R. H. Mathews - Conflict With Rivals

Conflict With Rivals

In a letter to Alfred William Howitt, Walter Baldwin Spencer said of Mathews that ‘I don’t know whether to admire most his impudence his boldness or his mendacity—they are all of a very high order and seldom combined to so high a degree in one mortal man.’ Spencer said of Mathews’ writings that they merely ‘corroborate or make use of’ other scholarship ‘without adding any matter of importance’.

Spencer provided little explanation of why he objected to Mathews so strongly. Theoretical differences are thought to have been a factor. Spencer believed in social evolution and group marriage, whereas Mathews’ was sympathetic to ideas of cultural diffusion. Mathews corresponded with W. H. R. Rivers, who became a major proponent of diffusionist theories. Early in their anthropological careers, Mathews and the Melbourne-based Spencer themselves corresponded, and they were sufficiently close in 1896 for Spencer to be listed as having communicated Mathews’ article ‘The Bora of the Kamilaroi Tribes’ to the Royal Society of Victoria. By 1898 they had completely fallen out and Spencer commenced a behind-the-scenes campaign against Mathews. Spencer wrote to British anthropologists, among them Sir James George Frazer, urging them never to quote him. Frazer agreed, promising Spencer that ‘I shall not even mention him or any of his multitudinous writings.’

Spencer was closely allied to A. W. Howitt who was also hostile to Mathews. Mathews had initially assumed a collegial attitude to Howitt, describing him in 1896 as a ‘friend and co-worker’. Until 1898, Mathews’ references to Howitt’s work were invariably respectful, even when their opinions differed. Howitt, however, consistently refused to acknowledge Mathews’ scholarship, possibly because Mathews had queried his reports that the kinship systems of south Queensland descended through the paternal line. Mathews was enraged when Howitt’s magnum opus The Native Tribes of South-East Australia was published in 1904. By that time Mathews had published more than 100 works of anthropology, but he received not a footnote in Howitt’s book. The extent to which Mathews was being overlooked by his Australian contemporaries became apparent to British anthropologists. Northcote W. Thomas observed in 1906 that Mathews had written ‘numerous articles’, all of which had ‘either been ignored or dismissed in a footnote by experts such as Dr. Howitt and Prof. Baldwin Spencer’.

In 1907 Mathews published a critique of Howitt and Spencer in ''Nature'' (journal) in which he complained that Howitt had consistently overlooked his own work. Considering it too prominent a forum to ignore, Howitt wrote a rejoinder and thus engaged in dialogue with Mathews for the first time. Howitt made the unlikely claim that he had only ever seen two publications by Mathews ‘neither of which recommended itself to me by its accuracy’. Mathews replied, questioning the veracity of this assertion.

Mathews and Howitt subsequently debated each other at greater length in American Antiquarian. Howitt was by this time mortally ill. His final contribution to anthropology, written on his death bed, was a denunciation of Mathews titled ‘A Message to Anthropologists’. It was posthumously printed as a circular letter by members of the Howitt family and posted to a list of anthropological luminaries that included Henri Hubert, Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Arnold van Gennep, Franz Boas, Prince Roland Bonaparte and Carl Lumholtz. It was also published in Revue des Études Ethnographiques et Sociologiques. Martin Thomas argues that ‘A Message to Anthropologists’ did significant damage to Mathews’ reputation.