The letters of Rachel Henning: Have we been conned?
| Edmund Biddulph Henning 1834-1928 | Rachel Henning's letters |
Contents
- Introductions
- Edited letters
- IHS articles
- References
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1. Introduction
One of the most famous books of early Australian writing is The Letters of Rachel Henning published in 1951-2 by the Bulletin magazine and subsequently republished in book form. Within those publications the available letters were heavily edited. Rachel Henning,(1826-1914) arrived in Australia from England in 1854, and her letters cover the period 1853-1882. The following is some material from the Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin which refers to Rachel Henning's writings and her period of residence in the Illawarra region of coastal New South Wales.
An article (linked above) by the present writer outlines aspects of her brother Edmund Biddulph Henning (1834-1928)and his time in the northern part of the district, near Bulli.
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2. The edited Letters of Rachel Henning
The following article was originally published by Michael Organ as The letters of Rachel Henning : have we been conned?, Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, August 1994, 50-52.
The Letters of Rachel Henning
Have We Been Conned?
Readers would be familiar with that Australian literary classic, The Letters of Rachel Henning, which initially appeared as a series in the Bulletin during 1951-2 and was subsequently published in book form by Angus & Robertson during 1953, with illustrations by Norman Lindsay. In 1986 a full-colour illustrated version appeared. What most people do not realise is that the published letters are a ‘deleted, distorted and defaced' version of Rachel Henning's original writings. As some of the letters were written from Illawarra (she lived for a period at Figtree, whilst her brother Biddulph had a farm on Bulli Mountain), this matter may be of some local interest.
A recent article by Anne Allingham, entitled "Challenging the Editing of the Rachel Henning Letters' (Australian Literary Studies, May 1994, 262-79), reveals that David Adams, then editor of the Bulletin, was responsible for the preparation and editing of the 90 letters which subsequently appeared as The Letters of Rachel Henning. However Ms Allingham discovered that there are in fact 176 known extant letters by Rachel Henning, the majority of which were deposited with the Mitchell Library during 1953 and have not been referred to since Adams' transcript originally appeared.
In comparing the original manuscript with the published version, Ms Allingham found numerous discrepancies and omissions. Mr Adams, being a journalist and perhaps concerned with issues of defamation, took many liberties with the editorial process. Apart from the common insertion of punctuation, paragraphs and capitals, he also deleted large chunks of letter openings and conclusions, containing as they do many references to Rachel's family and friends. He changed the date of a letter to fit in with his published chronology. He distorted the written word by actually rewriting parts of letters. For example, when Rachel wrote '.... she produced the very hideous bucket-shaped thing that you must remember....', Adams transcribed it as '.... she produced the design for the gold cup you must remember.’ When Rachel continued; '....I have not been able to get the inscription on the gold cup as Biddulph keeps it at the bankers....‘, Adams re-wrote it as; 'I have been able to get the inscription on the gold cup .... The inscription is as follows...‘ This not only changed the meaning, but also added extraneous text, where a footnote was warranted.
Such gross alteration of a manuscript is, in 1994, deemed totally unacceptable. However it seems to reflect the fact that Adams, the journalist, was editing the Henning letters as he would any other piece for the Bulletin, with scant regard for academic and literary protocol. He gives no explanation of his editorial method, therefore the impression is given that the letters as published accurately reflect the original manuscript and the feelings of the author, yet this is not so. According to Ms Allingham, Adams deleted much of the 'spice‘ from Rachel's letters - her numerous vitriolic descriptions of other women, discussion of family feuds, and disdain for the Colony in general is mostly omitted. We are left with a sanitised version of the letters and of Rachel Henning. Perhaps of most concern is the fact that Adams used Rachel's actual letters as his working copy, rudely scoring out unwanted pages, paragraphs and words with blue pencil, and inserting his own revisions above Rachel's lines.
In light of the above, perhaps it is time to 'rediscover' Rachel Henning’s Illawarra letters, and prepare a fulsome transcription - a 'warts and all' version which is comprehensive, accurate, and fully reflects the intent of the original author. Such a version should have been issued back in 1951-2. Michael Organ
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3. IHS Bulletin items
* In the December 1973 edition of the Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, an article by Pam Robinson (?) appeared entitled Rachel Henning in Illawarra, as follows:
Rachel Henning in Illawarra
It was on 11th June 1873 that Rachel Henning (Mrs. Taylor) first wrote from Springfield at Figtree to her sister in England. After a previous visit to Australia in 1854-56, she had returned to settle permanently in Australia in 1861, living with her brother Edmund Biddulph Henning (called Biddulph in her letters) until five years later she was married, rather late in life by Victorian standards, but apparently very happily, to Deighton Taylor. Pronounced Dye-ton, but in the tradition of Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet and Dickens’s Mrs. Micauber, she almost invariably refers to him as “Mr. Taylor”, even when writing to members of the family.
In the previous year she had written from Sydney, relating how she and Mr. Taylor had “made an excursion to Wollongong to look at farms. We went down by the steamer, which only takes about five hours going from Sydney, (and) took up our residence at the Queen’s Hotel (a very comfortable place).” Afterwards the Queen’s Hall Flats, it stood in Market Square, and was demolished only within the last few years.
They rejected two farms on Lake Illawarra, but were delighted with one on American Creek: “The land is very good. There is a tolerable house which we can inhabit while we build another, a creek (as they call a brook here) running right through the farm, and a site for a new house where there is a most lovely view of the whole Bulli Range.” Then, they returned by coach to Campbelltown (“a very good road . . . Of course, it is steep in parts, and passengers with any humanity in them generally walk to the top, but you can hardly imagine anything more beautiful than the scenery” — though “the beauty ceases at the top of the mountain”); then caught the train to Sydney.
In December she wrote that “the new house ought to be up in about three months”, but evidently builders were the same a hundred years ago, for in the following June “the timber for the house is nearly all come and lying in piles upon the site. The garden has been fenced around, and now we are only waiting for fine weather to begin the house and to plant the garden.” In anticipation, they had, on a recent visit to Sydney driven out to Baptist’s nursery and ordered a quantity of pines and cypresses and other shelter trees.
Those pines — perhaps — are still there. The sketch map in the first edition of the “Letter of Rachel Henning” indicates the site of Springfield as about where the Figtree High School now stands; and there was, until the school was built, a fenced enclosure there which clearly had been someone’s garden. The late Mr. Lindsay Maynes, however, said that Springfield was further to the south-west, where on a small rise above the creek there are some sheds and two or three old pine-trees; and investigation on the spot a few years ago showed definite traces of a garden there also. Mrs. Robertson, who as a child was taken to visit the Taylors, confirms that this was the site, and adds that the garden on the High School site belonged to the Gibson’s, whose name was given to Gibson’s Road.
Rachel explained that while they were about it they thought it best to build a comfortably large house, for they hoped to spend the rest of their lives there; and by April 1874 it was more or less furnished: “We have just had the sitting-room papered and the ceiling whitewashed . . . It is a large, pleasant room with three French windows, and a lovely View therefrom . . . The bedrooms are rather rough, yet, being unpapered . . . Just yet we cannot afford a great deal in the way of furniture; the cottage has cost so much.” (Nearly £300!)
They “hoped to make the garden very pretty by-and-by”; and apparently succeeded. Five years later Rachel was writing, “The trees and shrubs are growing up, the veranda pillars are covered with flowering creepers, and the beds are always full of flowers,” and four years later again, “It is wonderful how the trees have grown in nine years. The house was built on a bare paddock, and now, at a little distance, it looks as if it stood in a grove of trees: pines, cypresses, mimosas, etc._. although there are none very near the building.* A photograph, taken about 1890, in the first edition of the “Letters” shows a house with shingled roof and wide verandahs, creepers growing up the verandah—posts, what looks like a big bougainvillea at one corner, a rose garden to one side, spreading lawns and trees behind. There is no background to settle the question of its location, and the house itself is too much shaded by the verandahs for details to be visible.
Mrs. Robertson remembers the garden as "luvely wide paths winding amid trees, shrubs and flowers. The banks of American Creek, near which the house was built, were cool and ferny and shaded by sassafras trees."
* In 1979 a report appeared in the Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, of a proposal for a park in the name of Rachel Henning:
Rachel Henning Park - Perhaps
It is reported that a subdivision has been made at Gibson's Road at Figtree and that the area is where Rachel Henning lived for some time and from which she wrote some of the letters recorded in the publication outlining her life there. Our Society, through the chairman, Mr. Maynes, will make representations to the Heritage Council of Wollongong (recently formed) that the flood plain of the creek there be reserved as Rachel Henning Park.
* In the May 1995 edition of the Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, the following item by Joseph Davis on The Unpublished Letters of Rachel Henning appeared:
Rachael Henning's Unpublished Letters
Those who attended my address to the 1995 March Meeting of the Society will already know that I abandoned my advertised topic to report on my delight at finding not only that the microfilm of Rachel Henning’s letters held by the Mitchell Library contains many unpublished letters from lllawarra but also that many of the other letters also contain much unpublished material about our area. What is even more astounding is that not a single one of Rachel Henning‘s letters has been published in full Some of these letters extend beyond 20 hand-written pages. Henning’s letters are the most fulsome record of nineteenth century rural life in lllawarra and therefore deserve very serious attention. Once I have gained permission from the Mitchell 1 will begin to publish my transcription (with detailed historical notes) of all those letters which make reference to lllawarra. I will also begin a serious scholarly edition of Henning's Letters. It's a mammoth project, much bigger than my work on DH. Lawrence, but I feel I can’t not take up the opportunity to work on the second of the two greatest whingeing poms ever to set pen to paper in lllawarra. Joseph Davis
* At the October 1999 meeting of the Illawarra Historical Society, Pam Robinson presented a talk on The Letters of Rachel Henning. A brief review was provided in the November / December Bulletin by John Herben, as follows:
Pam Robinson began her talk on Rachel Henning by outlining her English upper class background and the situation she and her siblings found themselves in after the early death of their parents. After her brother and sister left for Australia Rachel's letter writing began in earnest. A year later Rachel and her sister followed in their brother Biddulph's footsteps. She continued her letter writing from the time she stepped onto the ship, but now to her sister back in England. Pam read some interesting excerpts demonstrating Rachel's chatty style of writing, her keen observations and comments on events at home and as far away as Russia. Pam, having been a fan of Rachel Henning's writing and drawings for 35 years, presented a very entertaining and informative talk about a lady who, despite having lived in the bush for a number of years, retained her English poise.
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4. References
Bayley, W.A., Rachel Henning Park - Perhaps, Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, July 1979, 36.
Davis, Joseph, Rachel Henning's Unpublished Letters, Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, May 1995, 44.
Herben, John, October Speaker: Pam Robinson - The Letters of Rachel Henning, Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, November / December 1999, 75.
Organ, Michael, The letters of Rachel Henning : have we been conned?, Illawarra Historical Society Bulletin, August 1994, 50-52.
Wikipedia, Rachel Henning, Wikipedia, accessed 3 February 2026.
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| Edmund Biddulph Henning 1834-1928 | Rachel Henning's letters |
Last updated: 3 February 2026
Michael Organ, Australia
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