The Brilliant Outsider Read online

  But Charles Finch’s lessons and expectations went beyond mastering the outdoor skills of rural life, and he encouraged George to read the extensive range of books, mainly legal texts, he kept in his study, hoping it might pique a desire for what he called a ‘serious future’. The boy read, or at least made an effort to plough through, a tome called The Lives of the Chief Justices of England, which extolled the virtues of a law-abiding society and the heroic lives of those who protected it, but it was the science books on his father’s library shelves, collected during his days as a public servant, that caught George’s attention.

  George had continued to struggle at school to this point, the lessons in mathematics, French and Latin uninspiring to a youth who yearned to be outside on his horse, but he was suddenly captivated by the experiments created by his father during his days in the field as a surveyor: ‘They awakened in me an abiding interest in science,’ he later wrote.

  In particular, he was engrossed by the art of navigation and the use of a sextant for surveying on both land and water. During holidays at Greenwich Point, he would wait expectantly for the sound of cannon fire across the waters of Sydney Harbour to signal that the Sydney Observatory had dropped its 1pm ‘time ball’, the only accurate measure of time in the colony and a navigation aid with which mariners could keep track of Greenwich Mean Time, regulated half a world away on a hilltop in south London. George was equally fascinated by his father’s Atwood machine, a wooden pendulum designed in the eighteenth century to explain Newton’s laws of motion and inverse square laws of attraction and repulsion. What should have been a complex subject for a boy who struggled at school had sparked his brain into action.

  Although their age disparity was more akin to that between a grandfather and grandson, the bond between father and son was intensely close. George was imbued with resourcefulness and a desire for achievement, sensing that his character and interests were strongly congruent with his paternal line and, in particular, with his grandfather Charles Wray Finch whose questing journey halfway across the world was a source of wonderment and inspiration.

  By contrast, George’s relationship with his mother was, at best, distant. The story of his maternal family was murky and held little interest for him or relevance to his rough and tumble upbringing. He tended to disparage Laura Finch’s fondness for the arts, making this clear in his late-life memoir that paid homage to his father’s influence while scarcely mentioning his mother other than with a backhanded compliment about her singing: ‘My mother was a good and attractive singer but rather over-fond of Mendelssohn’s songs without words but at her very best with Schubert’s songs.’

  It would be a misplaced sense of identity, however. Although he clearly embodied his paternal grandfather’s pragmatism and sense of adventure, George also had an ear for language, played the piano skilfully and later discovered a love of reading musical scores as others might read a book. There were physical similarities as well: he inherited Laura’s searing pale-blue eyes and fine-boned features, not to mention her stubborn nature and razor-sharp tongue.

  3.

  A NEW HEMISPHERE

  By her own account of their union, Laura Isobel Black was married off to Charles Edward Finch in 1887 to settle a financial debt owed by her bankrupt father. As outrageous as it sounded and without any evidence to suggest a financial link between the two men there was, nonetheless, a ring of truth to her claim.

  The beginning of Philip Barton Black’s story was a little like Charles Wray Finch’s, although Black’s journey to Australia was for different reasons and would have a very different outcome. He was the son of a successful Glaswegian cloth merchant, born in 1841 and the youngest of twelve children who, rather than find a place at the back of a queue of siblings, chose to accompany an uncle and emigrate to Australia. At first his enterprising nature seemed to pay off: he registered as an attorney and worked in Melbourne where he found himself a wife named Catherine Cox. Life seemed fabulous until he overreached.

  In 1866 Black secured a Crown grant in Queensland on land opened up by the doomed explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, moving his new wife more than 1200 miles north to a property outside Rockhampton where their first child, Laura, would be born the following year. It seemed a strange shift, given that he had no experience on the land let alone the harsh environs of Australia’s north, but most probably he had been enticed by the discovery of gold and later copper which drew men in their thousands, hoping to strike it rich.

  The reality must have struck home quickly because within a year he had given up the idea of mining or running cattle and sheep, instead opening a legal office in the tiny town of Clermont that had flourished in support of the human stampede. But the gold seams rapidly ran dry and the town economy stagnated, the law business foundered and by 1869, just as Catherine delivered their second child, Philip Black was in serious financial difficulties. He closed the office and declared PB Black and Co insolvent, quitting the property and moving back to Victoria to be close to his wife’s parents and beneath their financial umbrella.

  But the change of scenery did nothing to stem the tide and the money problems grew, just as the family did. By 1877 there were five children (four sons came after Laura) and they moved again, this time to Orange where the New South Wales gold rush had begun and appeared to be more sustainable.

  Black registered a new business entity, this time as a commission agent, a middleman specialising in rural property and commodities. Despite his struggles the family maintained a veneer of success, with Laura, then aged ten, taking singing and harp lessons as well as learning French and painting – the sort of skills expected of a young lady of means.

  There are few records to shed a light on her father’s business activities other than accounts of court appearances which show his efforts were of little avail. The gold rush had peaked and was now in decline and Philip Black slipped further into debt, his failure as an entrepreneur contrasting sharply with his success as a breeder of children. The combination proved disastrous and in 1881, just before the birth of their eighth child, the courts came to a conclusion about Philip Black and forced him to register debts of £1331 balanced against assets of just £125. He left town.

  The family moved once more, this time to the inner-west Sydney suburb of Annandale, but it was a similar sad tale, Black ending up in a legal battle over the ownership of land in the centre of Melbourne – a battle he would ultimately lose. By the time he was finally declared bankrupt in 1892, Philip Barton Black was father to ten children – seven sons and three daughters.

  Laura was fourteen when the family moved to Sydney from Orange. Bright and industrious and perhaps driven by the instability caused by her father’s money troubles, she would opt for a career rather than a husband and entered teachers’ college after finishing high school, graduating in 1886 and immediately finding work as a primary school teacher in Orange.

  Dark-haired and exotic with alluring eyes and a sharp intellect, Laura Black would have been the centre of social attention in a town packed with mining men and farmhands. Charles Finch, by contrast, was older, authoritative and a man of some importance. Where and how they met has been lost in time but their courtship would be brief. For a young woman to marry a man only two years younger than her own father suggests that there were extraordinary circumstances at play, and lends weight to Laura’s insistence that she was a sacrifice to her father’s sorry financial history.

  Whatever the reason for their marriage, it was clear that Charles Finch was besotted with his young wife, not just for her beauty but for her intelligence and presence. Apart from her love of the arts, Laura was a gregarious hostess even though the opportunities for entertaining in Orange were limited. Charles made every effort to turn his somewhat spartan homestead into a home befitting a woman who saw herself as a lady with a social position to uphold. The house at Greenwich Point offered some respite, but it, too, was relatively isolated, one of just a dozen or so houses in a bushland setting with grand verandahs
and views across the water to the city, a lengthy boat ride away.

  Laura relished her husband’s insistence on formality in the household but without a sufficiently scintillating social and cultural sphere in which to shine, particularly as a mother of three young children, she became increasingly disenchanted until the night in September 1894 that she went to Sydney with friends to listen to a lecture by the controversial English theosophist Annie Besant.

  Besant had been a prominent member of the National Secular Society in England and an outspoken women’s rights activist before finding fame by championing the rights of the match girls of East London in their strike of 1888. Her popularity grew as she became a leading member of the Theosophical Society, its name taken from the Greek phrase meaning wisdom of the gods. The society preached universal unity and dedicated itself to ‘the comparative study of religion, science and philosophy and the art of self-realisation’.

  Besant’s tour of Australia was a sell-out, her lecture in the then Sydney Opera House – a private theatre at the corner of King and York Streets – reduced to standing room. The small figure of Besant stood alone on the stage and lectured for ninety minutes on ‘the dangers that threaten society’, citing the unequal distribution of wealth as a particular evil and the need for a society without distinctions based on social status, sex or race. Mainstream religion was a destructive force, she argued, and should be discarded for the virtues of philosophy and science and the latent powers of man (or woman).

  On the surface, at least, the message appeared to be at odds with the philosophy of Laura Finch and her desire for social recognition (she allegedly carried around a silver box once owned by Charles Wray Finch’s father-in-law, Henry Croasdaile Wilson, containing a stale piece of Melba toast which she would present to hotel staff to indicate how she wanted her breakfast prepared). But the lecture that night clearly challenged her view of the world and she recognised in Besant a kindred soul disillusioned with the status quo. Certainly that was the story perpetuated in family circles: that she sat, mesmerised by Besant’s charisma, and at the end of the lecture whispered the words, ‘I agree with every word you said.’

  Within a year Laura found a stage of her own in Sydney (belying her son’s later dismissive judgment), appearing as a soprano soloist ‘before a fashionable audience at the YMCA Hall’, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald:

  Mrs Charles Finch, a new amateur soprano with a fine platform presence, essayed the aria ‘Vers nous Reviens Vainqueur’ (‘Aida’) but was better suited by the valse air from ‘Mireille’. In response to the applause which followed her interpretation of the Gounod melody, Mrs Finch added Meyer-Helmund’s charming song ‘Mother Darling’. A cordial feeling pervaded the concert room throughout the evening and the audience, which was a friendly one, included the Consul-General for France, M. Biard d’Aunet.

  The two events would fuel a determination in Laura Finch to escape the isolation of Nubrygyn and she began studying the texts of Besant and her theosophist mentors. Frequent trips to stay with her parents or friends in Sydney once promised an exciting release from the boredom of the bush but, as the new century beckoned and Laura turned thirty, even the music halls and society events in the city seemed to be merely the fringe of possibilities.

  Her husband was approaching his mid fifties, a kindly man but set in his ways and social sphere, making the difference in their ages and interests even more apparent. Charles Finch may have been content with his life but his wife wanted to explore the world outside. Europe beckoned and Charles knew he had no choice but to take her.

  Charles Finch had other reasons for promising Laura that they would embark on a grand tour of Europe: while his wife’s desire was to explore her potential, he wanted to discover his past. Unlike his father, who had become a soldier and travelled halfway around the world to escape his English legacy, Charles was fascinated by the family, history and determined to reclaim what he could of its status, even though the money, manor house and lands at Little Shelford near Cambridge that flowed from the highly successful ironmongering business of his forebears were now long gone. It fed his sense of place as a man of position and was also embraced eagerly by Laura, herself proud of her maternal link to an ancient titled Scottish family, the Maxwells of Bredieland, after whom her younger son had been named.

  So, in August 1902, having secured generous leave from his position at the Land Board, Charles Finch bought tickets for his wife and three teenage children and headed for Europe aboard the steamship Galician. He imagined it would be a twelve-month trip, even describing himself as a ‘tourist’ on immigration documents. Instead, only two of the Antipodean branch of the Finches of Cambridge would ever return to Australia.

  4.

  WHYMPER’S PATH

  The gendarmes, necks craned skywards, watched as the two figures inched their way past the famous parapet gargoyles toward the centre of the main face of the great Parisian cathedral of Notre-Dame. It was impossible to identify the climbers, silhouetted against the November moonlight, other than to note they were obviously fit and agile young men who were risking their lives and, more to the point, breaking the law.

  Still, it was hard not to be impressed by the feat, the partners in crime climbing straight up the west wall like a pair of spiders, finding hand-and foot-holds in the ancient and pitted stonework. It made interesting an otherwise humdrum evening dealing with street drunks, bar fights and domestic disputes around the 4th arrondissement.

  The officers were not the only spectators. A priest stood next to them, transfixed by the scene above. He might have been angry that a pair of fools was desecrating this grand monument to God; instead, he seemed amused by the events.

  The two men were both near the top of the towers now, more than 200 feet above the cobbled forecourt. From their lofty position they had sublime views across the twinkling city but their attention was drawn to the knot of spectators gathering below, among them the dark blue cloaks of the police. One of them acknowledged the audience with a wave, prompting a sharp, demanding call: ‘Descendez! Descendez!’

  The taller of the two responded cheerfully: ‘Oui, monsieur, nous serons dans un moment.’

  Foreigners, probably Englishmen, although the accent was strange. Perhaps they should face charges, or at least a night in the cells to teach them a lesson. The priest seemed to read the change of mood and shook his head. He just wanted them down safely.

  The officers weren’t about to challenge a priest from the city’s iconic cathedral. Instead, they watched in amazement as the climbers swiftly made their way back down the wall, hardly out of breath when they reached the pavement a few minutes later.

  George and Max Finch grinned, aware of the risk they had taken but politely brushing aside the official admonishment, as they had a few weeks earlier when they’d scaled the 1500-foot chalk headland called Beachy Head, near Eastbourne on the south coast of England. On that occasion the law had been waiting at the top of the climb, at a notoriously dangerous spot known as the Devil’s Chimney, bearing rope and rescue tackle and fearing the daredevils would tumble down the fragile cliff face to their deaths.

  It seemed a strange disregard for the law by a young man so attuned to his father’s wishes and principles, but it showed George Finch’s true character: that he would challenge authority when he regarded it as overly bureaucratic, irrelevant or standing in the way of what he wanted to do.

  There was a purpose behind the brothers’ madness. George had recently discovered a book called Scrambles Amongst the Alps by the British mountaineer Edward Whymper, famous for being in the first party to climb the fearsome Matterhorn that rose like a stone arrowhead on the border between Italy and Switzerland. The book was regarded as one of the classics of mountaineering literature and George regarded Whymper as his hero, inspired by the Englishman’s well-told stories and determined to emulate his feats, including Whymper’s early jaunts climbing Beachy Head and Notre-Dame.

  Although he hadn’t been on
the climb of Mount Canobolas that had inspired his brother, Max had willingly taken up the challenge and had proved a nimble and capable compatriot. It would be the beginning of a joyful sibling partnership as they turned from seaside cliffs and city buildings to the real challenge – the mountains of the Alps.

  Their rebellious exploits had provided them with a welcome distraction from frustrations within the family. When they’d landed in England in the spring of 1902, the family had stayed near Cambridge, close to Charles’s ancestral home but, despite an initial delight in her husband’s pedigree – including immediately adopting the use of the name Ingle Finch, as borne by the English branch of the family – Laura was not interested in rural English life. She’d pressured Charles to move them to Paris where the theosophist movement was based, particularly as it had become clear that George, who for once sided with his mother, was finding it difficult to settle into the English public school system.

  Charles had eventually relented and they’d moved into a grand apartment at 1 rue Michelet, in the heart of the university district, overlooking the spectacular Jardin du Luxembourg. It was the world of which Laura had dreamed while closeted by the stone walls, rough timber boards and dirt roads of Orange. Already a fluent French speaker, she was immediately at home, her entry to French society guided by influential theosophists including the scientist and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet. Within months she was hosting intimate soirées for the city’s bohemian arts community, where her languid beauty and dreamy ways soon became famous.