Georgiana molloy biography of christopher

Amateur botanist and pioneer of the remote southwest region of Western Australia, whose collections of native Australian flora were the finest to arrive in Britain during her day.Born Georgiana Kennedy on May 23, 1805, near Carlisle in Cumberland, England; died on April 8, 1842, at Busselton, Western Australia, of complications following the difficult birth of her seventh child; daughter of David Kennedy (a country gentleman) and Mrs. Kennedy (first name unknown), nee Graham (a country gentlewoman); married Captain John Molloy (thought to be the illegitimate son of the duke of York), in 1829; children: seven, all born in the Swan River Colony, including two who died in infancy.

Spent childhood in the Border country in genteel circumstances; upon marriage, emigrated to the Swan River Colony (present-day Western Australia) to settle first in the remote Southwest corner at Augusta, and nine years later in the slightly larger settlement of Busselton, 80 miles to the north; lived in isolated and relatively primitive conditions; lost her first-born child, a daughter, several days after the birth; lost her third-born child, a son, when he was 19 months; struggled out of grief by collecting native Australian flora, sending thousands of seeds and plant specimens to Captain Mangles, gentleman horticulturist, in London, over a five-year period.

Georgiana Molloy's story reflects the triumph of the imagination in overcoming the hardships of pioneer life. Transported beyond the farthest outskirts of her known civilized world into territory she had to learn to love, Molloy, an early European settler in the Swan River Colony, turned to botany. She became known for the quality of her collections, which were sent back to England and thus provided a record of indigenous plant and flower life in Western Australia.

She was born Georgiana Kennedy in the remote Border country near Carlisle in Cumberland, England, on May 23, 1805. One of five c

“The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.” - Ernest Hemingway

Elisa Markes-Young & Christopher Young were invited - together with four other artists - by the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) to respond to works in BRAG's Art Collection. The resulting exhibiton was titled 'A Matter of Response'.

Elisa and Chris' project was inspired by two unique women who’s lives show remarkable parallels - Rosetta Kelly and Georgiana Molloy.

Both women experienced hardship and grief with the native flora of Western Australia playing an important role in making the unbearable bearable. 

After losing her husband in an accident, Rosetta Kelly (b.1864) had to endure another tragedy when her 20 year old son Cyril was killed in action in France in 1917. Overcome with grief she began painting watercolours of WA wildflowers and dedicated them to her son’s memory.

She travelled by horseback in the Bunbury area and later expanded her reach with a car. Over 40 years, this body of work grew to over 300 paintings.

Georgiana Molloy's early life in Western Australia was one of great hardship, typical of settlers of the time. She birthed most of her seven children without medical assistance, losing her first child shortly after birth and later her only son.

In 1836, she started collecting botanical specimens for Captain James Mangles. Together with her husband John Molloy, she spent nearly all of her leisure time in collecting, collating and documenting botanical specimens of the South West of Western Australia. 

She developed a great passion for native flora as a result. Her work, which included several as yet unknown species, was considered to be of exceptional quality and is held to this day in Kew Herbarium.

Georgiana died shortly after the birth of her seventh child aged only 37.

Their determination to overcome adversity and an overarching theme of loss was a compelling story that the artists have interpreted in their work.

Upstairs in the Battye Library in Perth in 2007, I sat in a darkened room squinting at a microfilm of the sloping copperplate in Captain James Mangles’ letter books, which consisted of letters written to him on matters of botany between 1835 and 1845. Mangles was an amateur botanist who had retired from the British navy and lived near Regent’s Park, London. One of his correspondents was Georgiana Molloy, who emigrated from Carlisle, England, to Augusta in south-west Western Australia, arriving in 1830. In 1836, Molloy, who knew Mangles’ cousin Ellen Stirling, wife of the governor of Perth, received a letter and box of English seeds from Mangles, with the request that she return it to him filled with Australian seeds. Molloy protested, ‘I fear you have bestowed your liberality on one whose chief pleasure is her Garden but who does not enter the lists as a florist, much less a Botanist’, however she agreed to collect specimens when she had time. I had read extracts of Molloy’s letters in a biography written by Alexandra Hasluck, Portrait with Background (1955), but this was the first time I had seen them in their entirety.

Although the air was chilly with air conditioning in the archives, my skin was burning. As a broke writer, I’d been staying at a youth hostel, and a bed bug had bitten me on the toe as I slept. In an allergic reaction, red itchy welts the size of my palm stretched up my ankles, calves and neck. As I read the microfilms, I sat on my fingers to stop myself from scratching.

Once I reached the last letter, I requested access to the original letter books, and went up another floor to read them. When the books arrived in their cardboard box, I marvelled at their smallness. It seemed remarkable that the reams I had written on passion, grief and the history of botany were inspired by the careful cursive of these two books, only twice the size of my hand.
 

Destined for non-fiction and biography shortlists, Georgiana Molloy, the Mind that Shines rivals Journey to Horseshoe Bend as the best non-fiction book I’ve read so far this year.

Regular readers of this blog know that I love botanical illustration and it has its own category here, but Georgiana Molloy, the Mind that Shines is the first full-length biography I’ve come across that tells the life story of a woman working in this field of knowledge.

Like the women whose work Penny Olsen celebrates in Collecting Ladies, Georgiana Molloy (1805-1843) was a significant botanist in the years of early settlement, but I first encountered her inThe Complete Book of Heroic Australian Women by Susanna De Vries, an unimpressive book which harped on the drudgery of pioneer life for women and failed to make its subjects interesting.  Molloy also gets more than a mention in Curious Minds by Peter Macinnis, a much more engaging and better-written homage to the naturalists who began the work of studying our unique flora and fauna.  But in a twelve-year labour of love, Bernice Barry has given Georgiana Molloy a whole book of her own, and this biography is sheer delight to read.

Georgiana Molloy née Kennedy was born into a privileged English family that became impoverished through her father’s debts, and after his death her mother tried to keep up appearances and flirt her way back into money while mismanaging both her finances and her family.  When her older sister’s drinking problem caused scandal yet Eliza still retained her mother’s favouritism, Georgiana fled from her mother’s carping criticism to friends in Scotland.  Moving from a landlocked town with a skyline of grey roofs to an expanse of silver water in one of the most beautiful places on Earth at the Keppoch estate near the Gareloch,Georgiana was transformed.  She had intellectual companionship and she healed emotionally.  It was there that she developed a love of pla