by Whispering Gums

A post in our 2025 series featuring works published in 1935 (or by authors who died in 1935). This post includes a column that was published in the Women’s Supplement of The Sydney Morning Herald on 14 March 1935, and is by Gertrude Mack, the youngest of the three literary Mack sisters.

Gertrude Mack (?-1937) was an Australian journalist and short story writer. The youngest of thirteen children – who included five daughters – Mack was born in Morpeth, New South Wales, to Irish-born parents, Jemima (nee James) Mack and the Rev’d Hans Mack. As a child, she lived in various parts of Sydney including Windsor, Balmain and Redfern, and was educated at Sydney Girls’ High School.Two of her older sisters also forged literary careers, Louise Mack (whom we’ve featured here before) and Amy Mack (whom we’ve also featured). These two older sisters have been documented in Dale Spender’s Writing a new world: Two centuries of Australian women writers (1988) and by their niece Nancy Phelan in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, but neither Spender nor Phelan mention Gertrude. According AustLit, a diary of Mack’s is included in Phelan’s papers at the State Library of New South Wales. Curious.

This dearth of formal biographical information meant relying heavily, for this post, on Trove, where articles written by Mack abound. They tell of a curious and adventurous woman who was able to report firsthand on those challenging 1920s and 30s in Europe and the Americas. For example, in 1924, four years after the Mexican Revolution, she decided to go to Mexico City, something her American friends thought “a wild whim”. She writes for The Sydney Morning Herald (22 November 1924), that “according to American newspapers, it did seem a risk, but I knew their way of making any Mexican news appear hectic”. In the end, it does prove difficult, and she fails on her first attempt. She admits that she was not prepared for the poverty she sees in Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, and “was not yet accustomed to the unshaven Mexican”, but she later wrote admiring pieces on the country.

Mack spent eight years in London from around 1929 to 1937, and returned at least once for a few weeks in 1933. It was a difficult time in Europe, and The Sun (18 June 1933) reports that she had found “the same sense of strain in all the European countries, and this has been intensified more recently by the war menace, which seems to be very real.” I have not been able to find an image of her, but during this visit, sister Louise described her in “Louise Mack’s Diary” in the Australian Women’s Weekly (17 June 1933):

Tall, very slight and svelte, in a smart black frock of her own making, her hair marcelled, her big, grey eyes looking big-ger than ever under the glasses she had taken to lately. Elegant? Yes, certainly.

Gertrude returned again to Australia in 1937. There was much interest in her return, with newspapers reporting on her thoughts from the moment she first touched the continent in Western Australia. The West Australian (3 March 1937) wrote that she had passed through Fremantle in the “Orama”, and quoted her as saying Australian writers were doing well in London. “Henry Handel Richardson was acclaimed by many critics as the finest writer of the day”; and Helen Simpson (whom we have posted on before) “had taken up broadcasting work in addition to her writing”. Also, Nina Murdoch had had success with Tyrolean June and Christina Stead with Seven poor men of Sydney. The paper observed, tellingly, that “undoubtedly Australian writers were getting more recognition in London than in their own country”.

It also quoted Mack as saying she believed England was interested in stories about Australia, but that their interest depended “entirely on the topic of the story.” Unfortunately Australian writers “usually presented the drab side of the life of the country and laid too much stress on the droughts and the drawbacks” and “the frequent descriptions of struggles against drought and the hardships of Australian life gave readers a wrong impression of the country”. Consequently, readers “did not realise that the country had a normal life, with a bright social side, and the mass in England seldom knew that there was very fertile land in Australia”. Apparently, according to Mack, “German people knew more about Australia and were more interested than the people of any other country”.

Adelaide’s News (6 March 1937) took up the issue of how Australia is viewed, but with a slightly different tack, writing:

“It would be difficult,” said Miss Mack, “to make the average uneducated English man or woman believe that there is, in Australia, such a thing as culture. English people would be surprised if they could have a glimpse of real country life on a big station.
The only way to overcome this wrong idea.” she said, “is by our literature. which has not yet developed fully.”

Although she was talking about staying in Australia for just 6 months, it appears that Gertrude Mack was in fact seriously ill when she returned in 1937. She visited her brother C. A. Mack, of Mosman, but died in a private hospital in Darlinghurst on Wednesday 31 March and was buried at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium on the Friday.

A few days later “an appreciation” written by “W.B.”  appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald (6 April). W.B. It’s a moving tribute:

To those of us who had the happiness and the privilege of an intimate association with Gertrude Mack over a long period, abroad and in Australia, her death has meant a very poignant personal loss and sorrow. Her happy outlook on life, her faculty for perceiving the humorous side of things, and her sensitive reactions to atmosphere, made her a delightful companion, and she made friends among every class of people, whether they were foreigners or people of her own race. She had an unusual flair for getting at the heart of the interesting aspects of life and affairs, and this, added to her other gifts, enabled her to write such charming and interesting sketches, stories, and interviews. Her short stories and sketches were invariably the outcome of personal contacts. She could paint engaging pictures of people and places, and make them real to her readers. She also possessed outstanding musical ability, and might have won distinction as a pianist had she elected to take up music as a profession, for she had a fine critical perception and a rare appreciation of the true values in music.

She also translated stories from Russian, collaborating with Serge Ivanov to publish in English a volume of N. A. Baikov’s tales for children. She was a fascinating woman, and would be a worthy subject for a biography – either on her own, or as part of a larger biography on the Mack sisters.

Mack wrote prolifically, both short stories and articles, and across a wide range of subjects, so choosing a piece to share was difficult. In the end, it seemed appropriate to share something close to the heart of this blog, Mack’s report of a lecture given by a woman English novelist – Vera Brittain – on feminism. It was published in The Sydney Morning Herald, with a long title – “Feminism from a new angle: Reason replaces emotion: Vera Brittain lectures in London”. The actual title of Brittain’s talk, which was given on 22 February, was “Anti-feminist reaction in Europe”. The article focuses on Brittain’s opinion, rather than Mack’s as the reporter, but her own perspective can be gleaned, nonetheless.,

Feminism from a new angle

MEN and women, youthful and elderly, crowded into the lecture hall of the London School of Hygiene last evening. They came to hear a woman talk on “Anti-Feminist Reaction in Europe.” The lecturer was Vera Brittain, a writer whose auto-biographical “Testament of Youth” has become a kind of text-book for expounders of end-of-war gospel.

The chairman, a member of the Civil Service Clerical Association, by whom fortnightly lectures are organised at the School of Hygiene, in introducing Vera Brittain, remarked on the difficulty of finding an informed lecturer to approach the subject of feminism from a reasonable, rather than an emotional aspect. Little profit is gained—in fact, progress in the movement has been hindered—by discussion as to whether men are better than women, women superior to men. Such discussion gets one nowhere. Only when acceptance of their equal values becomes a sine qua non will the full force of women’s power to advance world progress be released.

It was evident that the chairman had complete confidence that the lecture we were to hear would be given from a reasonable aspect. As it was. Not for an instant did the lecturer allow emotionalism to obscure the clarity of the case she set forth. When she had been asked to give this lecture, she said, “The Rise of Anti-Feminism in Europe” had been the title suggested. But that would mean going back to the Dark Ages, for anti-feminism was not a sentiment of modern growth. She quoted Tertullian—his apostrophe to woman—”You are the devil’s gateway”—a common attitude of mind towards women through many centuries, and not unknown even in present days.

Undoubtedly a lecturer of magnetic personality and pleasing appearance brings added strength to an argument. And Vera Brittain, equipped with high-grade intellect, good looks, and a healthily feminine flair for becoming clothes, by her personality puts up a strong argument for the cause of feminism. I think it was Bishop Creighton who wrote, “Character is rather to be defined as an atmosphere than a sum of virtues.” To those who come in personal contact with Vera Brittain her character “gets across” by an atmosphere vividly sincere. Sincerity, that is the keynote of this most feminine pleader for feminine independence and individualism. Honesty in dealing with self as with others, she is convinced to be essential to progress.

In beginning her talk she said, “I promise you my talk will not be emotional,” and by a certain grim humour of tone one knew she was going to lay bare (well-probed) irrational fallacies fostered by anti-feminists. The lecturer covered a wide vista concerning the women’s movement over the past 150 years, and particularly the enormous advances it had made between the years 1918 and 1928. During those ten years the emancipation of women swiftly advanced in England, in Europe. Then an anti-feminist reaction began in European countries. The anti-feminist reaction in Germany and Italy, Vera Brittain suggests to be a portent of war. She sees it as a policy for re-harnessing women to the continuous job of supplying material for war makers. Why else, she asks, should limitation of families be an offence against the law? Preachers of the back-to-the-cradle movement see danger in the decreasing birth-rate. And the clear-minded graduate of economics again asks: why should there be danger? What does it matter if the birth-rate does decrease? Economically, it is a sound principle. By limiting production of human beings the economic problem of surplus population will solve itself; there will be no need for wars to clear off superfluous people whom women have been at some trouble to produce.

It was, as the lecturer promised, a talk without emotionalism. But, none the less, one was aware that deep emotional experiences lay behind her logical reasonings. Horror of war, fury at the waste, the futilities, the suffering, were in the background, impelling thought. To find a way of escape from such hatefulnesses for future generations is the problem of great moment.

In Germany to-day women are being excluded from educational activities, and in Hamburg alone 160 women teachers have been expelled from positions in schools, their places being taken by men. Teaching is work for men; women must go back to the kitchen, says Hitler; it is not for them to take part in public life as individuals—merely as women they will be more useful. And few rebel. The legend that the woman must be subjective to the man still holds with them.

But Vera Brittain believes if only women of all nations would consolidate and demand economic independence—a sort of money or your life attitude—they could form a more secure “safeguard against future calamities” than a dozen bundles of Locarno peace treaties. Perhaps she has touched on the solution. Is it for women to decide for war or against war?

Sources

“Death of woman writer“,  The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1937, [Accessed: May 21, 2025]
Gertrude Mack, AustLit [Accessed: 21 May 2025]
Gertrude Mack, “Feminism from a new angle“, The Sydney Morning Herald (Women’s Supplement), 14 March 1935  [Accessed: May 20, 2025]