by
Beverley Kingston
Isobel
Marion Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968), writer, was born on 1 July 1885 at
Dunara, Point Piper, Sydney, third child and only daughter of native-born
parents (Sir) Charles Kinnaird Mackellar, physician, and his wife Marion,
daughter of Thomas Buckland. She was educated at home and travelled extensively
with her parents, becoming fluent in French, Spanish, German and Italian, and
also attended some lectures at the University of Sydney. Her youth was
protected and highly civilized. She moved easily between the society of
Sydney's intellectual and administrative elite, life on her family's country
properties, and among their friends in London.
Dorothea
began writing while quite young and surprised her family when magazines not
only published but paid for her verses and prose pieces. On 5 September 1908 a
poem, 'Core of My Heart', which she had written about 1904, appeared in the
London Spectator. It reappeared several times in Australia before being
included as 'My Country' in her first book, The Closed Door, and Other Verses
(Melbourne, 1911). She published The Witch-Maid, and Other Verses in 1914 and
two more volumes of verse (1923 and 1926), also a novel, Outlaw's Luck (London,
1913), set in Argentina. With Ruth Bedford, a childhood friend, she wrote two
other novels (1912, 1914). During World War I and as a result of its frequent
inclusion in anthologies, 'My Country' became one of the best-known Australian
poems, appealing to the sense of patriotism fostered by the war and post-war
nationalism.
Photographs
of Dorothea in her twenties show her to have been then an ideal image of the
Australian girl, pretty, sensitive, and fashionable. She was said to be a
strong swimmer, a keen judge of horses and dogs. Her verse shows that she was
cultivated and spirited, her novels that she was hopelessly romantic. Between
1911 and 1914 she was twice engaged. The first engagement she broke because the
man was over-protective; the second lapsed through misunderstanding and lack of
communication after the outbreak of war. Her writing, once the product of
youthful passions and enthusiasms, became increasingly souvenirs of travel or
dependent on Nature for inspiration. She was unable to write of her disappointment
in love except in powerful translations from little-known Spanish and German
poets.
Despite
her 'loathing all restrictions and meetings', Dorothea Mackellar was honorary
treasurer of the Bush Book Club of New South Wales and active in the formation
in 1931 of the Sydney P.E.N. Club. She became responsible for her ageing
parents, and apparently wrote little after her father's death in 1926. Her
mother died in 1933 and Dorothea, 'a not particularly robust dormouse', was
frequently in poor health, spending ten years in a Randwick nursing home. Yet
she outlived her younger brothers and was able to keep both Cintra, Darling
Point, and a house at Church Point on Pittwater. She was appointed O.B.E. just
before she died on 14 January 1968 in the Scottish Hospital, Paddington, after
a fall at home. She was cremated after a service at St Mark's Anglican Church,
Darling Point, and her ashes laid in the family vault in Waverley cemetery. Her
estate was valued for probate at over $1,580,000.
H.
M. Green describes her as a 'lyrist of colour and light' in love with the
Australian landscape. She herself 'never professed to be a poet. I have
written—from the heart, from imagination, from experience—some amount of
verse'. Privileged and unusual, she was also typical of many Australian women
of her generation in the contrast between the inspired vigour of her youth and
the atrophy of her talent and vitality through lack of use.
Select
Bibliography
A. Matzenik, ‘Dorothea Mackellar. A memoir’, in The Poems of
Dorothea Mackellar (Adel, 1971)
Aussie, 42 (Aug 1922), p 37
Spinner, vol 1, no 9 (June 1925), p 143
Australian Woman's Mirror, 1 Nov 1927, p 11, 54
South Australiana, 8, no 1 (1969), p 11
P. O'Harris, Notes on Dorothea Mackellar (manuscript, State
Library of New South Wales)
John Le Gay Brereton papers (State Library of New South
Wales)
G. Mackaness collection (National Library of Australia).
Sources:
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