- Author and journalist Kerrie Davies became fascinated by a little-known chapter of Miles Franklin’s life after discovering the celebrated My Brilliant Career author had worked undercover as a domestic servant
- Despite her literary success, Miles spent a year working as a maid under a false name to investigate the treatment of women in service, later documenting the harsh conditions in an unpublished manuscript
- Kerrie’s research became the basis of her book, Miles Franklin Undercover, highlighting the author’s remarkable life as a trailblazing writer, feminist and adventurer
Here Kerrie Davies, 54, shares her story in her own words
Gazing at the grainy photo in the archives of the State Library of NSW, I was enthralled.
It was the face of Australian writer Miles Franklin, author of My Brilliant Career. She was wearing a servant’s tunic, and I was fascinated that such a celebrated figure had worked as a housemaid.
A gusty bush girl, Miles’ year in domestic service surprised me, and I was curious about what led to it.
As a lecturer in journalism at the University of New South Wales, I had the perfect job to let me explore her life.
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Loving words, I began working as an editorial assistant at that’s life! back when the magazine launched in 1994
Then, after writing for magazines and newspapers, in 2017 I wrote a book about poet Henry Lawson’s wife Bertha, A Wife’s Heart.
Now, in 2019, I plunged into research to write a book, backed by UNSW, on Miles Franklin’s time in service. Her famous novel, My Brilliant Career, tells the story of plucky Sybylla Melvyn, and is based loosely on Miles’ own life.
Born on her grandmother’s homestead at Old Talbingo, NSW, she grew up on the drought-stricken family farm, Stillwater, near Goulburn.
Like Sybylla, Miles shunned the expectation of marriage placed on young women back then, and remained fiercely independent.
Miles was just 21 when her book captured the hearts and imaginations of the young girls who read it.
Her diaries, letters and manuscripts are stored in the State Library’s rare manuscripts section.
Reading through Miles’ writings, it seemed the postman brought sackfuls of fan mail to her farm.
She’d become the toast of the literary world, with fans including author Henry Lawson, who’d helped her get published in 1901.
And I read the flirtatious letters between Miles and bush poet and journalist Banjo Patterson. Despite him being 15 years her senior, the letters hinted at a spicy romantic affair.
But it was her handwritten manuscript When I was Mary-Anne, a Slavey that really had me hooked. Back then, ‘Mary-Anne’ and ‘slavey’ were slang terms for servants, and it documented Miles’ time in service in Sydney and Melbourne.
Despite her novel’s success, Miles received little income from her writing. So she daringly decided to go undercover as a maid, to explore how the upper classes exploited women in service.
How amazing! I thought.
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She’d chosen the name Sarah Frankling as her fake identity – with Sarah one of her middle names.
As I researched, I was thrilled to be allowed inside a two-storey house in Waverley, NSW, where she’d worked. And I imagined Miles toiling there, over a century before.
In letters from her family, it was clear they were aghast at her entering service, with her grandma Sarah finding it deceitful.
In her diary, Miles wrote that she’d told her boarding house roommate, a maid called Alice, who she really was. I knew it! Alice had said. It’s to be hoped you succeed… poor slaveys need someone to speak for them.
Miles wrote about the lonely exhaustion of working long brutal hours, with just one afternoon off a week.
Sitting up late at night writing my book, I was inspired by Miles and her days heaving wet washing through a mangle, lighting fires in freezing winter, and sweating as she cooked in summer. Shockingly, Miles described cooking on a new gas stove one day, when it exploded, singeing her eyelashes, eyebrows and a clump of hair, leaving her with terrible blisters.
The mistress of the house, Mrs Finlayson, rushed to bring her olive oil to soothe the burn, but expected her maid to keep on with her ironing and cooking duties.
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It must’ve been the length of your eyelashes that saved your sight, the mistress had sniped.
With her doll-like figure, Miles recalled ‘Sarah’s’ many admirers, including the milkman who badgered her to date him.
I’ve made an inflexible rule not to go out with a man, she told him.
Miles was shocked by how dirty some of the houses were, but some of the mistresses were kind which impressed her. But she slammed some for devoting all their time and intelligence to running a household, when they could’ve been doing more important things.
After spending a full year as a servant, from April 1903 to 1904, Miles returned to her writing.
But sadly, when she tried to publish her manuscript, it was deemed so defamatory to the people she’d worked for, publishers wouldn’t touch it.
Miles began to write for newspapers, but her grandma Sarah still worried about her. Have you found anyone you like more than yourself yet? she’d asked.
She still hoped Miles would marry, I thought.
In 1906 she went to America, and spent nearly a decade working for the National Women’s Trade Union League in Chicago. Then she went to the UK, where she met suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, before working as a matron’s cook and orderly in hospitals in the Balkans during WWI.
Returning to Australia in 1932, Miles continued writing, living on her terms, and never married.
On her death in 1954, aged 74, she requested her estate be used to set up the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award.
What a life! I thought. She really was remarkable.
My book Miles Franklin Undercover was released last year, and I think Miles would love being back in the spotlight.
Last year I was thrilled to visit the set of the new Netflix series My Brilliant Career, with the wonderful Philippa Northeast bringing Miles Franklin’s Sybylla to a whole new
generation.
It’s not surprising that Miles’ own brilliant career is still inspiring people to this day.
To buy Kerrie’s book shop here.
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