Phillip Schuler Read online

  For reasons his children never fully understood, Frederick would have nothing to do with his mother or two younger sisters, who were still living in Bendigo. Family members would later speculate that he had been emotionally scarred by the sudden death of his father when he was fourteen and by his mother’s decision to remarry relatively soon after that. He discouraged the children from visiting Bendigo and when Catharine Curtis died in August 1910 neither Dorothy nor Minna Schuler had ever met their grandmother. Frederick’s sister Pauline married a singer and later director of the Bendigo Conservatorium of Music, Allen Bindley. Their daughter, Pauline Gertrude Bindley, became a celebrated bel canto soprano. For a time the Bindleys lived in rooms in Collins Street. At one stage Deborah Schuler made overtures of friendship but her husband was adamant that he wanted nothing to do with his relatives, including his younger sister, Olga. He told Dorothy it was because the Bindleys were ‘connected with the stage’—a remarkable claim from the longtime Age theatre and music critic. While the Bindleys might not have measured up to Frederick’s social expectations, he was happy for Minna to take singing lessons with the great Dame Nellie Melba.

  Deborah Schuler, who was often reduced to tears by her husband’s temper and stubborness, filled the gaps of warmth and compassion in the lives of her children. While she too could be stern and was known for her quiet poise, Deborah had inherited some of her Irish father’s wit and love of celebration. Like her husband, she was a keen reader, but her taste was for poetry and good novels. When she lost her sight, friends and family would read to her and she learned Braille. Later in life, despite her handicap, she was an enthusiastic member of a ladies’ ‘literary coterie’—the forerunner of the modern book club. When her son was in Egypt as a war correspondent, she sent him for his 26th birthday a red leather-bound copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey inscribed, ‘Phillip, with this mother’s fondest love’.

  Deborah was also renowned for hosting lavish dinner and garden parties for family and friends. Her literary coterie’s Christmas gatherings would see as many as a hundred women enjoying play and book readings on the back lawn at Lisson Grove. The musical and Shakespearean evenings with invited friends were announced with stylish hand-written programs and always concluded with a fine supper. At elegant dinner parties, Deborah would hold court in the large dining room—on occasion dressed in a violet velvet dress with a fine lace collar—dispensing warmth and fine food. Among the regular guests were Bogue Luffman, the travel writer and director of the Burnley Horticultural Gardens; General John Hoad, who led Australian forces in the Boer War and became the fledgling Australian army’s second Chief of General Staff; and Colonel Victor Sellheim, another career army officer who rose to the rank of major general in World War I. A cousin, Isobel Strahan, who visited Lisson Grove as a child, was in awe of Sunday lunch with the Schulers:

  It was a wonderful household . . . with Uncle Fred’s beautiful study—books from the floor to the ceiling all round, and the lovely red velvet covered couch and chair. And the beautiful drawing room with the marble mantlepiece and the grand piano, where Minna would sing and play. We thought of their house as just something so marvellous—almost like going to fairyland.2

  Phillip began primary school in nearby Kew and in 1901 moved to Melbourne Grammar School in St Kilda Road, South Yarra—riding there each day on horseback. He did well academically and in sport, earning a place on the senior athletic team for his prowess as a runner. The two girls attended Tintern, an Anglican girls’ school in Hawthorn. Dorothy had particular reason to remember the day at school, in December 1899, after it was announced that her father was to be appointed editor of The Age—and the reaction of the formidable Emma Bartlett Cook, the school’s founder and head teacher:

  That event caused me to suffer my first acute embarrassment for Mrs Cook, on hearing the announcement, called me out and congratulated me on his behalf and said she was proud to have me as a pupil and planted a hearty kiss on my blazing cheek. I was far too young to understand what all the fuss was about.3

  When Dorothy was ten, her father withdrew the two girls from Tintern and engaged a governess to continue their primary education at home. After two years they were enrolled at Melbourne Girls Grammar, in South Yarra.

  Phillip grew into a handsome, talented and gregarious young man who was popular with girls and generously reciprocated their interest. In his teens he joined the militia, serving with the 5th Battalion before transferring to the Australian Intelligence Corps as a second lieutenant in February 1911. The smart officer’s uniform with its braid and brass adornments and dashing Sam Browne belt would smooth the romantic passage of the young socialite. When the global dancing craze reached Melbourne, Phillip embraced it with enthusiasm—to the consternation of his father. The opening of the Palais de Danse on the foreshore at St Kilda in December 1913, which brought the tango to town, scandalised conservative Melbourne. There were grave warnings from pulpits across the city that the Argentinian passion for men and women dancing cheek-to-cheek with legs and arms pressed against each other in erotic embrace would bring moral ruin. Phillip was enthusiastic in his disagreement. He had matriculated at the end of 1905 after achieving passes in algebra, geometry, English, arithmetic, geography and drawing, and left Melbourne Grammar the following year. At his father’s insistence, he enrolled in law at Melbourne University, joining Trinity College. It would trigger a bitter rift between father and son, as Dorothy recalled:

  Phillip did a year at university. He didn’t know what he wanted to do so father said he could study law, which he wasn’t a bit interested in. He used to go out every night; he was very popular. He went to a dance nearly every night and father got fed up and said this would have to stop . . . because he never did any study.4

  In fact, he managed enough study to pass his first year of law. Then he promptly resigned from the course. He was restless. His pampered upbringing had given him every opportunity for success in life, but he had a taste for risk, adventure and romance. The conventional aspirations of middle-class Melbourne were not enough. After further rows with his father, Phillip quit the family home and moved to live with his uncle, Dr Sep Strahan, one of Deborah Schuler’s brothers, in Moonee Ponds. He refused all contact with his father but returned frequently to Lisson Grove to see his mother when Frederick was out of the house. While in self-imposed exile from the family, Phillip would further break with the conventions of the time by playing golf with Sep’s wife, Ina. He kept up his interest in track and field, returning to Melbourne Grammar in November 1907 for the annual sports day, winning the Old Boys’ Cup after finishing first in the 220-yard and 440-yard races and coming second in the 100-yard sprint. His form had deteriorated by the next year’s event when he could manage only second place in the 100 and 220 and third in the 440. The year 1908 was a big one for Old Melburnian sportsmen. Norman Brookes won the singles and doubles at Wimbledon and was instrumental in securing Australia’s first Davis Cup victory.

  There was more friction in the Schuler household when Frederick vetoed Minna’s plans to become a nurse. Minna, an energetic and volatile personality, then chose to study art, for which she had a considerable talent. For about two years she attended the Gallery School where her teachers included Fred McCubbin, one of the greatest Australian impressionists. Art school would also expose the youngest of the Schuler children to a wider community of bohemian celebrities—connections that would have scandalous consequences for the family in the years ahead.

  After about a year away from home, Phillip moved back to Lisson Grove and began to rebuild the relationship with his father. The restless spirit had decided on a career and Frederick would become his coach, mentor and springboard to success.

  3

  Coming of Age

  Phillip Schuler started work as a cadet journalist on The Age in November 1909. It was the beginning of a gradual rapprochement between the headstrong young man and his reserved father. Soon after arriving at the paper, he met two
other young reporters who would become major figures in his life. One quickly became his best friend, the other would turn into a bitter wartime adversary.

  Tasman Royal Bridges had joined The Age a few weeks before Schuler after working for several years on newspapers in Hobart and Sydney. Roy Bridges had already established himself as a talented short-story writer and would go on to write more than 30 novels. He and Schuler were assigned to the court round. Friendship grew easily with their common interests in books, drama and the flourishing social life of pre-war Melbourne.

  Two months after Phillip began his cadetship, Frederick Schuler appointed another cadet and attached him to the press gallery team covering the federal parliament, then based in Melbourne. It was an appointment that would launch the 24-year-old recruit on a career that would make him one of the most powerful figures in the Australian media. A decade later Frederick would rue his choice, denouncing Keith Arthur Murdoch as a ‘jackass and a cad’.1

  Murdoch’s first attempt to join The Age, as a seventeen-year-old fresh from Camberwell Grammar School, had ended badly. His mother accompanied him to an interview with the paper’s chief of staff who was unimpressed with the youth afflicted with a severe stammer. ‘He’ll never succeed in journalism,’ he said. ‘Put him in a bank.’2 Undeterred, the family tried again. Murdoch’s father, a well-connected Presbyterian minister, made a pitch to his friend and parishioner David Syme.3 Syme relented. Murdoch was engaged as a freelance district correspondent, and paid a shilling for every eight lines published of news snippets from suburban Malvern. It was the most menial of journalistic jobs, but it was a start.

  By early 1908 Murdoch had scraped together enough shillings—500 pounds worth—to fund a trip to London to seek treatment for his stammer and try his hand at breaking into Fleet Street, the mecca of journalism in the British Empire. The speech therapist he would call on was New Zealander Lionel Logue who would later treat the future King George the Sixth. Before leaving Melbourne, Murdoch sought assurances that he would be welcomed back to The Age. There had been changes at the paper following the death of David Syme but Frederick Schuler assured his ambitious contributor that he saw his London trip as a ‘well-earned holiday, and getting experience’ and that there would be a place for him when he returned.4 Murdoch set sail with letters of introduction from The Age and one from Prime Minister Alfred Deakin—a former Age man himself and another member of the Reverend Patrick Murdoch’s congregation. Deakin commended Murdoch as ‘a well-known and much respected young journalist’.5 Generous praise indeed for the jottings from Malvern Council.

  Despite the commendations, London proved a bitter disappointment for Murdoch. His stammer sapped his confidence and thwarted his stumbling efforts to find work. He gave up the job hunt, enrolled in a short course at the London School of Economics to build on his rudimentary education and focused on his speech therapy. In letters to his father he poured out his frustrations and described ‘fits of beastly depression’ compounded by his crippling speech impediment. ‘I wonder what it feels like to be without the nervous strain and the half-ashamed anxiety, and to a feeling of being halt and maimed, that possesses me every hour of the day,’ he wrote.6 His letter revealed the prudish disposition of a young man whose world to date had been centred on a Presbyterian manse in comfortable eastern suburban Melbourne: ‘London disgusts. But it has a subtle fascination. Here is the hub of the world and the centre of Twentieth Century life. But the east is too near the west: squalor, cold and hunger and depravity too near luxurious culture. A shocking feature of London is the immorality stalking the streets.’7

  Murdoch was soon packing his bags to return to Melbourne. He pleaded with his father to approach the widow of David Syme, who had died in February 1908, and Geoffrey Syme, who had succeeded his father at the helm of The Age, to take him back on the paper. The representations were successful. Although he had intended to stay in London until early the following year, Murdoch began his journey home in May 1909 via New York and Vancouver. One dividend of his few months in London was that he had begun to get his stammer under control. His appointment in early 1910 as a cadet in the federal parliamentary press gallery was the break that had eluded Murdoch for six years—and a position that would propel him on a collision course with the editor and his son.

  While Phillip Schuler and Roy Bridges were playing and partying, Keith Murdoch was single-mindedly building the political contacts that would smooth his inexorable rise to power. For a while the trio shared a house. Bridges would refer to a ‘fourth member of our group’—Neville Ussher, a young reporter from Portland in south-western Victoria. Ussher would enlist in the AIF soon after war was declared and be killed in action at Gallipoli.

  Melbourne immediately before the war was a city with plenty of distractions for young men—and women—with an appetite for distraction. While still overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon and God-fearing, the city finally was rebounding from the aftermath of the 1890s depression to secure its status as the epicentre of Australian political, economic and social life. And it was recapturing some of the lustre of its goldrush origins. Historian Michael McKernan would describe it as ‘a rich and sumptuous city, not that distant from Paris or London in its facilities and demeanour’. The city’s population—static for a decade—would reach 670,000 in 1914. It was the national capital and would remain so until the move to Canberra in 1927. A record wheat harvest and bumper wool clip at the start of 1914 were helping drive a new generation of prosperity, enlarging the wealth and rich architectural heritage generated by gold half a century earlier. Wireless telegraphy had arrived in 1912 to connect Melbourne and Sydney by telephone. The first airmail deliveries between the two cities came that July. There were new electric trams on Melbourne’s streets and construction of the last leg of the transcontinental rail line began in August 1914.

  Socially, Melbourne was shedding the shackles of Victorian rectitude. The performing arts—theatre, opera and music—flourished. Cinema was starting to make its mark. Raymond Longford launched his prolific career in 1911 with the box office hit The Fatal Wedding, and the Melbourne Glacarium screened the first double feature in history, pairing the local movie The Lost Chord with the Italian film The Fall of Troy. Restaurants, hotels and nightclubs burgeoned in the interlude before war gave rein to the prohibitionists and saw mass hotel closures and ushered in the infamous ‘Six O’Clock Swill’. Along with the tango, mixed bathing had arrived beside the Port Phillip seaside. South Melbourne Council voted in 1912 to remove segregation on its beaches, although The Argus still worried about the new fad of sunbathing. The paper warned that ‘lolling on the sand’ was a form of idleness that should be made illegal. Neighbouring St Kilda Council agreed, ruling that bathers must ‘forthwith resume ordinary clothing’ once they left the water.8 Surfing made its Australian debut in late 1914 with the visit of Hawaiian legend Duke Kahanamoku.

  Bridges and Schuler, known to many of his friends as Peter—a joking reference to his youthful ‘Peter Pan’ personality—would share both social and journalistic adventures beyond the court rounds. In the spring of 1910 they went together to cover one of the first aircraft flights in Melbourne. Frenchman Gaston Cugnet and his Berliot monoplane had earlier flown for seven minutes at Altona reaching a dizzying 200 feet before crashing into a cow on landing. Another demonstration flight scheduled at Williamstown was cancelled when a sea breeze sprang up, drawing a hostile reaction from the crowd. In his memoirs Bridges recalled:

  The following Saturday Cugnet was to fly from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Peter Schuler came along with me. The immense crowd was standing no nonsense this time so that, when the sea breeze came up and Cugnet did not fly, a howling mob started swarming on to the ground; whereupon Cugnet flew down towards the rail yards. Losing his nerve at the signal posts and sheds, he curved back and collapsed cheerfully into the tennis court. Peter and I ran for it; being near, we got there before the crowd. Cugnet was sitting in the wreckage, with the juice running out of it li
ke a squashed bug.9

  The friendship strengthened through that year. The two men enjoyed long bushwalks together and shared a love of literature and the arts. Schuler first came to meet Bridges’ family—his mother Laura and sister Hilda—one Sunday in autumn. From then on, he was a regular weekend visitor. ‘All the time our friendship deepening, for we cared and we shared,’ Bridges later wrote.10 They were reading the same books, ‘Wells The New Machiavelli, Anatole France, and W.J. Locke, who was at the height of his popularity’.

  They spent Christmas Day 1910 together: dinner in town, drinks with friends and a play at the King’s Theatre in Russell Street. In April 1911, Bridges returned to Tasmania on annual leave, spending a few days in Hobart before heading back to his childhood home at Sorell. Schuler joined him in the second week, arriving by train from Launceston and taking ‘leave of the pretty Hobart girl with whom he had struck up an acquaintance’.11 There were more bushwalks, including a climb to the peak of Mount Wellington, and visits to the hot springs near Sorell. Schuler was in typically high spirits. Oscar Straus’s operetta A Waltz Dream was playing in Melbourne. ‘He was singing shreds of the opera which, heard over the air today, conjure for me the time, the scene and my friend,’ Bridges would write, years later.12 ‘We were talking and talking—life, Australia, journalism, literature; always we planned; always we hoped. We were worshipping life, the island and the sun.’

  Back in Melbourne, when he was not writing his books, Bridges spent much of his time with Schuler. They tried their hand at plays, including dramatising one of Bridges’ books, By His Excellency’s Command. They became firm friends with the leading actors and managers then staging Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection at the King’s Theatre. In late July, Phillip joined the Melbourne Savage Club, becoming its youngest member. Bridges would be ‘sung in’ a few years later. Established in 1894, the club encouraged ‘a flowering of the Bohemian tradition’ in the spirit of the English poet Richard Savage. Its men-only membership included many journalists, artists and lawyers. Phillip’s family speculated that his friends might have adopted the nickname Peter after a tobacconist in Melbourne at the time named Peter Schuler: in fact, it was given by fellow members of the Savage Club to their young ‘Peter Pan’.