Two knights of Australia.(Australia)(A Public Life: The Memoirs of Zelman Cowen)(Book review)

SIR ZELMAN COWEN and Sir Ninian Stephen: each a lawyer by training, with a highly distinguished career in (respectively) academe and the judiciary, thereafter consecutive governors-general of Australia, and other things after that, both appointed to the governor-generalship by Malcolm Fraser--yet men with entirely different backgrounds, personalities and styles, and now with dissimilar books to record their lives. One is an autobiography, the other a tribute in the form of a collection of essays on the subject's achievements. The books are so different in genre, purpose and structure that it is impossible to compare them, so I shall discuss each in turn, drawing one or two comparisons along the way.

These men carry their honours lightly, and perhaps it's unimportant (certainly to them), but neither book mentions the chief honours bestowed on its subject--Sir Ninian has more knighthoods than any other Australian in the nation's history, including the highest of all, the Garter, two Grand Crosses (GCMG, GCVO), the ultra-rare AK, and a KBE (plus a KStJ). In those stakes Sir Ninian beats Casey and Hasluck, with Sir Zelman up there too with an AK, a GCMG, a GCVO, and a Kt (plus a KStJ)--a pointer to something, but not mentioned in these books.

Autobiography, recounting one's brilliant career, is a hard form to get right. Sir Zelman Cowen's autobiography avoids the perils and engages the reader by its modest tone and simple, straightforward narrative style. One or two sections could have been shorter (Oxford 1945-50, given fifty-five pages), others perhaps a little longer (the governor-generalship, 1977-82, thirty-two pages--is the governor-generalship less important than the student's career at Oxford?), but then this is the autobiography of an academic lawyer and it demands of the reader a strong interest in university life. The author's files are obviously in superb order and his memory is still sharp. The book is in large part a celebration of friendships, and this gives it warmth, even at times a moving quality, particularly in its accounts of the friendships of childhood and youth.

The first chapters are the most interesting and evocative. Zelman Cowen was born on October 7, 1919 (the day Alfred Deakin died) in St Kilda to Jewish parents whose family backgrounds were in White Russia (Belarus). His father was a commercial traveller and later a successful businessman (Pacific Oil) who is firmly in the background in this narrative, for the mother dominated the home, an ambitious woman with confident looks.

Before he had any idea what he wanted to do in life she had made up her mind he would be a lawyer (though there were no lawyers in the family, not even a university graduate), and not any old lawyer but a KC. She would relate to him, with approval, the story of how Isaac Isaacs' mother had come with him to select a barrister's wig and told the shop assistant, "We'll be back again to buy a judge's wig." Looking at the photographs of Cowen's parents I was drawn to the father, a genial-looking man with a wry grin and a taste for well-cut suits, elegant silk pocket handkerchiefs and good cigars. Unsurprisingly, over the years he gradually withdrew into himself.

Outside the home, Cowen's early years centred on schools in St Kilda and later Scotch College, and also the local synagogue where Rabbi Jacob Danglow presided. Danglow was a kindly man who supported Zelman's application for entry to Geelong Grammar, but when it came to Bar Mitzvah parties he could not attend them all, and was unable to attend Zelman's. There was consternation. Mother exploded (as was her way), making it clear to Danglow that he would attend and preside or the Cowens would transfer their synagogue membership to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation. Danglow was a self-respecting man, not cowed by that sort of threat, so the Cowens left his fold, though (to his credit) young Zelman himself later returned to worship there.

The chapter on Cowen's student days at the University of Melbourne provides much of interest in his recollections of professors, lecturers and students. His student politics were 1930s mainstream-left and he never dissented from that line, unlike his contemporary B.A. Santamaria, for example. We get the impression that almost everyone at the university held the same views, so it comes as a great surprise to be told that in the famous debate on the Spanish Civil War it was Santamaria's motion, "That the Spanish [republican] government is the ruin of Spain", that was carried. Sir Zelman's explanation that "the Catholic 'tribe' had the numbers" seems unconvincing given that Catholic students were a minority. Cowen took a prominent part in revues and the student union but his interests were always principally academic and his outstanding results reflected intense application to his studies.