SIR HENRY PARKES – AN OLD PAIN IN THE NECK?

Sir Henry Parkes’ political opponents often found him a pain in the neck, but as you will discover, this article refers to something quite different.

Sir Henry had a most difficult childhood.  He was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, in 1815, the youngest of seven children.  His father Thomas was a struggling tenant farmer on the Stoneleigh Abbey Estate.  Disaster struck  in 1823 when the family was forced off the land owing to debt.

Sir Henry later wrote; ‘From the time my father left Stoneleigh, I night date the commence of suffering and hardship which soon resulted in bleak and lasting destitution.‘

One of Henry’s first jobs, when still a young child, was to twist fibre into rope along a narrow laneway known as a ropewalk. He earned about four pennies a day.

Painting by Max Liebermann 1904 (Wikimedia)

Subsequently he  was employed in a brick yard, which he described as, ‘…breaking stones on the Queen’s highway with hardly enough clothes to protect him from the cold. ‘

Sir Henry Parkes died on April  27 1896. Shortly afterwards a long term personal friend, Mr E. Holden of Balmain, revealed that a few months before  the old statesman passed away, he  had  given Holden a statuette of himself, sculpted by  Signor Tomaso Sani, in 1887. It was about 12 inches high.  Apparently the work  was in appreciation of  Sir Henry’s  kindness to Sani. This may have been when Sani’s bas-relief carvings at the Sydney G.P.O.  were causing great controversy, being described as ‘vulgar caricatures’.

The sculptor had spent an evening at Parliament House when Sir Henry was speaking, to capture the posture of his subject. Looking at the statuette at the time of the gift, Mr Holden remarked on the odd tilt of the head. Sir Henry explained that this was not a natural or involuntarily acquired habit. The truth was really sad.  He said it was the result of a blow from an iron bar wielded by. ‘a brute of a man‘ when he was only eight or nine years old (most likely at the brick yards).  He said that he had been laid up for many weeks after the attack, and that it left him with shortening of the sinews of one side of his neck. Sir Henry told Mr Holden that he considered it a good likeness, but commented;

‘It would be a piece of arrogance for me to keep it in the house….it is a very pretty piece of sculpture, and I have given it to you to keep it safe from injury.’ (Australian Town and Country Journal, May 30, 1896)

When the Daily Telegraph posted a piece on the statuette, they too remarked on the characteristic tilt of the head.

Mr Holden showed the statuette to the then Premier, George Reid, who was most complimentary. Holden  commented  that if people were interested he could have terracotta or bronze reproductions made. Whether this happened is unknown.

Sir Henry Parkes (Source – Brittania)

We can only hope the statuette was kept safe by Mr Holden and his descendants, although its whereabouts  all these years later is something I have yet to discover.