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RECORDING A LIFE: A WORK IN PROGRESS
Geoff BELLIGOI *
My biography will analyse the history and development of biography, throughout the period of
the subject’s life, charting the changes between subject and narrator, as well as the purposes of life
writing at the different stages of her life. Changes to the practice and theories of biography as well as
the relationship between fact and fiction in life writing will be analysed in respective chapters.
Theory and practical examples will be placed alongside the application of writing the life of the
subject, Elizabeth Mary Ham, and refection will be made on the effectiveness of different approaches
to the successful recounting of her life story.
My title is “recording a life – a work in progress”. If fact it should be “lives”. I had initially started
with the intention of writing the biography of my Grandfather, Edward Costello who rose to Major in
the Australian Light Horse cavalry in the First World War, seeing action in Gallipoli and in the Sinai
and the Palestine – fighting, with many dying on both sides, the forefathers of the kind organisers of
this symposium. This is an active life; walking in on foot through the smallest gate of Jerusalem
among a small party of officers with General Allenby to accept the surrender of the city. Later he
served as a Member of the Queensland Parliament for 15 years representing the interests of the
district from where his fellow soldiers came. This is the type of life that stands out.
When he was dying he asked my mother to write the story of his life, but she was too close but
yet too far. She knew much but little. As a child she had overheard the adults talking but not knowing
the contexts she knew too little. Also she was too close; too emotionally involved. I on the other
hand have distance ‐ in time, generationally, and in opinions. I am not so easily scandalised by the
actions of my forebears; and there are scandals. I am also distant in space. I live on the other side of
the world from my cousins and remaining uncles and aunts – if they want to throw rocks on my roof,
they really have to be determined.
But why does this text deal with my grandfather, Edward Costello, in a publication on Writing
Women’s Lives? William Wordsworth wrote in the poem “My heart leaps up” that “the child is father
of the man”. By looking at the early life of my grandfather, I should be able to understand why he
acted as he did when older. What I have found when looking at the child is that I need to look at who
was the mother to the child. Elizabeth Mary Ham. I discovered that to talk about my grandfather, it
is necessary to write the life of my Great‐grandmother.
What are my reasons for writing a biography of my family members? The immediate reason for
this is personal – to recover the life and times of my family history. An interest in genealogy as well as
interesting subjects draws me to discovering my family, and its immediate part in the bigger picture
of Australian history. LP Hartley’s novel The Go‐Between’s oft quoted line: “The past is a foreign
country: they do things differently there”, which indicated the distance between an elderly narrator
and the dramatic events of his past, has been frequently adopted by historians to dramatise the gulf
between the present and bygone ages. The past is a natural hurdle. In the case of my family I have no
document written by the hand of my subject. I have first, second and third hand oral testimony of
events as well written documents produced by those around her (as well as a diary of her son who
travelled together with her to visit London and the area of her childhood) as well as historical archival
documents.
It is this remoteness that makes the topic both alluring and incomprehensible. It is for this reason
that in writing the biography I intend to conceive of the past as happening – as opposed to having
happened to portray events as they happened, forgoing the strictures of conventional historical
narrative, to investigate the sensations of being alive at different times. I also wish to not be
judgemental of decisions, having the advantage of knowing their outcomes.
*
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Australian Studies Centre - Universitat de Barcelona