Edgar Penzig, 1929 - 2010: a tribute [Brian Stevenson]

 Edgar Penzig is gone.

Writing a tribute is hard for me. I am trying to find the right words, but am ever wary of descending into sentiment that reflects the deep grief that I have felt since Sharon Hollingsworth sent me word on Sunday that my larger than life friend of nearly thirty years has left us.

Edgar Penzig wanted to be remembered. Don't we all? But in the course of his long and productive life, Edgar found a few ways to make himself extremely difficult to forget.

There's the books. Most of the folks reading this blog will have seen or read at least one of them. Good luck to anyone who wants to form a full set of Edgar's publications. I checked the National Library of Australia catalogue and there are twenty-two or so in the total, with a publishing history ranging from 1964 to 2009. Most of them are out of print and attract a hefty premium on the dealer's market on the rare occasions that they become available. Interestingly, both the first and last books were books of poems, atypical of his gargantuan output. As well as the books, we have innumerable articles, testimony to one man's almost unbelievable industry.

There's the controversy and the courage. It mattered little to Edgar that he was besmirching the reputation of Australia's national heroes, and he did not hesitate to call a spade the proverbial shovel where our pre-eminent bushrangers were concerned. Some historians use a scalpel in dissecting the past. Edgar Penzig used a hatchet. Ben Hall was a lazy and greedy man: Ned Kelly a plausible thug whose intellectual limitations were manifested in what Edgar called 'that tin rubbish'. It was not a way in which to make oneself popular with many aficionados of Australian bushranging, and it did not. Edgar could not have cared less, and reproduced in one book, with some pride no doubt, a nasty and threatening letter that someone was brave enough to put in the post but not game to sign. On the other hand, he had the highest possible regard for the colonial police, who, regardless of their individual and well-documented failings, were to a man doing a very difficult job that was poorly paid. The energetic (though often less than effective) Sir Frederick Pottinger came in for special praise, and Edgar once mused to me that if he had had a son, he would have liked to call him Fred.

There's the collector. For heaven knows how many years, Edgar saved, restored, rescued, classified, described and catalogued countless items from Australia's colonial past, most significantly the weapons. He once told me how his wife Megan and he had saved for a piece by eating baked beans out of a tin with a fork for weeks, and I don't doubt it. Many of the items he collected were unique and materially valuable, but because of Edgar's foresight and preservation, generations of Australians unborn have a priceless legacy - a tangible connection to our colonial past.

There's the lover of Australia. The first time I ever saw Edgar, his house was an easy one to find. Even in the dim and distant days of - let's see, 1982 - a national flag fluttering at full mast was not a common sight, not even in conservative Katoomba. I know that Edgar viewed with concern many of the directions in which his beloved Australia was going, and that this was part of his reason for relocating to Tasmania relatively late in life. In the Australia of 2010, bewildering to just about anyone, Edgar's views might have seemed old-fashioned and even eccentric, but there was never any doubting of the underlying and innate decency, and the sheer love of country that led him to formulate them.

There's his personality. No one ever accused Edgar of being self-effacing or shy. He was an actor, after all, and those in that profession are not generally know for their modesty, but even among this fraternity, Edgar was a case apart. Would anyone else have described themselves as 'Australia's premier bushranging author-historian', even if they felt it to be true, as Edgar so obviously did? Who else would reproduce a bust of themselves in a book, or put a painting of themselves in colonial costume on a book cover? We don't know where the robust self-assuredness stopped and the undoubted flair for self promotion began, but one thing is for sure. Both of these traits are often accompanied by meanness and a lack of consideration for others, but Edgar was devoid of malice and one of the least selfish people I ever knew. And if Edgar sometimes seemed to be short on modesty, he was never short of friends.

Ah, there's the friend. I had not known Edgar for more than two hours before he had presented me with a copy of his first bushranging biography, A real flash cove, the life of John Gilbert. Domiciled in faraway Queensland, I could not always be of much assistance to Edgar - after all, the man virtually lived in the Mitchell Library! - but from time to time I would find things and forward them to him. Always my slight assistance was answered by a prompt and glowing letter of appreciation, sometimes accompanied by a book. Or a phone call, and I knew from the second that I heard that booming voice through the wires that I was in for an hour or so - more, if I could wangle it with the other members of the household - of excellent and spirited conversation that never failed to entertain. It's still hard to believe that I won't hear those deep tones again. My heart is full, my world is poorer. My heartfelt condolences to Megan and other members of Edgar's family.