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Eben Gowrie Waterhouse

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Camellia 'E.G. Waterhouse' raised by Waterhouse in 1946 at Gordon, NSW and named after himself.[1]

Eben Gowrie Waterhouse OBE CMG (1881–1977) was an Australian scholar, linguist, garden designer and camellia expert. Based in Sydney, he improved the teaching there of foreign languages to lasting effect. He fostered a conception of garden design which still dominates much of the Sydney North Shore. He brought about a world-wide revival of interest in the genus Camellia, and lasting changes to the appearance of certain suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.[2]

Early life

Eben Gowrie Waterhouse (Gowrie to his intimates) was born in Sydney on 29 April 1881. He was the second of the three boys of Gustavus John Waterhouse and his wife Mary Jane Vickery. His older brother, Gustavus Athol (known as Athol; 1877–1950) became a noted entomologist and published the first comprehensive catalogue of Australian butterflies.[3] (Gowrie eventually named a camellia after Athol's second daughter Margaret.) His younger brother, Leslie Vickery (Les) Waterhouse (1886–1945) was an influential mining engineer.[4] Gowrie came to love plants, especially native plants, as a young bushwalker.[5]

Education

With his brothers, Waterhouse was educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney (B.A. with first class honours in French, German and Italian 1900–1903; M.A. 1919).[5]

Languages

After six years studying languages in Europe, Waterhouse returned as Master of Foreign Languages at Sydney Grammar with his "direct method" of teaching foreign languages. The method was so successful he was quickly taken on to the faculty of the Sydney Teachers' Training College. He became an associate professor of German at the University in 1926; professor of German and Comparative Literature from 1938 to 1946.[2] He was also prominent from the 1920s in the Goethe Society, the Alliance Française and the Dante Allighieri Art and Literary Society. Waterhouse relinquished his university chair in 1946, but remained curator of the university grounds till 1949.[5]

Waterhouse thought each person strives to find and express his individual genius, and that the highest form of its expression is to be found in literature and art. The great exponent and exemplar of such genius is the German poet Goethe.[6] So when Waterhouse describes his own landscaping and gardening as an art, the implication is that the expression of Waterhouse's individual genius is to be found in his gardens.

In the 1930s he supported the League of Nations Union inside and outside the university.[7] He had the standing, prestige and fluency to gain interviews with Hitler and Mussolini in 1935. His views were widely reported: he found Hitler face to face idealistic, fanatical, dramatic but unsound; Mussolini more statesman-like.[8] Goebbels he thought dangerous and cunning.[9] He preferred to live in "our free and sane Australia."[10] He proposed a Club of International Culture be established in Sydney to break down misunderstanding between different cultures and to encourage a richer cultural development in Australia itself.[11] In this he was like his English friend and fellow camellia enthusiast Sir Henry Price, co-founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at that time for similar reasons.[12][13]

In his eighties Waterhouse taught himself Japanese in order to be able to "talk camellias" with Japanese experts.[14]

Marriage

In 1911 Waterhouse married Janet Frew Kellie, a Scotswoman he had met in Paris in 1907. They returned to Sydney and eventually had four sons. Gordon Gowrie Waterhouse (1913–1986) was a horticulturalist who, with his father, established Camellia Grove Nursery in St Ives in 1939.[15] Douglas Frew Waterhouse (1916–2000) became famous as a biologist at the CSIRO.[3] Evan Wilson Waterhouse (1919-1970) founded Bellbird Books. Ian Kellie Waterhouse (1921-2013) was Foundation Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University.[14]

Eryldene

Between 1913 and 1936 Waterhouse had built at 17 McIntosh Street, Gordon a house and garden called Eryldene after his wife's birthplace in Scotland. Waterhouse, his wife Janet and their son Gordon moved into the house itself in 1914.The garden was eventually twice as extensive as it seemed; in 1921 it engrossed the block facing onto the street behind.[5] The house and the garden buildings were designed and built by William Hardy Wilson in a Georgian Colonial Revival style modelled on the earliest government buildings in Sydney and Hobart. House and garden were seen as a unit in the Arts and Crafts manner, though the house is not an Arts and Crafts house and the garden, first designed by Waterhouse, later by Jocelyn Brown, is a richly coloured blend of formal and informal elements which fundamentally extends the central axis of the house.[16][17] Waterhouse showed this in an illustrated article in The Home in 1923.[18][19] Eryldene became "a touchstone for the Sydney gardens of the first half of the twentieth century."[20]

The garden quickly came to contain the largest private collection of camellias in Sydney. At a time of enormous expansion of gardens and housing on the North Shore, Eryldene and its plantings were imitated all over Sydney (and in most issues of The Home before giving way to Spanish tiles and cloisters in the Thirties). Nearly a century later, the suburbs of Gordon, Killara, Pymble and Turramurra between May and August present an exceptional display of camellias in every form. The Melbourne suburbs of Ivanhoe and Heidelberg show something similar.

Landscape and garden

Waterhouse camellia 'Lady Gowrie' of 1951; flowering in shade in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.

Waterhouse did not confine himself to the exquisite layout of the garden rooms against a background of existing Australian eucalypts at Eryldene.[21] He participated fully in the 1920s and 1930s expansion of gardening as an art form and way of life. In the journal The Home in 1926 he published "Gardening as an Interpretive Art."[22]Annual and perennial flowers are not enough to sustain the garden as a work of art. Garden rooms formed by walls and hedges should be provided with the furniture of geometrical shrubs and pots.

He imagined in 1931 an enormous landscaped garden 300 or 400 acres in extent in which colour-forms would take the place of tonal groups in music. The garden was to be, not just an earthly paradise, but a Gesamtkunstwerk on greater-than-Wagnerian scale. The Sydney Harbour Bridge (opened in 1932) should be landscaped. To encourage such works of garden art, the University of Sydney should found a chair of landscape and domestic gardening.[23] He published "Domestic Gardening as an Art" in 1943.[24] His view always and everywhere combines a scholarly internationalism with unflinching aestheticism.

I have not studied botany, have taken no course in landscape design but have had always sensitivity to beauty and form about me.[25]

Overemphasis on cottage gardens had detracted from the "dignity and personality" of trees, especially Australian native trees, on landscaped ground.[26] With the encouragement of the Vice-Chancellor, Waterhouse redesigned and replanted the grounds of the University of Sydney 1925–1949. He redesigned the garden around the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and made designs for the University of New England. When the State Governor moved to Canberra as Governor-General of Australia, Waterhouse spent many hours in the grounds of Yarralumla discussing the landscaping with Lady Gowrie.[25] Sixteen years later he dedicated a camellia to her, one of his "eight or nine really good varieties".[27]

Nor were his interests confined to the macrocosm. His last book explores the aesthetic of Ikebana, on which his wife Janet was an acknowledged expert.[14]

Camellias

Waterhouse camellia 'Beverley Caffin Rosea' of 1947 in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.

Western interest in camellias as luxury flowers had waxed 1840–1880, then waned as they lost favour to orchids. Waterhouse's writing and breeding brought about a renewal of interest 1920–1960 in camellias, now as warm-climate woodland trees. He early formed the opinion that the rich and well watered soils of the North Shore were ideally suited to plants found in forest glades, most notably Japanese azaleas and camellias.[27] This led to his becoming one of the world's leading scholars of camellias — the International Camellia Society, of which he became the first president in 1962, has a register containing over 150 entries on camellias which Waterhouse identified, bred, discovered, renamed or reclassified.[28] Among these were camellias originally imported to colonial New South Wales or raised there by Sir William Macarthur of Camden Park 1820–61.[29]

Growing many camellias led to discovering natural seedlings, crosses and sports, as well as propagating known varieties and making deliberate crosses — starting with 'Plantation Pink' in 1942. Nearly all his named original varieties are still commercially available.

In 1970 Waterhouse assembled a national collection of camellias on two hectares in Caringbah, Sydney. The collection was renamed at his death the E. G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens. It contains more than 450 cultivars and species.[30]

Camellias raised by E.G. Waterhouse

Name Date Type Form and colour Extant
Plantation Pink 1942 C. sasanqua Single pink Yes
Beverley Caffin 1944 Seedling of 'Jean Lyne'? Double white with carmine flakes Yes
Bowen Bryant 1946 Williamsii hybrid Rose pink Yes
E.G. Waterhouse 1946 Williamsii hybrid Imbricated pink Yes
Henry Price 1946 C. japonica Deep crimson double Yes
Lilian Pitts 1946 C. japonica White flaked carmine Yes
Beverley Caffin Rosea 1947 Sport of 'Beverley Caffin' Semi-double, rose-red Yes
Exquisite (Waterhouse) 1947 C. sasanqua Pale pink single Yes
Maroona 1948 C. japonica Wine red Yes
Lady Gowrie 1951 Williamsii hybrid Loose pink Yes
Andromeda 1952 Seedling from 'Sodegakushi' Double white with carmine streaks Yes
Adrian Feint 1952 C. japonica Semi-double white with crimson stripes Yes
Campanella 1952 Seedling of 'Suibijin' Single light pink Yes
Dainty Maiden 1952 C. japonica seedling Semi-double rhodamine pink Yes
Janet Waterhouse 1952 C. japonica Semi-double pure white Yes
Nancy Bird 1952 C. japonica Semi-double, pale rose with crimson streaks Yes
Robin 1952 C. japonica Single cherry red Yes
E.G. Waterhouse variegated 1957 Williamsii hybrid Pink splotched white Yes
Margaret Waterhouse 1957 C. saluenensis seedling Semi-double soft pink Yes
Merrillees 1957 C. japonica Large, informal double white Yes
Polar Bear 1957 Seedling of 'Great Eastern' Large creamy flowers showing stamens Yes
Ellamine 1958 C. saluensis hybrid Single pink Yes
Paul Jones Supreme 1958 Seedling of 'Paul Jones' Semi-double white with carmine stripes Yes
Betty Cuthbert 1962 Seedling of 'Yoijibin' Neyron pink double Yes
Weroona 1963 C. sasanqua Semi-double white deeply stained rose Yes
Lady's Maid 1964 Seedling of 'Lady Gowrie' Light orchid pink Yes
Candy Stripe (Waterhouse) 1965 Seedling of 'Doris Tagg' White with red radial stripes Yes
Barbara Mary 1965 C. japonica Scented, blush pink, peony form Yes
Bells 1965 Williamsii hybrid Single, mauvy pink
Red Moon 1965 C. japonica Deep rose red, semi-double Yes
Glacier 1968 Seedling of 'Somersby' Semi-double snow white Yes
Mary Armati 1971 C. uraku seedling Semi-double blush pink

Honours

In 1933 Waterhouse was knighted by the king of Italy for his contribution to Italian culture abroad.[31] Waterhouse received the Goethe Medal in 1957 for his work as a Germanist.[32]

In 1962 he was awarded an OBE for services to the community. In 1976 he became a CMG for services to horticulture.[33]

Death

Waterhouse died on 17 August 1977 at Killara. He was 96. Janet had died at 88 in 1973. The Ku-ring-gai Council bought his house and land from the Waterhouse family for $150,000, and under Council aegis The Eryldene Trust assumed ownership in 1981.[34]

Books

• E.G. Waterhouse, J.A. Snowden: The initial stage in French by the direct method : a handbook for teachers containing detailed lesson-notes for fifty-two lessons. W.A. Gullick, Government Printer, Sydney 1913.

• Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: The teaching of the French verb : being an outline method for the presentation and practice of the tenses and moods. Teachers' College Press, Sydney 1914.

• Eben Gowrie (ed.) Waterhouse: Liederbuch. Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney 1932.

• Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: Goethe, Centenary Address. Australasian Medical Publishing Co., Glebe, NSW 1932. Rare copies in the Mitchell Library and the Macquarie University Library, Sydney.

• Eben Gowrie Waterhouse, Adrian (illustrator) Feint, Paul (illustrator) Jones: Camellia Quest. Ure Smith, Sydney 1947. The print run of 1,000 deluxe copies sold out in a month. According to The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, Waterhouse's Camellia Quest and Camellia Trail are "arguably the most beautiful garden books published in Australia".[5]

• Eben Gowrie Waterhouse, Paul (illustrator) Jones: Camellia Trail. Ure Smith, Sydney 1952.

• Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: The Magic of Camellias; Creative Ideas for Japanese Flower Arrangement. Ure Smith, Sydney 1968.

References

Vorlage:Reflist

  1. ↑ E.G. Waterhouse (C. x williamsi). In: Web Camellia Register. International Camellia Society, abgerufen am 20. September 2016.
  2. ↑ a b W.M. O'Neil: Eben Gowrie Waterhouse. In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University, abgerufen am 19. September 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Malcolm Robertson: Waterhouse, Douglas Frew (Doug) (1916–2000), The Age, 11 December 2000. Abgerufen im 19 September 2016 
  4. ↑ Michael Waterhouse: Waterhouse, Leslie Vickery (Les) (1886–1945). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University, abgerufen am 19. September 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Richard in Clough, Richard Aitken, Michael (eds). Looker: The Oxford companion to Australian gardens. Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Victoria [u.a.] 2002, ISBN 0-19-553644-4, S. 630–2.
  6. ↑ Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: Goethe, Centenary Address. Australasian Medical Publishing Co., Glebe, NSW 1932, S. 3–5 especially.
  7. ↑ HITLER AND MUSSOLINI In: The Sun, 6 April 1935, S. 4. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  8. ↑ TWO DICTATORS. In: The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1935, S. 11. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  9. ↑ Sees Fatal End Soon For Adolph Hitler In: The Sun, 23 September 1934, S. 9. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  10. ↑ SEES FATAL END SOON FOR HITLER In: The Dalby Herald, 2 October 1934, S. 1. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  11. ↑ INTERNATIONAL CULTURE. In: The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1935, S. 10. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  12. ↑ Sotheby's to Sell Sir Henry Price collection. Abgerufen am 7. Oktober 2016.
  13. ↑ Henry Price (C. japonica). In: Web Camellia Register. Abgerufen am 7. Oktober 2016.
  14. ↑ a b c Eryldene and the Waterhouses. In: Eryldene Historic House and Garden. The Eryldene Trust, abgerufen am 19. September 2016.
  15. ↑ The name alludes to the original Camellia Grove nursery on the Parramatta River in the 1850s. See Barker, Geoff: The Parramatta River 1848 to 1861 – Personal Observations by W S Campbell. Parramatta Heritage Centre, 14. Mai 2014, abgerufen am 8. Oktober 2016..
  16. ↑ "Jocelyn Brown" in Anne Vale: Exceptional Australian garden makers of the 20th century. Lothian, Middle Park, Victoria 2013, ISBN 978-1-921737-11-4, S. 83–87.
  17. ↑ Helen Proudfoot: Brown, Doris Jocelyn (1898–1971). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University, abgerufen am 8. Oktober 2016.
  18. ↑ Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: Erylydene, Gordon, New South Wales, the residence of Mr & Mrs E.G. Waterhouse; House and Garden Designed by Wilson, Neave and Berry. In: The Home. 4. Jahrgang, 1 June 1923, 1923, S. 27–30.
  19. ↑ See also Cazneaux's photo above Summer Blaze. In: The Home. 1 November 1930, S. 22.
  20. ↑ Helen Proudfoot: Gardens in bloom : Jocelyn Brown and her Sydney gardens of the '30s and '40s. Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst, NSW 1989, ISBN 0-86417-238-9, S. 10.
  21. ↑ OPEN AIR ROOM In: The Sun, 22 July 1928, S. 44. Abgerufen im 24 September 2016 
  22. ↑ Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: Gardening as an Interpretive Art. In: The Home. 7. Jahrgang, 1 February 1926, 1926, S. 22–3, 69.
  23. ↑ The Artist-Gardener: Lecture by Prof. Waterhouse In: Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 1931. Abgerufen im 20 September 2016 
  24. ↑ Eben Gowrie in Waterhouse, W.A. Shum: Australian Gardening of Today. The Advertiser, Adelaide 1943 (gov.au). Cited by Clough (2002).
  25. ↑ a b David Tunny: E G Waterhouse — Creating Harmony from Chaos. In: The University of Sydney. The University of Sydney, abgerufen am 20. September 2016.
  26. ↑ Eben Gowrie Waterhouse: Trees and Tree-canopies. In: The Home. 1 May 1931, S. 30–31.
  27. ↑ a b Professor who popularised Camellias, The Sunday Herald, 1952. Abgerufen im 22 September 2016 
  28. ↑ Register. In: International Camellia Society. Abgerufen am 19. September 2016.
  29. ↑ Colin Mills: Camellias at Camden Park. In: Hortus Camdenensis. 13. März 2010, abgerufen am 23. September 2016.
  30. ↑ E.G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens. In: International Camellia Society. Abgerufen am 22. September 2016.
  31. ↑ IL PROF. E. G. WATERHOUSE CREATO CAVALIERE DELLA CORONA D'ITALIA In: Il Giornale Italiano, 16 August 1933, S. 2. Abgerufen im 30 September 2016 
  32. ↑ Reportagen Bilder Gespräche: 60 Jahre Goethe-Institut. In: Goethe Intitut. Goethe Intitut, abgerufen am 29. September 2016.
  33. ↑ It's an Honour. In: It's an Honour. Abgerufen am 30. September 2016.
  34. ↑ Peter Levick: Eryldene, the Spiritual Home of Camellias. In: Camellias Australia. Abgerufen am 24. September 2016.
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