Lesbia Harford Explained

Lesbia Harford
Birth Date:9 April 1891
Birth Place:Brighton, Victoria, Australia
Death Place:St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne
Resting Place:Kew Cemetery, Melbourne
Occupation:poet
novelist
political activist
Citizenship:Australian
Alma Mater:University of Melbourne
Spouse:Patrick John (Pat) Harford
Partners:-->

Lesbia Harford (9 April 1891 – 5 July 1927) was an Australian poet, novelist and political activist. She was one of the first women to study law degree at the University of Melbourne. She agitated for the rights of workers, supporting a group of union workers who were imprisoned for treason and other crimes.[1] A later reading of Harford's poetry and biography have raised her profile as a pioneer of 'free love' and a queer icon.[2]

Biography

Lesbia Venner Keogh was the first child of Edmund Joseph Keogh and Beatrice Eleanor Moore, great-great-granddaughter of an Earl of Drogheda.[3] She was born at Brighton, Victoria, on 9 April 1891. From 1893 to 1900, the family lived at "Wangrabel", 6 Horsburgh Grove, Armadale (the house still stands today). Her father left home for Western Australia when his real estate business failed about 1900. She and her three siblings were raised by their mother, who took genteel jobs, begged handouts from Keogh relations and took in boarders. Harford was educated at the Sacré Cœur School at "Clifton", Malvern, Victoria; Mary's Mount school at Ballarat, Victoria; and the University of Melbourne, where she graduated LL.B. in 1916. She was one of the university's few women students and one of its few opponents of Australia's part in the First World War.[4]

Her brother, Esmond Venner (Bill) Keogh, became a prominent medical administrator and cancer researcher.[5] Her sister was Estelle Venner Keogh who was a recipient of the Royal Red Cross for her service as a nurse in World War I.[6] [7]

Harford advocated free love in human relations. She herself formed lifelong parallel attachments to both men and women, most notably to Katie Lush, philosophy tutor at Ormond College.[8]

Becoming interested in social questions, she worked in textile and clothing factories to gain first hand knowledge of the conditions under which women worked. She became state vice-president of the Federated Clothing and Allied Trades Union. She campaigned strongly against conscription in World War I. She was a friend of Norman Jeffrey and lover of Guido Baracchi, founding members of the Communist Party of Australia (but which she never joined).[9] [10] In Sydney Harford sang her poems to Guido as they crossed the harbour on the Manly ferry.[11]

In 1918 she moved to Sydney to campaign for the release of the Sydney Twelve, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) arrested and charged with treason, arson, sedition and forgery. She worked in clothing factories and as a university coach. She was also for a time a Fairfax housemaid (glimpsed in the poem "Miss Mary Fairfax"). She married Patrick John (Pat) Harford, sometime soldier, clicker in his uncle's Fitzroy boot factory and a fellow Wobbly, in 1920.[12] [13] [14] [15] [16] They shared an interest in painting and aesthetics. He was feckless and alcoholic but

Pat wasn't Pat last night at all.
He was the rain,—
The Spring,—
Young Dionysus, white and warm,—
Lilac and everything.[17]

They returned to her mother's boarding house in Elsternwick, Melbourne in the early Twenties.[18] Pat worked for the post-impressionist painter William Frater and himself became a painter under Frater's influence, later moving towards modernism and cubism.[19] [20] The Harfords had no children and were estranged in the last years of Harford's life.[21] Some writers claim they were divorced but there is no documentary evidence of it.[22] In 1926 Harford completed her articles with a Melbourne law firm.

Authors agree on her always-delicate health but not on the cause: a severe attack of rheumatic fever while a young child (Serle); tuberculosis (Lamb); born with a heart problem that prevented her blood oxygenating (Sparrow).[23] She often had to walk slowly. Her lips were sometimes quite blue.[24] She died aged 36 of lung and heart failure in St Vincent's Hospital on 5 July 1927.[25]

Writing

Harford had begun writing verse in 1910, and in May 1921 Birth, a small poetry magazine published at Melbourne, gave the whole of one number to a selection from her poems.

Harford's 59-page The Law Relating to Hire Purchase in Australia and New Zealand, "just written for the money it will bring", was published in 1923.[26] [27]

In 1927, three of her poems were included in Serle's An Australasian Anthology. The critic H.M. Green wrote "She has written some of the best lyrics among today's and certainly, I would say, the best love lyrics written out here."[28]

Mrs Keogh thought Harford's writing was "beautiful" and in 1939 was still trying to get her novel and more poems published.[29] In 1941 a small volume (54 poems) of The Poems of Lesbia Harford, edited by Nettie Palmer for Melbourne University Press, "revealed a poet of originality and charm."[30] [31]

In 1985, a much larger selection of poems appeared, edited by Marjorie Pizer and Drusilla Modjeska with a long introduction by Modjeska, acknowledging that some of Harford's sexual relations were with women and much of her love poetry was addressed to them.[32] [33] Les Murray published 86 of these poems and a page of biography in a 2005 anthology.[34] Lehmann and Gray's obese 2011 Australian poetry since 1788 prints only thirteen poems (given "as much space as Brennan") but provides a scholarly and detailed critical biography.[35] [36]

The most recent selection in print is Collected Poems (UWAP, 2014), which has 250 poems, a two-page foreword by Les Murray and an eight-page introduction by the editor, Oliver Dennis.[37]

Harford wrote a long-lost 190-page novel, The Invaluable Mystery, eventually published in 1987 with a foreword by Helen Garner and an introduction by Richard Nile and Robert Darby.[38]

Papers

Legacy

The political rock band Redgum recorded part of Harford's poem "Periodicity" set to music as "Women in Change" on their 1980 album Virgin Ground.

In Melbourne, the Victorian Women Lawyers' biennial Lesbia Harford Oration, given by an eminent speaker on an issue of importance for women, is named in her honour.

In 1991, the Playbox Theatre Company Melbourne presented Earthly Paradise; a Picture of Lesbia Harford, by the playwright Darryl Emmerson. This play was also published by Currency Press, Sydney.[39]

Bibliography

Novel

Poetry collections

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Bloodworth . Sandra . 2014-10-27 . Revolutionary Lives: Lesbia Harford . 2023-06-26 . Red Flag.
  2. Web site: Strauss . Dean . 2018-03-31 . Lesbia Harford . 2023-06-26 . Making Queer History . en-CA.
  3. Book: Serville, Paul de. Pounds and pedigrees : the upper class in Victoria 1850–80. 1991. Oxford Univ. Press Australia. Oxford u.a.. 0195545176. 510. 1. publ..
  4. Web site: Sparrow. Jeff. 2014-09-16. 'Render it Barely', review of Oliver Dennis, ed. (2014), Collected Poems: Lesbia Harford. Sydney Review of Books. 19 September 2014.
  5. Book: Gardiner, Lyndsay and Geoffrey Serle. Keogh, Esmond Venner (Bill) (1895–1970). Esmond Venner (Bill) Keogh (1895–1970) . National Centre of Biography, Australian National University . 6 May 2012. The Esmond Keogh papers are held by Cancer Council Victoria.
  6. News: 1945-10-15 . Family Notices . 2024-06-01 . Argus . Melbourne, Victoria . 2 . National Library of Australia.
  7. News: 1918-04-13 . Brought down by cupid . 2024-05-31 . Weekly Times . Melbourne, Victoria . 10 . National Library of Australia.
  8. "Why does she put me to many indignities ... My golden Katie, who loveth not kisses? ... 17.11.15." Pizer & Modjeska eds., The Poems of Lesbia Harford, p. 63.
  9. Book: Gollan, Robin. Baracchi, Guido Carlo Luigi (1887–1975). Guido Carlo Luigi Baracchi (1887–1975) . National Centre of Biography, Australian National University . 6 May 2012.
  10. Biographical note to Marjorie Pizer Papers, Mitchell Library, NSW, MLMSS 7428.
  11. Book: Sparrow. Jeff. Communism: a love story. 2007. RMIT D.Phil. thesis. 164.
  12. News: HOTEL BRAWL. . . Vic. . 18 June 1917 . 20 October 2012 . 8 . National Library of Australia.
  13. News: [?].W.W. SPEAKERS FINED. ]. . 24 October 1916 . 21 October 2012 . 5 . National Library of Australia.
  14. Book: Lamb, Lesley. Harford, Lesbia Venner (1891–1927). Lesbia Venner Harford (1891–1927) . National Centre of Biography, Australian National University . 6 May 2012.
  15. Full name Patrick John O'Flaghartie Fingal Harford (Ireland 1890–c.1972), National Archive of Australia series B2455, barcode 4968862. Enlistment attestation 1917, "Pattern cutter. Father deceased. Mother's whereabouts unknown. Next of kin: uncle Mr W Harford 181 Gertrude Street Fitzroy Victoria." For date of death, see Modjeska's Introduction.
  16. NSW marriage registration 15465/1920 in the district of Sydney.
  17. Book: The Poems of Lesbia Harford. Angus and Robertson. 1985. Pizer. Marjorie. Sydney. Modjeska. Drusilla. p. 118.
  18. Pat was a member of the Victorian Artists' Society 1922–1929; see Book: Vickery, Ann. "Lesbia Harford: Writing Revolution", in Stressing the modern : cultural politics in Australian women's poetry. 2007. Salt. Cambridge, UK. 9781876857875. 124.
  19. Book: Course, L.J.. Frater, William (1890–1974). William Frater (1890–1974) . National Centre of Biography, Australian National University . 6 May 2012.
  20. An oil painting by Patrick Harford (1890–?), Yarra Bank Meeting 1923, has accession number H39250 in the State Library of Victoria collection.
  21. Pat gave the Army his uncle's Fitzroy address as a forwarding address in 1923, suggesting he was no longer at Elsternwick by then. National Archive of Australia series B2455, barcode 4968862, p.23.
  22. For instance Modjeska; see Vickery on lack of documents.
  23. Sparrow. Jeff. 'Signed Up in a Rebel Band': Lesbia Harford Re-Viewed. Hecate. 2006. 32. 1. 8–35. 6 May 2012.
  24. Mitchell Library MLMSS 7428/2/6, interview with Guido Barrachi 20 August 1964.
  25. Death certificate, Mitchell Library MLMSS 7428/2/6: "phthisis, myocardial failure".
  26. Poem "How funny it would be", Pizer and Modjeska, p. 118.
  27. National Archive of Australia, Canberra, Series A1336, control 11973, barcode 3465293. The work in typescript, not just the copyright application, is available online.
  28. Letter to Percival Serle 30 September 1927 quoted by Book: Vickery, Ann. "Lesbia Harford: Writing Revolution", in Stressing the modern : cultural politics in Australian women's poetry. 2007. Salt. Cambridge, UK. 9781876857875. 84.
  29. Book: Harford, Lesbia; foreword by Helen Garner ; introduction by Nile, Richard. The invaluable mystery. 1987. McPhee Gribble. Fitzroy, Vic., Australia. 0140105247. Darby, Robert. Introduction, p. 8.
  30. Book: Serle. Percival. An Australasian Anthology. 1927. W. Collins Sons.
  31. Book: Palmer. Nettie. The Poems of Lesbia Harford. 1941. Melbourne University Press. Melbourne.
  32. Book: The Poems of Lesbia Harford. Angus and Robertson. 1985. Pizer. Marjorie. Sydney. Modjeska. Drusilla. Introduction by Drusilla Modjeska, pp. 1–38.
  33. Vickery, Ann, "Lesbia Harford's Romantic Legacy", in Book: Dever, Maryanne. The intimate archive : journeys through private papers. 2009. National Library of Australia. Canberra. 9780642276827. Newman, Sally, Vickery, Ann. pp. 81–132.
  34. Book: Hell and after : four early English-language poets of Australia, Francis McNamara, Mary Gilmore, John Shaw Neilson, Lesbia Harford. Carcanet. Introduction by Les Murray. 2005. 1857547853. Murray. Les. Manchester. Eighty-six Harford poems and a one-page biography.
  35. Book: Australian poetry since 1788. 2011. University of New South Wales Press. 978-1742232638. Lehmann. Geoffrey. Sydney. 1036. Gray. Robert.
  36. Web site: Lehmann. Geoffrey. Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray (eds): Australian Poetry Since 1788. Australian Book Review. 5 July 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140714230526/https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/component/k2/61-november-2011/617-geoffrey-lehmann-and-robert-gray-eds-australian-poetry-since-1788. 14 July 2014. dead. dmy-all.
  37. Book: Collected Poems Lesbia Harford. 2014. UWA Publishing. Foreword by Les Murray; Introduction by Oliver Dennis. 9781742585352. Dennis. Oliver. 1st. Crawley, Western Australia.
  38. Book: Harford, Lesbia; foreword by Helen Garner ; introduction by Nile, Richard. The invaluable mystery. 1987. McPhee Gribble. Fitzroy, Vic., Australia. 0140105247. Darby, Robert.
  39. Book: Emmerson, Darryl. Earthly paradise: a picture of Lesbia Harford. 1991. Currency Press, in association with Playbox Theatre Co., Melbourne. Sydney. 0868193038. Play produced by Playbox Theatre, Melbourne, 1991.
  40. Web site: The Invaluable Mystery (McPhee Gribble 1987) . National Library of Australia. 21 April 2024.
  41. Web site: The Poems of Lesbia Harford (D. W. Paterson 1941) . National Library of Australia. 21 April 2024.
  42. Web site: The Poems of Lesbia Harford (A&R 1985) . National Library of Australia. 21 April 2024.
  43. Web site: Collected Poems : Lesbia Harford (UWA Publishing 2014) . National Library of Australia. 21 April 2024.
  44. Web site: Selected Poems (Text 2023) . National Library of Australia. 21 April 2024.

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