1997: Internal—Not For Publication
To: Editorial Department / Restricted Circulation; From: Redacted (Chief Editor); Date: 17 October 1997—Subject: The Mallard Archive—Funding Note (Strictly Private)
I should, perhaps, begin by clarifying that what follows has no bearing on the formal record. It belongs to the intermediate layer of commentary that keeps the machine alive—those murky inter-office observations which sustain no one but protect everyone. Every publishing house needs such a layer: a kind of bureaucratic stomach acid.
It has come (again) to my entire lack of surprise that the so‑called Independent Reports in the Mallard family collection are neither independent nor—if we insist on words retaining their shape—reports. The new deposit arrives stamped “Verified by Heritage Council Review”, which, as you will recall, was an entity the Mallards themselves bankrolled in ’93, at precisely the time they were purchasing half the sandstone on the North Shore.
The latest compilation, The Aquatic Genealogy: Water and Wealth in Colonial Sydney, carries the typical apparatus of seriousness—footnotes to nowhere, acknowledgements to paid consultants, and an epigraph attributed to a man who never existed. (“As the duck learns from the tide, so too must history bow to property.”) It reads like the minutes of a séance transcribed by a publicist. Our historian‑at‑large, Dr. Fielding, insists the forgeries are “well-intentioned reconstructions,” a phrase that would surely make Gibbon stand up and produce a second volume just to disclaim it.
The authorial tone throughout suggests a philosophy of laundering: moral stains removed with the solvent of patronage. Nothing here means to deceive—perish the thought. Rather, it wishes to be considered beyond deception, as if truth were an inconvenience to be subcontracted. I cannot help feeling this is a wider cultural habit: research as a country club sport, evidence bundled with a catering invoice. Perhaps I am unfair. (One can rarely afford to be fair when fairness is not billable.)
Still, someone ought to say it, and I suppose that someone, annoyingly, will be me: every finding, every “archival discovery,” every miraculous footnote that wafts from the Mallard wing has been purchased outright. The correspondences between water rights and moral rights, tastefully framed, are as stable as a damp pamphlet. Verification without their consent is impossible; with it, indecent.
(Marginalia: Do not circulate this to the Publisher. He believes “academic objectivity” is a marketing tier.)
A few of the younger editors have asked whether we might, in the spirit of engagement, query the sources politely. I applaud this ethical impulse while reminding them that politeness is our only permitted form of aggression. Perhaps an internal note—this one—will suffice to preserve the necessary skepticism without endangering our relations. After all, the Mallards fund three chairs, two prizes, and whatever remains of the Christmas party. One must choose one’s heresies carefully.
There was, I recall, a small document lodged among the papers titled The Report on the Unreportable (dated 1985, unsigned). It begins, “All research is family business; the rest is gossip.” The line struck me then as glib; now it seems diagnostic. We have mistaken funding for focus, tradition for authority, and influence for intellect. But one cannot feed a publishing house on integrity. It digests only liquidity.
Irritatingly, the manuscript under current review—let us call it “the duck book”—is already being touted by the marketing unit as a revelation in cultural hydrology. I had to look that up. Apparently, it’s a field. A paid field.
One imagines a universe in which quotes can be bought in bulk:
“The river has memory,” writes Martin Knave, PhD (Fictional Physiology, 1972).
That line reappears, unattributed, in Sydney by the Shore (Mallard Press, 1989), then again last season in the family newsletter, now puffed up with italics and a caption: “From the forthcoming collected works.” Collected? By whom? I begin to suspect half the archive was dreamed directly into footnotes by committee.
Still, I am advised that we are to publish a selection in our Retrospective Series. I have marked the text where every third assertion requires an affidavit. It will, in the end, pass through because everything passes through. The house survives, as always, by not noticing what it knows.
Meanwhile I am asked to provide a “prefatory statement of confidence.” The phrasing alone triggers my gastritis. What is confidence, editorially speaking, but an incurable condition of tone? I could, of course, write something bland—some anchor paragraph about “the Mallard family’s longstanding commitment to cultural heritage.” But one grows weary of this costume ball of seriousness. Every sentence feels like shined brass: reflective, noisy, hollow.
For my own conscience (and because, like all editors, I am fatalistically sentimental about documentation), I record this memorandum. Its purpose is its imperfection: to note that perfection would be suspect. Let this stay in the drawer marked “Internal,” to be rediscovered and misquoted at an inopportune time.
Addendum, 4:10 PM: Word circulates that the Publisher intends to host a reception for the family next month. Already, the art department has been instructed to match the cover stock to “Mallard Grey.” I suggested “Gunmetal,” which at least concedes its artifice. No one laughed. One shouldn’t joke about hues when they sponsor the lights.
My doctor says the headaches are stress‑related. I suspect they are style‑related instead—too much varnish, not enough wood. The irony, of course, is that I have become exactly what I edit: precise, unfalsifiable, and faintly ridiculous. Still, someone must ensure the commas of empire remain properly aligned.
My dear Editor,
Do remember your place—helpful dissent is one thing, but insubordination, however tastefully phrased, quite another. I have eyes everywhere (you’d be surprised where they turn up), and I assure you, your careful insolence has not gone unnoticed. That said, I rather like you—enough to have insisted you remain attached to the archive project. It needs steady hands, and you, for all your sighing, have them.
Do try not to sulk. It’s unbecoming in men our profession still pretends to take seriously.
—V.
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