{"id":4749,"date":"2011-05-30T06:30:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-29T22:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-secret-life-of-john-curtin\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:06:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:06:41","slug":"the-secret-life-of-john-curtin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-secret-life-of-john-curtin\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The secret life of John Curtin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Curtin probably wrote under the pen-name Vigilant <\/em>– providing important insights into his temperament – according to a study of the wartime prime minister after whom Curtin University is named.<\/p>\n

Lesley Wallace is the Manager, Research Services, at Curtin University Library and manages the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. She co-authored What\u2019s in a name \u2013 was John Curtin \u2018Vigilant\u2019?<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The study combined Mrs Wallace\u2019s probe of papers by economist and journalist Tom Fitzgerald with a comparison by University of Newcastle researchers Alexis Antonia and Hugh Craig of distinctive words used by both Curtin and Vigilant<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Before his death in 1993, John Curtin researcher Tom Fitzgerald amassed a wealth of evidence that Curtin had written as Vigilant<\/em> while editing the Westralian Worker<\/em> before he entered Federal Parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurtin\u2019s editorials, later writings on economics, and parliamentary speeches have been widely studied, but no published biographies have considered the pen-named material,\u201d Mrs Wallace said.<\/p>\n

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald had researched Vigilant<\/em>\u2019s writing for his incomplete biography of Curtin.<\/p>\n

Mrs Wallace said that more than 40 articles attributed to Vigilant<\/em> were likely to have been penned by Curtin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe views expressed were views Curtin held strongly and the articles reveal knowledge of people, places, events and literature that he knew well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe columns \u2013 on subjects not addressed in the known Curtin writings – reveal much about Vigilant<\/em>\u2019s views and the writings and people influential in forming his thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, in reviewing a book on ‘the sex problem in its every aspect’, Vigilant<\/em> wrote about the place of women in society and the nature of sex and marriage.<\/p>\n

Taking the socialist line, he stated that ‘the only ultimate complete solution of the sex-problem, bound up as it is with the economic dependence of woman, lies in the emancipation of society’.<\/p>\n

Vigilant<\/em> challenged his readers to examine their own relationships to see if they were free of the ‘exercise of physical or economic advantage by the man’ or ‘the exploitation of sex-charm on the part of the woman’.<\/p>\n

The recent study noted many parallels between the lives of Vigilant<\/em> and Curtin.<\/p>\n

For instance, in a lament expressed by many newcomers since, Vigilant <\/em>expresses a poor opinion of Perth’s intellectual life compared with that of the eastern capitals.<\/p>\n

He sees an urgent need for elevating that life, especially with a repertory theatre, writing that ‘the West hasn’t been furiously progressive in the world of ideas of late’.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Curtin were Vigilant<\/em>, it would help us see the events of Curtin’s life from his own viewpoint,\u201d Mrs Wallace said.<\/p>\n

The two University of Newcastle researchers compared several distinctive words by Curtin with words employed by Vigilant<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on these comparisons a good case for Curtin’s authorship of at least some of the Vigilant<\/em> articles can be made,\u201d Mrs Wallace said.<\/p>\n

However, the results suggest Curtin did not write all of Vigilant<\/em>\u2019s pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Curtin did write all the articles, then he clearly varied his style, in some cases carrying over few habitual preferences from his political writing to these essays in literary history and evaluation,\u201d Mrs Wallace said.<\/p>\n

Dr Antonia said the failure of the linguistic analysis to attribute some of the articles to Curtin might be due to him having consciously chosen to use a set of stylistic words conventionally considered suitable to the literary and personal themes that Vigilant<\/em> tackled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extent to which different authors adopt this subject-specific focus or not can explain why the articles of some authors seem uniform while those of others display marked variability,\u201d Dr Antonia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther tests with a large number of Curtin articles would be needed to confirm this hypothesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photography: Sam Proctor<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Library’s collaborative research reveals uncanny parallels between anonymous writer and wartime prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-4749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community","category-research"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Secret-Life-of-John-Curtin-thumb-1.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 04:03:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4749"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=4749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}