A short broom whisk from Rowe Street are the State and Mitchell libraries. Voracious in everything, she devoured there the writings of Jung, Freud and the grimoirs of occultists Levi, Blavatsky, Fortune and Crowley. With an innate ability to see beyond, that which was written, she adapted with facility to techniques of self-hypnosis in order to cross the barriers to those same inner planes of awareness and perception Huxley, half a world away in California, would reach for with mescaline.
As she later wrote,
These experiments produced a number of peculiar and unexpected results...culminated in a period of extra sensory perception together with a prolonged series of symbolic visions.
10.
Roie believed to the end of her life that the beings she encountered in her trance state-the archetypal gods-were real. Here she was at divergence with what she had read in Jung, who afferred that they were merely universal levels of ones own being; certainly not living entities. Nevertheless she was convinced that Hecate, Pan, Lilith, Lucifer and all the rest she had encountered were real, and that, during her encounters with them, their energies and qualities flowed from them to her; then to be manifest in her art.
Jim Russell the cartoonist, now well over ninety, still producing a daily strip for the Herald, as well as running a busy travel agency in Sylvania Waters, first met Roie when she was working as a dental nurse at the T&G building in Elizabeth street. He remembers her as being,
a very attractive, bright young thing, but I didn’t see her again until about 1935. I was working at Smith’s Weekly then as a senior artist, and one night one of the nude models we used in our sketch club said,"Remember me?"
I said, "No."
She said, "Rosalie Norton. I had white clothes on then."
We became quite friendly, and had coffee and things-as artists did with models-and one day she turns up at the office with artwork, which was quite out of this world... devils and things. Frank Marian, the editor, liked her work, put her on. And I thought, Well I’m buggered if I know what you’re gonna do, for there’s nothing funny about this. (One of Roie’s humorous drawings was of a group of women sitting in a circle on the grass biting the heads off their babies and laughing.)
11.
Anyway, Marian, an odd bloke, thought something may come of it. He sat her in a room next door to me with two other girls. One of them was a Bohemian type like a big horse and the other was a prim, little school ma’am type. Rosie, however, fitted in quite well.
There was one, funny, little touch. Rosie didn’t wear a blouse. She wore a big scarf with one end tied around her neck and the other around her waist. Now this was O.K. when she stood up, but when she sat down, and leant over, you could see all of her boobs. All the editorial staff would come in for a bit of a perve, and I told her one-day what was going on.
"If they want to look, that’s O.K.," she said. "I’ve posed for you in the nude. So what the hell?"
But then her drawings became so outlandish, and her behaviour so bohemian that she sort of drifted away from Smith’s. Whether she got the sack or not I don’t know. Then I started to hear of her being the witch of King’s cross, and thought, This is the demure, little dental nurse?
I used to see her around the Cross quite a lot. By this time she was the weirdo of all times. Phony as could be. Putting on this act of the witches and loving it. Because she was getting all the attention she wanted and was being written up.
Anyway, I would see her from time to time at parties with a young man in tow, Gavin Greenlees. A timid sort of bloke with glasses. But it got to the stage where you just dodged her, for she was so outrageous with her Satan and all those things.
One night I was at a party at Chips Rafferty’s place. Block of flats up the Cross, third floor.
During the party we heard screams from the flat below, and Chips said,"Aw Christ. What’s this?" And went down.
Well Rosie had this Gavin bloke by the balls. And he was screaming.
Chips said,"Let ‘im go. Let ‘im go."
But she wouldn’t. So Chips just went BIFF, and knocked her out. And saved him, for the poor fellow was crying, and sobbing.
Once he had escaped her, and I use this term advisedly, he told me she was rooting him to death. He pleaded with me to save him from her. She had him locked up in a room. She would be on to him night and day. And it was just sex, sex, sex, until the poor bloke could hardly raise a fat anymore.
12.
In 1949 Roie was invited to exhibit her work at Melbourne University. As usual she was broke and could only raise the freight charges for her paintings. She hitched to Melbourne, accompanied by her cat and the long suffering, great love of her life, some disparagingly said familiar, Gavin Greenlees. Gavin, like Roie, had been a precocious child. The A.B.C. could not believe that a 12-year-old had written the poems he had submitted to the Argonauts. Far too advanced for Jason and his rowers in Poetry Corner, they were read instead to an adult audience.
Roie’s work was hung in Bowden White library. On opening night, amidst her depictions of Bacchanalian orgies and sexual fantasies, the academics nibbled on cheese, drank red wine and enthused. A good time was being had by all until detectives Olsen and Tannahill appeared. The Vice squad men declined the cheese, shuddered at the offered wine and declared themselves to be offended by the paintings. Putting a damper on the party, they slapped a summons on Roie under the Police offences Act (1928) and forced the organisers to turn the paintings they deemed most offensive (Lucifer and the Witch’s Sabbat) to the wall.
The Vice squad’s pet art critics fulminated at works which were,"stark sensuality running riot; the result of a nightmare dipped brush; as gross a shock to the average spectator as a witch’s orgy.
Roie however was amused at their reactions."Obscenity," she remarked," like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. This fig leaf mentality expresses a very unhealthy mental attitude."
She appeared before Senior Magistrate Mr. Addison on August 19 1949 where the prosecution was based on a case when Queen Victoria ruled from her English throne in 1836.
"Explain the animal painting." The Crown Prosecutor pointed to Roie’s Sabbat, the one which would offend many more in the years to come; the one where a naked female, obviously Roie, appeared to be in sexual congress with a panther of indeterminate gender, presumably also naked underneath all the black fur.
"Witch’s Sabbath,"Roie said from the dock,"is symbolic. The subject is... demonology. The female figure represents a witch. The panther represents the power of darkness... the night. The embrace of these two is the symbol for the initiation of the witch into the infernal mysteries."
A.L. Abrahams for the defence added to this,
"The paintings are symbolic of ancient mythology. They are not sexually immoral. They were shown to a limited circle of intellectuals at University who were striving for an adult outlook in culture."
Here Abrahams looked pointedly at detectives Olsen and Tannahill.
"We have to cater to people with normal reactions to sex...not morons, subnormals, or neurotics."
S.M.Addison took it all aboard; made his notes, as Judges do, and at the end of the day pronounced the paintings not to be obscene, awarding costs against the Vice squad of 4 guineas.
13.
Jim Russell, remembering the incident well, had this to say,
Shortly after that I get a phone call from me mate, Walter Glover. He says, "I’m doing a book on Roie."
He’d got the rights to all her dreadful drawings-I think they were dreadful. She was competent, but if you got blind Freddie or a student to do outlandish things they would get attention. Whatever she did could be called creative, but not useful. I don’t know who would want them.
I said, Wallie, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?"
"Oh yeah,"he said. "They’ll be a big seller."
I said, Wal don’t deal with these perves. You’ll get yourself in trouble.
He was a nice little bloke, Wal.
12.
Walter Glover was a Sydney journalist and editor of such diverse publications as Pastry Cook’s Review and Mortician’s Monthly. Occasionally he would drop into the courtroom adjoining Central police Station and take note of the human flotsam that had fallen foul of the law. On one of his visits Roie and Gavin, described on the charge sheet as artists, were in the dock charged with being vagrants with no visible means of support. There was something about the pair appealed to Glover, who for sometime had been toying with the idea of publishing an art book of sorts. For no reason other than that, he approached the bench and offered to employ them.
They arrived at my office late in the afternoon, both freshly groomed and sparkling as if they were straight out of the tub but they were dressed like hippies two decades ahead of their time. Gavin displayed a propensity for copper. His spectacles, which rested on the end of his nose, were held together with copper wire, as were his well-worn shoes. They showed me their extraordinary work. It was so different from anything I had seen that I was impressed with its obvious potential.
14.
Glover, while advancing payments to the artists in advance of royalties, negotiated and secured rights to all of Roie’s works-past present and future. This done, he purchased stock of high quality deckle-edged Glastonbury Antique paper for the publication. Although some highly original suggestions relating to book production, (Someone suggested that 100 copies of the book could be bound with tanned bat skin following a plague of flying foxes which swept Sydney that year.) were all very well, Glover had problems. Before he could get himself together, he came in one morning to find notice that the lease was up in the cramped warren he called his office, and was paying a pound a week for would not be renewed.
Bugger! But it was just like magic. The building’s caretaker was a mate of Dad’s. When he heard of it, he offered Dad a whole floor in the same building. The floor of course was far too big for Dad’s purpose. However Dad knew a guy in the advertising game who was looking for bigger premises. They did a swap and the guy paid Dad 300 hundred quid for the swap. The caretaker got a cut, Dad took over the agency’s former premises and everyone was happy.
Dad now had an office but no furniture.
The next day he bumps into another old mate from his army days who was up on a fraud charge and knew he was going down for at least five years. He had furniture in a repository doing nothing. Dad got the furniture for just that. Roie painted a huge mural on the office wall of Baphomet, the God of Energy in celebration.
15.
Despite the several printers who declined the work, on the grounds it could offend their lady proofreaders, Glover was in business again. However...
It was 1952,or ‘3. Mum and Dad and me were living at the time in a flat at Bondi. It was a very hot night, and we were sitting down to dinner. Dad had opened the window and the front door to get a bit of a breeze going. Suddenly there was this man standing in the doorway. Big bloke, solid.
"Yes?" Dad said.
"Mr. Glover?" the bloke says.
"Yes." Dad says. Who are you, what can I do for you?"
"Never mind, who I am,"the guy says."You’re doing a book on Rosaleen Norton?"
"What if I am?" Dad says,"What business is it of yours?" And he goes to rise from the table.
But by this time the guy’s in the room, standing beside him. As I said he was big, and he puts his hand on Dad’s shoulder-makes him sit down again.
He reaches over the table to the fruit bowl and takes out an apple."I don’t want anything in the book about Eugene Goosens, Mr Glover," he says. And then he starts to crush the apple in his fist. "Understand?"
The bloke dropped the crushed pulp on the table, wagged his finger at Dad, nodded to Mum.
"Who’s Eugene Goossens?" Dad asked.
But the bloke had left.
15.
Eugene and his twin sister, Sidonie Anne, were born to two itinerant musicians, Eugene and Annie Goossens, in a theatrical boarding house at Rochester square in London’s Camden Town on the 26 May 1893. According to the Times there was no violent thunderstorm, instead the wind was light from the NorthWest, weather fair, temperature rather cool.
The girl lived only six months, dying before the onset of winter. The boy survived the winter, but suffered the rest of his life from a damaged heart valve (Mitral Stinosis.). His paternal grandmother, reputed to posses the second sight, sneered at the diagnosis, "His heart was broken at the loss of his twin," she said. It is interesting to note that Sir Eugene Goossens’ family originally came from Belgium. There, in 1603, a woman called Claire Goessen was charged with being a witch and riding to covens on a broomstick smeared with ointment. But more of that later.16.
Although born within the sound of Bow Bells, technically a Cockney, Eugene always spoke in the mellifluous drawling tone affected by those middle class English who aspire to a class above their station. Whereas the rulers of that class ridden country, in perverse affectation, tend to adopt the colloquialisms and dropped aitches of the Cockney.
Cockney or not, Eugene fitted in among those who mattered in London’s musical world. After he gave a recital at the Albert Hall in 1921 Noel Coward eulogised him in Russian Blues when he sang, "My heart just loosens when I listen to Mr. Goossens."
Goossens throughout his professional life enjoyed a brilliant career. Beginning with an H.M.V. recording of Haydn’s Creation in 1916 and ending with Still’s third symphony in 1962, he recorded over 240 works of popular classics as a conductor in addition to his role as violinist, notably in the London Philharmonic String Quartet.
In the late 30’s America beckoned and Eugene went. He made it big in New York; even bigger when he went to Cincinnati, where he conducted that city’s symphony orchestra to great acclaim. He spent the war years in America and married his third wife, Marjorie, there.
However, Cincinnati was cold and Eugene who had been daily consuming Nembutal and Digitalis for his heart condition felt the cold so much that he invariably wore a heavy overcoat complete with astrakhan collar, even during rehearsals.
Eugene first came to Australia in 1946 as guest conductor with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He so impressed the movers and shakers of classical music he was offered not only the post of permanent conductor of the S.S.O. but that of Director of the Conservatorium of Music.
Gene, as his intimates called him, was equally impressed with Sydney. He loved the climate. He loved the harbour views from the director’s office at the Conservatorium.The money offered was also appealing. After his appointment, with canny negotiating, he upped the ante to the extent that eventually his remuneration was more than that of Chifley, the Prime Minister.
Settling his affairs in Cincinnati was comparatively simple. However, the move to Australia led to a flurry of petulant and demanding letters to Australian Customs. Reaching ministerial level, it concerned levies due on a high finned Buick Goossens wanted to import from the ‘states. 17.
In his contest with the implacable bureaucracy of Customs, he lost the first round to them on points; the second by a knockout.
Sans Buick, although still wearing the coat with astrakhan collar, he returned to Australia in 1947. Accompanied by Marjorie and the two daughters from his previous marriages, a journalist saw him as,
a big, pink man with large ears. A long pointed nose, alert eyes, a bulging forehead and long sideburns turning Grey at the ends. He moves slowly, speaks softly with an accent that has a faint flavour of the English North Country about it. But you are conscious all the time of the tremendous latent force in the man, of controlled and latent power.
In photos he looks unemotional, almost cold. But he is one of the proofs that the camera can lie. He is warm, friendly, direct and with immense personal charm and manners. 18.
Bambi Tuckwell, former model and lady about town, now Lady Harewood remembers that,
We all found him," very English with his cultured voice and seemingly aloof manner, mixed with his very un-english traits of walking around with his coat thrown over his shoulders like a terribly dashing cloak. He was much more fun than he looked. He looked very formidable, but he was enormously charming.
19.
An ex member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra remembers him as,
A cold fish, but a wonderful musician. He had to contend with the lotus-eating attitude of some of the players... "It’s a nice day so let’s go down to the beach and have a Barbie." Which tends to get in the way of excellence. 20.