In my
last post, I continued the story of Richard Henry, founder of the Australian
Blackwells. We saw him established in business in Melbourne (wool and tallow
brokering – not very appealing, but bear with the man). And we saw him, in 1884,
take a bride, Tasmanian spinster Catherine Sadler, 29 – or Kate, as she later appears
in some official records.
I’ve
recently discovered, though, that Kate may not have been R.H.’s first wife. The following birth announcement appeared in The Argus
of Tuesday, May 18, 1880: “BLACKWELL. – On the 12th inst., at 59 Drummond-street,
Mrs R. H. Blackwell of a daughter.”
It is
possible there was another R.H. Blackwell living in Melbourne at the time, but
if so, he doesn’t appear in any other records I can find. Richard Henry arrived
in the colony alone, he did not have a wife with him. Did he marry a Melbourne
woman soon after arriving in 1878? The fact of an announcement would seem to suggest the
baby survived birth, and I can find no death notice for a Mrs. or infant daughter
Blackwell between that date and the beginning of 1884. Still, my best
guess is that baby and mother perished shortly after the event, and R.H. was in
the market for a new wife, which of course, he found in Kate.
After
the wedding in Van Diemen’s Land, the newlyweds came back to Melbourne, to
Prahran, the same suburb where Herbert Lillies and his bride would settle the
next year, and wasted little time starting a family. Matthew Drummond,
grandfather to baby boom Blackwells and Breens, came into the world on December
6, 1884, great uncle Richard Marsden, a few years later on August 8, 1888.
Most of
what we know about R.H. before the turn of the century (and after for that
matter) comes from The Argus and
other newspapers of the day, which are available online, digitized and indexed
at The National Library of Australia’s fabulous Trove website. The keyword indexing is
based on largely uncorrected optical character recognition (OCR) text generated
automatically after the pages were scanned. This means there is no guarantee that
when you do a search you’ll find every instance of “Blackwell,” for example, because in some cases the word may be rendered
as “Bdaokwoh” or other difficult-to-predict manglings. But it's still an invaluable resource.
In my
early searches in Trove, I found the already reported mentions of R.H. arriving
in Melbourne and dissolving his partnership in the tallow and wool brokering
business that he would continue operating on his own – all in The Argus. More determined searching has
since turned up quite a bit more, including much evidence of the family
business that our grandfather would eventually carry on well into the 20th
century: distributing champagne in Australia. When we were children, this is
what we were always told the family’s fortunes were based on. What I hadn’t
realized is that it was a business originally started by our great grandfather,
not grandfather Matthew.
R.H. somehow
wangled a contract with the George Goulet champagne company in Reims, France,
to be its “sole” agent in the Australian colonies. It is not clear if Champagne
George Goulet still exists today. You can find bottles for sale on the Web with
vintages at least to 1999. And one winery directory has a listing for the
vineyard – in Celles-Sur-Ource, about 170 kilometers south of Reims – but it’s
not listed in other directories. The company has no website, or not that I can find, and
doesn’t rate an entry in either the English or French Wikipedia. (There, I’m
giving away all my research secrets.) But in the late 19th century, George
Goulet was a highly regarded brand, patronized by royalty, which probably gave
it its currency in Australia.
Half-bottle of Goulet champers recently auctioned on Web |
The
first evidence I found of R.H.’s involvement with George Goulet was an April 1883
ad in The Argus. It was the briefest
of line ads – “Champagne, George Goulet’s extra dry, quarts and pints. R.H.
BLACKWELL, agent, William-st” – probably aimed at the trade. The timing in
relation to the dissolution of his partnership with Herbert Wallace in March of
that year is interesting. Did they disagree about a direction for the company,
with R.H. wanting to concentrate more on the champagne trade and Wallace
wanting to stick exclusively with tried-and-true tallow and wool?
Then the next year, in The Wagga Wagga Advertiser, we get some
insight into what R.H. was doing to spread the word about George Goulet
champagne. Wagga Wagga is in an inland city of about 45,000 today, in New South
Wales, midway between Melbourne and Sydney. It was mainly an agricultural town
then. You have to wonder if the article, under the heading “A New Brand of
Champagne,” was paid for by R.H. (Consider the name of the publication.)
“Yesterday
morning we had the pleasure of an introduction to Mr. Blackwell, a
representative from the firm of Messrs. George Goulet and Co., of Rehims [sic].
This gentleman has been commissioned by this new and popular firm with the duty
of introducing their famous champagnes in Australia. Consequently, at his
invitation, several local connoisseurs
attended at the Commercial Hotel in order to pass an opinion on its merits.”
Wagga Wagga Commercial Hotel after 1890 flood |
“There
were some fifteen gentlemen present, including the agent for Krug and Co.
[another French champagne company]. The wine was introduced in “magnum”
bottles, and the decision of the fourteen well and truly tried men was
decidedly in favour of Messrs. Goulet’s wine. After the wine had been
thoroughly tested, a gentleman proposed “Health and prosperity to the firm”
which was warmly pledged, and followed by a graceful and appropriate reply from
Mr. Blackwell, who directed those present to an infallible test apart from the
palate [huh?].”
“Upon this
Mr. Armstrong [who he?] requested the respected host of the Commercial to bring
up a bottle or so of Krug, in order to test the difference. The gentlemen
present then gradually seized their hats and retired, apparently declining the
kind of invitation of Krug’s agent. Mr. Blackwell comes among us with the best recommendation,
from the fact that the firm he represents was honoured with a commissison to
supply champagne to the Russian Emperor [Alexander III (1881-1894), “the Peace-Maker”] on
the occasion of grand festivities upon his accession to the Throne last year.”
Coronation festivities for Alexander III - is that George Goulet wine on the table? |
Most of
the rest is a reprinting of a Times
of London article describing a “special” correspondent’s visit to the Goulet
winery. There is so much in the Advertiser
article that is weird and not of our time that I itch to parse it, but this
is probably not the place. Suffice to say, standards of “journalism” were quite
different then.
In 1885,
we see R.H. again reaching out to end consumers in the Bendigo Advertiser, the newspaper of a former gold rush town north west
of Melbourne, today a mid-size city of 80,000. It’s a display ad (see below),
although there is no picture, just text. Including an image would probably have
meant commissioning an engraving, which would be expensive. Most news organs of
the day, except the “illustrated” papers, appear to have been 100% text.
A big
part of marketing a champagne at this time was playing up the fact that the
rich, famous and noble drank it, or that it was served at prestigious events. So
we have this interesting item from the June 13, 1885 Launceston Examiner (Tasmania): “The following telegram was
received by the Melbourne agent for George Goulet Champagne [i.e. R.H. Blackwell], and forwarded to
the Messrs. Irvine and McEachern, the local agents: We are sure you will be
pleased to hear that we have received further orders from the Queen of England,
for her house at Aix-La-Bains, where she is staying for three weeks, from the
Queen of Wurbomberg [Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, later Queen Olga
of Württemberg] at Nice, as well as a very considerable one from Lord Lyons,
the English Ambassador at Paris.”
Queen Olga of Württemberg |
And R.H.
placed a display ad in the April 1, 1890 Argus,
trumpeting the fact that George Goulet champagne had been “Selected against the
World [?] For Banquet given by Municipality of Paris - Occasion of Opening Universal
Exhibition, 1889 [the one at which the Eiffel Tower was unveiled].”
Contemporary photo of Paris Exposition of 1889 showing Portuguese Pavilion and Eiffel Tower |
This is
just the beginning of the family connection with George Goulet. Next post:
Matthew enters the business, meets and marries Vera Lillies, gets shirty
about interloping champagne competitors, etc.
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