By Gary Tippet
ON THE afternoon of June 25, 1919, seven ladies of Mont Albert - all well-educated and well-connected, but feeling just a little intellectually unstimulated - met at the invitation of Miss E. Alleyne Sinnott at her home, ''Ibhai'', in Wolseley Street, to discuss the formation of a group devoted to the reading and discussion of books.
They kept detailed minutes that record that not only was the idea acclaimed but that Robert Louis Stevenson should be the subject of study at the first meeting, and Bengali poet, novelist and artist Rabindranath Tagore at the next.
Members of the Reading Circle meet to discuss books.
Almost to the day 91 years later, the tradition continues.
On one Friday's rain-soaked afternoon, 23 ladies - the term is properly and respectfully chosen - of the Mont Albert Reading Circle, have crammed into rows of armchairs and kitchen chairs in the cosy lounge room of Mrs Ann Bachelard's modest red-brick home in Blackburn.
The topic this time might - but probably wouldn't - have surprised their predecessors. It speaks of thieves, murderers and addicts, abusers and abused: the inmates of Fairlea Women's Prison, where member Julia Bryans set up a writing group in 1991.
The 35-minute presentation is at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. Ms Bryans tells of her despair years later of seeing one of her students free, but bone-thin and scabby-faced, begging from cars on Victoria Street; of the mischievous delight one student took in dragging her teacher to lesbian bars; and how one prisoner's drunken husband brought her a birthday present - 18 shoes he'd pinched from a display table, all for left feet.
After which there is discussion and afternoon tea of sandwich triangles, passionfruit sponge and almond cake.
Something like this has been happening every second Friday afternoon since that day in 1919. For more than 2000 meetings, without break, about 20 women have sat down to discuss literature, the arts, history and philosophy, and listen to a carefully prepared, exhaustively researched paper from one of their members.
Many have been doing so for decades. Ages of current members range from the mid-50s to the mid-90s and at last year's 90th anniversary, member Libby Vorrath calculated that the current members had amassed ''388 busy, intelligent women-years'' of active membership. Her mother, Mary Broughton, now 94, has been a member since 1961.
Today's host, Ann Bachelard, is the strongest link to the first Fridays. Her maternal grandmother, Mrs Annie Webster was Member No. 5 of the inaugural Circle and her mother, historian and author Mona Webster, was a member for 50 years. Ann joined in the mid-80s after returning from England.
She says the Circle had its beginnings at a time when academically trained women, teachers and public servants were legally forbidden from continuing their employment after marriage: ''They'd got vitally interested in the subjects they studied at university and then they were expected just to drop them and, well, have babies.
''So it was much more fun and so intellectually stimulating to enjoy the companionship of other women speaking intelligently and interestingly on a given topic and the different interpretations of those topics.''
The same holds true today, she says, though the attraction wasn't immediately apparent: ''When I was a child it really put me off. All the fuss of running around to get an afternoon tea ready and all the work Mother put in to her very well-researched, double-checked papers. I think I was a bit intimidated. But as I got older I grew intrigued by it.''
One of the most recent Circle members, retired journalism educator Margaret Rees-Jones, says there is much about the Circle that can seem anachronistic: The archaic formalism of the business-meeting structure; the use of titles - Mrs, Miss, Dr or Lady - instead of given names; the fare at afternoon tea, ''not quite cucumber sandwiches, but not far off''. Ms Vorrath agrees, laughing. ''The lasting attraction is extraordinarily hard to convey. It defies description. It's a funny little group and we have these funny little meetings. It's a varied, interesting group of friends you mostly only ever see here, but it's very stimulating. Presenting and listening to papers, it's something to keep your brain ticking over. It's a challenge.''
Perhaps the most glaring anachronism about the Mont Albert Reading Circle is its title. Initially membership was restricted to the good women of that suburb and, as Ms Vorrath recalls, ''moving to Malvern'' was grounds enough for termination.
But in 1919 there were practical reasons for the restriction. Mont Albert was still ''countrified'' and members walked to meetings along muddy roads or across open paddocks. In bad weather the horse cab from the Surrey Hills steam train station would be hired to do the rounds collecting members. It wasn't until 1931 that a Mrs Reid became the first Circle member to drive her own car.
By that time the Circle had transformed from its more book club-ish beginnings. A syllabus was introduced and the president would choose a theme for the year. Each member would prepare a paper based on the theme to deliver at one of the fortnightly meetings. Themes ranged from 1930's ''Civilisations of the World and Their Survival in Modern Times'' through to ''The Two Elizabethan Ages''; ''Reformers, Revolutionaries, Innovators and Discoverers''. This year's is based on an inscription on a New England gravestone: ''She Did Her Best.''
But as a history prepared for the 50th anniversary notes, there were taboos: ''… it was found necessary to include in the rules one prohibiting subjects of a religious or political nature. It was feared that these topics would breed dissension.''
In 1983, members of the Circle were horrified when a university social studies student wrote a thesis on the history of the group. The result, they felt, gave ''a wrong impression of social exclusiveness … [which] has never been consciously part of our make-up''.
Certainly some of the original members were from Melbourne's intellectual elite, but the first president, Mrs Grout, had been married at 16 to a middle-aged sea captain, and sailed with him around the world and was shipwrecked three times. When he died, she finally married her childhood sweetheart.
''And today, still, it's a no-nonsense, very practical group,'' insists Ms Bachelard. ''It's certainly not exclusive in any elitist sense, it's simply a matter of friendship, intellect and good conversation.''
She expects that to continue for a long time, in this world and perhaps the next. As her mother wrote in a paper on the Circle's heritage in 1992: ''I sometimes wonder if, when my time comes to make the final crossing, I shall find, on that further shore, a little group of women who, having felt the celestial palaces to be lacking in one regard, have formed an Everlasting Reading Circle. I hope so.''