[South Australian Portraits]

'The Eucalypts, 1910-1918. "With Gray Green Scimitars Defying The Sun"' [cover title of an album of signed portrait photographs of worthy South Australians]

[Adelaide, circa 1919].

A custom-made photograph album (190 × 200 mm), containing 6 card leaves with an original gelatin silver photograph mounted on both sides of each leaf, with interleaved tissue-guards. Each photograph is approximately 135 × 95 mm.

Half leather and cloth, lettered in full in gilt on the front cover (with 'The Eucalypts' in gilt on the spine); leather discoloured and moderately rubbed, with slight wear in a few areas; some tiny paint spots near the head of the front cover; tissue-guards a little foxed and offset; marginal silvering-out to five prints; overall in very good condition.

All but the first portrait is signed, and only the last one contains an additional inscription (the date, '10.1.19'). The State Library of South Australia has another example of this album, enabling us to confirm the identities where the handwriting was unclear. Ministers of religion, lawyers, doctors, and architects predominate. The subjects are Reverend A.H. Gifford [possibly A.E. Gifford?]; Benjamin Benny [1869-1935, senator and solicitor]; George McEwin [1873-1945, lawyer and philanthropist]; Edward Erskine Cleland [1869-1943, barrister and judge]; Alfred McBain Bonython [1865-1954, architect]; [Sir] James Wallace Sandford [1879-1958, merchant and politician]; Reverend Wilfred Harris [Unitarian minister, returned to England in 1918]; Dr Herbert Frank Shorney [1878-1933, opthalmologist]; [Sir] Thomas John Mellis Napier [1882-1976, later a SA Supreme Court judge]; Harold Reid; Edward Warner Benham [1872-1948, lawyer and academic]; and Francis Hedley Counsell [1864-1933, architect].

The subtitle is a misquote from 'Among the Sandhills' by Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory) (1865-1904), an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope ('The scented orange bushes check the breeze | Granting in tribute many waxen stars, | And aromatic Eucalyptus trees | Defy the sun with grey-green scimitars'). We have saved the best until the end: we purchased this item decades ago, and have postponed cataloguing it innumerable times, not knowing who 'The Eucalypts' were. We have finally solved the puzzle, by the simple expedient of spending untold hours on it. We eventually discovered the lengthy biographical sketch of Alfred Bonython, compiled by Giles Walkley for the University of SA's database on architects (accessible online). Among many other interesting details, he records that 'At the age of 42, Bonython became the father of a fourth daughter ... Determinedly reviving his literary activities, he joined, both at their outset in 1910, Lady Symon's Poetry Society and the "liberal Christian" discussion group, The Eucalypts Club (... SRG 252)'.

Item #108343

Price (AUD): $750.00
other currencies