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Georgiana's Journal, the journal of Georgiana McCrae, originally edited by Hugh McCrae and published by Angus & Robertson in 1934, has been accepted as a title for the Academy Editions Series. As a result of the radical changes Hugh McCrae made to his grandmother's text, the journal is being completely re-edited.One of the mysteries surrounding the journal concerns the manuscript. Although you wouldn't know it from reading the published version, it is clear from reading the manuscript that it is in fact a copy, made by Georgiana McCrae, of her original journal. A number of different theories have been postulated as to the fate of the original document, and whether it played a role in the published version. For example, there has been speculation that Georgiana McCrae gave both the original and the copy of the journal to her son George (Hugh McCrae's father) before she died, and that he read both versions and burnt the original1. Others believe that Hugh McCrae read both versions before his father destroyed the original (this possibility is proffered by Hugh's daughter Mrs A.J. Morris and grand-daughter Janet Hay as a possible explanation of Hugh's changes to the journal). The remaining option is that Georgiana copied out the journal because it was in bad condition, and that she herself destroyed it. Evidence for this theory comes from Nettie Palmer's journal Fourteen Years in which she describes Georgiana as 'in her old age, [coming] across the papers, dim and dilapidated; and she copied out the whole thing; so it's this copy, on firmer sheets, that turned up in the McCrae house after George Gordon died about 1926'.2 Further evidence that Georgiana herself destroyed the original is found in the title-page of an earlier journal which was similarly copied out in later life: she entitled it 'Stray Leaves from an Old Journal, Long Since Committed to the Flames'.3
So much for speculation. What we do know with some certainty about the journal is that there was once an original journal, and that much of it was copied verbatim. We know this by the occasional repetitive dullness of some of the entries which list names of dinner guests or daily temperatures, which could not have been recalled, and almost certainly were not imagined. Georgiana also tended to preserve the integrity of the original journal by writing it out on the recto pages, and reserving the verso pages for comment and extraneous material. It is also a fact that the manuscript of the journal which is held in the Fisher Library in Sydney and the La Trobe Library in Melbourne is a copy in Georgiana's hand, and that it is dated after the Duchess of Gordon's death in 1864. Finally, it is quite clear that this is the version on which Hugh McCrae based his edition. I have come across nothing written by Hugh McCrae, published or unpublished, that implies that he ever saw the original version.Thérèse Weber
1. This version is included in Susanna de Vries-Evans book, Pioneer Women Pioneer Land: Yesterday's Tall Poppies (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1987), p. 137. 2. Nettie Palmer, Fourteen Years, in Nettie Palmer, ed. Vivian Smith (St Lucia: UQP, 1988), p. 140. 3. 1828 journal MSS.
2. Nettie Palmer, Fourteen Years, in Nettie Palmer, ed. Vivian Smith (St Lucia: UQP, 1988), p. 140.
3. 1828 journal MSS.
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Email Contact : t.weber@adfa.edu.auLast Updated : 20 Janaury 2000