Vere Gordon Childe spent his childhood at a home called Chalet Fontenelle, at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains of NSW.
He was educated at Sydney University and subsequently at Oxford. Childe returned home in 1917, but as a pacifist, atheist and committed socialist he was ostracized by Australian academia. There was also an estrangement from his father Stephen, a conservative Anglican minister. For this reason Childe’s professional life was spent overseas. He became internationally recognized as an archaeologist, particularly for his work excavating and interpreting the Neolithic village of Skara Brae, in the Orkney Islands.
It’s interesting that Vere Childe’s London home was the modernist Isokon Flats in Belsize Park. The interior was almost as minimalistic as Skara Brae. During the 1940s Childe lived in a flat opposite Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. He became Agatha’s bridge partner.
Mallowan was a member of staff when Childe was Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London. They are seated together (front row) in the following photo.
When he retired Childe returned to Australia, and to the Blue Mountains. In 1957 he was staying at the Carrington Hotel, in Katoomba. On Sunday, October 21, he took a taxi to the Govett’s Leap lookout at nearby Blackheath. He asked the driver to wait, while he carried out some compass bearings.
Some hours later he had not returned and the driver went to look for him. There was no sign of the professor, but his spectacles, raincoat and compass were lying at the top of the cliff. The police were notified, and a search was made at the base of the look-out. At dawn the following day his body was found on a ledge, 200 ft from the valley floor. It was believed he had lost his footing while trying to take bearings of Pulpit Rock, and had fallen a thousand feet. He was 65.
Vere Childe is said to have been influenced by Charles Darwin who, co-incidentally, had visited Govett’s Leap in 1836. This is evident in a wonderful piece Childe wrote about pottery, in his book Man Makes Himself;
Building up a pot was a supreme instance of creation by man. The lump of clay was perfectly plastic; man could mould it as he would. In making a tool of stone or bone he could only take bits away from it. No such limitations restrict the activity of the potter. She can form her lump as she wishes; she can go on adding to it without any doubts as to the solidity of the joins. In thinking of ‘creation’, the free activity of the potter in making form where there was no form’ recurs to man’s mind…‘
Note his change to use of ‘she’ over ‘he’. He made a point of acknowledging women in his studies of social evolution.
Vere Childe perceived Australian society at the time of his return (the 1950s Menzies era) as ‘badly educated, stupidly racist and extremely right wing’. It certainly was a stultifying era!
Of particular professional concern was the poor state of archaeological research in the country, Childe had grown up surrounded by evidence of early Aboriginal habitation – including grinding grooves in the sandstone and rock art in shelters by the local Gundungurra people. Childe hoped Australians would take the longer view of the continent’s history to include Indigenous perspectives. He espoused this view on ABC radio and in lectures, unfortunately within a week he was dead. (John Low, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History)
VERE GORDON CHILDE – MASTER OF HIS OWN DESTINY
During that last stay at The Carrington, Childe sent a letter to his friend and associate Professor William Grimes, with instructions that it not be opened until 1967; ten years later. It did not actually become public until the 1980s, when it appeared in the journal Antiquity. Here is an extract;
To end his life deliberately is something that distinguishes Homo Sapiens from other animals even better than ceremonial burial of the bead. But I don’t intend to hurt my friends by quoting that prejudice. An accident may easily, and naturally befall me on a mountain cliff…..I have enormously enjoyed visiting the haunts of my childhood, above all the Blue Mountains. I have answered to my own satisfaction questions that intrigued me then. Now I have seen the Australian spring. I have smelt the acacia, watched snakes and lizards; listened to the locusts. There is nothing more I want to do here, nothing I feel I aught and could do. I hate the prospect of summer, but I hate still more the fogs and snows of a Britain winter. Life ends best when one is happy and strong. (Tribune. 19 Sept 1990)
Not everyone could accept that he had taken his own life. The Blue Mountains historian John Low records that on the evening before his death, Childe was subjected to cruel jokes about his appearance while drinking at the Carrington Hotel’s bar.
He sought refuge with the receptionist, with whom he had developed a warm friendship. During their conversation he asked her to accept his typewriter as a gift. She tried to refuse, but not wishing to cause him further hurt she thanked him and accepted. However, she placed the machine in the safe with the intention of returning it to him later. This warm hearted lady would never change in her conviction that Childe’s gift was a gesture of friendship rather than a sign of intending suicide, and who are we to argue?
HERE IS A RELATED STORY – GOVETT’S LEAP & ITS GHOSTS
FOR MORE ON VERE CHILDE AND SKARA BRAE, CLICK HERE
