Appendix
The D.E. (Eve) Stewart archiveâin praise of handwriting
Eve Stewart maintained meticulous files, but whether these were always kept this wayâor whether they were neatened over timeâis unclear. She filed letters, photos, Christmas cards and various newspaper clippings, telegrams and receipts according to the person to whom they were addressed or from whom they were received. Many of the folders had been reusedânames crossed out or overwrittenâand some of them were numbered, suggesting an attempt at categorising or cataloguing, but it's impossible to know precisely. When I saw the files for the first time, the material within each manila folder had been arranged in chronological order, so I could read the stories easily from beginning to end.
Both Eve and Jim frequently kept carbon copies or duplicates of correspondence and correspondence files were not âstatic' repositories. Many letters are annotated with comments. Important passages are boxed in red pencil. These highlighted passages are usually about promises madeâparticularly promises about publication or finalisation of reportsâand the boxed details are quoted back in later letters.
Sometimes Jim and Eve wrote letters on the same day and about the same eventâusually to their respective parents. Many of these simply recount events, but the different emphasis placed on such events gives an insight into their characters.
Most of Eve's archive consists of the letters she and Jim wrote to each other and to people around the world. The breadth of material is significant, but the gaps are all too obvious. As a couple they were close and wrote to each other frequently when apart. When they were together there is of course no correspondence, so there is no easy way of re-creating details or emotions. Similarly, most surviving correspondence includes Jim or Eve as active participants. It is almost always polite. There is very little in the third person, no correspondence between people discussing Jim or Eve, making comments about them rather than to them. This correspondence might have been far less polite.
Sometimes even the paper tells a story. Just as Jim used cigarette packets as his writing material in the POW camp, Eve continued to use Sydney university letterhead paper many years after Jim's death and long after her bitter feud with the university. Sometimes she crossed out the address; at other times she wrote on the back of the page. At the end of her life, nearly blind, she continued to write on an antiquated typewriter. Because typewriter ribbons were no longer available for her machine, she placed carbon paper between two sheets of plain paper. Unable to see what she typed, but hoping that the pressure of the keys on the carbon paper would transfer to the back sheet of paper, her typewritten letters become at times erratic and include frequent apologies.
Because of their joint obsession with stamp collecting, Jim and Eve usually tore stamps off envelopes, often removing the date stamp as well. This is particularly annoying in the case of letters from Eve's mother, which are often undated. Where the letters remain in their envelopes, I was frustrated to find the date stamp is usually ripped off.
Parents today complain that their children have lost the ability to spell and that the world of SMS and text messaging has reduced the written word to a series of abbreviations. Eve's adolescent diaries are full of similar shortcutsâB4, /,\, @. She used abbreviations when she had limited space, as in the diaries, or when she was writing with haste or emotion, as in her letter to the Bishop of Norwich.
Today's modes of instant communicationâcomputers, photocopiers, fixed and mobile phones, webcams and social networkingâmake it difficult for younger readers to comprehend the difficulties that Jim and Eve faced. There was no phone at The Mount until the 1960s and Eve had no phone at Wentworth Falls until the 1990s. Everything that was writtenâlecture notes, research papers, correspondenceâwas handwritten or manually typed. There was no easy way to edit textânot even any white-out fluid. Manuscripts were typed and retyped, footnotes typed on a separate page and pasted to the bottom of foolscap pages of text. On the other hand, because of this sort of communication, much of it remains. Without easy communication by email or phone, Jim and Eve wrote lettersâsometimes dailyâto each other and to numerous people around the world. It is a remarkably comprehensive correspondence and gives a picture of the working lives of a close couple, their interests and professional connections. I often wonder if in the future we'll be able to recreate the lives of people in similar circumstances, or will telephone calls and emails and computer files all be lost.
Jim and Eve were frequently irritated by the time delays that occurred when writing letters to people overseas and there were often misunderstandings and confusions. In 1947 Eve was in Cyprus, waiting to join Jim in Australia but unable to obtain passage on a ship. Their letters are numbered and frustration mounts when letters (with instructions, reprimands, apologies) arrive out of sequence. Jim used the same system of numbering in his earlier letters to Eleanor from the POW camp, and later in his letters to Basil Hennessy in the mid-1950s.
Until I started this research, I had never taken much notice of people's handwriting, although as a teacher, I had been conscious of the extent to which illegible writing irritates the reader and can unnecessarily affect a student's marks.
Most of the material I have read in the personal archive consists of letters, handwritten for the most part. Gradually I began to recognise a writer even before I saw their signature. I knew that O.G.S. Crawford and Hector Catling preferred to write on small pages, half a page turned sidewards so that it was wider than deep. Both of them had pretty awful handwriting but it was the two folders of letters from Judith Stylianou (née Dobell), the Byzantine scholar, that most daunted me. It took months before I dared tackle them, so convoluted was her handwriting and so idiosyncratic her spelling. I rejoiced when she used a typewriter. I had only just finished reading Miriam Davis's biography of Kathleen Kenyon when I came across a receipt from the Institute of London. The signature was a thin spidery doodle and, while I struggled to read it, I remembered Davis's comment about Kathleen Kenyon's impossible handwritingâsure enough this was hers! I knew that Eve's mother would cover every scrap of paper, writing sideways along the edges when she had finished the page. She always gave the day and date, but, because she wrote so frequently, seldom the year.
Eve kept a folder for each correspondent and the contents of each folder formed a sort of life. I saw handwriting deteriorate with age, growing larger as eyesight failed, and looping painfully with arthritis. Sometimes I would read a whole folder in a morning and watch someone age and fail before my eyes.
Handwriting is personal. We immediately recognise a letter from a friend or family member. Graphologists read handwriting and believe it reveals our personality. Our signaturesâeven in the modern electronic worldâare ours alone. We expect them to give us entry, permission, accessâand to be in some sense proof of who we are.
Recognising handwriting is not the same as knowing a person, yet, after months of research, it is easy to fool yourself into believing that it is. I saw Eve's handwriting where others did not. At Sydney University's Nicholson Museum there is no record of Eve working there, although I know she was employed for a few years as a technical assistant. Looking through the museum files, I could see immediately where she had added a note to a document, or filled out a catalogue entry.
My first day in Nicosia during my first research trip to Cyprus was a Sunday and I strolled idly through the old city. I arrived at the museum before it opened and sat in the shady foyer looking at the painted ceiling, the massive doors with multiple locks and the museum attendants eating ice creams as they waited to begin work. The museum is an old-fashioned museum, crammed full of objects arranged chronologically. There are some written panels with limited explanations but, although unimaginatively displayed, I was relieved that it wasn't full of elaborate interpretation and interactive displays aimed at competing with the internet and taking up space and money that could be devoted to objects and research. I immediately moved toward the Bronze Age displays, ignoringâas I generally doâthe classical sculpture and overdrawn formal pots of the Classical period. I love Bronze Age Cypriot pottery. It is handmade and quirky, full of the individuality that made Jim's corpus a futile attempt at imposing order.
Amongst the display of pots was a large but broken alabaster bowl in the centre of the cabinet. As I looked closer I gasped with a sort of personal and exclusive delight. On the inner rim was the pottery register numberâand immediately I saw that it was in Eve's handwriting.
Timeline
Notes
FOREWORD
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1âEngland, Egypt and Cyprus, 1914â36
CHAPTER 2âEngland and Cyprus, 1936â39
CHAPTER 3âEngland, Cyprus and the Near East, 1930â38
CHAPTER 4âWar, 1940â45