At the State Library of Victoria C.J. La Trobe has been commemorated in several ways: first, there was the creation of the La Trobe Library to house the Australian collection; then, the concept of a separate library being abandoned, the Australian collection was housed in the Domed Reading Room, which was renamed the La Trobe Reading Room; and last year a statue was erected on the side lawn in front of the building. The statue, based on the all-too-familiar portrait by Sir Francis Grant, represents La Trobe in his governor's uniform, thus emphasising his official role as a colonial administrator. It was in this role that he helped to facilitate the establishment of the Public Library, allocating the initial funding, reserving the land for a building and appointing the Trustees.1 La Trobe admired the work of Redmond Barry, who had the leadership role in the creation of the Public Library; and although his official connection with the colony had ended before a building had been erected, he maintained a personal interest in the Library for many years afterwards.

Prior to his departure La Trobe became the first — and for some years, the most substantial — donor of books to the institution. (The only other donor before the Library opened its doors on 11 February 1856 was a gentleman by the name of G. M. Gallot, about whom nothing seems to be known, who donated a copy of the London Times for 1800.) On 17 November 1853 Redmond Barry, formally thanked La Trobe for the ‘very valuable donation, the first made to the Institution’.2 On 4 May 1854, just two days before he sailed for home in the Golden Age, La Trobe — probably like most travellers wanting to lighten his baggage wherever possible — added a further six volumes to the original gift of 84 volumes. As the first books ordered from London did not arrive until November 1854, La Trobe's books could be regarded as constituting the original collection of what is now the State Library. They were, of course, books that he no longer wanted and not items specially chosen for the Library. Nevertheless, they tell us something of the intellectual interests of the man who held executive power during the infancy of the colony, when books were scarce.

La Trobe's 1854 gift is a miscellaneous collection of non-fiction prose works. There are works on religion (Gladstone's The State in its relation to the Church; Southey's The Book of the Church; Mrs Simon's The Ten Tribes of Israel historically identified with the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere); science (Agassiz's Etudes sur les Glaciers; Charpentier's Essai sur les Glaciers; Daubeny's Active and Extinct Volcanoes; Ray Society's Reports on the progress of Zoology and Botany; Somerville's The Connection of the Physical Sciences); and at least one work that combines the two (Whewell's Physics, with reference to Natural Theology). Several volumes deal with politics (Halliburton's The Bubbles of Canada; Grote's The Politics of Switzerland; Biggs's Report to the House of Commons on New South Wales). A couple of volumes deal with Aborigines — Evidence before the House of Commons on the Aborigine (1837) and Threlkeld's Key to the Aboriginal Languages (1850). Given his father's association with Wilberforce, one volume that La Trobe must have read with particular interest is Sir Thomas Fowell's African Slave Trade (1839). No poetry, plays or novels, or any works that might be described as having literary interest were included.

Over half the donation consisted of the set of bound Volumes 1 to 55 (1809–1836) of the Quarterly Review.3 The volumes are uniformly bound in plain green cloth, with title, volume no., and year on the spine in gold lettering. As in the other books that he donated, there is pasted on the inside front cover La Trobe's bookplate with the combined La Trobe-Montmollin coat of arms, and on the front endpaper a bookplate which reads: ‘Presented to the Melbourne Public Library on 17th day of November 1853 by His Excellency/Charles J. Latrobe/Governor of Victoria’. In some instances the issues are reprints, which indicate strong public demand for particular numbers. The first number of the periodical was issued in 1809, but the copy bound here is the sixth edition printed in 1827. The second issue of Vol. 55 — there were two per volume — being February 1836, it is most likely that the set was assembled later that year. La Trobe could hardly have afforded the purchase; in 1839, about to set out for Port Phillip, he acknowledged that ‘my position in life hitherto has been such as to leave me almost altogether a debtor to the favor & kindness of those around me….4 The most probable explanation for La Trobe's owning such a handsome collection is that the set was a gift from the publisher, with whose family he became friendly in 1835.

The Quarterly Review, published by the firm of John Murray from 1809 to 1967,5 was established by a group of Tories, among whom was Walter Scott, in opposition to the influential Whig Edinburgh Review. It quickly became a leading journal of opinion, wielding considerable political and literary influence.

La Trobe found the conservative political outlook of the Quarterly congenial. Writing to John Murray on 1 March 1837, just before leaving for the West Indies, to thank him for a present of books, La Trobe remarks: ‘I thank you particularly for the care you take to preserve my political morality in the gift of Peel's Speeches & perhaps I may say of the Quarterly Review I trust I am staunch’.6 He goes on to say that the copies of the Quarterly, along with the other works, will bear him company. It is possible that he is referring to the set that he donated to the Library in 1854. The other possibility is that the set was part of a gift that he received from Murray when setting off for Port Phillip.

There was good reason for La Trobe to feel gratitude to the Murrays for ‘the great and uniform kindness & indulgence’ that he had received.7 He was welcome in the Murray family circle, his closest relationship being with the younger John Murray, whose interest in travel he shared; but he was also regarded as a potential contributor to the Quarterly. In a favourable review (possibly written by the editor, J. G. Lockhart) in the Quarterly (vol. 54, September 1835) of his book, The Rambler in North America, La Trobe was described as ‘an author from whose future lucubrations we may hope to receive large supplies of amusement and instruction’.8

During his time in Australia La Trobe read the Quarterly, on one occasion complaining to John Murray III, who had succeeded his father as head of the firm, that an article had misrepresented what was happening in Victoria.9 The copies of the periodical published during his stay in the colony were not among the items he gave to the Library. There is no obvious reason why he should have left the set of bound volumes behind, except perhaps a disinterested desire to help the new institution. It was almost certainly the only such set in Port Phillip when he arrived; and the same may have been true when he departed — and it was certainly a valuable acquisition by the Library.

Eleven years later La Trobe made a second and larger donation, which was more carefully considered.10 On 8 June 1865 he wrote to the Librarian Augustus Tulk, who was then in England, asking him ‘to take charge of a few volumes which I have from time to time put aside with the idea that they might be acceptable to the Public Library under your charge — in the prosperity of which I take much interest’.11 For some years La Trobe was one of the ‘Committee of Gentlemen’ that in 1859 Barry suggested could advise H. C. E. Childers, a Library Trustee who was back in England, on purchases for the Library. In the course of a letter on 16 January 1860 Barry tells Childers that he has heard from the bookseller Guillaume that ‘Mr La Trobe paid him a visit lately & spent some time going over the books then ready to be sent out and that he approved of them highly.’12

In 1865, having made contact with Tulk, La Trobe sent a selection from his own library, remarking: ‘There is nothing, as you will see from the enclosed list, of great value — but some of the volumes may fill up a gap in yr library, or possess some interest’. There is no record whether Tulk took advantage of La Trobe's invitation ‘to withhold any you may think unworthy of being placed on the shelves’.13

This donation, covering much the same ground as the first, was less significant in relation to the Library, which now possessed about 30,000 books, with a growing list of donors. One aspect of this second donation is of particular interest in relation to La Trobe personally. He noted two inaccuracies in the Catalogue of the Public Library that Tulk had sent him. His father's name was wrongly given as ‘Christopher’ in the entry for his book, Journal of a Visit to South Africa;’ and La Trobe (whose own publications were already in the Library) was wrongly identified as the author of a volume of poetry, The Solace of Song, written by his brother, Revd John Antes La Trobe.14 La Trobe then mentions that he has included two more works by his brother, The Music of the Church and Sacred Lays and Lyrics, in the selection. Two other volumes that he included had a family significance: his grandfather's 1780 translation from the German of The Ancient and Modern History of the Moravian Brethren [Alte und neue Brüder-Historie] by David Cranz; and his father's 1794 translation from the German of History of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America [Gestchichteder Mission der evangelischen Brüder unterden Indianern in Nordamerika] by George Henry Loskiel.

By 1865 La Trobe's eyesight was deteriorating, and he must have been becoming aware that it was unlikely that he would write the projected volume about his Australian experience. In 1872 he accepted the inevitable and sent to the Public Library the letters that he had gathered from early settlers nearly 20 years earlier with a view to making a book. Eventually published in a volume edited by the then Librarian, T. F. Bride, in 1898, they remain a useful source for historians. As Shane Carmody points out (see below page 86), this last gift was the beginning of what is now the La Trobe Australian Manuscript Collection.

The Mitchell Library in Sydney was established to preserve the great collection of Australiana assembled by David Scott Mitchell. While La Trobe was an active supporter of the Public library, as this brief survey shows, the naming of the Australiana library in Melbourne after him does not signify that he was a major benefactor. It was probably politically opportune a century after his governorship to represent the La Trobe Library as ‘commemorating the courage and enterprise of the Pioneers’ (as the foundation stone says). Giving it the name of a servant of the Empire, an Englishman who was not a settler and who was often at odds with the material-minded pioneers, does, however, suggest a different meaning to us today. What distinguished La Trobe was that he was, in the words of Rolf Boldrewood,‘a humane and highly cultured person’.15 It is less his performance as a governor than his personal commitment to moral and cultural values in a newly formed settler society that is commemorated by the naming of a library (and also a university) after him.