by
D. J. Jordan
Janet
Gertrude (Nettie) Palmer (1885-1964), writer and critic, was born on 18 August
1885 at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Victoria, only daughter of John Higgins,
Irish-born draper and later accountant, and his wife Catherine, née McDonald.
In the early 1890s the family moved to Armadale, Melbourne. Nettie felt
isolated as a child; her only brother Esmonde was not born until 1897. Their
upbringing was austere, their Baptist parents believing in 'high thinking and
plain living'. Nettie began writing early, encouraged by her uncle Henry
Bournes Higgins whom she had, as a small child, confused with God. She wrote in
part to define her spiritual existence, in revolt against her parents' strict
religious observances.
Nettie's
education began at home with her mother and continued at Miss Rudd's Seminary
at Malvern. In 1900-04 she attended Presbyterian Ladies' College where she
formed lasting friendships with Christian Jollie Smith and Hilda Bull. P.L.C.
nurtured both her scholastic and literary talents and she began to publish
prose and verse. In 1903 she matriculated with honours in English Literature,
French and Latin and also excelled in history, while struggling with compulsory
mathematics.
In
1905 Nettie enrolled at the University of Melbourne (B.A., 1909; M.A., 1912).
She was awarded the exhibition and first-class honours in first-year English
and gained honours in modern languages. Her parents restricted her social
activities but she participated in student affairs. Through H. B. Higgins she
was introduced to the political events of the day and in 1905 to the Literature
Society of Melbourne where Bernard O'Dowd, with whom she shared an almost
mystical appreciation of the bush, shaped her commitment to socialism and
cultural nationalism. While studying for her final-honours examinations in
classical philology in which she gained a third class, in January 1909 she met
Vance Palmer.
Financed
by her father and uncle, in 1910-11 Nettie studied for the diploma of the
International Phonetics Association in Germany, France and England. On the
fringes of the suffrage movement, she was influenced by the works of G. B. Shaw
and Henri Bergson and through Vance was introduced to guild socialism.
Returning to Melbourne in 1912, Nettie taught modern languages at P.L.C. and
began to write cultural criticism for the socialist press. Intellectually and
morally rigorous, she continued to question her relationship to the Christian
faith and to socialism, and became involved with Frederick Sinclaire's Free
Religious Fellowship.
In
1914 Nettie revisited London and married Palmer on 23 May in Chelsea Chapel
with Baptist forms. In Brittany when the war broke out, the Palmers returned to
London where their daughter Aileen was born. Nettie published two slim volumes
of poetry, South Wind (1914) and Shadowy Paths (1915).
The
Palmers returned to Melbourne in 1915 and moved to Katharine Prichard's cottage
at Emerald. Their second daughter Helen was born in 1917. Unable to have
further children, Nettie felt 'forced into the preoccupation with outside matters
which is usually the affair of women who have lived their life and finished
it'. With Vance she was publicly outspoken in opposing censorship and
conscription. She began a regular literary column in the Argus and with
Christian Jollie Smith edited a collection of essays by the socialist E. J.
Villiers. During Vance's absence in 1918-19 with the Australian Imperial Force
she lived with her aunt Ina Higgins and taught privately. Her relationship with
her brother became tense after Esmonde became a committed Marxist.
On
Vance's return the family again lived at Emerald where Nettie taught her
daughters. She felt life in the bush was important for quiet, considered work
but also believed in the importance of cherishing an attachment to the soil. A
series in the Argus was later published as The Dandenongs (1952). In 1925 they
moved to Caloundra, Queensland.
In
the 1920s Nettie emerged as possibly the most important literary critic in
Australia. After the publication of Modern Australian Literature 1900-1923 (1924),
a landmark in criticism which won the Lothian essay prize, she had many more
regular outlets, notably her weekly literary causerie in the Illustrated
Tasmanian Mail (212 articles in 5½ years), the Brisbane Courier, All About
Books and the Bulletin Red Page. Regularly signing two or three articles a week
of about 2000 words, she also used occasional pseudonyms. Her contribution to
the modest Palmer income was vital.
With
Vance, Nettie was committed to the development of a national literature as a
means of achieving a more enlightened community. Much of her writing dealt with
the themes, subjects and idiom of Australian writers, notably Henry Handel
Richardson. She played a seminal role in establishing the canons of Australian
literary criticism but she also wrote widely on world literature. Some of her
essays were published in Talking it Over (1932); her 1928 anthology, An
Australian Story-Book, set standards for the short story. Nettie's lively
correspondence from Caloundra, and from 1929 from Melbourne, established a
network of contact and encouragement between many Australian and overseas
writers and intellectuals, and especially for young women writers such as
Marjorie Barnard and Eleanor Dark for whom she provided an anchor. In 1931 she
published her biography, Henry Bournes Higgins, and in 1934 she co-edited The
Centenary Gift Book. Active in the Australian Literature Society, the
Verse-Speaking Association, and later the Fellowship of Australian Writers, she
lectured and broadcasted.
In
1932 the Palmers camped for eight months on Green Island, Queensland, where
Dora Birtles described how Nettie 'liked people, she found out whatever was
worthy of appreciation in them and encouraged them with a small personal song
of praise'. She was always the same, Marjorie Tipping remembered. 'She bubbled
along with her enthusiasms'. 'In height she was probably five feet five inches
[165 cm] … and medium in build. She was handsome, in spite of her complete lack
of care for her personal appearance. She had dark straight hair … and quizzical
eyes that expressed something of her animated personality even before she began
to speak'. Most writers found Nettie's personality warm, her letters supportive
and her criticism stimulating, but a few found her patronizing and self-assured.
She
became increasingly involved in political issues as her hopes for a more
integrated world diminished. In 1935 in Paris she attended the first
International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture. After living in
Spain in 1936, she improved her Spanish, largely in order to grasp South
American literature. On her return to Melbourne the fight against Fascism
became her major concern. She was a member of the Spanish Relief Committee with
whom she published several booklets, and of the Joint Spanish Aid Council. She
spoke about Spain, notably in a notorious debate at the University of Melbourne
in 1937. Active in literary groups for the 'defence of culture', she was
Melbourne editor of a Sydney anti-Fascist journal for women, a member of the
Victorian branch of the International Refugee Emergency Committee and taught
English to migrants to whom she was a 'guiding angel'.
Throughout
the 1940s and 1950s Nettie's self-professed role was largely that of 'a liaison
officer in literary life'; she edited memoirs, collections of poems and short
stories, wrote introductions and translated. While continuing to encourage
younger writers and to publish in journals such as Meanjin, she no longer
reviewed regularly. She lectured for the Commonwealth Literary Fund and the
university extension board and was a member of the Goethe Society. In 1948
Meanjin Press published Fourteen Years: Extracts from a Private Journal
1925-1939, often seen as her most important work. She published the first major
study of Henry Handel Richardson in 1950 and Bernard O'Dowd (1954), a thorough
revision of Victor Kennedy's manuscript.
A.
D. Hope has highly praised Nettie Palmer's 'intellectual toughness' and the
distinctive quality of her writing: 'the accent of good talk and the unaffected
charm of a stimulating personal conversation … a style at once feminine,
Australian and civilised'. She was 'a really professional writer in the
European sense'.
In
uncertain health from the 1940s, Nettie spent much time caring for ill and
elderly relations. Nevertheless, she actively continued her championship of and
care for Australian writers, her generosity to all inquirers and her interest
in the new. Her ability to wear her extensive scholarship lightly—perhaps too
lightly—stands out in her sensitive criticism. She had subsumed some of her
creative talents and early feminism to support of her husband and the cause of
a national literature. No public honour was offered to this eminent citizen.
Survived by her daughters, she died at Hawthorn on 19 October 1964, and was
cremated. A portrait by Lina Bryans is held by the National Library of
Australia.
Select
Bibliography
D. Modjeska, Exiles at Home (Syd, 1981)
J. Rickard, H. B. Higgins, the Rebel as Judge (Syd, 1984)
Overland, no 100, Sept 1985
D. Jordan, Nettie Palmer: Australian Women and Writing,
1885-1925 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1982)
H. B. Higgins papers (National Library of Australia)
E. M. Higgins papers (State Library of New South Wales).
Sources:
Pages:
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