A writer of Sydney slums and overseas WW2 conflicts
Today's blog is about a poet and war reporter who married a woman born during a time of extreme anguish in her family. It relates to a previous blog that had a shocking event at its core.
KENNETH SLESSOR
Kenneth was born Kenneth
Adolphe Schloesser in Orange NSW to Robert and Ella. As a young lad, he lived
in England for a while and upon return to Australia visited the mines of NSW
with his father who was a Jewish Mining engineer whose own father and grandfather
had been distinguished musicians in Germany. Robert changed the family surname
to "Slessor" on the 14th of November 1914, just after the outbreak of
WW1. Kenneth's father encouraged him to appreciate music, food and books and
instilled in him a European sense of sophistication.
A voracious reader and
writer, his first publication was in 1917, a dramatic monologue spoken by a
"digger" remembering Sydney Harbour and Manly Beach, appearing in
"The Bulletin."
Kenneth joined the Sun
newspaper as a cadet journalist in 1918 with his early writing was full of
description with poetic touches. The following year he had six poems published
in The Bulletin and one in Smith's Weekly.
When his family moved to
China, Kenneth remained in Sydney. On the 18th of August 1922 he
married Noela Beatrice Myee Ewart Glasson, who used her stepfather’s surname,
Senior.
The name Glasson may be familiar
as it featured in the blog, I wrote on the 20th of November 2023 about
the senseless murder of Leticia Cavanagh in a foiled robbery of the City Bank
in Carcoar in September 1893. The Bank Manager, John Philips, who was preparing
to vacate the premises the following day was also killed, his wife was
disfigured, and their baby daughter had a finger cut off.
The robbery was carried out
by Edwin Glasson, from a local prominent family, who after his marriage to
performer Annie Summerdale had lived way beyond his means, a fact of which
Annie was unaware. At his trial for the double murder on the 29th of
November 1893, Annie was pregnant, giving birth the following year to a
daughter, Noela Beatrice Myee Ewart Glasson.
She married Kenneth Slessor
under the surname of Senior, her mother’s second husband. Whether he adopted
her before he left the marriage is unknown.
(To view the blog of the 20th of November 2023, please click onto the tag below with the name Edwin Glasson.)
In the year of his marriage
Kenneth had met Norman Lindsay and other writers and creatives and became loyal
to Lindsay’s philosophical
ideas but remained a journalist. In 1927 he joined the Smith’s Weekly and
remained there until 1940 serving as editor from 1935. In 1939 the small
paperback Five Bells: XX Poems appeared. The elegy “Five Bells”, a meditation
prompted by the death from drowning of his friend Joe Lynch in Sydney Harbour
in 1927, is generally agreed to be his finest poem. In the 1930’s he published
other volumes of poems; one being “Darlinghurst Nights” upon which a musical play was
based and performed by the Hayes Theatre Company a few years ago.
In 1940 he was appointed an official war correspondent by the Commonwealth
Government and he sailed for Britain. He served in North Africa, Greece, Crete
and Syria until 1943 and was in Papua New Guinea into 1944. Kenneth took the
position as a great honour and remained loyal to the traditions of the Anzacs,
seeing a good deal of action. He showed admiration for the general soldier but
had a dislike of military authority and often had disputes regarding censorship
and military bureaucracy.
He learned that the army had sought his discreditation as a war
correspondent and resigned on the spot in 1944 in protest against the attitudes
of the Army Public Relations Branch. During the war he only wrote two poems, “An
Inscription for Dog River” – a critique of Sir Thomas Blamey – and the poem
best associated with him “Beach Burial”, lamenting the loss of so many in war
as they dip and bob in the waters long dead. Upon return to Australia, he became
an editor at his old stomping ground, The Sun newspaper.
Noela had joined him in England and Egypt where she had worked for the Red
Cross. After Kenneth was sent to Papua New Guinea it was some time before they
were reunited in Sydney.
Noela succumbed to cancer dying in October 1945. Their relationship was a tempestuous one, but they were fiercely devoted to each another. Kenneth was
devastated when she died. Noela was cremated at Rookwood Crematorium.
In 1951, Kenneth married Catherine Pauline Wallace, a divorcee. Their son
Paul was born in 1952. The marriage was an unhappy one and broke down in the
mid 1950’s ending in divorce in 1961. In the late 1960’s Catherine, who was
suffering from cirrhosis, returned to live in the same house as Kenneth in
Chatswood, but as a housekeeper. Paul, of whom Kenneth had custody, resided
with his father, attending Shore School like him.
A successful senior journalist and editor, Kenneth had left The Sun in
1957 for the Daily Telegraph, where he stayed until 1971. He was President of
the Journalists’ Club, Sydney from 1956-1965.
Kenneth loved the finer things of life and collected books, pictures,
music, etc. surrounding himself with the best of the Arts at the time; his
early education into a European lifestyle always remained with him.
Kenneth Slessor died suddenly of a heart attack on the 30th of June 1971 at the Mater Hospital in North Sydney. In accordance with his will, he was cremated and his ashes placed next to those of Noela in Rookwood Crematorium gardens.
Kenneth Slessor was a writer and poet whose feelings ran deep. He was profoundly affected by what he saw in the slums of Sydney and later in the killing
fields of WW2.
I remember being introduced to Slessor as a young student dissecting arguably
his greatest work “Beach Burial”, a poem with very few words but those chosen
were intensively descriptive. That poem stayed with me for many years.
References utilised today were ancestry.com, the Australian Dictionary of
Biography by Dennis Haskell, Wikipedia, Commonwealth War Graves information, National Library of Australia and
the National Archives. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any photographic
images of Noela.
If you have any insights into the contents of today’s blog or
reminiscences of learning a Slessor poem add a comment below or at the Group Facebook
page which can be found under
Rookwood Cemetery Discoveries
Or simply send me an email at
Until next week
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