouted Victorian rectitude in matters of death, and more forcefully
refuted colonial ideals of egalitarian, manly fortitude. In publicly announcing the importance
of the private sphere, Springthorpe was flouting masculine conventions. In one sense his
grieving harked back to some of the agonistic relations between nature and culture that were
at the core of Victorian liberalism. Men had to overcome their appetites, their animal natures,
in order to gain self-control and a sense of the civilized self. The cultivation of these attributes
required complex intersections between the public and the private self. But as Tosh has force-
fully argued, the sense of struggle within liberalism was increasingly externalized in the late
nineteenth century. What was to be overcome was outside the self - an exotic 'other' - lands,
climates, peoples that required incorporation into the empire. And this task required manly
attributes and self-sacrifice, more so on the frontier than in the metropolitan centre. Spring-
thorpe, however, forcefully asserted the affective, emotional elements of liberalism, sentiments
that placed him outside colonial masculine codes. The sense of class ridicule uneasily edging
around the reactions to the memorial points to the fact that Springthorpe's memorial was an
unsettling presence in colonial culture.
IV
Springthorpe's mourning offers a rare insight into the tensions between the public and the
private male self at a time when the codes of Victorian masculinity were focused on the rigorous
55 On the role of women in maintaining social and questioned its consequences for women,
codes and social status see Beverley Kingston, My arguing that the sex imbalance in the population
Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann: Women And made women more highly prized. See John
Work in Australia (Melbourne, 1975), 6-28 and Docker, The Nervous Nineties:Australian Cultural Life
Oxford History ofAustralia, volume III: Glad, Confident in the 189os (Melbourne, 1991), 117-49; Chris
Morning 1860-1900 (Melbourne, 1988), 277-83. On McConville,'Rough women, respectable men and
the broader social forms of gentility in the colonial social reform: a response to Lake's "masculinism"',
context see Penny Russell, A Wish of Distinction: Historical Studies, xxii, 88 (April i987), 432-40; and
Colonial Gentility and Femininity (Melbourne, i994); Bruce Scates,'Socialism and feminism: the case of
Paul de Serville, Pounds and Pedigrees: The Upper William Lane. A reply to Marilyn Lake', Labour
Class in Victoria 1850-1880 (Melbourne, I99I); and History, LIX (November I990), 45-58. For the con-
Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous sequences for women see Patricia Grimshaw,'The
Melbourne (Melbourne, 1978). Australian family: an historical interpretation' in
56 Most notably Marilyn Lake, 'The politics of Ailsa Burns, Gill Bottomley and Penny Jools (eds),
respectability', op. cit., I6-31. See also Marilyn The Family in the Modern World:Australian Perspectives
Lake,'Socialism and manhood', op. cit., 54-62. Some (Sydney, 1983), 39-42.
historians, however, have contested the extent of 57 Springthorpe Diaries, 16 April 1899.
this masculinism, at least within the working class,
presentation of a controlled and ordered self. The preference for the published autobiographical
narrative in the late Victorian period worked to represent a unified self that was largely public.
Springthorpe's diaries are just one piece of evidence, among many, pointing to fractures in these
masculine codes of public fortitude, discipline and training. And although there seems, as Tosh
argues, to have been a 'flight from domesticity' in the late Victorian era, Springthorpe's diaries
demonstrate that many men still sustained their masculinity through an ordered and affirming
private sphere. Family was still central to the formation of a strong public self for many men,
particularly those who chose marriage in preference to the growing popularity of bachelor and
club life.58 When private foundations collapsed for such men, the 'essence' of the public man
was threatened. The diary was a form of private reconciliation for Springthorpe, a means of
shoring up the public man by writing a world of mourning which gave his life its bearings
through its echo of the world of the paterfamilias that had been his lot and was now lost. It
also provided a means for healing the rupture between public and private occasioned by Annie's
death. Here the mourning performance was far from pathological. In fact it sustained the public
self for Springthorpe.
Much of Springthorpe's diary, in its intricate maintenance of the presence of Annie, seems
to be a refusal to accept his loss. But through the act of narrating his religious doubt, the failure
of his efforts to communicate with Annie and his ambiguous dreams, Springthorpe appears to
be undertaking the vital psychic work of disengaging himself from his grief. These efforts are
protracted and by no means linear in their progression towards this end, but one final factor
seems to tip the balance in favour of a break with the mourning process, a break that enables
him to marry again in 1916. Of course the signs of a break have been apparent for a few years.
Increasing doubts about communication and anxious dreams are obvious clues. More signifi-
cant perhaps is Springthorpe's diary itself. After 1904 the entries become less frequent and
shorter. But the crucial juncture seems to be January/February 1907, almost ten years to the
day after Annie's death. On this anniversary of her death he reflects on the symmetry in his life
-'ten years' absence after ten years' companionship'.59 In these and other comments he implies
that he had to suffer in equal measure to his happiness, that there was some ultimate calculus
of pleasure and pain. A few months after this anniversary there is an unprecedented break of
nine months in the diary. He picks up his pen again early in I908, but then there is a further
break of eighteen months from August I908 to March I910. Thereafter the entries become
more sporadic. Having suffered for ten years, after ten years of happiness, Springthorpe seems
released from his burden. This sense of a final evening of the scales of pleasure and suffering is
so actively lived in his diaries it seems almost to have shaped the actuality of his mourning.
This concern with the scales of suffering had diverse sources. In part it emerged out of
debates in medical science. A sense of the need to balance life, to strike an accord between the
faculties, and between physical and mental work, was related to the fundamental problem of
excess for Victorians. In his published writings and his medical practice Springthorpe, like
many of his contemporaries, was vitally interested in the problems of excessive concentration
58 For the broader dimensions of these develop- structing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism
ments see John Tosh, A Man's Place, op. cit., 145-94 (Princeton, 1989); and Eve Sedgwick, Between Men:
and'What should historians do with masculinity?', English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New
op. cit., 183-9; Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in York, 1985).
Victorian America, op. cit.; Mary Ann Clawson, Con- 59 Springthorpe Diaries, 23 January 1907.
Social History VOL. 27 : NO. I
on one faculty at the expense of others. Drawing on the influential work of such medical
theorists as Henry Maudsley, many Victorians, especially professionals and men of science like
Springthorpe, saw self-indulgence and excess of animal appetite as a descent into barbarism.60
In contrast, control and self-denial were the hallmark of civilization. But this could go too
far. The excitements of civilization increased nervous disorders. These problems were in part
elaborations of an older concern with the relations between mind and body. But it is one
that takes on a certain urgency in Victorian medical science. For doctors like Springthorpe
there were pervasive fears that civilization was cultivating the mind at the expense of the body,
while savagery did the opposite. The consequence of these 'imbalances' was decline and decay.
This was not merely abstract theory. Springthorpe actively embraced such doctrines in
wrestling with his own personal dilemmas. In his early diary it is the fear of indulgence and
excess (of animal appetites) that his writing monitors and guards against. Later he is worried
that morbid reflection, and obsessive involvement in his work, are threatening his constitution.
It was excess or a compulsive absorption in one capacity, thought or desire that seemed most
unsettling. What was required was an equal cultivation of both mind and body. For Spring-
thorpe and others a healthy body meant a sound mind, but equally a fit mind ensured a sound
body.61
These were pervasive themes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychological
medicine. But Springthorpe also had an unusual preoccupation with the psychological aspects
of disease. He was aware of the work of Lombroso, Galton, Krafft-Ebing and other theorists
of degeneracy. As a medical practitioner he was sympathetic to somatic theories of mental
illness, argued forcefully by such eminent alienists as Henry Maudsley and Charles Bucknill.
But while most of his contemporaries were attempting to expand the domain of physical
theories of mental disturbance and ideas of hereditary degeneracy, Springthorpe always retained
a central role for psychological factors.62 By the early decades of the twentieth century he was
part of a small group of colonial doctors sympathetic to Charcot, Weir Mitchell and other
theorists of psychological dimensions to mental phenomena. He was also one of the few
sympathetic commentators on Freud's theories (prior to I914), although like his fellow-travellers
he seemed to prefer the quicker therapeutic results of hypnosis and suggestion.63 Just before
the Great War Bergsonian vitalism added a further dimension to his understanding of the
nervous system and diseases of the mind. The body and the mind were animated by energies
exploding or dissipating according to the actions of the nerve cells, and the disposition of the
nerves was affected as much by psychological as physical conditions. For Springthorpe, psycho-
logical maladjustment and fixations could affect the bodily constitution, just as physical
conditions could shape psychological manifestations. It was essential, then, to ensure a balance
60 For Henry Maudsley's very influential study 62 ibid. See also J. W Springthorpe, 'On the
on the need to balance mind and body see, Body and psychological aspect of the sexual appetite', op. cit.
Mind: an inquiry into their connection and mutual influ- and 'Climacteric neuroses', Australian Medical
ence in reference to mental disorders (London, 1870). Journal, viii (i886), I93-9.
61 For some of his published writings on these 63 For the broader Australian debate on psycho-
problems see Springthorpe, 'On the psychological therapy see Stephen Garton,'Freud and the psychi-
aspect of the sexual appetite', Australian Medical atrists: the Australian debate I900-1940' in Brian
Gazette, IV (1884), 9-12 and 'The therapeutic use of Head and James Walter (eds), Intellectual Movements
suggestion', Intercolonial Medical Journal of Australia, in Australian Society (Melbourne, 1987).
xiI (1907), 198-206.
of the physical and mental, to maintain bodily and psychological health. Excesses of either
mental or physical stimulation could either unsettle or dissipate the vital energies generated
within the nervous system leading to illness, degeneracy or madness.64 Perhaps this explains his
vigorous work routine during his time of mourning. It was this that allowed him to'indulge'
his grief.
But these scientific preoccupations, important as they are, seem too abstract and arid to
explain Springthorpe's intense investment in mourning and his equally sudden abandonment
of the journal after a decade of obsessive writing. In the journal we can glimpse other factors
shaping his suffering. For him it was not merely a problem of energies, although it seems clear
that he understood his suffering as partly the effect of grief upon his nervous constitution.
Although he sought the scientific foundations for such theories, his inspiration was as much
literary and spiritual as medical. Drawing on writers such as Zola, himself an eager participant
in French 'spiritism', Springthorpe was convinced that material science was never sufficient to
encompass the 'mystery of life'.65 This sense of a greater mystery in life had religious sources,
as we have seen, but there is something more mundane in Springthorpe's sense that ten years'
mourning was enough. There is a strong undercurrent of superstition about the happiness of
his married life. Superstition was on the decline in the Victorian world, especially among the
professional middle classes, but Springthorpe's romantic imaginings in his journal still toyed
with images of nymphs, magic, mystery and fate.66 And although there were no specific super-
stitions informing the length of mourning necessary to appease 'fate', Springthorpe suggests
time and again that his marriage had obviously been too contented and fulfilling. Existence
inevitably delivered, he seems to suggest, an equal quantum of happiness and unhappiness;
having enjoyed ten years of married pleasure it was only right that he experience a similar
period of mournful suffering. This may explain why Springthorpe waited nearly another ten
years before marrying the daughter of his housekeeper. Did he wish to have a further ten years
of suffering to ensure a period of happiness after a second marriage? The journals are silent on
this theme but the timing is striking.
An evening of the scales was clearly a trope that Springthorpe played with in his journal.
Something had to restore balance, and this could only be achieved by an equal measure of
suffering. The most likely source of inspiration, however, was eastern religion. Colonial
Australia was very alive to the richness of eastern ideas and culture. There had been strong
political and institutional ties between India and Australia until 1857 (the early Australian
colonies had in fact been part of the Archdiocese of Calcutta for many years), and throughout
the nineteenth century trade and commerce kept the two in close contact. Prominent
64 Such ideas are present in some of Spring- Illness and American Society 1875-1940 (Princeton,
thorpe's writings already cited. They are best 1983).
glimpsed, especially the interest in vitalism, in his 65 Springthorpe, Therapeutics, Dietetics and
major published work, Therapeutics, Dietetics and Hygiene, op. cit., 639. For the beliefs and activities of
Hygiene, 2 vols (Melbourne, 1914), especially vol. 2, French spiritists see Thomas A. Kselman, Death and
639-53. For the broader context of Victorian the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton, NJ., 1993),
psychological medicine there are many relevant 143-55.
studies. See, for example, Elaine Showalter, The 66 On superstition in Victorian culture see Peter
Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture Haining, Superstitions (London, 1979); Don Lewis,
1830-1980 (London, I985);W. F Bynam, Roy Porter Religious Superstition Through the Ages (London,
and Michael Shepherd (eds), The Anatomy of 1975); and Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and
Madness (London, I985); and Gerald Grob, Mental Culture 1736-1951 (Manchester, I999).
Australian writers and commentators professed admiration for the 'mysteries' and culture of the
East, particularly India and Japan, and it seems likely that Springthorpe was alive to these
currents of opinion.67 There is a strong suggestion in Springthorpe's journal of a Buddhist sense
of 'karma', a balancing of good and bad, of retribution and inevitable consequence in the
circular path to nirvana. More than once he writes of a wheel revolving on the pathway to the
stars. After his own death in 1933 a bas relief,'The Wheel of Life', was added to his wife's
memorial, depicting an aged Tibetan lama, seated on the bank of the river of peace after a long
journey.68
This mystical, perhaps superstitious, sense of completion, of having evened the scales of
happiness and unhappiness after ten years, appears to be the final break for Springthorpe. How
else can we explain the almost casual sense in which he seems released from his burden on the
tenth anniversary of Annie's death? And here we can see that the diary has shifted in its purpose;
from a site for governing the self to a calendar in which he ticks off the days of his penance.
After ten years he feels free to move on. He still occasionally reflects on his grief, but the diary
entries become more infrequent and increasingly focused on his public life. In I909 he finally
moved to a new home (oyous Gard), where 'you are not ... it knows you not and you ...
know it not', Lancelot at last reconciled to being without his Guinevere.69
University of Sydney
67 For an interesting analysis of the complex (eds),'Australian perceptions of Asia', Special Issue
relations between Australia and Asia in this period of Australian Cultural History, IX (g99o).
see David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the 68 T. A. Keeley letter, 24 January I966.
Rise of Asia 185o-1939 (St Lucia, 1999), I3-97. See 69 Springthorpe Diaries, 30 March I9I0.
also David Walker, Julia Horne and Adrian Vickers

The Scales of Suffering - Garton

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Scales of Suffering - Garton

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Scales of Suffering: Love, Death and Victorian Masculinity

Author(s): Stephen Garton

The scales of suffering: love, death and

J. W. Springthorpe was a significant figure in Australia's emerging professional middle class.

12 Again the literature on Victorian codes of self- (Kensington, I986), 28-54.

in E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds),

36 Springthorpe Diaries, 26 February 1897, 14 57-176; Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (London,

49 ibid., I5 September 900o. public mem

6L ? :^L ;r ·;lf;;= ijg IJC i ·LI

r _ __ pi-W·""' " ':

You might also like