The Mayne Inheritance (review)

This little volume is notable on two counts. First, it is a "Gothic tale of murder, madness and scandal" (quoted from the cover) starting with the "success" of an Irish immigrant, Patrick Mayne (1824-1865), and culminating with massive gifts to the City of Brisbane and the State of Queensland. The latter were enabling funds toward the magnificent site of the University of Queensland Arts and Sciences campus (St. Lucia), as well as the land for its Veterinary Establishment and an endowment for the Medical School, all provided by the youngest children, James (1861-1939) and Mary (1858-1940), of this remarkable family.

Along the way we benefit from Rosamond Siemon's extensive readings, which suggest that the Mayne patriarch got his start by murder and robbery, was prone to administering corporal punishment to local miscreants on his own judgment, and amassed a fortune by hook or by crook. The gruesome details of the killing are juxtaposed with descriptions of various titillating commercial misdeeds and political chicanery, all presented in a matter-of-fact style that is at first disarming but possibly indicative of the hardscrabble frontier life in the British Colonies that would become Australia, and the particular states of Queensland and New South Wales. Thus various men-about-the-pub are accused of murder or complicity, more or less exonerated, and then another man is implicated on circumstantial evidence and hanged for it. This rather large slice of life happens in the space of a few sentences. One acknowledges her difficulty in research at a distance but also wishes that Siemon would exert more organized skepticism and attempt to distinguish the relative weights of police and medical reports and newspaper stories plus anecdotes. Her style wears thin as the paucity of facts overwhelms the narrative. The implications of hanging an innocent man, the veracity and verification of the deathbed confession by Patrick Mayne, even the taint of inherited madness in the family, are never properly assessed, let alone resolved.

And so it happened that in August 2003, while giving five lectures in Brisbane on Vincent van Gogh, King George III and acute intermittent porphyria, I was approached by Rosamond Siemon and her enthusiastic supporters to give an opinion on the underlying illness of the Mayne family. The short answer is that her book is full of accounts of unusual behaviors by Mayne family members, but there is neither sign nor symptom. Accordingly, there is nothing in print thus far that specifically supports or damages a working hypothesis of porphyria, in contrast to the well-documented cases of Vincent and George. Even the congenital fears supposedly instilled in James and Mary Mayne, to which Siemon attributes their electing not to have children, are less than adequately documented.

At the end of the day, what drives Simeon up the wall is the lack of state and city recognition given to James Mayne and his sister for their generosity and foresight. On this ground she is firm, has plenty to say, and it all makes sense. Even the university's failure to label its great hall "James Mayne Hall" (it is called simply Mayne Hall) is interpreted by Simeon as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public into "Main" hall and to help them lose track of the "scandalous" donor family. That is certainly the current public habit, and I believe that she may be correct about the background intent. Wholesome attempts by Rosamond and others to rectify this situation in the University Senate are currently receiving inadequate support from the powers that be.

Which brings me to the second count. The Mayne Inheritance has become this year's selection of "One Book One Brisbane," and thus the successor to last year's book, Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang. This program is sponsored by the city council and its libraries, and proclaims that it wants as many Brisbane residents as possible simultaneously reading the same book! (I leave readers of Leonardo Reviews to...