James Penberthy - Music and Memories. David Reid S.
of his talents, he was chosen later to lead the music for the Biorama Group which toured with the world's first movie, Soldiers of the Cross, and while travelling he happened to be in Kempsey, New South Wales, one day, having a cup of tea served to him by Florence Sarah Anlezark. In due course Florence Sarah became Albert's wife and my mother. While Miss Anlezark was serving the Salvationists their tea and making sandwiches, she accidentally sliced a sliver of skin from her thumb. "I'd like that," said Albert. He took it home sealed in a piece of see-through paper. Attached to it was a notice: "A piece of Florence Anlezark - more to follow later." That piece of skin has been preserved for ninety years. My sister, Florence, has it among her souvenirs. According to the rules Florence Sarah had to become a Salvation Army officer in order to marry Albert. Of course she did and they were more in love and happier together than any other two people.
What sort of name is Anlezark? There is more in it than meets the eye. There are two stories, both impressive. It is a queer name and, according to the preferable version, dates back to William the Conqueror and into Normandy before 1066. My Aunt Gemima (known as Mime), who attempted to provide us with a family tree, found that a follower of William was given a piece of land near Liverpool. The man's name was Anlezark and there is a town there of that name. The mystery deepens. Nearly a thousand years later, George Anlezark was selected to "go home" with the Wallabies rugby union team. The Anlezark family appointed George to represent it and to rescue the Anlezark millions. Apparently George never came back. Who knows what happened?
According to Aunt Mime's search in the maze of archives and family trees, the Anlezarks came to Sydney in 1803 in the person of Sir Thomas - one of Governor Macquarie's aides. In the other story, the first Anlezark in Australia was a convict, whose name was not really Anlezark at all. What we do know is that Jim Anlezark, my maternal grandfather, sired a bevy of interesting daughters and one boy, Wesley. It is easy to see how I became James and my brother, the painter, became Wesley Booth. The Anlezark family was completely poverty stricken. I doubt that any of my uncles or aunts ever earned more than five pounds a week - my father certainly did not.
My mother now enters the story. It is extraordinary that anyone could be so blessed, as they say in the Army, to have such wonderful parents. There were disadvantages, of course. Sometimes parents were bigger and better than was comfortable. Nothing grows under a banyan tree, even when it a well-intentioned little tree. Moreover, the God of the Salvation Army may be a loving God but the one I met was also stern, narrow-minded and sometimes stultifying. The Salvation Army's motto was: "Go for sinners and go for the worst," and so my father didn't mind the constant evidence of wickedness and terror which came to our house in the form of hopeless drunkards, smashed-up children and worse, but my little sins could bring down the wrath of a vengeful God, or father or both.
Albert and Florence had five children. The first was named Bendigo and he weighed fifteen pounds when he was born. He died ten minutes later. Ben wasted little time in the saga of the Penberthys. He does, however, illustrate a quaint custom of the time. They fed mothers on peanuts and rice in those days - to make big babies. My mother's eldest sister, Gert, nursed dead Ben all night and they gave him a Salvation burial next day. Vale, Ben. My parents must have yearned greatly for babies for, within a year, I was born in Prahran, Melbourne, at fourteen pounds. I often wonder whether, from their point of view, this was an error. I was born with constipation and developed pneumonia soon afterward. The nurse appointed to deliver and nurture me fed me milk-arrowroot biscuits ten minutes after I was born. Obviously I survived but have suffered from constipation for fifty years. Other members of the clan enjoyed asthma, hay fever, T.B., lung cancer and even more exiting diseases. My parents believed, along with the health cranks of their generation, that wheat and cow's milk were the health foods of the nation. Those of us, who gave up milk and wheat in time, eventually got rid of most of the Australian health curses and went on to adulthood and longer in surprisingly good shape.
The family was increased regularly until there were four children My sister Florence was born when Captain and Mrs Penberthy were transferred to the Hawthorn Corps in Melbourne. From here on I can remember clearly. I was perhaps three years old and could distinctly recall a black spot on the bell of a tuba which stood near the front door; and how Salvation Army soldiers, particularly fat lassies, rolled sideways as they walked down the passage when they came for lunch or for a meeting. But, most of all, I can remember my first romance. I enjoyed playing mothers and fathers in the front gutter when the little girl Butcher, from next door, came out to play. It was just about here that I developed those good and evil tendencies that persisted. Characteristics don't change, they only intensify.
The Salvation Army is, or used to be, an organisation better for those who join it than for those born into it. There was always the terrifying example of super-good parents with bad children flung into all the wicked ways of the world six days a week and fronting up to six holiness and blood and fire meetings on Sundays. Here is a list of the things that we, as children were not permitted to do - the adults were forbidden the same things. Salvationists and their children had to keep all Ten Commandments of course, plus no smoking, no drinking, no plays, no cinema, no spending money and no sport on Sundays. The biggest sin of all, however, was "girls". There's a paradox somewhere in this. Salvation Army boys were not permitted to go out with girls, be alone with girls, nor even carry girls' cases home from school. Salvation Army girls, on the other hand, were permitted boyfriends. I have no idea how this was achieved. Perhaps the Lord kept a stable of good boys especially suitable for Salvation Army girls.
I had no trouble with the ban on smoking, drinking or sport on Sunday or going to shops on the Sabbath - but girls! They filled my thoughts from the age of three and now, at over seventy, they still do! I anticipate at least ten more years of tortured delights in which I am still vastly guilty of this terrible evil - woman. Inevitably I am drawn like Ulysses to the Sirens, knowing that the bonds which tie me to the mast can never save me from Charybis, so to speak. My mother, of course, was once a girl, even though a Salvationist, and she was an absolutely marvellous person - to the point of sacrificing herself for the good of her husband, children and the social dregs and derelicts of the likes where we lived. She loved us and we loved her but the fear of the devil was ever near.
As the eldest, I carried the hopes of my mother. She wanted me to be as good as her "saintly" father, Jim, so I was called Jim. She wanted me to be as wonderful as her husband, Albert, so she called me Albert. I lived in fear of both my mother and my father. I knew that they were saints and I was a sinner. "If you're not good, I'll pray you dead, Jimmy," she once told me. "I'd rather you were dead than bad."
I was brave enough to take my chances. I fell in love for the second time with a three‑year-old girl next door to the Salvation Army hall in Broken Hill. One Saturday afternoon, while this tot and I'd been playing red-hot mothers and fathers in the washhouse, my mother called me in for a bath. This was a tin tub in the kitchen. The physical evidence of my four-year old masculinity was embarrassingly evident. "Jim," she accused sternly, "you've been playing with yourself!" I had not. It was an unjust accusation. All my life, then and thereafter, I had no need to, but I'd been playing with the girl next door. Guilt set in and never left me.
My mother could get a look in her eyes, comparable with the look the Army's God might give on Judgement Day. "Jim," she repeated with that same look in her eyes one Saturday afternoon at five o'clock, in my father's headquarters "house" in Melbourne - I was eighteen. "Jim, have you been down to the beach with Jean Saunders?" Jean was the daughter of a high-ranking officer and very lovely. I had no trouble with the question - only the answer. "No, Mum," I replied fearlessly and moved away. I stopped. Here it was, the look of doom. I had been to the beach with Jean Saunders; she was wonderful but I'd never even touched her with my hand or been within six inches of a kiss. I was crushed. Then and again and again. I was always guilty. I was eighteen. I am still guilty. My mother is in heaven or wherever good Salvationists go and I still fear her and those who represent her - all women. And I still love them. I am not sure whether they have been my salvation or my damnation.
I must admit, however, that my father's influence was more devastating. To him girls were a more deadly brand of sin than tobacco and in the Army that was something. I was blasted every time he caught me with a girl. He blew hell out of me even for carrying quite a plain girl's case home from school. What tortured him? He had only one wife and they were obviously