Sir Henry Wrixon "Men at home. "Punch". 1903.

 Punch (Melbourne, Vic. : 1900 - 1918; 1925)

Thu 27 Aug 1903 Page 25

Victoria’s Representative Men At Home.  

NO. 2. — The President of the Legislative Council 

SIR HENRY WRIXON.

                                        Sir Henry Wrixon Lady Wrixon Miss Wrixon & doggo

Henry J. Wrixon, son of the late Judge Wrixon, claims, with many other distinguished Australians, Ireland as his place of birth. He was born in Dublin in the year 1839—came to Victoria as a boy in 1850. Was sent to Dublin University to complete his education in 1858. Here he obtained two gold medals given by the Historical Branch of the University. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1860, and to the Victorian Bar upon his return to Victoria in 1865. He entered the Victorian Parliament in 1870, and was several times Minister of the Crown. He was elected President of the Legislative Council upon the retirement of Sir Wm. Zeal in 1901. Knighted in 1892.

When the President of the Legislative Council of the State of Victoria is not in another place he is to be found at home at “Raheen,” a commodious mansion situated in the highest part of Kew. The building commands an extensive panorama of views. It overlooks Studley Park and the Yarra on one side, and on the other Heidelberg and the outer northern suburbs lie stretched below upon a variegated carpet, which stretches from the Dandenong Ranges to Mount Macedon.

Although the duties of the President of a Legislative Council are not, like a Governor’s, all-time-absorbing, Sir Henry Wrixon is not a man of leisure, as the word is usually understood. His official position demands attendance at functions and ceremonies that can scarcely be regarded as specially attractive or entertaining to a man who is by nature and inclination a student.

Some men when “at home” delight to take their leisure at other men’s work. One will toil patiently in his garden, digging and pruning; another, perhaps a judge, will exchange the Bench of Themis for that of the carpenter, and find his pleasure in chips and shavings; whilst yet another will work, as paid men do not work, at turning, fret-sawing, photography and what-not. These men do, willingly and without fee or reward, hard work which on compulsion they would not undertake for a thousand a year.

“The labour we delight in physics pain.”

Sir Henry Wrixon’s delights do not run in the muscular groove. His appetite in his leisure hours is for “the dainties that are bred in a book.” His playground is his library, richly stocked with volumes, many of them such as the average reader would consider excessively dry reading. Reports of commissions and weighty pamphlets form no inconsiderable portion of his library, and the occupant devours a choice report of an American or a European congress with the same enthralling interest as the man in the street experiences over a new novel.

                                  

Student and deep reader though he be, Sir Henry Wrixon has found sufficient leisure to write a novel. Its title is “Jacob Shumate,” and it has just been published in two volumes. Although a work of fiction, it is not of the popular or sensational kind. In part, it may be regarded as containing a good many autobiographical touches, and the incidents are such as have, or might have occurred in Sir Henry Wrixon’s own political career. “Jacob Shumate” is a study of many characters that the author has no doubt met, and, indeed, are tolerably familiar to all who have seen much of Victorian politics. 

The observations of his working life have furnished Sir Henry Wrixon with much material. Much of his leisure time has been devoted to recording his impressions and his observations, and this record he has again remoulded into the story of “Jacob Shumate.”

Link to:Jacob Shumate.

It is well known that men of legal and studious turn of mind have occasionally suggested appliances and inventions which have baffled more practical intellects. An instance is afforded by a contrivance of the simplest kind invented—but not patented—by Sir Henry Wrixon. The idea is simplicity and effectiveness combined, and it may be suggested for adoption by persons who write or read much by artificial light. 

Reporters and others shield their eyes by a screen on the forehead above the eyes, a method practically useless, even deleterious, if the light is above and in front, for the rays striking downwards upon the white paper are reflected with little loss of power straight into the eyes. Sir Henry Wrixon found this to be the case, and, thinking the matter out, perfected his “invention.” The lamp is placed above and behind the reader or the writer, and a dark, adjustable screen is hung upon the lamp. This screen is pulled open to any required extent. 

The result is that the rays of light falling upon the white paper from above and behind are reflected at an angle equal to that of incidence and away from the eyes. A maximum of illumination is thus secured with an absence of any direct and a minimum of reflected rays upon the vision. 

Sight is of all the senses the most precious and its care a vivid necessity to persons of middle age. Sir Henry Wrixon’s method may be recommended to all. The illustration in this article, showing Sir Henry in his library, will more fully explain the sight-saving appliance.

                                                             Sight-saving appliance.

At home and in private life Sir Henry Wrixon is one of the quietest of men. There is an utter absence of all “frill.” He is almost necessarily a pleasant companion and agreeable conversationalist, for he has read much and seen much, and all that he has read and seen he has observed and stored up in a particularly retentive mind. 

But he is always willing to learn, and he will listen with profound and respectful attention even to a novice. 

It is his opinion that something may be learnt from every book and every human being. Therefore he never casts either aside, but “looks through” it or him or her, certain that he will add some little pebble of information to the mound of his knowledge.

His leisure may be truly said to be spent in reading—it may be the books in his library or it may be those still more varied and interesting books, men and women, the curious volumes that crowd the shelves of each man’s life.

LINK TO:-

Sir Henry Wrixon   Colonial Conference at Ottawa 1895

Sir Henry Wrixon   Sir Henry Wrixon "Socialism: being Notes on a Political Tour" 1897

Sir Henry Wrixon   Jacob Shumate.

Sir Henry Wrixon   Pattern Nation1906

Sir Henry Wrixon.  THE RELIGION OF THE COMMON MAN. Published Book reviews 1909

SIR HENRY WRIXON'S NOVEL. Jacob Shumate, Book review by 1903.

                                                 Sir Henry in his office library Raheen Kew. Vic.

The Australasian (Melbourne, Saturday 15 August 1903)

Sir Henry Wrixon's Novel.

Jacob Shumate 

(Or The People's March, A Voice From The Ranks) 

An author, whether he is concerned with social problems or his visit to throw his message into the form of fiction. Numbers of people will read a novel who would close the door to a more austere form. 

Sir Henry Wrixon has elected to do this in order to bring before the community a picture of democracy and democratic public life as it has presented itself to him during his long career in Victoria, and his choice can be thoroughly justified. 

To a large extent Jacob Shumate may be accepted as giving the real experiences of the writer, but had he confined himself to writing his reminiscences he would not have appealed to so large a body of readers as he is now likely to secure, and he would not have had the freedom which he enjoys when he attributes sentiments and opinions to different people. 

Probably a just criticism would be that he has not trusted to fiction sufficiently. There is so little fiction, that from the standpoint of a novel the book is soon felt to be a make-believe. 

But readers have to thank Sir Henry Wrixon for an interesting and often vivid narrative of the experiences of a candidate new to public life; of the incidents that befall him; of the difficulties that beset his path; of the people he meets with. 

The whole gives us, what the author desires to set forth, a lively view of the working of democracy in a new country.

Of the people who are depicted, it may be said that every candidate comes across them, one and all. Very odd some of them are, and of the oddities we have careful studies.

Those who know anything of a political canvass will meet with familiar figures at every page, and will enjoy meeting them also.

"Among the many persons sketched in these pages," writes Sir Henry Wrixon, "there will be found neither great names nor great villains. 

The only excuse that the writer can offer for the absence of characters so useful to the dramatic force of a story is that he has not, in fact, found either heroes or villains in his every-day experience of democratic institutions; and he has sought throughout to be above all things a truthful chronicler of what he has observed." 

Sir Henry has good-naturedly closed his eyes to a few men who have had their day on the political stage; men who could easily have been posed for the wicked parts in the play; and, on the other hand, he finds a very complete hero in Edward Fairlie Frankfort, the young University professor, with whose political fortunes the book is concerned. 

His ideas are exalted, his principles are those of the high-toned, philosophical, but cautious radical whom Sir Henry Wrixon has always dearly loved. The author has had evident delight in fashioning the character, and in no situation in which he is placed would Sir Henry Wrixon himself have desired to act differently from the Frankfort decision.

Frankfort is installed as professor of sociology in the city of Miranda, in the province of Excelsior, and it will be noted that the coincidence that occurs between Monmouth and Macedon repeats itself in Miranda and Melbourne. 

He becomes known as an advanced and earnest social teacher, and he is invited to stand for the constituency of Brassville, the electors of which are utterly disgusted with the sitting member, Mr. Ebenezer Meeks, because the last loan bill was allowed to pass without any provision for the £250,000 reservoir to which the district considered itself entitled. 

Ebenezer had also fairly enraged the local temperance party by voting for the transfer of a license from a bush shanty to a palace hotel. But all the communications from Brassville conclude, as did the letter from Frankfort's banker uncle, "Of course you go hammer and tongs for the reservoir." 

That the candidate will work night and day to secure the expenditure of £250,000 in the district is assured us as a matter of course. Indeed, nothing is brought home to the reader more thoroughly than the perils that face our local democracy through the local scramble for public works, and through the electioneering power of the ever-growing mass of the public servants in their organised associations. 

Sir Henry Wrixon bears willing witness to the patriotism and to the humanitarian aspirations of the people, and also to the personal honesty of the representatives as a body. But every district demands its share of the scramble, and its just share looms very large in the local imagination, and the member who will not, or cannot, strike log-rolling bargains, is apt to go to the wall.

Such is the fate that awaits poor Ebenezer Meeks. Meeks was very willing to log-roll, but he was jockeyed. The district can be corrupted in this way, and though the member does not pocket cheques, he often has to pocket his convictions. 

If any innocent mortal should suppose that Sir Henry Wrixon has put too much "local works" colour into his picture, he may be reminded of the statement just made by the Premier of an adjacent state:—

"I am besieged for money wherever I go. This district has very little claim on the Government. Their member constantly votes against it." Sir Henry Wrixon could not make any one of his characters talk more plainly of a demoralising practice that borders on corruption.

The letters, appeals, and articles come as a shock to Frankfort. "Could it be, here, on the very threshold of his public career, his prospects of usefulness in public life depended on a reservoir? 

All his knowledge, ability, aspirations, ideals, prospects mixed up in some way with the reservoir? No, that was too absurd." However, it is so. 

Frankfort has to study the reservoir question, and he soon discovers that the work is a melancholy, palpable job; that it will never pay interest, and that it will be inevitably thrown on the hands of the Government. 

However, he can canvass the constituency before making up his mind about the undue pressure. He goes on with his canvass because the opportune failure of the proposed £10,000,000 loan sets the reservoir question aside for the time being. The interest of the book lies in the people Frankfort meets, and in the demands they make. 

Quiggle, the electioneering agent, is capitally drawn, with his cheery manner, his constant advice, "Keep her free, sir; keep her free," meaning that the candidate should never commit himself to a refusal, and his ready undertaking to give the pledges Frankfort could not.

Any demand made by an elector Quiggle can explain is right, and one that really ought to be granted. On outside subjects there is a bewildering if charming variety of opinion. 

In every hut and shanty, in every homestead men and women are to be found, thinking and theorising, spinning out devices of the brain, to cope with the questions of life. 

"Thinking has become democratised. It used to be the privilege of the few. Now it is the recreation of the many. If our civilisation fails it will not be for want of advice." 

Frankfort visits Mother Dole, who keeps a refreshment shanty, "because," as Quiggle explains, "though she can't vote herself she makes the others vote, and as she tells them, too." Mother Dole is emphatic on the woman's right question.

 "If I've got to get my dray along the bog road there I put a team of bullocks till't. If I mixed them, half heifers and half steers, the dray would get stuck there, stuck there, well, till I'd begun to say my prayers." 

A delightful conversation follows on these lines. But Mrs. Quiggle—for the agent has a wife as bright as himself—puts the issue this way.

 "Only married women should have the franchise. What a single woman wants is not a vote but a husband. She ain't a real woman if she is satisfied with a vote." 

While a third speaker declares, "You and your friends quite overlook the obvious fact that if every woman is entitled to one vote, the woman who is a mother is entitled to two. She has performed a service, perhaps at the risk of her life, which is not only useful to the community, but essential to its existence. Is she to get nothing for this from the state that she builds up?" 

Jacob Shumate, whose name, oddly enough, is given to the book, is known to all politicians. He is disappointed in life, he has been fed by the radical press. He is shrewd, lean, and discontented. 

His fixed idea is that the people have been robbed of the land, though the land laws are the direct making of the people. 

He strongly objects to the Government helping to extirpate the rabbits:—"Fifty-three families in this district are supported by trapping rabbits, and others are employed by the wire-fencing; but surely, Mr. Shumate, you would not preserve the rabbits merely to bleed the land-owners?"  

"Why not, sir? If you will only count all the value grasped by the land-owner on the unearned increment, as was set out by John Stuart Mill, you will see that the rabbits make a very moderate levy indeed on behalf of the community at large."  

"Still, as a thinking man, you will not say that the prosperity of the country would be increased by the destruction of any kind of wealth."  "Pardon me, sir, but I do say it," Jacob Shumate replied.

And he proceeds to argue the proposition in the terms with which our local radicals have been duly supplied. What Shumate argues for is a Government grant to the Red Parrot Exportation Company, for the catching of the parrots will employ thousands, and the industry will be novel and honest. 

A kindred spirit is Karl Brumm, the German selector:—"Quiggle tells me that you favour the decimal system?"  "What intelligent man does not? Only there, too, people will miss the point. It should be a duodecimal system. You can take an even quarter, half, or three-fourths of twelve, but you cannot of ten. Yet people do not notice these simple fundamental things.

"The selector who gives his vote to the member who will help to get him his title deeds without his complying with the conditions, and the local land officer who touts for sham testimonials, the railway guard who is a political boss as local president of the Train and Rail Workers' Association, Mr. Seeker, the secretary of the great State Workers' Association itself, and his mode of operation, all appear on the scene. 

And the volumes are studded with valuable obiter dicta. Thus we have the opinion of Ernest Hooper, the state school teacher, on religion in schools. He insists on opening with a devout prayer, in which all sane men can join, and an inspiriting hymn. But he holds that "religious teaching by a state teacher would be of little value.

 This teaching is a very difficult matter in our times. The danger is obvious. When children grow up and find that some things taught them by rote as facts are not really facts, they are very apt to think that all they have learned is much the same, and that religion generally is a make-believe.

"The curious can make many guesses at the political characters introduced. Some of them are sufficiently obvious. Two of them — Mr. Dorland, the founder of the University in which Frankfort is a professor, and Jortin, a large manufacturer, are avowedly American types, and they and the University and currency episodes in which they figure might have been omitted with great advantage as irrelevant, and as unduly swelling the size of a work, the huge proportions of which are its great drawback. 

The author's friends, who will wish the book to be the success its merits deserve, must regret that it was not cut down by some judicious editor by at least one half. 

After a failure in Parliament and a defeat at an election, when he repudiates the reservoir, Frankfort marries the daughter of the big local land-owner, and settles down in life and becomes the local member again. 

But the individual fictional part of the work, as we have said, is very small. There is a final chapter, in which the future of the province of Excelsior is sketched. 

The most important paragraph reads:—"The problem of combining state industries with political independence, it was not given to the present generation of Excelsior to solve. They tried experiments. 

The more the Government drifted under the Socialist impulse into industrial undertakings, the more helpless it got politically, and the more true political life withered.

How it will ultimately work out experience, not speculation, must reveal. Either it will result in the full Socialist ideal, with the loss of political independence, or the individuality of the people will assert itself, and private enterprise and self-reliance will live again. "No doubt this is a true statement; no doubt also we are at the parting of the ways.

👇

                                                       Lady Wrixon Miss Wrixon and doggo.

The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954)

Sat 4 Jan 1913, Page 4

NEW BOOKS.

Frankfort, or Politics Among the People, by Sir Henry Wrixon, K.C. (London: Macmillan and Co.)

Sir Henry Wrixon has published what may be regarded as a revised and elaborated edition of his previous political study, “Jacob Shumate.” The learned author makes no pretence to artistic work as a novelist, and his object is not to furnish an example of literary style. 

He is an experienced observer of political Vanity Fair; he has first-hand knowledge of its motive forces, private or public, and he chooses the most popular form of presenting his thoughts and conclusions.

The characters are numerous, and for the most part represent types familiar in our own community. The author does not develop them according to the methods of most modern fiction. 

They are not left to reveal themselves by their own acts and words, and they do not betray their strength or weakness through the medium of ingenious dramatic situations. 

After the manner of a kindly guide, philosopher and friend, he appears to conduct his reader on an inspection of his creations; explaining their peculiarities and political views, occasionally passing judgment on their personal and political merits. 

Very often the characters have little or no connection with the story; they are needed merely to make the political gallery the more representative.

Of necessity these methods are fatal to economy of material and directness of treatment. The narrative expands amazingly. It carries the weight, too, of many aphorisms, proverbs, quotations and lecturettes—all very interesting in themselves, but detrimental to the progress of the story.

As the object of the book is to illustrate the practical working of present-day politics and indicate political tendencies, these things are comparatively unimportant.

The hero — Edward F. Frankfort — is a Scotchman born of English parents, who by spare living and high thinking earns an education and is admitted to the bar. After a little press work in the old country he leaves for the colony of “Excelsior,” there to make his career. 

He is a young man of high principles and self-reliance. He is ambitious and believes in facing the battle of life like a man “the very opposite of a more recent gospel for the poor, which professes to abolish the need for struggle by making all comfortable upon the dead level of the plain beneath.”

It is not long before he is a candidate for the suffrages of “Brassville.” The main object of that constituency is to secure Government loan moneys to the amount of £500,000 for the construction of a reservoir. 

Incidentally the greater part of Brassville’s politics seems to consist of personal greed, trickery and selfishness. The reservoir business is a job. Still it is necessary for the local member to support it with enthusiasm. 

Frankfort’s conscience rebels. All his closest and most influential friends want the reservoir, right or wrong; his public career depends upon its advocacy. Just as he is about to announce his decision against the project the Government loan fails; other subjects arise, and he wins his election.

Frankfort’s career as a member serves to introduce a series of everyday happenings, all designed to show the state of practical politics.

“What was wanted of a politician now was not to die for his country, but to live for his constituency.” In Excelsior “there was a broad and generous sentiment against any severe exaction of efficiency from your brother man, live and let live. 

If the public were inconvenienced at times that was considered a lesser evil than would be the enforcement of a stern discipline upon the workers who served the public.” Reliance upon the Government gradually became more pronounced. 

When the secretary of the State Workers’ Union wrote to his member his letter came not as the appeal of a suppliant, but the claim of an attendant. On receiving it the member was reminded of “the old system of guilds, under which powerful corporate bodies established monopolies and taxed the rest of the people to support them.”

There was a leaning also towards Socialism. As one of the characters observes, “the people are to give up freedom for a full belly, or at least the promise of it, from the Government.” “The taking over by the Government of a fresh industry was always hailed as the true remedy for the depression in it.” 

Perhaps the most suggestive of the political essays with which Sir Henry Wrixon interleaves his story is that relating to “the caucus.”

“The fact is,” he observes, “that Parliaments have had their day. A fatal blow was struck at Parliamentary institutions when representation glided down into delegation, when men were returned to Parliament not to give their judgment upon public questions according to their principles avowed to their constituents, and accepted generally by them, but to carry out the instructions given from time to time from outside. 

This is the chief factor in the change in the nature of Parliamentary government which the present generation is witnessing. It is true that this change is only one feature in a general movement upward, or at least onward, which we see to be in progress; and which appears to involve as a part of it the decay of Parliaments. They are no longer the popular ideal, nor are they acclaimed by the masses as the people’s champions. 

The popular feeling is trending more and more from Parliament towards some outside, direct, executive authority which is to do what the people want quickly, and to alter what is done as readily when they direct. 

The outcome of this trend is seen in some of the most democratic communities, where, though Parliaments are retained, the desired legislation is first settled in secret at the caucus of the dominant party and afterwards presented to the Legislature only to be passed into formal law.”

The book is a conscientious attempt to represent fairly all sections of opinion. It is characterised by a broad, genial tolerance. No piece of political quackery is too foolish to represent honestly for what it is worth, and no political puppet is too insignificant to be heard and considered on his merits. 

There is a delightful, good feeling towards even our old friend “Jacob Shumate” the Socialist cobbler, who had “honesty for a dozen men but not sense enough for one.”

As for the hero, his high principles cost him very dearly. Through his attitude on the great reservoir question, when it was resurrected at the next election he lost his seat, and, what was infinitely worse, some good friends and a charming heiress whom he loved with all his heart.

Sir Henry Wrixon’s book merits the study due to the work of a high-minded, cultured and experienced observer of public events.

Link to: 

 Sir Henry Wrixon Colonial Conference 1895

 Sir Henry Wrixon "Socialism: being Notes on a Political Tour" 1897

Sir Henry Wrixon "Men at home. "Punch". 1903.

Sir Henry Wrixon Pattern Nation 1906

Sir Henry Wrixon. The religion of the common man 1909.