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Sadly, last year, the Brigidine Sisters passed Kildara Centre, Malvern, over to another Catholic group to set up a different Spirituality Centre. Housed there for many years, or at least since the closure of Kildara College, the building, its former library, has housed the Brigidine Archives and a large collection of Brigidine furniture, artwork, literature and other items, many of which have intrigued me, and others, on visits there, over the years.
While the Archives remains, confined to two rooms: one housing the collection and the other a workroom, the rest of the collection was given away to good homes last year. One item of interest, which has made its way to Kilbreda, is a beautiful harp. Believed to have come here with ‘the first Victorian foundation’, it spent most of its life at the Beechworth Convent, before ending up at Malvern, when Beechworth closed some years ago.
Not much information exists about the harp, and the very vague provenance doesn’t convince me.
If it had arrived with the first foundation sisters, it would have arrived in Apsley House, Echuca, early in 1886. The Tullow Annals of 4 January 1886 record, “on this day, Mother Borgia Hayden, Mother Benedict Moore, Sister Vincent Brennan and Sister Thomas Healy left their dear old Convent and loved Mother and Sisters in Tullow for their new and distant home in Echuca, Australia”. Those sisters sailed aboard the Austral, which, incidentally brought my own great-great grandfather and great-great-great grandmother to Victoria the previous year. Travelling with their party, Bridget Moore (later M Gertrude), a niece of M Benedict, reflected on her decision to cross the seas thus: “I watched dear old Ireland as long as my eyelids could see it….”1 Their hearts were buoyed, when the party was joined at Naples by Bishop Crane and his brother Fr Nicholas Crane, who was to become a great supporter of the sisters on his appointment to Echuca in 1886. On arrival in Melbourne, the nuns were made welcome at Presentation Convent, Windsor, before travelling north to Echuca.
If one of their number had been a gifted harpist, why then would the harp have gone anywhere else? Unless of course the harpist herself had been transferred.
I favour another theory. Just as the Echuca foundation was getting established, the call had already been received in Abbeyleix to start a further convent in the far-off Colony of Victoria. The second foundation, within 6 months of that at Echuca, saw the nuns setting up in a former bank building in Beechworth in November 1886. Abbeyleix had a reputation as an elite school. “The nuns there were ‘ladies’, some were very artistic with musical skills of a high order…” 2 Arriving aboard the Orizaba on November 14, the Beechworth pioneers were Mothers Vincent Cummins, Stanislaus Nolan, Borgia Walshe and Thomas Kerr. After spending the night at Windsor, they travelled by train to Echuca via Sandhurst to meet the Mercy sisters. After an eight day ‘rest’, they returned briefly to Melbourne, thence to Wangaratta, where “they were met by Bishop Crane and stayed the night in the Wangaratta Presbytery. On the following day, the 27th November, the Bishop, Priests and four sisters travelled to the Beechworth Railway Station, where Dean Tierney and a great crowd of parishioners gave the sisters a tumultuous welcome, and their first meal in the parish. A procession led the sisters to their new home, and the first convent in Beechworth, a building which formerly was the Oriental Bank in Ford Street.”3
Most compelling for me, is the following line, describing an early speech night in Beechworth. “A distinguishing feature of the first scene (of Isabella of Castile), being an instrumental trio, in which Miss Cleary exhibited great proficiency on the harp.” 4
The harp will be restored, not to playing condition, but to ornamental condition and will be on display in the admin area of Kilbreda College in the near future.
Damian Smith
Archives
Notes
1 “Women of Strength, Women of Gentleness.” Morna Sturrock, p9
2 “Women of Strength, Women of Gentleness.” Morna Sturrock, p20
3 “The history of the parish of Beechworth 1854-1978” Fr Leo Lane, p362
4 “Brigidine Convent School, Beechworth” Advocate 24 December 1892