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Dear Letitia
Your father, Charles Fairfield came from an Anglo-Irish family with aristocratic connections. He had been managing a silver mine in Colorado when his friends were killed in a stagecoach accident on a mountain road, leaving a teenage boy. It was the early 1880s, and Charles decided to deliver the boy to his mother’s family, who lived in St Kida in Melbourne, making a detour to England on the way. On the ship from England to Australia, he met Isabella MacKenzie who would later be your mother. She had apparently been sent by her family to visit her brother, a musician, who was reputed to be ill. But that story does not completely add up. It was an unusual and very daring thing to do in those days for a woman of your mother’s class. Why was this beautiful, talented young woman sailing such a long-distance unaccompanied?
A steamer arriving in Melbourne from England in the 1880s
Do I need to go back that far? Instinct tells me I must. Both your parents must have been brave and adventurous so perhaps it is little wonder that they produced three talented and intelligent daughters. For a while, your mother joined her brother in his bizarre lifestyle in the goldfields. His illness proved to be more about the amount he drank and eventually she returned to St Kilda to a hotel recommended by Charles Fairfield.
The mother/daughter relationship is important. I believe to get to know the daughter, I must first learn about the mother. Unless the archives in London turn up some of your own memories of Isabella, your mother I will have to rely on the writings of your sister, Cicely, better known as Rebecca West. However, even her own biographer says Rebecca West was first and foremost a storyteller and infers that she did not let the truth get in the way. She describes the seaside hotel in great detail in her rambling memoir but frustratingly doesn’t give it a name. I am guessing it is the Esplanade Hotel, affectionately known as The Espy, which has been recently been refurbished.
The Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda
Charles who worked as a Journalist in a Melbourne newspaper married Isabella on 17th December 1883. They moved a few doors from the hotel to an old and beautiful house and stayed in connection with the hotel’s proprietors, Mr and Mrs Mullins. I am telling you this because a man called Mullins is one of the people who refurbished the old Esplanade Hotel. Is it just a coincidence? I will keep digging. I have contacted the historical society in St Kilda and later this year I will make a visit on my way to Hobart. I want to get a feel for the place you were born in 1884. I know you lived most of your life in Scotland and England but I think I want to claim a bit of you for Australia.
