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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Australian Writers, by Desmond Byrne
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Australian Writers
+
+
+Author: Desmond Byrne
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2009  [eBook #28599]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Wilson and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN WRITERS
+
+by
+
+DESMOND BYRNE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Richard Bentley and Son
+Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
+1896
+
+[All rights reserved]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                PAGE
+  INTRODUCTION                     1
+
+  MARCUS CLARKE                   29
+
+  HENRY KINGSLEY                  90
+
+  ADA CAMBRIDGE                  131
+
+  ADAM LINDSAY GORDON            159
+
+  ROLF BOLDREWOOD                189
+
+  MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED            229
+
+  TASMA                          260
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Any survey of the work done by Australian authors suggests a question
+as to what length of time ought to be allowed for the development of
+distinctive national characteristics in the literature of a young
+country self-governing to the extent of being a republic in all but
+name, isolated in position, highly civilised, enjoying all the modern
+luxuries available to the English-speaking race in older lands, and with
+a population fully two-thirds native. The common saying that a country
+cannot be expected to produce literature during the earlier state of its
+growth is too vague a generalisation. There are circumstances by which
+its application may be modified. It certainly does not apply with equal
+force to a country whose early difficulties included race conflicts,
+war with an external power and political labours of great magnitude, and
+to another whose commercial and social development, carried on under
+more modern conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous, has been
+facile, unbroken and extraordinarily rapid.
+
+Nor can paucity of literary product, where it exists, be satisfactorily
+explained by the unrest that continues in a new land long after it has
+attained material prosperity and the higher refinements of life. The
+Americans are a type of an extremely restless people. They have been so
+throughout the greater part of their history, and the characteristic is
+now more marked than ever. It is a fixed condition of their national
+being, an expression of the cumulative ambition that is the source of
+their varied progress. Yet from time to time men have arisen among them
+who not only have given intimate views of a new civilisation, but have
+added something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used to
+call 'the best that is known and thought in the world.' Even when the
+independent nationhood of the United States was still but an aspiration,
+Benjamin Franklin had familiarised Europe with much that has since been
+recognised as inherent in the modes of thought and manners of the
+Western race.
+
+The bulk of the literature of America is, of course, still small in
+proportion to the culture and intellectual energy of the country; but it
+has been and is sufficient to interpret in a more or less distinctive
+way all the leading phases in the evolution of the national thought and
+sentiment. The subtle influence of the deeply-grounded religious feeling
+which, implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations of
+intense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modern
+life offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the
+people in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate it
+in comparison; with the conditions of other countries; the contrasts
+furnished by a society fond of reproducing European habits, yet
+retaining a simplicity and freshness of its own: these and other
+features in the progress of the United States for over a century may be
+found expressed in its literature from the native standpoint, and not
+merely from that of the intelligent outside observer.
+
+An American writer in discussing, a few years ago, the quality of the
+literature produced before the War of Secession, when wealth and leisure
+were abundant among the planters and in the principal New England towns,
+observed that 'there would seem to be something in the relation of a
+colony to the mother-country which dooms the thought and art of the
+former to a hopeless provincialism.' If a comment so largely fanciful
+could be made respecting Australasia and Canada, it would practically
+mean--at all events from the American point of view--that as long as
+they remain dependencies of Great Britain, and therefore lack the
+stimulus of an active patriotism, so long will much of whatever is
+individual in their social development and national aspirations be
+without expression. In the case of the Australasian colonies it would
+further mean (apart from any consideration of their future independence)
+that a people far removed from other communities of the same race and
+already giving promise of being the greatest power south of the equator,
+must continue for an indefinite period to be wholly sustained and swayed
+in matters of thought and art by a country over twelve thousand miles
+distant that happens for the present to offer the most convenient
+markets in which to buy and sell. The point need hardly be discussed,
+but it suggests some facts in the intellectual life of Australia that it
+will be of interest to name. These may not be found to explain why there
+is yet no sign of the coming of an Antipodean Franklin or Irving, or
+Hawthorne or Emerson; but they will help to show why the literature of
+the country grows so unevenly, why it is chiefly of the objective order
+and leaves large tracts of the life of the people untouched.
+
+Perhaps the paradox that a people may read a great deal and yet not be
+interested in literature could hardly be applied to the Australians,
+but it is a fact that they make no special effort to encourage the
+growth of a literature of their own. By no means unconscious of their
+achievements in other directions--in political innovations, in sport and
+athletics--they appear not to take any pride in or see the advantage of
+promoting creative intellectual work. Will this be considered natural
+and reasonable, as already they are supplied with books and plays and
+pictures from England and Europe, or as a proof of thoughtlessness and
+neglect? 'Why,' asked a critic in the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1819,
+'should the Americans write books when a six weeks' passage brings them,
+in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius in bales and
+hogsheads?' Are the Australians of these days asking themselves a
+similar question? It would seem so. In 1894 they imported books,
+magazines and newspapers from the United Kingdom to the value of
+£363,741: this, too, at a time when most of the colonies were understood
+to be rigidly economising in consequence of a financial crisis. A decade
+before the amount was not far short of a hundred thousand pounds
+higher.
+
+Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual tendencies of the
+native population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to be
+abreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and to
+have every form of literature and art adequately represented and
+excellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her own
+among the nations.' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration for
+literary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can be
+called genius, with an over-readiness to discover it.'
+
+Artistic talent in America has from an early period in the history of
+the country enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and attention. Mr.
+Henry James has testified to the 'extreme honour' in which writers and
+artists have always been held there. Literature is now a subject of
+special systematic study in all the important schools; literary
+organisations are numerous, including no fewer than five thousand
+circles for the study of Shakespeare; authorship has become something
+like a craze in fashionable society; the intelligence of the criticism
+in the weekly press is on the whole equal to that in English journals;
+and several of the magazines are largely devoted to the more artistic
+kinds of writing. If the results of these incentives to production seem
+comparatively small, as they undoubtedly do, it must not be forgotten
+that the profession of letters in America long suffered, and is still
+suffering, from the absence of international copyright law. Before the
+year 1891 the markets were filled with cheap reprints of British and
+European works (often of an inferior class), and even now authors have
+to encounter competition with a vast quantity of foreign matter of which
+copyright, owing to the peculiar conditions of the law and of the
+publishing trade, is often obtained at prices much below its real value.
+
+It is not, however, the native literary product of America that is
+noteworthy so much as the widespread and conscious taste for literature
+among the people, and the means which they adopt to promote it. The
+best friend of Australia could not credit it at present with any
+markedly active desire 'to have every form of literature and art
+adequately represented and excellent of its kind.' In this respect the
+results of the high standard of education attained in the Government
+schools and the subsidised Universities are disappointing. The
+Universities of Sydney and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old, but
+neither is yet represented with distinction in the higher forms of
+literature and art. The Governments, at least, do their duty. Having
+liberally provided for school education, they spend annually large sums
+in making additions to picture-galleries, in maintaining libraries (of
+which there are over eleven hundred), technological schools and museums,
+and in other ways adding to the comfort and enlightenment of the people.
+But large private contributions are rare, and the founding or endowment
+of public institutions still rarer.
+
+Of societies or clubs devoted specially to the interests of literature
+there are very few--probably not half a dozen. Here and there among the
+upper classes there are little coteries whose members read the English
+and French reviews, and are well posted in all movements of interest in
+the world of letters, but there is no actual organisation among them,
+and they do not seek to extend their influence. Their ambition is
+confined to providing for their personal improvement and pleasure. The
+reading of the people, though extensive, is not serious nor in any way
+specialised, unless a recent notably high average of borrowing in the
+historical departments of a few of the free libraries be taken into
+account. The leading book exporters in London say that throughout the
+Antipodes the public demand is confined, as in England, mainly to the
+'general' literature of the hour. 'Whatever has succeeded in London will
+usually succeed in Australia' is the invariable remark of the exporter
+and the first principle that guides his tentative selection in the case
+of all newly-published works. The circulation of the best British weekly
+and monthly reviews by some of the principal subscription libraries
+helps the reader to choose for himself, but if he should wish to buy a
+new book, however valuable, that has not become popular in the business
+sense, he will probably have to send to London for it.
+
+The wealthy people seem to select their reading-matter chiefly with a
+view to entertainment. Not long ago the manager of one of the most
+fashionable of the Melbourne circulating libraries said that about
+ninety per cent. of the female and seventy-five per cent. of the male
+frequenters of such libraries in Australia read only novels. But this
+average is perhaps rather over-stated, being given at a time when there
+was an exceptional demand for certain novels that had obtained notoriety
+by an audacious treatment of sex questions and English society.
+
+A glance at the fare which fourteen of the London publishers provide in
+their colonial editions is of interest. Excellent value, of its kind, is
+usually offered in these issues, but here again we find proclaimed an
+excessive preference for light prose literature. Of 264 volumes in one
+'colonial library,' 238 are of fiction. Sketches, memoirs, reminiscences
+and a few essays make up most of the balance. The taste of the working
+classes, so far as it can be ascertained from the records of the
+principal free libraries, is, curious as it may seem, decidedly sounder
+than that attributed to the customers of the subscription libraries. It
+must be remembered, however, that the former are seldom tempted with new
+fiction, and never with fiction of the spicy or questionable kind. Some
+of the larger institutions are rigidly exclusive in regard to the light
+kinds of literature.
+
+Authorship in Australia loses an important incentive in the absence of
+local magazines. All of the better kind have lacked sufficient public
+support. Several of them, including the _Colonial Monthly_ (established
+by Marcus Clarke), the _Melbourne Review_, the _Centennial Magazine_,
+and the _Australasian Critic_ (the latter conducted by the professors of
+the Melbourne University) promised so well that their want of support is
+not easily explainable. It has been attributed to an unreasoning
+prejudice, an assumption that being locally produced they must
+necessarily be inferior; but this probably does the reading public less
+than justice. Apparently from their contents, most of the magazines
+failed because they were made too Australian in character, too unlike
+the English periodicals to which readers had been so long accustomed.
+There are many fine magazines in the United States, but their conductors
+do not make the mistake of trying to do without British and European
+contributions. They know the value of names as well as of matter.
+Foreign writers supply about one-third of the contents of the monthlies.
+When great interest suddenly attaches to some national question, their
+enterprise, like that of the newspapers of the country, sometimes takes
+the special form of securing cabled summaries of the opinions of
+influential politicians in Great Britain and elsewhere for immediate
+publication.
+
+A contributory cause of the failure of Australian magazines is the fact
+that the cost of their mechanical production has always been higher
+than that of any of their imported competitors. This promises to be a
+difficulty for some years to come. Book-publishing, as a separate
+business, is also practically impossible, for like reasons. The
+Australian reader attaches no special value to the possibilities of the
+local magazine, partly because its place as a literary and art record is
+considered to be fairly supplied by the weekly newspapers. Moreover, it
+is said he demands cheapness as well as high quality in his periodicals,
+and knows that both can be got in several English, American and European
+magazines. If this be so, the same predilection will no doubt account
+for the spectacle of leading London firms sending to the colonies tons
+of their popular modern books in paper covers, and offering them at
+about half the price charged in the United Kingdom, where they are
+obtainable only in cloth-bound editions.
+
+That no one has yet lived by the production of literature in Australia
+is not a matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would seriously think of
+attempting to do so. Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker, a
+steeplechase-rider--anything but a professional man of letters; Marcus
+Clarke was a journalist and playwright, and wrote only two novels in
+fourteen years; Rolf Boldrewood's books were written in spare hours
+before and after his daily duties as a country magistrate; Henry
+Kingsley returned to England before publishing anything; Kendall held a
+Government clerkship which he exchanged for journalism; Mr. Brunton
+Stephens is in the Queensland Civil Service; Mr. B. L. Farjeon's
+colonial work was mainly done in connection with the New Zealand press;
+Messrs. Marriott, Watson, E. W. Hornung, J. F. Hogan, Haddon Chambers
+and Guy Boothby, among younger writers, have taken their talents to
+London; and none of the half-dozen female novelists have been dependent
+upon literature for a livelihood.
+
+What, it may be asked, becomes of the best talent developed by the
+Australian schools and Universities? It is employed, or tries to find
+employment, in the practice of law, medicine, journalism and teaching.
+From law to politics is but a step in the colonies, and the chances of
+attaining Cabinet rank, rendered frequent by the prevailing aggressive
+form of party government, are often attractive to men of ability and
+ambition. The journalists are more or less drenched with politics all
+the year round, and they, too, occasionally find it an easy matter to
+vary their occupation by assisting in the active business of law-making.
+The tension of their daily lives, severer than that of the majority of
+press writers in Great Britain, leaves them little or no leisure for
+literary work of the higher kind, and generally the prospect of being
+compelled to send whatever they might write to the other end of the
+world for the chance of publication discourages effort. It may safely be
+said that there are young men on the editorial and reporting staffs of a
+dozen of the principal journals who possess ability that would secure
+them distinction in the wider fields of England or America. To their
+skill and spirited rivalry is due the universally high quality of the
+Antipodean press. Mr. David Christie Murray, writing after considerable
+experience of the colonies, and as one who had been an English
+journalist, said that on the whole he was 'compelled to think it by far
+and away the best in the world.' The remark is without exaggeration so
+far as it applies to the large weekly journals.
+
+The extent of the favour shown by Australian readers to the works of
+their own novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned to that which
+their merits have previously won in England. Booksellers and their
+London agents, who of course treat all literature from a purely
+commercial standpoint, are at all events unanimous in discrediting the
+existence in recent years of any prejudice against colonial fiction of
+the better class. It is now very seldom sent out in two or three volume
+form, they say, but neither are the most popular English novels, except
+occasionally to subscription libraries. For representative Australian
+work, then, there is a fair field but no favour. It is as though the
+function and existence of the authors apart from the rank and file of
+English letters were not recognised. There is an exception to this rule
+in the poet Gordon, as a portion of his writings, the Bush _Ballads and
+Galloping Rhymes_, irresistibly commemorate the national love of
+horseflesh and outdoor life. Every Australian now knows that _For the
+Term of his Natural Life_ is a great novel of its class; but as a
+leading Victorian journalist (Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in an
+article in the _Melbourne Review_, Clarke's real merit was for years
+undervalued, because he was known to be 'only a colonial writer.'
+Thousands of English, European and American readers had admired the
+novel before they thought of inquiring who the writer was or whence he
+came. It is true that the story attracted a good deal of interest in
+Australia even during its first appearance as a serial, but from
+elsewhere came its recognition as one of the novels of the century.
+
+The authors whose lives and writings are briefly sketched in this volume
+are all noted in some degree for accuracy and sincerity in their
+representation of life in Australia. They have all written from abundant
+knowledge--from love, also, perhaps it may be added--of this great wide
+land with its brilliant skies, its opportunities and its wholesome
+pleasures. That they should fail to cover their field--that they tell
+too much of country life and adventure and too little of the throb and
+energy of the cities--is in a large measure explained by the fact that
+their books are of necessity primarily written for English readers.
+
+Somehow it is assumed that people in the mother-country continue to be
+interested only in the picturesque, the curious and the unusual in
+Australian life. The idea is in part a survival from earlier years when
+a host of military officers, Civil Servants, journalists and tourists
+described in some form the more obvious peculiarities of the colonies:
+their giant, evergreen forests, strange amorphous animals, aristocratic
+gold-diggers, ex-convicts in carriages, and general state of
+topsy-turveydom. There is quite an amazing variety of occasional records
+of this class in forgotten books, magazines and pamphlets. In at least
+a score of well-known novels there are charming country scenes, true in
+every particular; but there is a distinct limit to the power of fiction
+of this kind to interest remote readers, while much repetition of it
+might well be misleading.
+
+A writer in the _Australasian Critic_ once rightly observed, respecting
+a batch of short stories of the conventionally Australian kind, that
+English readers might 'fancy from them that big cities are unknown in
+Australia; that the population consists of squatters, diggers,
+stock-riders, shepherds and bushrangers; that the superior residences
+are weatherboard homesteads with wide verandas, while the inferior ones
+are huts and tents.' No foreign reader could understand from them that
+'more than half the Australian population have never seen kangaroos or
+emus outside a zoological garden, and that not one in a hundred, or even
+a thousand, has seen a wild black fellow.' There is a well-known type of
+Australian novel to which the same remarks might apply with almost
+equal fitness.
+
+The lack of interest on the part of the novelists in the cities is the
+more noticeable because they contain one-third of the whole population
+of the country, a proportion said not to have a parallel in any other
+part of the world. This neglect is surely a mistake, founded on an
+erroneous conception of the tastes of the English public, and resulting
+partly from the absence of anything like a local literary influence upon
+the writers. 'Have the stress and turmoil of a political career no
+charm?' asks Mr. Edmund Gosse, in referring to the restricted scope of
+the English novel, and in making a plea for 'a larger study of life.'
+
+The same question might with very good reason be raised concerning the
+political life of Australia, which has been almost entirely neglected
+since Mrs. Campbell Praed used up the best of her early impressions and
+settled in England. The majority of the writers of fiction who continue
+to live in the country are women, and possibly not interested in
+politics; but the chief reason why the romance is seldom written of the
+Cabinet Minister who started life as a gold-digger or draper's
+assistant, or of the democratic legislator whose first election was
+announced to him through a hole in a steam-boiler that he was riveting,
+is to be found in a belief that it would not be appreciated in the
+far-off land whither all Australian books must go for the sanction of
+their existence. Here again the British reader appears to be misjudged,
+for has he not accepted from another direction, and enjoyed, _Democracy_
+and _Through One Administration_? Mrs. Praed, lightly skimming the
+surface of Antipodean political life in two of her stories, has shown it
+to be not without humour, nor lacking in the elements of more serious
+interest. But she cannot be said to have exhibited any particular belief
+in the political novel, and none of the more practised among her
+colonial contemporaries has ever given it a trial.
+
+On the main question of a national literature it will perhaps be
+concluded that Australia has yet scarcely any need to be concerned: that
+not much must be expected from a civilisation which, though it has been
+rapid, began little more than a century ago; and that the existence of
+wealth, and the possibilities of leisure and culture which wealth
+affords, cannot produce the same effect upon art in a new country as in
+an old one. The whole matter no doubt is somewhat difficult of decision.
+It has been none the less useful to indicate why so little of the work
+already done is the work of native writers--why the existence of much of
+the best of it may almost be considered accidental. And while a refusal
+to take the trouble of independently judging the worth of a local
+artistic product may or may not be an invariable characteristic of a new
+country, it was also right to contradict on the best available authority
+the assertion of a 'prejudice' against the work of Australian authors.
+
+A portion of the talent that cannot be absorbed in the already
+overcrowded ranks of law and medicine might find employment in building
+a literature which should have something of national savour in it, if
+migration to England were no longer a condition of success to those who
+would make writing a profession, as migration to New York or Boston is
+similarly found to be a necessity to the young Canadian man or woman of
+letters. It need not be wished that the colonial Governments would do
+more than they have done--certainly not that they would create a sort of
+civil pension list, as a section of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria
+contemplated doing ten years ago in discussing a proposed grant to the
+family of Marcus Clarke. But the Universities might extend their
+influence, and those who have leisure might combine to introduce some of
+the methods which have helped to create a living public interest in
+literature and art in European countries. In other words, there is
+needed an increased sense of responsibility in the cultured class: those
+people, among others, who yearly help to fill the luxurious ocean
+steamships on their long journeys to the Old World, and who bring back
+so singularly little practical enthusiasm for their own land in the
+South.
+
+Meanwhile it is encouraging to note the high promise of the work of some
+of the younger writers. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. H. Lindsay Miller), the
+daughter of a well-known Victorian judge, has, in _The Moving Finger_,
+raised the short story to an artistic level hardly approached by any
+other Australian writer. And Mrs. Alick Macleod, author of _An
+Australian Girl_ and _The Silent Sea_, has given in the former novel--a
+fine story, despite some irregularities of form--the most perfect
+description of the peculiar natural features of the country ever
+written. For the first time the Bush is interpreted as well as
+described. In the attitude displayed in this story towards the
+fashionable life of the towns there is habitual impatience and
+occasional scorn. The sketches of Mrs. Anstey Hobbs' efforts to found a
+salon, the flirtations of Mrs. Lee-Travers--who 'chose her admirers to
+suit her style of dress'--Laurette Tareling's solemn respect for
+Government House, and the generally satirical view of the 'incessant
+mimicking of other mimicries,' are no doubt justified; they are often
+decidedly entertaining. But it would of course be a mistake to accept
+all this as more than a partial view of Melbourne society. The book does
+not pretend to deal with it in other than an incidental manner. Mrs.
+Macleod's studies of character and often clever dialogue suggest that
+she might profitably adapt to the presentation of Australian life the
+quiet intensity of Tourguéneff, or the delicately observant style of the
+American critical realists, Henry James, W. D. Howells and Richard
+Harding Davis. And here one wonders whether the Australian novelists who
+find so little material in Sydney and Melbourne have seen what the new
+writer, Henry B. Fuller, has done with the life of modern unromantic
+Chicago?
+
+According to Mr. Howells, America, through the medium of its own
+particular class of novel, 'is getting represented with unexampled
+fulness.' The writers 'excel in small pieces with three or four
+figures,' and are able conveniently to dispense with sensationalism--a
+point not yet reached by Antipodean novelists. 'Every now and then,' he
+says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect
+comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would
+gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody
+else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or
+a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster
+of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story;
+"no promenade, no band of music, nossing!" as Mr. Du Maurier's Frenchman
+said of the meet for a fox-hunt. Yet it is all alive with the keenest
+interest for those who enjoy the study of individual traits and general
+conditions as they make themselves known to American experience.' As the
+Transatlantic social conditions, of which the realistic novel with only
+three or four figures is understood to be the outcome, are being more or
+less repeated in Australia, a similar literary medium will probably be
+found best adapted to the portrayal of life there. At least it may be
+claimed that there is no lack of material in the shape of individual
+traits which have not yet been suitably described in any form.
+
+
+
+
+MARCUS CLARKE.
+
+
+In the peculiarity of his fitful talents, and in the character of his
+best work in fiction--a pathetically slender life's product--Marcus
+Clarke is still alone in Australian literature. Others have shown the
+cheerful, hopeful, romantic aspects of the new land; he, not less
+honestly, but with a more concentrated and individual view, has pictured
+some of the monotony of its half-grown society, the gloom of its
+scenery, and the painful realities of its early penal systems. Reputed
+only as a novelist, he possessed besides imagination some of the higher
+qualities of the critical historian. And had his life been prolonged, he
+might almost have done for Australian city life what Thackeray did for
+the London of seventy years ago. He could, at least, have written a
+novel of manners that would have credited the people of Australia with
+some individuality: such a novel as would mark the effects which
+comparative isolation must produce in a people who are educated and
+intelligent beyond the average of the British race, intensely
+self-contained and ambitious, and of whom two-thirds are now
+native-born,--a novel that would have corrected the too languidly
+accepted judgments of omniscient elderly gentlemen, who, after a few
+weeks or months spent among the smallest and most imitative section of
+Antipodean society, gravely conclude that 'leaves that grow on one
+branch of an oak are not more like leaves that grow upon another, than
+the Australian swarm is like the hive it sprang from.'
+
+A rhetorical half-truth of this kind, as applied to the entire people,
+can best be answered in the manner of the modern realists. The field is
+narrow in Australia, yet not too narrow for the writer who, foregoing
+the taste for sensation, will be content to transcribe and interpret
+impressions of the moving humanity around him to their minutest detail;
+who will forget the pioneer squatter, the Oxford scholar disguised as a
+'rouseabout,' and the digger and bushranger of a past generation; who
+will sacrifice something of dramatic effect in the endeavour to produce
+a faithful and finished picture of colonial middle-class society. As
+qualifications for such work, Clarke had exceptional courage,
+straightness of eye, and a decided taste for exposing shams, superadded
+to a forcible and satirical style of expression.
+
+Whether he had the tact and temperate spirit that must form the basis of
+these qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, if
+he may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as _Civilization
+without Delusion_, _Beaconsfield's Novels_, and _Democratic Snobbery_.
+There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than their
+undoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. They
+show that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudices
+which were marked features of his youth.
+
+Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in the Beaconsfield novels he saw
+little beyond an expression of the author's personal exultation as the
+successful representative of a maligned race. In the theological
+controversy of _Civilization without Delusion_, an even less effective
+and becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which,
+in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause for
+tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped,
+almost a barren field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by early habits
+of dissipation, it had no strength to resist the agnostic conclusions
+which were the product in later years of a coldly critical examination
+of the general grounds of Christian belief.
+
+In dealing with religion, his characteristic independence developed into
+a stiff intellectual pride, and from that into a recklessness which
+disregarded alike his public reputation and the feelings of others. But
+these forays into the preserves of theology were happily rare. Such
+questions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were only
+the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is
+indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of
+humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field
+of religious contention at all.
+
+There are a few facts in the early life of Marcus Clarke which are
+sometimes so strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his brief career
+that they form a necessary preface to any consideration of his literary
+work. Soon after his birth at Kensington (London) in 1846 his mother
+died, and thenceforward through all his youth he seems to have received
+little advice or attention from relations. His father, a barrister and
+literary man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised over him a
+merely nominal authority, and so he had liberty to gratify a spirit of
+inquiry and curiosity notably beyond his years. At his own home he
+became the pet of his father's acquaintances, a set of fashionable
+cynics.
+
+In _Human Repetends_, a sketch of his published several years later,
+there is a passage which substantially records his experiences at this
+time: 'I was thrown, when still a boy, into the society of men thrice my
+age, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent in all those wicked and
+witty circles in which virtuous women are conspicuous by their
+absence.... I was suffered at sixteen to ape the vices of sixty.... So
+long as I was reported to be moving only in that set to which my father
+chose to ally himself, he never cared to inquire how I spent the
+extravagant allowance which his indifference, rather than his
+generosity, permitted me to waste. You can guess the result of such a
+training.'
+
+Left alone in the world at the age of eighteen, upon the death of his
+father, he emigrated to Australia. Failing to take any interest in a
+bank-clerkship provided by an uncle for him at Melbourne, he was sent to
+a sheep-station near Glenorchy, one hundred miles inland. Here again he
+paid little attention to the occupation chosen for him. All the day and
+half the night were dreamed away in literary thought. Just as he
+wandered alone over fern-hill and creek-bed, plain and mountain range,
+and absorbed impressions of a scenery at once repulsive and fascinating
+to him, so he dipped into all kinds of literature without method or set
+purpose. But he preferred fiction, and as the consignee of an endless
+succession of French novels he became a marked man in the eyes of the
+village postmaster.
+
+Two years had thus been spent, when a Dr. Lewins, who was known as a
+'materialistic philosopher,' visited the station and made the young
+Englishman's acquaintance. A warm mutual regard resulted, and soon
+Lewins succeeded in obtaining a small post for Clarke on the Melbourne
+_Argus_. This was the beginning of the most brilliant journalistic
+career established on the Australian press.
+
+A less happy result of the same friendship was Clarke's conversion to
+the arid and uninspiring doctrines of materialism, though perhaps it
+could hardly be called a conversion in the case of one upon whom the
+deeper principles of Christian faith had never obtained any real hold.
+
+Colonial democracy seems to have been to Clarke at once a source of
+inspiration and of scorn. Coming from among the English upper classes,
+with the education and temperament of an aristocrat, he was yet readily
+able to sympathise with the higher principles of the new society. Its
+intelligence, virility and free intercourse broadened and interested
+him, as it does most young Englishmen. But for that common product of
+a new country, the pretentious plutocrat, he had only contempt.
+
+It is the bitterness with which this feeling is expressed in his
+journalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for
+work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of
+those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom
+much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's
+character. The same hand that in the famous _Snob Papers_ so savagely,
+and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English
+society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential
+facts of life is the most conspicuous quality. So, too, might it have
+been in the case of the 'Peripatetic Philosopher,' whose weekly
+criticisms of Melbourne men and manners in 1867-68 has correctly been
+judged the best writing of its kind yet done in Australia. In these
+articles, remarkable as the work of one who was only in his
+twenty-second year, there is a closeness of observation and incisiveness
+of style which promised much more for their author than the
+circumstances of his life afterwards permitted him to realise.
+
+The usual effects of an undirected youth and an undisciplined manhood
+explain Marcus Clarke's failure to render to his adopted country the
+service which, as a distinctly gifted writer of the realist school, he
+seemed well fitted to perform. He was a Bohemian, who, while resisting
+the worst vices of his class, shared its carelessness and improvidence
+to a degree that left little energy for ambitious work.
+
+His was not an idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond of
+variety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years'
+literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life to
+country-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art to
+ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a few
+of his compositions: _Lower Bohemia in Melbourne_ (a sketch), _Plot_ (a
+sensational drama), _Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy_ (magazine
+article), _The Humbug Papers_ (humorous and satirical), _The Future
+Australian Race_ (an ethnological study), _Goody Two Shoes_ (a
+pantomime), _Civilization without Delusion_ (a theological discussion
+with the Bishop of Melbourne), _The Power of Love_ (an extravaganza),
+_Doré and Modern Art_ (a review), _Cannabis Indica_ (a psychological
+experiment). Almost the whole of Clarke's life may be said to have been
+devoted to the supply of some temporary demand of the periodical press
+or the stage. Even the two novels which represent his only sustained
+work were written for serial issue in Melbourne magazines.
+
+It does not appear in either case that he wrote with any special view
+to establish a literary reputation; indeed, it would seem that the story
+of convict life might not have been completed but for the strenuous
+importunity of the firm of publishers with whom he had contracted to
+write it.
+
+Journalism, the early occupation of so many eminent men of letters, has
+usually been abandoned as soon as the young writer has once shown
+exceptional ability as a novelist. This rule was not followed by Clarke.
+As the leader in his day of the journalistic class, who, as the late Mr.
+Francis Adams has said with substantial truth, still 'stand almost
+entirely for the conscious literary culture of the whole Antipodean
+community,' he held a position which would have unfavourably affected
+the literary tone and ambition of a still more energetic and original
+writer.
+
+He had no predecessors in the special work he elected to do; he had to
+establish his own standard of achievement; and he was without the
+constant stimulus which intercourse with literary society, such as that
+of London, affords. The demands of the newspapers were then, as now,
+more for purely ephemeral criticism or narrative than for matter worthy
+to rank as permanent literature.
+
+An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of satirical humour such as
+Clarke had, and developed by a wide range of reading, were just the
+qualities which are always in request on the keen, aggressive daily
+press of Australia. One can easily imagine the flattering demands made
+upon the young author's powers by the men who were his personal friends
+as well as employers.
+
+Whenever he was deficient in taste of expression, or in urbanity of
+criticism (as in his treatment of the Jews), he showed the effects
+partly of impetuous haste, and partly of his remoteness from those
+centres of literary opinion which always beneficially influence a young
+writer, be he ever so original or naturally artistic. It has been
+doubted whether Clarke was ever fully convinced of his own powers; but
+however feasibly this may have applied to the first four or five years
+of his literary career, there was no ground for it after the unanimously
+favourable reception accorded to _For the Term of his Natural Life_ upon
+its issue in book form in 1874.
+
+In England and America, as well as in Australia, this one novel gave him
+an immediate and distinct reputation. With it he might have speedily
+established himself as one of the leading writers of the day, and,
+turning from the depressing realism of penal cruelties which can have no
+further parallel in British countries to something more within our
+sympathies--to the realism of modern Australian life,--have supplied
+what is still conspicuously lacking in Australian fiction. Yet, during
+the remaining seven years of his life he produced no imaginative work
+worthy his name and ability. The ever-ready market of the local
+newspaper press absorbed his best efforts, and such intervals as there
+were he devoted to an attempt to establish himself as a writer and
+adapter for the stage.
+
+In this way the years passed without yielding much beyond a livelihood.
+Meantime, Melbourne was his microcosm: he made a systematic study of its
+life from the purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets to the
+palace of his 'model legislator' on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one of
+his favourite novelists, he made observation a severe and regular
+business, but he lacked the energy or the patience to take full
+advantage of its results. Balzac employed his accumulated materials in
+bursts of creative energy which, if terrible in their intensity and
+their drain upon his health, had at least method in them, and effected
+their purpose. Poverty did not swerve him, nor prosperity sate him.
+
+That part of genius which consists in natural depth and accuracy of
+vision Clarke had in abundance, but he was weak in the lesser gifts of
+patience and synthetic power, perhaps also in ambition. Moreover, an
+unfortunate extravagance, which led from chronic debt to bankruptcy,
+compelled him to continue the class of work which gave the surest and
+most regular income.
+
+Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley for more fiction were neglected
+from year to year, and similar indifference was shown to a flattering
+invitation to join the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_ in London, an
+opportunity that would have led to the establishment of Clarke in those
+literary circles outside of which no purely Australian writer, with the
+exception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ever yet received adequate
+recognition.
+
+Among Clarke's uncompleted writings are a few brilliant chapters of a
+novel which promised to be as permanent a record of his ability as the
+well-known convict story, though of a different kind. But the author had
+the unlucky faculty of attending to anything rather than the work which
+offered him certain fame and fortune, as well as the most natural
+employment of his powers. At the time of his death he was only in his
+thirty-fifth year. Probably with advancing life he would have become
+more settled in his tastes and habits, realising that the work at which
+he was happiest in every sense was the writing of novels, and that
+alone.
+
+The satire and cynicism so noticeable in Clarke's writings, especially
+in his critical sketches and essays, are liable to give an inaccurate
+conception of his temperament. They obscure, as such characteristics
+nearly always do in literature, the gentler aspects of the writer's
+nature. His satire is, perhaps, too uncompromising. It often seems to
+reflect a personal bitterness, to take too little cognisance of the
+springs of human weakness. Undoubtedly brilliant in force and keenness,
+it yet too seldom produces the kind of hearty laugh with which Thackeray
+and Swift, for example, relieve their fiercest scorn. His personal
+experience of life had been discouraging. He had sounded its depths and
+sipped its pleasures; its rude facts found him deficient in self-control
+and fortitude. He had refused to learn the common logic of existence.
+
+There is an element of tragedy in the rapid change which the unhappy
+circumstances of his private life wrought in his temperament. Addressing
+the disciples of Mrs. Grundy in an early essay defending the
+Bohemianism of his youth, he tells them that they are ignorant how
+easily good spirits, good digestion, and jolly companions enable a man
+to triumph over all the ills that flesh is heir to. 'You cannot know,'
+he adds, 'what a fund of humour there is in common life, and how
+ridiculous one's shifts and strugglings appear when viewed through
+Bohemian glass.... Life seems to you but as a "twice told tale, vexing
+the dull ear of a drowsy man" seems but as a vale of tears, a place of
+mourning, weeping, and wailing.... I wish ye had lived for a while in
+"Austin Friars"; it would have enlarged your hearts, believe me.'
+
+This was the cheerful philosophy of Clarke as a young bachelor, after he
+had spent his slender patrimony, disappointed the successive efforts of
+friends to make a business man of him, and was about to begin the
+earning of a living by his pen. A dozen years later we see him with
+developed talents and a valuable name, but broken in fortune and spirit,
+and gloomily anticipating death months before it came. The Jew usurers,
+whose race he despised, had long been his real masters, and, with a
+nature sensitive in the extreme, he writhed in their bondage.
+
+Improvidence had been not merely an unhappy incident, as it is in the
+lives of so many young men of artistic tastes; it had overweighted him
+more or less for years, and 'the thoughtless writer of thoughtful
+literature,' as the author of his biographical memoir has called him,
+sank beneath it while yet at the beginning of a career full of the
+brightest promise. The sort of companionship that pleased his careless
+youth had latterly proved unsatisfying, and to some extent distasteful
+to him. Its effects upon his character were so unfavourable that some
+who had been his companions in journalism felt it necessary, after his
+death, to credit him with a greater capacity for kindly forbearance
+towards humanity than is apparent in the bulk of his writings.
+
+'My friend,' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appear
+to be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which can
+exist in the same individual. In his case these contradictions were so
+apparent--and, if I may use the term, so contradictory--that, unless one
+knew him, it was impossible to believe what his nature was. On the one
+hand, he was recklessly generous, impulsively partisan, morbidly
+sensitive, and highly chivalrous; on the other, forgetful of
+obligations, defiantly antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, and
+affectedly cynical.... His life was one of impulse, and the direction of
+the impulse depended solely on surrounding circumstances.... He has
+passed from us at an early age, leaving behind him some enemies made,
+perhaps, by his own waywardness; but he has left many friends,
+too,--friends who loved him for the good that was in him.'
+
+In another sketch of the author, his character is thus summed up:
+'Caustic he was sometimes, and cynical always; but beneath there beat a
+heart of gold--a heart tender and pitiful as a woman's.' This estimate
+is amply justified by the power of pathos and the often tender analysis
+of human feeling in _For the Term of his Natural Life_, however absent
+the same qualities may seem in many of the shorter stories.
+
+An interesting picture of Clarke's personality is given by a writer in
+the Sydney _Bulletin_: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour
+delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His
+face was a remarkable one--remarkable for its singular beauty. Like
+Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and
+one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of
+genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles
+Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his
+witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant
+things, and scattering _bons mots_ with apparent ease, so that in
+listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books
+as Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the French
+memoir-writers.... He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none
+of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and
+are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy but
+himself."'
+
+In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more than
+pointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne and
+Sydney offer a novelist capable of work like that of Mr. W. D. Howells,
+or the series of tales of urban society in America by Mr. Marion
+Crawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, a
+need, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism.
+The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade will
+sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people
+in a new and rapidly-developing country.
+
+Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which could
+not have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; with
+Parliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism by
+the increasing practice of electing artisans and labourers to do the
+legislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortunes
+which never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of the
+paper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, after
+overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life
+afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering
+novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure
+and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of
+government,--with these and some social aspects still less agree able to
+contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have
+the disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke had
+indicated, but scarcely begun, before he died.
+
+_Long Odds_, Clarke's first story, deals with English life, and bears no
+resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is
+chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a _mésalliance_, and
+horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications
+of gambling and intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to
+do with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned with
+the selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature--a singularly dark
+theme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rare
+intervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily set
+aside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase and
+the Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or
+freshness.
+
+The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the
+expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There
+are traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the high
+colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too,
+is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose
+experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book,
+is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even the
+ordinary, capabilities of the new race of which he is ostensibly a type.
+
+It is said to be a well-understood maxim of the novelist's art that many
+a liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writer
+keeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In
+_Long Odds_ there are two villains, and at least two others villainously
+inclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance.
+
+It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims at
+dramatic point before anything else, the 'simple Australian,' as his
+author is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less useful
+than the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in this
+instance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality has
+been secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two male
+characters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business of
+the story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining.
+
+There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that the
+lineaments of the conventional society villain may have been filled in
+with the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of those
+morally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among the
+acquaintances of Clarke's early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of the
+story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the
+small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both
+his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard,
+and altogether disagreeable.
+
+The author is not entirely forgetful of the interests of his nominal
+hero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made the
+plaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at last
+allowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from an
+artistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidious
+taste for poetic justice.
+
+Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, the
+author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The
+result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents
+that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the
+conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously
+improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley
+and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which
+the reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side of
+human nature.
+
+In connection with criticism of this kind, it ought, however, to be
+noted that other hands besides the author's are known to have
+contributed to the novel. Shortly after it began to appear serially in
+the _Colonial Monthly_, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse while hunting,
+and sustained a fracture of the skull which interrupted his literary
+work for many weeks. How much of the writing had previously been done
+seems to be a subject of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, in
+order to preserve continuity in the publication of the parts, Clarke's
+friends did write some portion of the story, but whether in accordance
+with the author's _scenario_, supposing one to have existed, has not
+been stated.
+
+'Only a few of the first chapters' were the work of Clarke, says the
+editor of the _Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume_, writing in 1884; but in
+an article published in the _Imperial Review_ (Melbourne) for 1886, the
+contributed matter is limited to a couple of chapters written by Mr.
+G. A. Walstab, and skilfully inserted in the middle of the novel.
+Walstab was one of Clarke's best friends, and he is no doubt the
+'G. A. W.' to whom the story is dedicated 'in grateful remembrance of
+the months of July and August, 1868.'
+
+From the absence of a prefatory explanation when _Long Odds_ was
+published in book form in 1869, it may be assumed that Clarke was
+satisfied with the quality of the contributed work. At least, he was
+willing to take the full responsibility of its authorship. But even with
+this in view, it were well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictly
+accountable for the faults of the story. Not much must be expected from
+a first novel produced in the circumstances mentioned, and issued when
+the author was only twenty-three. In his haste to give it final shape
+immediately after the serial publication, he was probably ill advised.
+One can only regret that it was not set aside for a year or so, and
+written afresh, or, at least, largely revised. Perhaps this would have
+been expecting too much from so unmethodical a worker as Clarke. The far
+finer dramatic taste and literary form of his masterpiece, issued five
+years later, showed how little indicative of his talent was the earlier
+work.
+
+In view of the large extent to which the life of the Australian landed
+classes has been described in fiction during the last twenty years, it
+is curious to read the plea Clarke offered to his Antipodean critics for
+passing over the literary material close at hand and preferring the
+well-worn paths of the English novelist.
+
+During the serial publication of _Long Odds_ the colonial press raised
+some objection to the laying of the scene in England instead of in
+Australia. The author replied simply that Henry Kingsley's _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_ being the best Australian novel that had been, or probably
+would be, written, 'any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting life of
+the colonies could not fail to challenge unfavourable comparison with
+that admirable story.'
+
+The excuse is just a little too adventitious to have convinced even
+those to whom it was originally addressed. None the less, it may at the
+moment have accurately represented the opinion of a beginner who at that
+time could scarcely have known the extent of his own powers.
+
+Probably he had given the subject little thought. His colonial
+experience was certainly less varied than Kingsley's had been. Above
+all, his tastes, and in some degree his temperament, differed
+markedly from those of his predecessor in the field. The judgment or
+instinct that kept him from coming into direct competition with
+Kingsley--assuming his own questionable belief that any effort of his
+would have been competition--at least erred on the side of safety. That
+the immediate alternative should have been an imitative example of a
+hackneyed class of English novel, ineffective of purpose,
+book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness of cynicism, is something
+which admits of a more definite opinion.
+
+'I have often thought,' says the writer, referring to the hero of
+_Geoffry Hamlyn_ 'and I dare say other Australian readers have thought
+also, How would Sam Buckley get on in England? My excuse, therefore, in
+offering to the Australian public a novel in which the plot, the
+sympathies, the interest, and the moral, are all English, must be that
+I have endeavoured to depict with such skill as is permitted to me the
+fortunes of a young Australian in that country which young Australians
+still call "Home."'
+
+Without this prefatory sign-post, the reader could never have suspected
+such a purpose. Clarke may have had it definitely in his mind when he
+first sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously or
+unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour
+of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter,
+really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of
+the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything
+typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of
+passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectator
+of it.
+
+To say that he was good-natured, jovial, popular, 'the sort of man that
+one involuntarily addresses by his Christian name'; that although he was
+shy and awkward in the society of ladies, at ease with his own sex only
+when cattle and horses were the subject of conversation, ignorant of
+music, and unable to tell Millais from Tenniel, he 'could pick you out
+any bullock in a herd ... shear a hundred sheep a day ... and drive four
+horses down a sidling in a Gippsland range with any man in
+Australia,'--to say all this by way of preliminary, to add that
+Calverley was no fool, and yet to show him in scarcely any other guise
+than that of a trusting victim of rogues, is to go a very short distance
+in the portrayal of a typical Australian.
+
+In the slack-baked condition in which we find him, he merely repeats the
+ordinary spectacle of green youth in the process of seeing life and
+buying experience at the usual high figure. Compared with the real
+squatter (who, ordinarily, is college-trained, and does not shear sheep
+nor risk his neck unnecessarily), Bob, the son of rich 'Old Calverley,'
+and nephew of an English baronet, is as an exaggerated stock-figure of
+the stage to the commonplace blood and brain of everyday life. A
+childlike trust in one's fellows, a reputation for good-nature, an
+untamable taste for horseflesh and the pursuits of the Bush, belong to
+every young squatter in a certain class of Australian fiction; they are
+qualities which may be applied indiscriminately, with always some
+effect.
+
+The real squatter is a more civilised and reliable, if less picturesque,
+person. He likes both work and pleasure, provided they be suitably
+proportioned. His work is in the personal management of his properties;
+his pleasure is taken in the large cities. He entertains no fantastic
+prejudices against urban life, in proof of which he often spends his
+later years in some city hundreds of miles from the scene of his early
+toil and pastoral successes.
+
+As a young man in London, he can be found with rooms at the Langham, the
+Métropole, or some other of the half-dozen fashionable hotels known to
+colonial visitors. There he will entertain his friends, joining with
+them, in turn, the continuous movements of the society season. He
+frankly lacks much of the ease and polish of the young Englishman, but
+his natural amiability and good spirits largely compensate for these
+deficiencies, while they preclude any feeling of discomfort on his own
+part.
+
+During his three or six months' stay in London (the combination usually
+of a little business with a very full programme of pleasure) he spends
+freely, and in his tour of the clubs plays here and there a little at
+cards--perchance loses. Worldly beyond his reputation, and somewhat
+Chesterfieldian in his principles, he consents to be a Roman while at
+Rome. He has inherited the British hatred of fuss and personal
+peculiarity, and none shall call him mean. But, unlike many of his
+English friends at club and course, he has watched and taken some part
+in the hard process of making money, and knows the difference between a
+little gentlemanly extravagance and the reckless hazarding of a fortune.
+At least, it may be affirmed of him that in nine cases out of ten he is
+decidedly no fool.
+
+These are only a few of the prominent outlines of the type of young man
+who, his holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on his own or his
+father's estates. Those whose passion for a horse destroys all
+self-control, who spend thousands in gambling and betting, who
+innocently take every smooth gentleman at his own valuation, are merely
+individuals--persons who may as unfailingly be found in England or
+elsewhere as in Australia.
+
+Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of the British pioneer colonists, as
+every Australian knows. In attempting to give an answer to his own
+speculation of 'How would Sam Buckley get on in England?' Clarke
+presumably undertook to continue the portrayal of this type. The result,
+considered apart from the function Calverley fulfils in _Long Odds_,
+must be held as emphatically a failure.
+
+Never was a novel written with a franker or more deliberate purpose than
+that shown in _For the Term of his Natural Life_. The author had the
+twofold object of picturing the dreadful crudities and brutalities of
+the early system of convict 'reformation' in Australia, and of
+preventing their possible repetition elsewhere. The first of these aims
+was attained with a fuller employment, and perhaps more moderate
+statement of historical facts, than can be found in any other fiction of
+the same class; the second was ineffective, because, when it found
+expression, the abuses which had suggested it no longer continued at the
+Antipodes, and could not conceivably be repeated on the existing
+settlements at Port Blair and Noumea.
+
+The story was written a quarter of a century too late to assist the
+abolition of convict transportation to Australia. Had it appeared at the
+right time, it might have done much where formal inquiries and the
+testimonies of disinterested and humane observers had repeatedly failed.
+For sixty years the practice of deporting criminals had been carried on,
+upheld in England by official indifference and callousness, and in the
+colonies themselves by the greed of a small class of private persons who
+grew rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned convict labour, until
+the free emigrants by the authority of their numbers were able to insist
+upon its cessation. For so long as the colonies were willing to receive
+a population of criminals, so long was England only too anxious to
+supply them and make a virtue out of it. It mattered little to the
+official mind that the system was incurably bad and immoral; the main
+thing was to speedily and effectually transfer an awkward burden to
+other shoulders. The entire history of penal transportation from Great
+Britain throws a sinister light upon the national character. The
+practice originated with banishment of convicts to the American colonies
+under conditions which constituted a form of slavery.
+
+The criminal on being sentenced became a marketable chattel of the
+State. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiring
+the right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence to
+a builder, planter, manufacturer, or other employer beyond the Atlantic.
+The price paid to the British Government averaged five pounds per head,
+and some of the more useful prisoners were resold in America for
+twenty-five pounds each. One of these dealers in convict labour, in
+giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, made a
+matter-of-fact complaint that 'the trade' was not so remunerative as
+people supposed. Artisans sold well, but the profit realised upon them
+was often consumed by losses upon some of the others. One-seventh of his
+purchases died on his hands, and in the course of business he had been
+obliged to give the old, the halt and the lame in for nothing. When the
+War of Independence closed the United States against the traffic,
+Britain was given a fresh opportunity to reconsider and place its penal
+system upon a more humane basis; but the temptation to adopt sweeping
+measures was once more too strong to be resisted. The promoters of the
+Australian scheme were in so great a hurry to seize their chance that
+they despatched over seven hundred convicts before even the site for the
+first settlement was chosen. The hardships which this characteristic act
+afterwards entailed are too familiar in history to need repetition.
+After such recklessness, it is no wonder that, as Sir Roger Therry has
+observed, 'the first-fruits of the system exhibited a state of society
+in New South Wales which the world might be challenged to surpass in
+depravity.'
+
+A generation passed before the British Government reluctantly admitted
+transportation to be a failure. Lord John Russell, as late as 1847,
+discovered that it had been 'too much the custom to consult the
+convenience of Great Britain by getting rid of persons of evil habits,
+and to take that view alone.' In planting provinces which might become
+empires, they 'should endeavour to make them, not seats of malefactors
+and convicts, but communities which may set examples of virtue and
+happiness.'
+
+This mild, platitudinous rebuke came when all the damage was done. It
+remained for the free inhabitants of Australia to point to a plainer
+principle in declaring that 'the inundating of feeble and dependent
+colonies with the criminals of the parent State is opposed to that
+arrangement of Providence by which the virtue of each community is
+destined to combat its own vice.'
+
+To illustrate in a single story all the most prominent and pernicious
+features of the transportation system, Clarke had to invent a case of
+crime in which the criminal, unlike the majority of the worst offenders
+sent to the settlements, should always be worthy of the reader's
+sympathy. It was necessary that the felon be a victim as well as a
+felon; that he should not regain his liberty in any form, but continue
+by a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers to
+experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie
+Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be
+exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist
+between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who,
+for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We
+must treat brutes like brutes,' says the prime martinet of the story:
+'keep 'em down, sir; make 'em _feel_ what they are. They're here to
+work, sir. If they won't work, flog 'em until they will. If they
+work--why, a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'em in mind of what
+they may expect if they get lazy.'
+
+The author chose to represent the extreme case of a man who, innocent of
+a murder charged against him, allowed himself to be transported under an
+assumed name in order to prevent the exposure of a long-concealed act of
+unfaithfulness on the part of a beloved mother.
+
+Richard Devine is the bastard son of an aristocratic Englishwoman who in
+early youth was forced by her father into a loveless union with a rich
+plebeian. The single fault of the mother's life is confessed after
+twenty years, when the husband in a moment of anger strikes her
+high-spirited and obstinate son. The latter consents to leave his home
+for ever, and relinquish the name he has borne. On these terms the wife
+is spared. Richard Devine goes on the instant. Crossing Hampstead Heath,
+he comes upon a robbed and murdered man, and presently is arrested for
+the crime. The explanation that would save him would also cause the
+dreaded exposure of his mother, and so he withholds it, gives a false
+name, and, having put himself beyond the means of defence and the
+recognition of friends, is convicted and sentenced to transportation for
+life.
+
+In making all the subsequent career of Rufus Dawes abnormally
+painful--that of a dumb sufferer who in sixteen years' confinement,
+ending only in a tragic death, experiences by turns every form of
+punishment and oppression--the author often touches, though it cannot be
+said he ever exceeds, the limits of possibility.
+
+'Need one who was not a hardened criminal have suffered so much and so
+long?' is the question that continually recurs to the mind of the
+reader; but it is suggested by the prolonged and pitiful sense of
+unsatisfied justice rather than by any doubting that the extremes of
+penal discipline as practised in the name of the British Government
+between forty and sixty years ago could have been successively applied
+to a single human being. The writer adheres relentlessly to his central
+idea to the end. Dawes' unameliorated servitude and unavenged fate were
+intended to symbolise glaring anomalies of justice which never were
+remedied. The 'correction' he is subjected to was that which the laws of
+the time permitted, and which in many cases goaded its victims to draw
+lots to murder one another in order to escape from their misery.
+
+Some of the least creditable features of convict transportation, of
+which it was said by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence had been a
+disgrace to the nation, came to an end only when the system itself was
+abolished. But novelist and statesman alike struck at the abuses without
+feeling it necessary to mention any of the good results of the system.
+Its inherent merits were strictly few, indeed; yet they ought to be
+sought in history by anyone who would get a fair idea of the prison
+policy of the period. It is, of course, inevitable that the criticism
+conveyed in a strong imaginative work should fail to give a full view of
+results so complex as those produced by the largely haphazard method of
+the Australian penal settlements.
+
+The practice of assigning prisoners to private employment, for example,
+produced notable effects upon society, of which Marcus Clarke's story
+gives but the faintest indication. If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinary
+first offender, he might have regained liberty soon after his arrival in
+Van Diemen's Land. But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of the
+author to make him exhibit all the rigours of convict discipline. His
+case must therefore be regarded as more exceptional than typical. As a
+rule, only men inveterate in crime were detained in constant punishment.
+Transportation for life meant servitude only for eight years if the
+convict conducted himself well, a condition which, of course, depended
+largely on the sort of master who secured his services. Major de Winton,
+an officer who served for some years on Norfolk Island, has mentioned
+that a prisoner by good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after he had
+been twice sentenced to death, thrice to transportation for life, and to
+cumulative periods of punishment amounting to over a hundred years!
+
+An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a literary workman is obtained
+from the story of the conception and laborious writing of _For the Term
+of his Natural Life_. It affords the first, and unhappily the last,
+evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; and
+from the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery of
+keeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friends
+knew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the general
+reader of his famous novel.
+
+The best of Clarke's minor writings display the results of much general
+culture, but give no proof of special preparation. They are short,
+concentrated, forcible--the natural expression of a brilliant,
+impetuous, and spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural repugnance to
+lengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essential
+conditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one.
+
+In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruit
+his health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three years
+writing extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties of
+Melbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than his
+could not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life had
+suggested itself previously during his reading of Australian history.
+Finding himself now without sufficient money for the proposed holiday,
+he decided to put into active progress this literary project which had
+hitherto been only vaguely outlined.
+
+Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance at
+Melbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made a
+sufficiently striking story. But he concluded that he could make his
+picture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the old
+settlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson,
+Massina and Co. readily contracted with the young novelist for the first
+publication of the story in their monthly, the _Australian Journal_, and
+made him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristic
+confidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for the
+new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appear
+after the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industry
+necessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarke
+could give.
+
+Writing against time, he is said to have felt like a convict himself.
+The irregular dribbling out of the story so injured the reputation of
+the journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half the
+ordinary issue.
+
+Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke,
+has given an entertaining account of what followed: 'The author would
+be frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequently
+promise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effect
+the required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat better
+results; but as this could not go on _ad libitum_, copy would fall into
+arrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the author
+to finish his tale was to induce him into a room in the
+publishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc.,
+and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facile
+pen; and in such manner was _His Natural Life_ produced.'
+
+In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishers
+print a somewhat comical letter which they had received from the
+delinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tells
+them that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will let
+them have a larger supply during the following month. The letter
+concludes nonchalantly as follows: 'This is awkward, I admit, and I
+suppose some good-natured friend or other will say that I have
+over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-called
+festive season, but I can't help it.'
+
+The story as first published was much longer than the form in which it
+appears in the English edition. At the request of the present writer,
+Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was one of Clarke's literary friends,
+supplies the following account of how the novel came to be so
+extensively curtailed:
+
+'As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke
+constantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential,
+conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and on
+one of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through a
+Melbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to read
+it, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the story
+carefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly the
+impression it had made on me.
+
+'After twenty years I can recall the substance of the letter, which is
+probably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as it
+is powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragic
+if they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in the
+story whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The hero
+underwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible,
+motive, and on the whole was a _mauvais sujet_ himself. To win the
+reader's sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that the
+latter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was described
+under a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and I
+objected to the publication of a song in French _argot_ with a spirited
+translation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the author
+of the novel, whereas I had read it in an early _Blackwood_ before he
+was born.
+
+'Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all my
+suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of
+his mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omitted
+both the things I had objected to.'
+
+Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the artistic unity of the novel is
+thus preserved, and the dominant aim of the author emphasised. Many of
+those who read it in the serial parts strongly disapproved of the
+excisions, but there can be little doubt that the story is the stronger
+for their having been made.
+
+It was as the work of a vivid historian, rather than of a social
+reformer, that Marcus Clarke's masterpiece won its popularity, and, for
+its dramatic and substantially accurate view of the worst (always the
+worst) aspect of convict life, it will continue to be read while anyone
+remains to take an interest in the unhappiest period of Australian
+history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the
+intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical
+method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and
+inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was
+fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far
+English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and
+invested with more power than single individuals should ever possess,
+may become despots, and even blackguards.
+
+It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the
+originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of
+1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with
+all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself
+even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact
+historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great
+privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first
+thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the
+officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with
+the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they
+held.
+
+Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made
+no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of
+Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin.
+
+In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary
+throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically
+put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good
+effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the
+colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often
+wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system.
+His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his
+term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system
+loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the
+other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to
+their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate.
+
+The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of
+punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest,
+consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the
+highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.' It was with the latter
+part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to
+represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk
+Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir
+George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the
+experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House
+of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and
+'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting
+those who undergo punishment.'
+
+The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke's plot was always seen clearly,
+but never obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme that of the impetuous
+reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment
+known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral
+with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid
+eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian
+novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained
+by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and
+by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson
+to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm and
+impersonal presentation.
+
+In the rapid progress of the plot the reader is kept keenly interested.
+If he have an eye for the moral he will detect it at once; if not, there
+is no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he will
+find the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness of
+truth,' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. He
+confessed that the book had a fascination for him. Not once or twice,
+but many times, had he read it, and during his visit to Australia he
+spent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements and
+examining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based.
+
+That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardly
+be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and
+outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify
+the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully
+depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _His
+Natural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most
+young writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good an
+artist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any misuse of the
+privileges of good fiction. To maintain a strong impression on the
+reader, his touch is occasionally strong and fearless, like that of
+Kipling. But this object attained, he uses his materials with an almost
+unnecessary reticence. The episode of the cannibalism of Gabbett and his
+fellow-convicts is exceptional. Yet it purposely falls short of the
+terrible original, which is happily hidden away from general view
+between the covers of an old Parliamentary report.
+
+It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimate
+of motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far,
+it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference for
+delineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vice
+more clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for the
+purposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But his
+cynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--was
+not of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice or
+dishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have no
+uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad characters
+are in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life of
+debauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but the
+effect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on the
+man's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison
+tyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused.
+
+Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives of
+the ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadows
+contrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen others
+in the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments of
+rogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ which
+Lord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have been
+so continuous and unqualified.
+
+The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded by
+the story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting the
+claims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need not
+have defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not to
+gratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. James
+North--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been an
+active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never Too
+Late to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed
+and self-accusing drunkard.
+
+The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and
+dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities
+among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is
+distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a
+hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become
+almost monotonous in their unvaried severity.
+
+But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the
+clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of
+an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or
+that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured
+convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of
+criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?
+
+How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorous
+dissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort of
+satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. I
+like to see the fellows' eyes glint at you as you walk past 'em. Gad!
+they'd tear me to pieces if they dared, some of 'em.'
+
+Frere is a triumph of consistent literary portraiture. He is generally
+understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose
+name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably
+more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it must
+be assumed that Clarke aimed only at the representation of a type.
+
+Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates, Burgess and Troke,
+there undoubtedly were on the settlements, but the average official has
+probably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant.
+Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anything
+unprovided for in the 'regulations,' for which he has an abject respect.
+'It is not for me to find fault with the system,' he says; 'but I have
+sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the
+chain-gang and the cat.' But he never gives intelligence, much less
+kindness, a fair trial.
+
+Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be found
+in any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to the
+penal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society,
+familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, and
+habitually in the society of her elders, she early develops into a
+quaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such as might well disconcert a
+peacock like the Reverend Meekin.
+
+To Frere, whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, her
+innocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as a
+strong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruel
+fraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so
+tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a
+relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers,
+despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intensely
+womanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely places
+her creator far above the rank of the cynics in literature.
+
+Not the least of the elements which combine to make _His Natural Life_
+one of the most remarkable novels of the century is the occasional
+skilful varying of its painful realism with a colouring of romance, as
+in the relations between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing devotion when
+she is so strangely made dependent upon him at the deserted settlement;
+his long-continued confidence that she will effect his vindication and
+deliverance; and, finally, the dominant motive of securing her safety
+against North with which he escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, and
+joins her in the doomed schooner on its last voyage to Van Diemen's
+Land.
+
+What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in the
+story--including the experiences of the marooned party at Macquarie
+Harbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil's
+Blowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel an
+ineffaceable memory.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY KINGSLEY.
+
+
+What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm of
+Henry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him by
+principles of literary art, have said that his best work is in many
+places of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, and
+imitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply the
+place of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the central
+motive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of a
+young woman's self-sacrifice; and the Thackerayan mannerisms in
+_Ravenshoe_ are an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine novel.
+
+As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than
+may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely
+credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style
+far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers
+in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above
+that of his more celebrated brother.
+
+The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with
+Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a
+hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as
+it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of
+them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in
+one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever
+may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a
+story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain
+of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he
+encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life.
+
+The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been
+recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest
+might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of
+view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley
+and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the
+three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for
+their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of
+the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to
+leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in
+most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial,
+expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more
+noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the
+question which opens this essay.
+
+Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of
+education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields
+of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with
+ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford
+without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off
+to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational
+period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the
+world. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies could
+scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed
+employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged
+Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit
+mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to
+persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the
+country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the
+towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half
+done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had
+deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to
+stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found
+up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to
+stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the
+reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners.
+
+Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from Van
+Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican
+mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed
+shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the
+crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo.
+In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them
+were toiling in Victoria alone.
+
+Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his
+first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that
+he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and
+the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from
+England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they
+thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was
+continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to
+his wife.
+
+An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition
+of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary
+career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent
+in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which
+succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less
+precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman
+in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he
+was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then,
+like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the country
+in search of work on the sheep and cattle stations.
+
+A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the late
+Hon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends the
+arrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners'
+(_i.e._, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down on
+his luck.' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest at
+the station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeable
+glimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old Melbourne
+Memories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood
+twelve years ago.
+
+At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and making
+the experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimate
+commercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account by
+him. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in western
+Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood met
+Kingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worth
+quoting in full.
+
+'Why Langa-willi,' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in my
+memory, apart from other reasons, for I spent many a pleasant day there,
+was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest
+of Mitchell's.
+
+'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the
+best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the
+well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can
+imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down
+comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden
+forth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but in
+reality to get an appetite for lunch.
+
+'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their own
+way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had covered
+the regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when
+the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writing
+up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the
+glasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the
+verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy,
+unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and
+for his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. I
+suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often
+looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the
+restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.'
+
+At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among
+the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's
+career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few
+words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first
+four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as
+he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and
+became more conventional in his methods.
+
+He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh
+_Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the
+Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without
+the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had
+much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The
+writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed
+always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he
+employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy.
+Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his
+life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of
+which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels.
+
+It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word
+of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its
+riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the
+disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers
+during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any
+of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_
+seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most
+striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.
+
+The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre
+at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a
+daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was
+primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation
+of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity
+created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories
+which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he
+succeeded with singular completeness.
+
+Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _The
+Hillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopædic Dr. Mulhaus in his
+lecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is
+nothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance with
+mining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant in
+his mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not even
+incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields.
+
+As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, he
+selected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of his
+stories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process,
+extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold period
+would certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. There
+is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst of
+fortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many of
+them from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomes
+varying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases as
+high as thirty thousand pounds, a year.
+
+The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience is
+seen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volume
+of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it might
+have been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or a
+washing-cradle in his life.
+
+The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant and
+ill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberal
+estimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before their
+kindred in Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is undeniable,
+that they are very sensitive to praise or blame. What wounds them more
+than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceeding
+from persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt and
+trustful hospitality.
+
+To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean,
+the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitor
+should be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices in
+the collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article.
+Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, and
+the critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer of
+Australian society.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of
+imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion
+towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or
+months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself
+from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point.
+
+It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual
+writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether
+these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround
+them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do
+not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a
+complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well
+to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall
+say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?
+
+By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the
+colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the
+pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate
+(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more
+enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in
+ordinary circumstances.
+
+The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would
+earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself
+spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this
+first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be
+unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least
+told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous
+one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort.
+
+It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to
+preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant
+colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some
+of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and
+delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and
+then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader
+expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a
+greater trust in human nature.
+
+As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this
+difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in
+the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists.
+Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's
+young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the
+characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show
+themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of
+representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry.
+
+Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr.
+Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within
+a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for
+four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the
+manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a
+deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of
+course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute
+observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to
+fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest
+sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have
+seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly
+called the working aristocracy of Australia.
+
+The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and
+picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian,
+Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the
+rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships
+which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil,
+loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The
+aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one.
+
+There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has
+made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley
+been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have
+obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the
+historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the
+compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's
+choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was
+telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of
+emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its
+difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the
+exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches
+rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the
+first to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognise
+the beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate the
+pervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapid
+early development of Australia was due.
+
+It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all that
+was best in the social life of the country, at one of its most
+interesting periods, should not have written a volume or two of
+reminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or
+_The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of more
+descriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in the
+use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger
+writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be
+considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to
+Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of
+Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story
+of the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geological
+lecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose the
+author ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an
+opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for the
+hand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dull
+prosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture of
+the pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldom
+seen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with all
+their wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story is
+rapidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate which
+has been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations no
+longer providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the land
+where he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Unlike so many of
+the pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to England, but that it is
+_not_ 'for ever' one can safely predict from the outset. He sees the old
+country in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered on
+the rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly bought
+back the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its original
+acres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in the
+security of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, they
+can contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle by
+hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have
+arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the
+cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire
+life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a
+new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes
+among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse
+approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of
+life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening
+glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal
+friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality,
+and charity towards all mankind.
+
+Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the
+proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world
+over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his
+novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring
+their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that
+'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold
+assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right
+feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent
+and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The
+names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene
+after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to
+return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature,
+refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs.
+Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom
+Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and
+didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to
+politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend
+her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic,
+passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain
+Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is
+sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers
+so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came
+down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured
+roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is
+everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except George
+Hawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audacious
+examination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful to
+find all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, even
+though the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to be
+true.
+
+But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story in
+contemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him.
+In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketches
+straight from the life of the country, and it is their beauty that makes
+_Geoffry Hamlyn_ a classic in Australian literature.
+
+Among the characters, there are so many who inspire us with love rather
+than mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, of
+conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, which
+in another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoyment
+of the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes the
+visits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts and
+happiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yet
+the majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalled
+separately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a station
+near at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona,
+Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always a
+hostage from one staying as a guest at the other.' The visits were
+generally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they felt
+inclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustrated
+at the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the little
+colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, where
+she has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain's
+hospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and,
+although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as much
+enjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during this
+next week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end of
+the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited,
+and apparently bent on making a long stay of it.' They help one another
+when there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously.
+Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of the
+hearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends.
+
+There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying the
+material comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. Major
+Buckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to hold
+decided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middle
+of the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts of
+Providence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinner
+itself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling that
+you have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd do
+it.'
+
+On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeable
+doctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast in
+Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end.'
+
+Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone in
+an armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything for
+himself, would, in the author's opinion, 'show himself a man of weak
+mind.' Niggers were all that a Southern gentleman wanted to complete his
+comfort when the sun was at baking-point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's teachings
+undergo a playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for
+cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of
+perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of
+Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two
+lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The
+Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that she didn't.
+
+In the conversation of Kingsley's colonists, the business of the
+squatter, his hopes, fears and struggles, find no place, and the idea of
+hard work is never obtruded for its own sake. The talk is the talk of a
+cultured class who live wholesome lives and have no cares. The twelve
+thousand miles that separate them from the centre of their intellectual
+life are obliterated. The men preserve their individual tastes, together
+with that comradeship and mutual considerateness which have their origin
+in the best traditions of college life. The same loyalty and chivalry
+are prominently reproduced in the characters of _Ravenshoe_ and _Silcote
+of Silcotes_. But in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ these qualities are perhaps more
+noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the later
+novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially
+competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached
+to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an
+Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only
+the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is
+intent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to provide
+for a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the new
+country an even better field than the old one for his researches as a
+naturalist and geologist. In telling his story, Kingsley seems, in
+short, to have treated pioneer squatting in Australia as the brighter
+aspects of English country life have been treated in fiction for
+generations past. He expends his best efforts in showing the picturesque
+surroundings and interior comfort of Australian homes. Neither their
+tables nor their bookshelves lack any of the best luxuries of the hour.
+The greyness and rawness of their environment are not touched upon.
+Marcus Clarke could never have shown the Australian people so much of
+the beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the country
+to be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonely
+specks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend the
+contrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left on
+the mind of the reader. Australian scenery awed and depressed him. With
+all his powers of graphic expression, he could seldom write of it
+without exaggeration. It was the fascination of the grotesque rather
+than the picturesque that he felt. Kingsley, though scarcely so graceful
+and vivid a describer, had a keener and more constant sense of natural
+beauty. His vision was unclouded by the peculiar susceptibility of
+temperament which narrowed the view of his brilliant contemporary. He
+could not have indulged in rhetorical flourishes at the expense of
+accuracy, as in the familiar passage professing to give the Australian
+view of 'our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds
+who cannot fly, our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all
+fours.' A comparison of Marcus Clarke's too often quoted description
+with the sketches of landscape given in, say, the twentieth,
+twenty-eighth and thirty-sixth chapters of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and at the
+beginning of the third volume of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_
+curiously illustrates how far the appreciation of Australian scenery
+depends upon the point of view of the observer.
+
+Kingsley's descriptions, like all else that he wrote of the country,
+breathe an unmistakable personal enjoyment. They are the natural
+expression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with which
+he surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim's
+shins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, old
+fellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends in
+the sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden.
+Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go on
+shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, had
+foreseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five pounds
+on the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking
+under the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung at
+him, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend
+Stockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning the
+evaporation of his love for Mary Hawker.
+
+Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or in
+describing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figure
+so often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own
+happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure
+mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's
+interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance
+of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach
+an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if
+they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good
+fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness.
+
+Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited by
+persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with
+only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of
+their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical
+exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at
+Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice
+Brentwood is almost unique in Australian literature.
+
+Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one of
+the most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimen
+of Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who were
+the terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in the
+district, and, after committing outrages at one station, are reported to
+be riding on to another twenty miles distant. At the latter, Captain
+Brentwood's home, Alice happens to be alone. When the terrible news
+comes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest road
+is ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, and
+will they arrive before him?
+
+    Sam's noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a hundred years
+    old, stood in the stable. The buying of that horse had been Sam's
+    only extravagance, for which he had often reproached himself, and
+    now this day he would see whether he would get his money's-worth out
+    of that horse or no.
+
+    I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting the bridle on
+    Widderin's beautiful little head. Neither of us spoke; only when I
+    handed him the saddle, and helped him with the girths, he said, 'God
+    bless you!'
+
+    I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he rode by, he
+    said, 'Good-bye, Uncle Jeff; perhaps you won't see me again'; and I
+    cried out, 'Remember your God and your mother, Sam, and don't do
+    anything foolish.' Then he was gone....
+
+    Looking across the plains the way he should go, I saw another
+    horseman toiling far away, and recognised Doctor Mulhaus. Good
+    Doctor! he had seen the danger in a moment, and by his ready wit had
+    got a start of everyone else by ten minutes. The Doctor, on his
+    handsome, long-bodied Arabian mare, was making good work of it
+    across the plains, when he heard the rush of a horse's feet behind
+    him, and turning, he saw tall Widderin bestridden by Sam, springing
+    over the turf, gaining on him stride after stride. In a few minutes
+    they were alongside of one another.
+
+    'Good lad!' cried the Doctor. 'On, forwards; catch her, and away to
+    the woods with her! Bloodhound Desborough will be on their trail in
+    half an hour. Save her, and we will have noble vengeance!'
+
+    Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on across the plain
+    like a solitary ship at sea. The good horse, with elastic and easy
+    motion, fled on his course like a bird, lifting his feet clearly and
+    rapidly through the grass. The brisk south wind filled his wide
+    nostrils as he turned his graceful neck from side to side, till,
+    finding that work was meant, and not play, he began to hold his head
+    straight before him, and rush steadily forward....
+
+    One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the plain and
+    die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He said one short
+    prayer, but that towards the end was interrupted by the wild current
+    of his thoughts. Was there any hope? They, the devils, would have
+    been drinking at the Mayfords', and perhaps would go slow; or would
+    they ride fast and wild? After thinking a short time, he feared the
+    latter. They had tasted blood, and knew that the country would be
+    roused on them shortly....
+
+    Here are a brace of good pistols, and they with care shall give
+    account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were
+    better--so much better--not to live if one were only ten minutes too
+    late.... Now he was in the forest again, and now as he rode quickly
+    down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the hoarse
+    rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well-nigh
+    come.... Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some
+    wild inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful
+    as ever, and Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah,
+    feeding her birds.
+
+    As he rode up he shouted to her and beckoned. She came running
+    through the house, and met him breathless at the doorway.
+
+    'The bushrangers, Alice, my love!' he said. 'We must fly this
+    instant; they are close to us now.'
+
+    She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty well, for her
+    father had often told her what to do. No tears! no hysterics! She
+    took Sam's hand without a word, and, placing her fairy foot upon his
+    boot, vaulted up into the saddle before him.... They crossed the
+    river, and dismounting, they led the tired horse up the steep slope
+    of turf that surrounded a little castellated tor of bluestone....
+
+    'I do not see them anywhere, Alice,' said Sam presently. 'I see no
+    one coming across the plains. They must be either very near us in
+    the hollow of the river-valley, or else a long way off.'
+
+    'There they are!' said Alice. 'Surely there is a large party of
+    horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or eight miles off.'
+
+    'Ay, ten,' said Sam. 'I am not sure that they are horsemen.' Then he
+    said suddenly in a whisper, 'Lie down, my love, in God's name! Here
+    they are, close to us!'
+
+    There burst on his ear a confused round of talking and laughing, and
+    out of one of the rocky gullies leading towards the river came the
+    men they had been flying from, in number about fourteen. They had
+    crossed the river, for some unknown reason, and to the fear-struck
+    hiders it seemed as though they were making straight towards their
+    lair.
+
+    He had got Widderin's head in his breast, blindfolding him with his
+    coat, for should he neigh now they were undone indeed! As the
+    bushrangers approached, the horse began to get uneasy and paw the
+    ground, putting Sam in such an agony of terror that the sweat rolled
+    down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on his arm, and
+    Alice's voice, which he scarcely recognised, said in a fierce
+    whisper: 'Give me one of your pistols, sir!'
+
+    'Leave that to me!' he replied, in the same tone.
+
+    'As you please,' she said; 'but I must not fall alive into their
+    hands. Never look your mother in the face again if I do.'
+
+    He gave one more glance around, and saw that the enemy would come
+    within a hundred yards of their hiding-place. Then he held the horse
+    faster than ever and shut his eyes.
+
+    Was it a minute only, or an hour, until they heard the sound of the
+    voices dying away in the roar of the river, and, opening their eyes
+    once more, looked into one another's faces? Faces they thought that
+    they had never seen before--so each told the other afterwards--so
+    wild, so haggard, and so strange.
+
+If, as Professor Masson says, 'it is by his characters that a novelist
+is chiefly judged,' Henry Kingsley's future reputation will be found to
+depend almost solely on what he accomplished in _Geoffry Hamlyn_, _The
+Hillyars and the Burtons_ and _Ravenshoe_. In the first two of these
+there is an abundance of original observation and little conscious study
+of character. The vivid Australian scenes of the one, and the Chelsea
+life of the other, are transcripts of the author's own memories. His
+knowledge of the squatters he got by working for them and living with
+them; what he knew of police and convicts and bushrangers he learned in
+doing police duty; the life of the Burtons, as told in 'Jim Burton's
+Story,' was that which the author saw during his boyhood round his
+father's old rectory on Chelsea Embankment.
+
+'He seemed to me,' says Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, 'to have lived his own
+books, battled them out and forced them into their living shapes, to
+have felt them and been them all.' Hardly all--one feels bound to say.
+The remark is entirely true of nearly everything in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and
+of three-fourths of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but to _Ravenshoe_
+it applies in a more limited degree, and to some of the later novels
+scarcely ever. Either through carelessness (of which one often suspects
+him) or deficiency of judgment, Kingsley more than once allowed the
+exigencies of his plots to destroy all consistency in his characters.
+
+Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer, is made to retire from
+the world and brood for many years, and on quite insufficient grounds,
+in the belief that his first wife had been unfaithful, and had tried to
+poison him. Nothing short of a condition of semi-insanity could explain
+his conduct. In other respects the character is finely conceived. Emma
+Burton, too, is a perfectly natural and charming person until she is
+employed to revive the old problem of how far a sense of duty can
+triumph over the power of love. Her devotion to her deformed brother is
+wrong, because it is unnecessary. But even if this were not the case, it
+would be irrational in a woman so eminently sensible and unromantic as
+she is shown to be in the first half of the story. Almost at the
+beginning of her voluntary service she is represented as realising 'the
+hideous fate to which she has condemned herself in her fanaticism.' It
+is quite impossible to make the reader believe that, loving Erne Hillyar
+as she did, she could for years persist in rejecting him, and that her
+brother would permit so much sacrifice on his account.
+
+The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is another instance of perversion.
+Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust
+the _blasé_ aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more
+inconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from the
+Bush' employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance of
+hers in Rotten Row.
+
+But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the
+caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in
+a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty,
+audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton
+and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson.
+
+Even in _Silcote of Silcotes_ there are intermittent glimpses of
+finely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities of
+the Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreign
+intrigue. Kingsley's skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men,
+especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his
+philosophic friend Marston (a study of the George Warrington type);
+Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless
+profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athletic
+curate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman.
+With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placid
+good-natured cynic of _Ravenshoe_, is, however, a clever exception. 'All
+old women are beautiful,' says Kingsley in one of his stories, and he
+never portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and Lady
+Ascot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers,
+are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinct
+personage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and
+Ada Cambridge.
+
+The superior position usually accorded to _Ravenshoe_ among Kingsley's
+novels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by the
+naturalness of its characters. It was the author's first essay in pure
+romance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imagination
+was always largely, sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved to
+people old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangled
+genealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportion
+property to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhuman
+generosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illness
+which terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends for
+Welter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so long
+before that had seduced Charles's sister and stole his _fiancée_.
+Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs,
+and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthful
+companion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the author
+proceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in many
+similar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constant
+anxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments and
+confidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only a
+small way to discount the sterling merits of the novel.
+
+
+
+
+ADA CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+Towards the close of 1890 the Australian booksellers--a cautious,
+conservative class in their attitude towards new fiction, especially
+that produced by the adventurous female writer of these latter
+days--began to display so marked an interest in the work of Ada
+Cambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the case
+might have credited them with a friendly--possibly a patriotic--desire
+to give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in the
+following year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularity
+of the author was firmly established.
+
+The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave
+them a place of honour in his show-window, and the leading critical
+review said that the second story possessed a charm which ought to
+induce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make an
+exception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition that
+the public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving young
+writer. Yet Ada Cambridge's literary work had extended over no less a
+period than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securing
+recognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could have
+won a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half the
+labour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, as
+the wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besides
+literature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when there
+happened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of the
+leading colonial newspapers.
+
+About half a dozen novels were issued in this way, besides occasional
+articles and poems. The publication of the longer stories in the
+_Australasian_, a high-class weekly journal, ought in itself to have
+made a name for the author, and possibly would have done so, were they
+not in most cases so obviously a local product, and therefore not to be
+seriously considered. It was a repetition of the experience of Rolf
+Boldrewood. In the end, as usual, it was the English public that first
+accepted her novels for what they were worth.
+
+Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint
+villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best
+stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband,
+the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England,
+to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other
+country towns of this colony, they settled in 1893 at Williamstown, a
+waterside suburb of Melbourne.
+
+A novel entitled _Up the Murray_, dealing with life in the colonies, was
+published by Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue her work under
+her maiden name) in the Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the same
+character followed at irregular intervals. Two were issued in book-form
+by a London firm of publishers, but did not attain to much more than a
+library circulation.
+
+When the author again came before the English public, it was with a
+novel in which the purely Australian interest was rigidly subordinated
+to dramatic quality and a richly sympathetic study of character. _A
+Marked Man_ is the story of a younger son of an old English county
+family who, while sharing the pride and indomitable spirit of his
+ancestry, develops a hatred for conventional prejudices and religious
+cant, and, after making a final assertion of independence by marrying a
+farmer's daughter, emigrates to New South Wales to establish a name and
+fortune on his own account.
+
+The first half of the action takes place in England, the remainder in
+the colonies. The natural beauties surrounding the home of the Delavels
+at Sydney are not less delicately and poetically described than the
+village life they have left behind in the mother country--the
+patriarchal rule of an old-fashioned, rather pompous house, over a
+people retaining the hereditary respect of vassals for their feudal
+lord; but the view given of Australian society is, in keeping with the
+relation to it of Richard Delavel and his household, of the slightest
+kind.
+
+Delavel and the only daughter whom he has trained to be his second self,
+whose comradeship makes him almost forget the long-drawn thraldom of his
+early _mésalliance_, live in a world so much and so necessarily their
+own, that one is grateful for the good taste which excluded from it the
+bustle and commoner interests of colonial life. The novel met with
+general, and in several instances cordial, favour in England, and since
+then the author has yearly increased her reputation.
+
+Three out of five of the later novels are, like _A Marked Man_, made
+comparatively independent of the distinctively local interest to which
+we have been accustomed in the works of most Australian authors. It is
+not possible, for example, to point out anything in the shape of an
+essentially local first cause for any of the principal incidents of
+_Not All in Vain_ and _A Marriage Ceremony_. The passionate half-brute,
+Neil Hammond, who pursues the heroine of the former story across the
+world, and terrorises her with his unwelcome attentions, would have met
+a violent death, or himself have murdered someone, in his own country or
+elsewhere as inevitably as in Australia; and the man who killed him
+would not have found Katherine Knowles less faithful during the long
+years of his imprisonment had her sacrifice been under the daily
+observation of Hammond's family and her own strait-laced aunts in their
+East Norfolk home.
+
+In _A Marriage Ceremony_, the only advantage secured by taking the story
+from London to Melbourne--instead of to New York, let us say--seems to
+lie in whatever added strength the sense of greater distance imparts to
+the temporary appearance of a final separation between Betty Ochiltree
+and her strangely-wedded husband. The marriage that was a condition of
+their inheritance having been performed, bride and bridegroom part in
+accordance with a previous agreement. The former reappears as a
+prominent figure in the society of modern Melbourne--the Melbourne of
+1893, when the failure of banks and land companies was a regular subject
+of morning news.
+
+Here, it might be supposed, was an opportunity for one or two vivid and
+instructive sketches of the sensational period that witnessed the proof
+of so much folly and its punishment, and wrought so many more effects on
+all classes of Australian society than could be noted in the common
+records of the time. But the great crisis is almost ignored in the
+novel. There are merely a few passing references to its progress, and a
+mention of the loss on the part of Mrs. Ochiltree of some of the wealth
+which she is beginning to regard as having been rather spuriously
+acquired.
+
+Even the very successful story of the _Three Miss Kings_ and _A Mere
+Chance_ tell little of the city life of Australia, though their action
+is placed in it almost exclusively. The latter is a tale of match-making
+intrigue and money-worship in Toorak, but the main interest of the plot
+apart, the account of fashionable Melbourne is a singularly colourless
+one. As for Mrs. Duff-Scott and her Major, the amiable pair who in the
+character of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to find husbands for
+Elizabeth King and her sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are so
+effectually forestalled, they are as conventionally English as though
+they belonged to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood.
+
+Again, though during half of _Fidelis_ we are given occasional
+impressive and delightful glimpses of Nature under southern skies, the
+principal characters are English, and in England is centred first and
+last the dominant pathos of the story. A complete absence of dialect
+from the novels helps to emphasise the author's slender use of
+extraneous aids to interest.
+
+The influence of Ada Cambridge's twenty-five years' Australian
+experience is shown in her general outlook upon life, rather than in the
+details of her work. The prevailing tone of her books is one of marked
+cheerfulness, sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty dislike for
+conventional stupidities, especially for the mock-modesty that stifles
+honest sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement to the pleasant
+dictum (which seems so much more feasible in sunny Australia than in
+colder northern lands) that the second half of life is not less fruitful
+and satisfying than the first.
+
+As the general effect of Ada Cambridge's teaching, so far as it can be
+gathered from her plots, and the few instances in which she has
+permitted herself anything in the shape of didactic expression, is to
+make us more patient with life's complexities and perceptive of its
+compensations, and more content with whatever happiness may be drawn in
+our way by the chain of accidents called Destiny, so do her principal
+characters, in their foibles and their strength--in the little acts and
+impulses which qualify alike their heroism and their baseness--tend to
+make us more discriminative and charitable.
+
+In almost every case they are strong studies from some point of view.
+Of deliberate analysis there is very little; but there are numerous
+realistic touches not commonly admitted in fiction, which, handled with
+skill and insight, keep the character within the pale of common
+experience and increase rather than alienate the reader's sympathy.
+Thus, Richard Delavel's outburst of relief upon the death of his first
+wife, so far from being vulgar and brutal, as it might have seemed in
+other circumstances, recalls and emphasises the high sense of duty and
+honour and the iron self-restraint which had enabled him to be in all
+essentials a good husband for twenty-five years to a cold-hearted
+creature, between whom and himself there had never been either common
+interest or feeling, and for whose sake he had relinquished the woman
+that would have been his real mate in intellect and sympathy. Delavel's
+housekeeper, who is also a privileged friend, takes him to task for his
+unseemly hurry to go in search of this old love before his wife had been
+a week in her grave. He makes no secret of his relief. 'The sense that
+I am free is turning my brain with joy,' he confesses.
+
+    'I say it because I feel it. I am aware that it is in very bad
+    taste, but that doesn't make it the less true. Do you suppose people
+    are never glad when their relations die? They are--very often; they
+    can't help it; only they pretend they are not, because it seems so
+    shocking. I don't pretend--at least, I need not pretend to you. The
+    fault is not always--not all--on the side of the survivors, Hannah.
+    I don't think I am any worse than those who pretend a grief that
+    they don't feel. I was never unkind to her--never in my life, that I
+    can remember. I did not kill her; I would have kept her alive as
+    long as I possibly could. I think--I hope--that if I could have
+    saved her by the sacrifice of my own life, I should have done it
+    without a single moment's hesitation.'
+
+    'I am sure you would,' said Hannah.
+
+    'But,' he continued, with that unwonted fire blazing in his eyes,
+    'since dead she is, I _am_ glad--I am, I am! I am glad as a man who
+    has been kept in prison is to be let out. It is not my fault; I
+    would be sorry if I could. Some day, Hannah--some day, when we have
+    been dust for a few hundred years--perhaps for a few score
+    only--people will wake up to see how stupid it is to drive a man to
+    be glad when his wife is dead. They are finding out so many things;
+    they will find that out too in time.'
+
+Probably it will still appear to many that Delavel's admission was at
+least indelicate and inconsistent with his chivalrous nature. It is not
+here possible to convey an adequate impression of his fiery spirit, his
+long heart-hunger, and the magnitude of the loss which a wholly
+uncongenial marriage must ever mean to such a man. When the full story
+of his life and that of his quietly 'implacable' wife is read, his
+conduct seems natural and excusable. It is as much a part of himself as
+the tremulous tenderness with which he ministers to the comfort of the
+frail Constance Bethune, after finding and bringing her home, or as his
+fierce grief when she dies.
+
+Another very human spectacle that illustrates the author's method is the
+reunion of Betty and Rutherford Ochiltree--the frank selfishness of
+their mutual joy while the poor woman who had been an unconscious
+barrier between them lies dead under their roof. It is a somewhat
+painful episode, and precludes anything like high esteem for Rutherford,
+but it has the quality of intense actuality.
+
+In like manner is Adam Drewe shorn of some of the merit of his devotion
+to the heroine of _Fidelis_ by being shown in successive attachments to
+other women during his long exile in Australia. The author recognises
+that, 'the laws of literary romance being so much at variance with the
+laws of Nature,' Adam is certain to suffer in the reader's good opinion
+for having 'continued to hunger for feminine sympathy as well as his
+daily dinner.' No doubt his stature as a hero lessens when it appears
+that though the absent Fidelia was ever in his thoughts, and a daily
+source of inspiration to him as a writer, he twice narrowly escaped
+marriage--first with a servant girl at his lodgings, and afterwards with
+the daughter of his landlady--and that at another period of his colonial
+life he became involved in a disreputable kind of Bohemianism. But he is
+not disgraced by these lapses to the extent that the author anticipates;
+at all events, they make him more human than he could otherwise have
+been.
+
+It is this power of infusing a robust humanity into her characters that
+makes the distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge's best novels. In each,
+whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or three
+personages who talk and act as real men and women do--now rationally or
+in obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which,
+as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent of
+other laws, the only one that persistently defies our calculations.'
+They are mostly big people with big appetites. The beauty of the women
+is the beauty of mind and of sound physical health.
+
+Susy Delavel was tall, well grown, straight and graceful, with an
+intelligent, eager face, though 'her mouth was large, her nose not all
+it should have been, and her complexion showed the want of parasols and
+veils.' She was 'not handsome at all, but decidedly attractive.'
+
+Sarah French, the girl in _Fidelis_ whose comeliness so nearly drew the
+hero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than a
+pretty, face,' with a 'large and substantial figure.' Adam Drewe
+concluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on he
+finds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, with her cheerful
+healthy face, her strong busy hands, her neat hair, her neat dress....
+She might have sat for a statue of Motherhood--of Charity with a babe at
+her ample breast, and others clinging to her supporting hand; Nature had
+so evidently intended her to play the part.'
+
+Katherine Knowles has fine physical symmetry and a strong, frank face.
+While lacking 'the airs and graces, the superficial brightness, of
+conventional girlhood,' she is 'singularly vivid in her more substantial
+way.'
+
+Betty Ochiltree's beauty, too, is of the kind that wears well. She has a
+face 'frank and spirited, firm of mouth and chin, kind and sweet, as
+honest as the day,' surmounting an ample body, and she carries herself
+with dignity, 'as few Australian girls can do.' And how impressive and
+consistent with her character is the noble, placid figure of Elizabeth
+King, 'perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignity
+and ease!'
+
+The author is fond of showing the attractiveness of such women at the
+age of thirty, or even more. 'In real life,' she once observes, 'the
+supremely interesting woman is not a girl of eighteen, as she is in
+fiction. Every man worth calling a man knows that. A girl of that age
+... knows as much about love as does a young animal in the spring, and
+not a bit more. And the human male of these days--so highly developed,
+so subtly compounded--has grown out of the stage when that much would
+satisfy him. I mean, of course, the human male who in real life answers
+to the hero in fiction--a man who must have left, not only his teens,
+but his twenties behind him.'
+
+When one comes to the heroes, it is easy to recall half a dozen
+commanding figures who blunder in the most natural and amiable manner in
+their affairs; who think a good deal more of their immediate personal
+comforts than of religious or ethical abstractions; who like their own
+way and try to get it; who, in short, are mostly what the author wishes
+them to appear--'the men out of books that we meet every day.' Of little
+men, in the physical sense, there are only two of any importance, but
+even these are virile and masterful. A general aim of the stories would
+seem to be to show the sexes what each chiefly admires in the other. It
+is first a sort of apotheosis of the _mens sana in corpore sano_, and
+after that an illustration of the independent attractions of sympathy,
+gentleness, culture, and high character.
+
+Though in most cases the strongest attachments are formed between men
+and women arrived at an age to discriminate beyond mere physical charm,
+nevertheless physical charm is the most powerful, though not always
+acknowledged, motive of their choice. 'Because of this,' says the
+pathetic Hilda Donne in _A Marriage Ceremony_, touching her cheek, which
+is terribly disfigured by a birth-mark, 'I have never had _love_. Can
+you think what that means? You can't. Once I thought I was not going to
+be quite shut out--once; but I was mistaken. I have found out that it is
+for one's body that one is loved, and not for one's soul.'
+
+Hilda unconsciously exaggerates, for it appears that Rutherford Hope,
+though at first affected with disgust by her disfigurement, and
+convinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman,'
+had come at last to regard her as a possible wife--before he was
+confronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by wedding
+Betty Ochiltree, in compliance with the conditions of her millionaire
+uncle's will. Yet Hilda's comment is substantially sound. Even
+Rutherford, with all the sense of his mature years, and all the culture
+that enabled him to appreciate her poetic gift, would have had to argue
+himself into a marriage with her.
+
+The ugliness of Adam Drewe, from which his mother turned in disgust at
+his birth, and which in youth drove him across the seas in an agony of
+sensitiveness from the woman he loved, was a less serious affliction
+than that of Hilda Donne; but we know that he continued to be keenly
+reminded of its disadvantages long after time had proved the sterling
+qualities of his manhood, lessened his deformity, and brought him fame
+and wealth.
+
+Compared with the previous illustration, however, his case is at fault
+in failing to give a sufficient description of his deformity. But that
+he himself long thought it an insuperable bar to his happiness is clear.
+When he fell in love with Fidelia Plunket, she was temporarily blind.
+His affection for her was returned, and he knew it, but dreading the
+disillusionment that would ensue when her sight was restored, he fled to
+Australia and determined to abandon all thought of her as a wife. Urged
+to return, because 'when a woman _is_ a woman,' and really in love with
+a man, 'there's no camel she won't swallow for him,' Drewe replied that
+his camel was just the one camel that no woman had been known to
+swallow, or, at any rate, to digest. And he remained--for twenty years.
+
+The plots of Ada Cambridge's novels are of the episodical order, and the
+author, despite her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness of the
+average conventional novel, has not disdained employment of some of its
+time-honoured methods. Occasionally she is at pains to explain the
+feasibility of coincidences employed to secure dramatic interest. They
+are certainly never of an impossible kind, and no one would deny the
+truism that real life abounds in them. But has not a distinguished
+writer aptly pointed out that there are matters in which fiction cannot
+compete with life? As a rule, however, where a few such weaknesses
+exist, they do not count for much with the average reader when the
+principal scenes are as finely drawn as those in _A Marked Man_ or
+_Fidelis_, or _The Three Miss Kings_. The latter story in some details
+puts a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels,
+yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of the
+three girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chief
+incidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plot
+become almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole are
+similar to those which obscure the artistic defects of _Geoffry Hamlyn_,
+and which for thirty-seven years have made it one of the most popular of
+Australian stories.
+
+In the presentation of tragic or pathetic incidents lies Ada Cambridge's
+chief power, as far as her plots are concerned. In _A Marked Man_ it is
+accompanied by her highest achievements in portraying a variety of
+well-contrasted character. _Fidelis_, which opens at the Norfolk village
+of the earlier novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains fewer
+developed characters, as may also be said of _A Marriage Ceremony_. But
+the three novels are equal in the high standard of their emotional
+quality. No quotation of moderate size could do justice to any of the
+principal scenes of _A Marked Man_: the chivalrous sacrifice of Richard
+Delavel's youthful marriage; the inward repentance of it for twenty-two
+years; the revival of his love for Constance Bethune; his painful
+anxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of her companionship, and
+anguish at her death; and his own death soon afterwards. In the more
+briefly detailed tragedy that brings into such striking relief the
+sprightly drama of _A Marriage Ceremony_, there is a scene giving a fair
+example of the author's style in touching passages. When Hilda, deeply
+in love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his union with another woman, she
+takes the readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly marrying a
+shallow coxcomb who seeks her for mercenary reasons, and going with him
+to Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the sudden
+reappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment received
+from her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and to
+save herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the long
+separation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day of
+their marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the final
+impediment. Together they pay a last visit to the dead woman:
+
+    Incapable of speech, he lifted a tress of hair--flowing free over
+    the rigid arms, because it was really pretty, and thus had to be
+    made the most of--and pressed it a moment to his bearded mouth. In
+    that gesture he seemed to ask her forgiveness for having been a man
+    like other men, as Nature made them.
+
+    'Kiss _her_,' Betty whispered, pushing him a little. She, too, felt
+    that it would be something, if not much, to put to the account that
+    was so frightfully ill-balanced--a kiss from Rutherford before all
+    was wholly over.
+
+    He stooped and laid his lips--scarcely laid them--on the waxen
+    forehead. And he thought how he had nearly kissed her once, in the
+    scented spring dusk, at her father's gate, and been repelled at the
+    last moment by the thought of something that he could not see.... He
+    turned back the sheet and straightened it, and nobody but hired
+    undertakers had anything more to do with Hilda Donne. He put out the
+    lamps, leaving her in the dark, which, as a living, nervous woman,
+    she had always been afraid of; and he took Betty in his arms to
+    comfort her a little, before he opened the door upon the light and
+    life of their own transfigured world.
+
+There is a characteristic vein of realism in the subsequent view of the
+lovers' self-absorption and short-lived sorrow, and the callousness of
+Donne.
+
+    No later than the same Saturday afternoon [Hilda was buried in the
+    morning], her Edward was cheering himself with his preparations for
+    New Zealand, whither he was easily persuaded to set off at once as a
+    means of distracting his mind from his domestic woes, and of
+    retiring gracefully from a Civil Service that was otherwise certain
+    to dismiss him; and there he shortly found a number of absorbing
+    interests, including--as Rutherford had predicted--a rosy-cheeked
+    second wife, who, as he wrote to Mrs. Ochiltree when announcing his
+    engagement, was all that heart could wish, and had apparently been
+    made on purpose for him.... No later than Saturday afternoon--and
+    early at that--Rutherford, having parted with the widower and seen
+    him off the premises, ran upstairs to his wife's door, with a spring
+    in his step and a light in his eyes that plainly showed his mourning
+    to be over. Hilda was dead and gone, but Betty was alive in her
+    splendid strength and beauty, and he was her husband and bridegroom,
+    and his hour had come! The grave had closed over that broken heart,
+    which had ached as long as it could feel, and ached most for him;
+    but the world was still glorious for him and his love, and never so
+    glorious as now. They began to bask in their happiness, as the house
+    in the sunshine that flooded it, now that the blinds were drawn up.
+    The shadow of death, close and terrible as it was, could not dim it
+    for them any more.
+
+In all the novels there are memorable scenes of tenderness, among the
+best of which are those between Fidelia and Adam Drewe, first in their
+brief meetings as girl and youth--she with her weak eyes bandaged, but
+reading him through his voice and bashful deprecation; he yearning to
+remain with her, but forcing himself away--and then in long years after,
+when he returns to find her in widowhood and poverty, and to all seeming
+hopelessly blind.
+
+The conception of the latter scene is quite the best to be found in the
+whole of Ada Cambridge's work, and has not been equalled in its kind by
+any other Australian writer. The simplicity and verbal reticence of this
+chapter of intense feeling gives also a good sample of the author's
+style of expression. Seldom ornate or much studied, it is ever a lucid
+and easy style. As a narrative specimen, the following, from the same
+novel, is conveniently quotable:
+
+    It was not much of an accident, but it was enough. The engine buried
+    its fore-paws in the soft earth of the embankment, where engines
+    were not meant to go, and then paused abruptly in the attitude of a
+    little dog hiding a bone in a flower-bed; the embankment sloped down
+    instead of up, and the monster hung upon the edge of it, nose to the
+    ground and hind-quarters in the air, looking as if a baby's touch
+    would send it over. Several carriages, violently running upon it and
+    being checked suddenly, stood on tip-toes, so to speak, and fell
+    into each other's arms with a vehemence that completely overset
+    them; one rolled right down the bank, head first, and the others
+    tumbled upon its kicking wheels. It was all over in a moment; and
+    the dazed passengers, realising in a second moment that the end of
+    the world was still an event in the future, picked themselves up as
+    best they could. No one was killed, but some were badly shaken, and
+    most of them screamed horribly. The sound of those screams, mingled
+    with the clanking and crashing of riven wood and metal, and the
+    hissing of escaping steam, conveyed the idea of such an appalling
+    catastrophe as would make history for the world.
+
+Though not a satirist--she does not hate well enough to be that--Ada
+Cambridge has occasionally a neat and forcible way of describing
+character. Richard Delavel's first wife was 'a gentle and complaisant
+being, soft and smooth, apparently yielding to the touch, but dense,
+square, and solid as a well-dumped wool-bale.' When opposed in will or
+contradicted in her opinion, she smiled resignedly, and, if it appeared
+due to her dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally she was 'the
+evenest-tempered woman that ever a well-meaning husband found it
+difficult to get on with.' A pattern of order and conscientiousness,
+'governed by principles that were as correct as her manners and costume,
+and as firmly established as the everlasting hills,' she might have made
+an admirable wife for a clergyman, but was totally unsuited to Delavel,
+as he to her.
+
+Still, she was very proud of the look of 'blood' in her Richard, and
+when he became wealthy, and she a fashionable hostess in Sydney
+society, nothing delighted her more than her opportunities of making the
+aristocratic connection known. Her own origin as the daughter of a
+farmer was quite forgotten. 'Annie might have been a Delavel from the
+beginning, in her own right, for all the recollection that remained to
+her of the real character of her bringing up.... Years and certain
+circumstances will often affect a woman's memory that way--a man somehow
+manages to keep a better grasp of facts.'
+
+Yelverton, the lover of Elizabeth King, an English aristocrat spending
+some of his wealth in lessening the misery and vice of London, was 'not
+the orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist
+with a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set the
+world right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of a
+sense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and the
+spirit which produced that was not limited in any direction.'
+
+His friend, Major Duff-Scott, 'an ex-officer of dragoons, and a late
+prominent public man of his colony (he was prominent still, but for his
+social and not his official qualifications), was a well-dressed and
+well-preserved old gentleman who, having sown a large and miscellaneous
+crop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded with
+great wealth, and all the privileges of the highest respectability.'
+
+
+
+
+ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.
+
+
+The strongest note of Adam Lindsay Gordon's poetry is a personal one.
+When he represents Australia best, he best represents his own striking
+character. Yet that character had clearly shown itself, as had also his
+lyric gift, before he saw Australia. He is the favourite poet of the
+country by a happy fortuity rather than by the merit of special native
+inspiration. Those tastes of the people which he has expressed in manner
+and degree so rare as to make a parallel difficult of conception were
+also his own dominant tastes. From early boyhood they had controlled his
+life, and in the end they wrecked it.
+
+That any man living an adventurous and precarious life, often in rude
+associations and without the stimulus of ambition or of intellectual
+society, should write poetry at all is a matter for some wonder. And
+when several of the compositions of such a writer are marked by rare
+vigour and melody, and some few are worthy to rank with the best of
+their kind produced in the century, it must be held that the gift of the
+author is genuine and spontaneous. It is impossible to believe that
+Gordon would have been less a poet had he never lived under the Southern
+Cross; that he would have cared less for horses and wild riding, for
+manliness and the exhilaration of danger. Had he become a country
+gentleman in England, or a soldier, like his father, should we not still
+have had 'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' 'The Romance of Britomarte,' 'By
+Flood and Field,' and 'How we beat the Favourite.' And do these not form
+the majority of his best poems? A man apt alike for the risks of the
+chase or the cavalry charge, with a delicate ear for the music of words,
+with natural promptings to write, would in any conditions have found
+time to celebrate the things which his daring and gallant spirit loved.
+Had he not ridden as well as written the rides related by his 'Sick
+Stockrider,' he might have been foremost in that more glorious one so
+often present to his fiery fancy, and have wielded
+
+            'The splendid bare sword
+  Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!'
+
+Gordon was a true soldier in sentiment all his life, as he was also a
+true Englishman, and it is the soldier and the Englishman in him far
+more than the Australian that the people of his adopted country,
+consciously or unconsciously, admire. It is yet difficult to consider
+his work as a writer apart from his personality. And it is natural that
+this should be so in the case of a man whose career was itself a
+romance, who led as strange a double life as ever poet lived, and who,
+through all, retained the marked essentials of a gentleman.
+
+In his character as a sportsman and a rider there is an element of the
+ideal which largely helps to commend him to the majority of Australians.
+Though his liking for horses and the turf became a destroying passion,
+there was never anything sordid in it. He was not a gambler, for long
+after he had won recognition as the first steeplechase rider in a
+country of accomplished riders, he declined payment for his services on
+the race-track, accepting it only when compelled at last by poverty to
+do so; and the distaste with which he had always viewed the meaner
+associations of the sport latterly became dislike and scorn. In the
+period of disappointment that preceded his death he refused a
+remunerative post on the sporting staff of a leading Melbourne journal
+because he wished to dissociate himself completely and finally from
+everything connected with the professionalism of sport.
+
+As a Bush rider he became noted for the performance of feats which no
+one else would think of attempting. The Australians often speak and
+write of it as courage absence of fear--but it surely had a large
+admixture of pure recklessness. It is at least evident that danger had a
+certain irresistible fascination for him. 'Name a jump, and he was on
+fire to ride at it,' is the description given of this curious
+predilection which made his company in a riding party a somewhat
+exciting pleasure. The day in 1868 when he won three steeplechases at
+Melbourne is still remembered; and at Mount Gambier, in South Australia,
+a granite obelisk marks where once he leaped his horse over a fence
+surmounting the headland of a lake, and then across a chasm 'more than
+forty feet wide.' A single false step would have cast horse and rider
+into the lake two hundred feet below. Of the same wild character was his
+riding during boyhood in the hunting-fields of Gloucestershire. It would
+be natural to suspect some measure of vanity or bravado in all this, but
+no hint of either is given by any of his acquaintances; and the few who
+knew him well are emphatic in placing him, as a man and a sportsman,
+apart from and above the majority of those with whom the conditions of
+his life brought him into contact. 'Gordon,' says one of his intimate
+friends, 'was always a quiet, modest, pure-minded gentleman.... I never
+knew such a noble-hearted man, especially where women were concerned.'
+
+The deep melancholy in many of Gordon's poems has been attributed to the
+influence of Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of the earlier
+years of his life in the colonies. This explanation, if not wholly
+erroneous, is at least much exaggerated. It ignores the most obvious
+elements of the poet's temperament. It takes no account of the history
+of wasted opportunities and regrets, of defeat and discontent, of
+self-wrought failure and remorse, that may plainly be read in 'To my
+Sister,' 'An Exile's Farewell,' 'Early Adieux,' 'Whispering in the
+Wattle Boughs,' 'Quare Fatigasti,' 'Wormwood and Nightshade,' and other
+poems. The writer, as he himself says, has no reserve in the criticism
+of his own career.
+
+  'Let those who will their failings mask,
+    To mine I frankly own;
+  But for their pardon I will ask
+    Of none--save Heaven alone.'
+
+Gordon's youth was wild and ungoverned. Before his twenty-first year his
+folly had lost him home, friends, love, and the one profession that
+might have steadied him, as well as afforded him distinction. He was
+the son of Captain Adam D. Gordon (an officer who had seen service in
+India) and the grandson of a wealthy Scotch merchant. Captain Gordon
+settled at Cheltenham in the later years of his life, and intended that
+his son should study for the army; but a mad wilfulness and passion for
+outdoor sport had taken possession of the youth, and nothing could be
+done with him. He rode to hounds with all the daring that marked his
+horsemanship in later life; he rode in steeplechases, he frequented the
+company of pugilists at country fairs and public-houses, and joined in
+their contests; he was removed from two schools for unruly conduct, and
+a more serious escapade, though innocent of any bad intention, nearly
+caused his arrest by the police. At last it was agreed that he should
+emigrate to Australia. He was glad to go, but bitter at the thought of
+what his going implied. The knowledge that he suffered solely through
+his own fault did not make less disagreeable to him the censure of
+others, even that of the gallant father whom, in his wildest moments of
+rebellion, he never ceased to love and admire. The unhappiness attending
+this severance from the home that he felt he would never see again is
+told in a poem to his sister, written (August, 1853) a few days before
+he sailed.
+
+  'Across the trackless seas I go,
+    No matter when or where;
+  And few my future lot will know,
+    And fewer still will care.
+  My hopes are gone, my time is spent,
+    I little heed their loss,
+  And if I cannot feel content,
+    I cannot feel remorse.
+
+  'My parents bid me cross the flood,
+    My kindred frowned at me;
+  They say I have belied my blood,
+    And stained my pedigree.
+  But I must turn from those who chide,
+    And laugh at those who frown;
+  I cannot quench my stubborn pride,
+    Or keep my spirits down.
+
+  'I once had talents fit to win
+    Success in life's career;
+  And if I chose a part of sin,
+    My choice has cost me dear.
+  But those who brand me with disgrace,
+    Will scarcely dare to say
+  They spoke the taunt before my face
+    And went unscathed away.'
+
+The stanzas (there are ten more in the poem) have all the bitterness of
+a youthful sorrow and all the vigour of a youthful defiance. But at the
+moment of his deepest depression it is upon himself that the writer
+casts the real blame. This is characteristic of his judgment of himself
+throughout life. He has ever too much honour and spirit to shirk the
+responsibility of his own acts. And the same qualities keep him from
+doing injury to others. He is consoled by remembering this in bidding
+good-bye to his native land.
+
+          'If to error I incline,
+  Truth whispers comfort strong,
+  That never reckless act of mine
+  E'er worked a comrade wrong.'
+
+As a colonist, Gordon might have justified his Scotch descent by making
+a fortune. Wealth was to be gained in other and surer ways than by
+groping for it in the goldfields. But he was indifferent, and allowed
+himself to drift. Australia was attractive to him only as a place of
+adventure, of freedom, of retirement, of oblivion. All but the latter he
+found it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of the
+country, but could never overcome the thought that in those first false
+steps he had lost all worth striving for. Time softened the gloomy
+defiance of his farewell verses, but did not alter his determination to
+efface himself, to be forgotten even by his family. He held no
+communication with anyone in England, and heard nothing from his home
+until ten years later, when a lawyer's letter notified him that both his
+mother and father were dead, and that under the will of the latter he
+was to receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds. Meanwhile, Gordon
+appears to have made no attempt to win any of the prizes that were the
+common reward of pluck and industry in the Australia of the fifties. He
+joined the mounted police force of South Australia, but, impatient of
+its discipline, soon left it, and for long afterwards was content with
+the rough employment of a horse-breaker.
+
+A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this time. He broke in horses
+during the day, and read the classic poets at night. Think of the
+refined Englishman in blue blouse, fustian, and half-Wellington boots,
+seated among the boisterous company of a 'men's hut' on a Bush station,
+reading Horace by the aid of a rude lamp, 'consisting of a honeysuckle
+cone stuck in clay in a pannikin, and surrounded with mutton fat!' Or
+sitting at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining, as he so finely
+did, the famous Balaclava Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity and
+admiration a year after he arrived in Australia. How he would have liked
+to be among the actors in that scene!
+
+  'Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride
+    Long years of pleasure outvie!'
+
+he exclaims, and wishes that his own end could be fair as that of one
+'who died in his stirrups there.'
+
+Gordon seemed not only to be reconciled to his Bush life, but to have
+become attached to it. He once declared it to be better in many
+respects than any other. He was temperate, skilful in his work, and as
+popular as one of reserved manner can be. Most of the squatters of the
+period made it a practice to receive into their social circle any
+companionable and educated man, whether their equal in position or not.
+It was a generous custom, typical of the most hospitable country in the
+world, and worked well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike Henry Kingsley
+and others of the same class, took no advantage of it. That the
+squatters did not themselves recognise the worth of one so unassertive
+was not to be wondered at. He saw this, and never blamed them. They
+could not, as he remarked on one occasion, be expected to know that he
+was as well born as any of them, and perhaps better educated. One of
+them saw there was 'something above the common' in him; but that was
+all. At length he was discovered by a good-natured and scholarly Roman
+Catholic priest (the Rev. Julian E. Tenison Woods), who, though he does
+not say so, evidently took a pleasure during the five years of their
+acquaintance in making the merits of the solitary Englishman known in
+the colony. Their tastes accorded excellently. They talked 'horses or
+poetry' as they rode together, or smoked by their camp-fires. Gordon's
+reserve thawed for the first time. He had a well-trained memory, and
+occasionally would recite Latin or Greek verse, or a scene from
+Shakespeare, or passages from Byron and other modern poets. Greek he had
+taught himself in lonely hours after his arrival in Australia, having
+neglected it while at college.
+
+In the end his disposition left the good cleric, like many another, much
+puzzled. Was there anything of foolish pride or misanthropy in Gordon's
+avoidance of society that would have welcomed him? Both his recorded
+speech and his poems are without evidence of either. Those who remember
+his taciturnity and little eccentricities also speak of his kindness of
+heart, generosity and trustfulness of others. Did he ever complain that
+he was oppressed and saddened by his self-chosen life in the Bush? We
+have seen the high estimate he once gave of it; and Mr. Woods, who has
+recorded many proofs of close observation of his friend, testifies that
+the melancholy of his poems found little or no expression in his
+conversation. Gordon may have been shy (as Marcus Clarke noted), but he
+early formed a fairly accurate judgment of his literary powers. He said
+'he was sure he would rise to the top of the tree in poetry, and that
+the world should talk of him before he died.' Coming from one who was
+far from being vain or boastful, the remark suggests hope and ambition.
+But neither, it would seem from his colonial career, was ever more than
+a passing mood with him. Why did he remain in obscurity during several
+of the best years of his life, doing rough and dangerous work, when he
+might have obtained some remunerative post in one of the cities? Why did
+he marry a domestic servant--one who could never be an intellectual
+companion for him?
+
+It appears that he considered himself to have 'irretrievably lost
+caste.' It is a fantastic idea, and could not have any justification in
+a country where an Englishman of good manners and behaviour need never
+want congenial society. Gordon was abnormally proud, independent and
+sensitive: an unfortunate disposition for anyone who has his way to make
+in an imperfect world. Such a man constantly misunderstands himself and
+is misunderstood. He takes severe, unpractical views of his own
+character and of life generally. Not necessarily morose or ungenial, he
+is always apt to be thought so. Gordon's conclusion that he had lost
+caste is a proof of supersensitiveness, and the deep effect produced
+upon his temperament by the incidents of his youth.
+
+There is a touching and significant little story of an acquaintance
+which he formed with a young lady at Cape Northumberland, and how he
+ended it. We are delicately told that, having become a warm admirer of
+his dashing horsemanship, the lady used to walk in early morning to a
+neighbouring field to see him training a favourite mare over hurdles.
+Something more than a mutual liking for horses and racing is plainly
+hinted at as existing between them. But after they had met thus a few
+times, Gordon asked abruptly whether her mother knew that she came there
+every morning to see him ride. She replied in the negative, adding that
+her mother disapproved of racing. 'Well, don't come again,' said he; 'I
+know the world, and you don't. Good-bye. Don't come again.' Surprised
+and wounded, the lady silently gave him her hand in farewell. 'He looked
+at it as if it were some natural curiosity, and said, "It's the first
+time I have touched a lady's hand for many a day--my own fault, my own
+fault--good-bye."'
+
+For a brief period after the receipt of his father's legacy Gordon
+looked towards his future with some interest and confidence. He spoke of
+a proposal to undertake regular journalistic work at Melbourne, and to
+make an attempt at writing novels. It was at this time also that he
+foresaw that he would make a name as a poet. The people of Mount
+Gambier, finding him presently settled as the owner of a small estate in
+the district, made him their representative in the Legislative Assembly
+of South Australia. In this new character he seems to have achieved only
+a reputation for drawing humorous sketches. Having delivered a few
+speeches highly embellished with classical allusions which failed to
+make any impression upon the plain business men of the House, he
+subsided, and was afterwards seldom heard. And when his seat became
+vacant in due course, he did not seek re-election. He had been unable to
+take his Parliamentary experience seriously. He is said to have always
+looked back upon it as something of a joke.
+
+And now, with a revival of his former attachment to the excitements and
+uncertainties of the turf, begin a series of misfortunes which pursued
+him until his death. His property, mismanaged and neglected, had to be
+sold, and he set out a poor man once more for the adjoining colony of
+Victoria. Here, while suffering ill-health and poverty--starving in his
+own proud way--after failing in a small business which he had
+undertaken, Gordon learned that he would probably come into possession
+of the barony of Esselmont in Scotland, then producing an income of
+about two thousand pounds a year. But on further inquiry it was found
+that his title to the estate ceased with the abolition of the entail
+under the Entail Amendment Act of 1848. The excitement of his
+ill-fortune and the effects of a recent wound on the head combined to
+unhinge his mind, and in June, 1870, at the age of thirty-seven he ended
+his life by shooting himself at Brighton, near Melbourne. In comparing
+the impressions of Gordon's disposition given by his friends, it is
+curious to note that among the few things in which they agree is an
+absence of surprise at his suicide.
+
+It would not be difficult to imagine a more representative poet in the
+provincial sense than Gordon. His description of the colonies as
+
+  'Lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
+    And songless bright birds,'
+
+would be strangely misleading were it not contradicted by other lines
+from the same hand, showing a delicate appreciation of the rugged
+features of Australian scenery. But he sees them only in passing, or as
+a symbol of something he is pondering, or as a contrast to what he has
+left behind 'on far English ground.' No sight or sound of Australian
+Nature is a sole subject of any of his poems. His 'Whispering in the
+Wattle Boughs' does not express the voices of the forest, but the echoes
+of a sad youth, the yearnings of an exile; his 'Song of Autumn' is not a
+song of autumn, but a forecast of his own death--a forecast that was
+fulfilled. If he ever felt any enthusiasm for the future nationhood of
+Australia, he did not express it. And such few native legends as there
+were, he left to other pens.
+
+In all of his best poems, there is some central human interest,
+something that tells for courage, honour, manly resignation. When a
+story does not come readily to his hand in the new world, he seeks one
+in the old. He fondly turns to the spacious days of the old knighthood,
+when men drank and loved deeply, when they were ready to put happiness
+or life itself upon a single hazard. The subjects that Gordon best liked
+were short dramatic romances, which he found it easier to evolve from
+literature than from the life and history of his adopted country. Beyond
+the compositions upon the national sport of horse-racing, the only
+noteworthy Australian subjects in his three slender volumes are 'The
+Sick Stockrider's Review of the Excitements and Pleasures of a Careless
+Bush Life, and his Pathetic Self-satisfaction'; 'The Story of a
+Shipwreck'; 'Wolf and Hound,' which describes a duel between the
+hunted-down bushranger and a trooper; and some verses on the death of
+the explorer Burke. 'Ashtaroth,' an elaborate attempt at a sustained
+dramatic lyric in the manner of Goethe's 'Faust' and 'Manfred,' fills
+one of the three volumes, and among shorter pieces in the other two are
+more than a dozen suggested by the poet's reading, by his recollections
+of English life, and, in a notable instance, by one of the most
+memorable of modern European wars.
+
+In a dedication prefixed to the _Bush Ballads_, Gordon suggests some of
+the local sources of his inspiration. He obviously overstates his
+obligations to the country. Some of the best of the poems in this, the
+most characteristic collection of his work, have no association with it
+whatever. 'The Sick Stockrider,' 'From the Wreck,' and 'Wolf and Hound'
+are colonial experiences, finely described. But most of the remaining
+poems, while they owe something to Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne,
+are not in any sense Australian.
+
+  'In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles
+    'Twixt shadow and shine,
+  When each dew-laden air resembles
+    A long draught of wine,
+  When the skyline's blue burnished resistance
+  Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
+  Some songs in all hearts have existence:
+    Such songs have been mine.'
+
+But where, save in the retrospect of 'The Sick Stockrider' and a verse
+or two of 'From the Wreck,' shall we find any of the air of the lovely,
+transient Australian spring? It is rather absurd to place with _Bush
+Ballads_ the 'Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' a recital of the old tragedy of
+Arthur and Launcelot; the story of seventeenth-century siege and
+gallantry in the 'Romance of Britomarte'; the dramatic scenes from the
+'Road to Avernus;' 'The Friends' (a translation from the French); and
+the psychological musings of 'De Te' and 'Doubtful Dreams.'
+
+And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there is indeed one galloping rhyme--'How
+we beat the Favourite'--with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftness
+of colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton or
+Whyte-Melville. Especially vivid and terse is the description of the
+latter part of the race, where the favourite (The Clown) overtakes
+Iseult, the mare leading in the run home.
+
+  'She rose when I hit her. I saw the stream glitter,
+    A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee;
+  Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her;
+    The space that he cleared was a caution to see.
+
+  'And forcing the running, discarding all cunning,
+    A length to the front went the rider in green;
+  A long strip of stubble, and then the big double,
+    Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between.
+
+  'She raced at the rasper, I felt my knees grasp her,
+    I found my hands give to the strain on the bit;
+  She rose when The Clown did--our silks as we bounded
+    Brushed lightly, our stirrups clashed loud as we lit.
+
+  'A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping,
+    The last--we diverged round the base of the hill;
+  His path was the nearer, his leap was the clearer,
+    I flogged up the straight, and he led sitting still.
+
+  'She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her,
+    And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew;
+  A short prayer from Neville just reached me, "The Devil!"
+    He muttered--lock'd level the hurdles we flew.'
+
+After a glance at the crowd where, as seen by the rider, all 'figures
+are blended and features are blurred'--
+
+  'On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way,
+    Still struggles, "The Clown by a short neck at most!"
+  He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges,
+    And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post.
+
+  'Aye! so ends the tussle--I knew the tan muzzle
+    Was first, though the ring men were yelling "Dead Heat!"
+  A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said "The mare by
+    A short head." And that's how the favourite was beat.'
+
+It was by this piece, according to Marcus Clarke, that the poet's early
+reputation was made. 'Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame
+at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are
+known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly,
+scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to
+magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody
+knew a couplet or two of "How we beat the Favourite" that he consented
+to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a
+verse-maker.' Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, there
+is nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or
+Flemington. Yet, it _is_ Australian in the sense that it expresses the
+one taste which, of all those inherited by the people from their British
+ancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as it was by the American
+colonists)--which, on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the new
+land. Gordon was a pronounced believer in the efficacy of field sports
+as a means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood of the race. In one of
+his minor pieces he vigorously affirms that
+
+  'If once we efface the joys of the chase
+    From the land, and out-root the Stud,
+  Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon Race,
+    Farewell to the Norman Blood.'
+
+With him the fearless huntsman makes the fearless soldier. Both are to
+be cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as at
+Balaclava, we are to be none the less proud of him,
+
+  'As a type of our chivalry.'
+
+Of the longer poems, the two best in artistic quality are 'The Rhyme of
+Joyous Garde' and 'The Sick Stockrider.' They afford a complete contrast
+in subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer and
+more finished. There is a nobility in its expression not elsewhere
+equalled by the author. But the other poem is more direct and simple in
+its pathos, more easily understood. It tells something of familiar
+experience in language irresistibly touching and musical. It would be
+interesting and a favourite if only through the obvious fact that it
+describes in part some of Gordon's own early life.
+
+  ''Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass
+    To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
+  And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass,
+    Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.
+  'Twas merry 'mid the backwoods, when we spied the station roofs,
+    To wheel the wild-scrub cattle at the yard,
+  With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;
+    Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.
+
+  'Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,
+    When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;
+  How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang
+    To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat!
+  Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,
+    Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed;
+  And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath!
+    And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!'
+
+'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde' loses in appreciation by assuming
+familiarity on the part of the reader with all the details of the story.
+It is too allusive. It is a description more of Launcelot's remorse
+than of the crime which occasions it. As to the other classic themes,
+they probably avail as little to the reputation of the author as did the
+elegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australian
+legislators. 'He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more
+interested in the land valuators.'
+
+Gordon's work was introduced to the English public by an article in
+_Temple Bar_ in 1884, and in 1888 a short memoir of him, entitled _The
+Laureate of the Centaurs_ (now out of print), was published. Since then
+his poems have become known throughout the English-speaking world. Is
+this because he is called an Australian poet--because people wish to
+learn something of Australian life from his pages? Do English readers
+ever ask for the poems of Harpur, or Henry Kendall, or Brunton Stephens?
+No; Gordon's poems are admired for the human interest in them; for what
+they tell of tastes and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-loving
+and fighting Briton in whatever land he may be. It is the sort of
+admiration that finds fit expression when an English officer and artist
+makes a present to the publishers of a spirited and valuable set of
+drawings to illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge. No other
+Australian poet has yet found entrance to the great popular libraries of
+England. Kendall, who almost deserves to be called the Australian
+Shelley, tells more of Nature in one of his graceful pages than can be
+found in a volume of his contemporary. But his thoughts are too remote
+from the common interests of life; and of his own character he has
+recorded only what is sad and painful. For the rest, his brief history
+seems to prove that scarce any service may be less noticed or thanked in
+Australia than the describing of its natural beauties or the writing of
+its national odes.
+
+Gordon has more than once been misrepresented with respect to his
+religious views. He has been called an agnostic, an atheist, even a
+pagan. Passages in nearly a score of his poems must be read and compared
+before an opinion can properly be given on the point. That he was a
+doubter, and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain; but there is
+nothing to support the charge of atheism. He shows a very clear
+conception of the Christian ideas respecting right and wrong, and of the
+Divine mercy, but hesitates to accept any theories of punishment in a
+future state. His general attitude is one of hope, and of desire to
+believe. He often thinks--too often--of the transiency of life, and of
+the question to be solved 'beyond the dark beneath the dust.' But there
+is no despair. And meanwhile his practical creed is
+
+   'Question not, but live and labour
+      Till yon goal be won,
+    Helping every feeble neighbour,
+      Seeking help from none.
+    Life is mostly froth and bubble,
+      Two things stand like stone--
+    Kindness in another's trouble,
+      Courage in your own.'
+
+It conveys at once the highest and truest of the many views he has given
+of his own character. Generous to others, he was too seldom just to
+himself. It was well there remained among the friends he left behind a
+few who knew him for what he was, and who were unwilling that qualities
+often clouded during his life by an unhappy temperament should be
+undervalued or forgotten. Kendall's 'In Memoriam' is a worthy tribute,
+and finely summarizes the general impression of Gordon which one obtains
+from his verse:
+
+  'The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
+  That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
+  The splendid fire of English chivalry
+  From dying out; the one who never wronged
+  A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged
+  The many anxious to be loved of him
+  By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
+  As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul
+  That never told a lie, or turned aside
+  To fly from danger; he, I say, was one
+  Of that bright company this sin-stained world
+  Can ill afford to lose.'
+
+
+
+
+ROLF BOLDREWOOD.
+
+
+English readers of Rolf Boldrewood's novels have often wondered why he
+has ignored in his writings the modern social life of Australia. He has
+a unique knowledge of the country extending over sixty years, but his
+literary materials have been drawn only from the first half of this
+period. No other purely Australian novelist has succeeded in making a
+considerable reputation without feeling the necessity of fleeing to the
+more congenial atmosphere of literary London.
+
+It is true that even he had to find acceptance at home through the
+circuitous route of the press and the libraries of Great Britain, but he
+was able to wait for his long-delayed popularity, and when it came and
+found him in advanced age, he had no inclination to leave the land of
+his adoption. Probably if literature had been to him more of a
+profession and less of a taste and pastime, he would long ago have felt
+inclined to turn his back upon the indifference with which the colonies
+usually treat their own products in authorship until English approval
+has imparted new virtues to them.
+
+Most of the other writers who have contributed to the portrayal of a
+certain few aspects of Antipodean life have gone to London or elsewhere.
+Many years absent from Australia, they know little of its later
+developments. Boldrewood has spent a long and eventful life there. Of
+the southern half of the continent he must possess a specially intimate
+knowledge. Melbourne he has known in all the stages of its growth from a
+canvas-built hamlet to the finest city in the Southern Hemisphere. When
+he saw it first, the great golden wealth of the country lay unsuspected,
+and Ballarat and Bendigo were not.
+
+Though English by birth, he is wholly Australian in training and
+experience. In 1830, being then four years old, he was taken by his
+parents to Sydney, and there educated. Early in youth he became one of
+the pioneer squatters of Western Victoria, sharing with a few others the
+danger of dispossessing the aboriginals, and soon acquiring considerable
+wealth. But some years later, going back to New South Wales, and
+venturing to establish himself there on a larger scale as a sheep-owner,
+he was involved in a disastrous drought and lost nearly everything.
+
+In _The Squatters Dream_, which is understood to be partly
+autobiographical, he has minutely recorded the varying fortunes of
+pastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness of failure never
+caused him to forget the happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to speak
+ill of a pursuit so much identified with the prosperity of the country.
+He refers to it as 'that freest of all free lives, that pleasantest of
+all pleasant professions--the calling of a squatter.'
+
+Abandoning his ambition to rank with the wool-kings, he entered the
+Civil Service as a police magistrate and gold-fields commissioner. In
+these combined offices he spent twenty-five years, and, while continuing
+a good public servant, contrived, like Anthony Trollope, to find time
+for substantial work in literature. Though during a period of about
+twenty years he contributed several stories and other literary matter to
+the Sydney and Melbourne press, it was not until the publication of
+_Robbery under Arms_, at London in 1889, that his work obtained due
+recognition even in the colonies. Ten years earlier he had made an
+unsuccessful bid for an English reputation by the publication of _Ups
+and Downs_, the novel which, under the more attractive title of _The
+Squatter's Dream_, reappeared in 1890 as a successor to the famous
+bushranging story. That the spirited opening chapters of _Robbery under
+Arms_ should have been thought lightly of by Australian editors when the
+serial rights of the story were offered to them is somewhat astonishing.
+The author has related how these chapters were successively rejected by
+a number of the leading journals, including two of the best weeklies.
+
+At length the manuscript was read by Mr. Hugh George, manager of the
+_Sydney Morning Herald_ and the _Sydney Mail_, who promptly accepted it
+for publication in the latter newspaper.
+
+Boldrewood at this time (1880) was well known to the Australian press.
+It must, however, be pointed out in justice to the editors, whom his
+story failed to impress, that his previous work had revealed little of
+the dramatic sense that contributed so materially to his success in
+presenting the careers of his highwaymen. But it is less easy to see
+why, when the full possibilities of the story had been realised, there
+should have remained a second difficulty, that of securing a publisher
+to issue it in book form. 'An Australian house,' the author has said,
+'refused to undertake the risk;' and he adds, 'as a matter of fact I had
+to publish it partly on my own account in England.' This proof of his
+confidence in the attractions of the story has since been justified by
+its complete success throughout the English-speaking world.
+
+A writer with so much experience of Australia, and continuing to reside
+in it, cannot be surprised if he is expected to take a large share of
+responsibility for the fact that Australian fiction--the fiction
+produced by writers known to the British public--only in a slight degree
+reflects the most interesting features in the present-day life of the
+country. At the same time, no such considerations can detract from the
+sterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood's actual services to Australian
+literature. It is hardly possible to believe that the English people
+still prefer to look to Australia only for stories of adventure; but if
+they do--and as the first to welcome and appreciate colonial writers
+they are perhaps entitled to exercise a choice--it is well that such
+stories be written from complete local knowledge, and thus at least
+correctly describe the broader aspects of the country.
+
+If Boldrewood were asked to explain his silence respecting Antipodean
+life of the present day, he might reply that the novel of modern manners
+did not form any part of the work which he had chosen to do. At all
+events, he could claim to be as much a historian as a novelist. It has
+been his ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he saw it in his
+youth, about forty years ago--as it was immediately before and after the
+discovery of gold. That his record _per se_ is strikingly vivid and
+faithful is the first general impression which his novels make upon the
+reader, whether English or colonial. There is about them much of that
+air of 'rightness' which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the most
+enduring qualities of good fiction, whatever its literary style may be.
+They are cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far more account of
+the good than of the bad in human nature. There is no fondness of the
+sensational for its own sake. The conditions of probability are observed
+with a closeness which, in books dependent for their interest so largely
+upon plot and incident, amounts almost to a fault.
+
+An English historian is said to have declared that he would willingly
+exchange a library full of the poets for a single good novel of the
+period in which he was interested. One can readily imagine that if a
+generation or two hence there should be any Australian history left
+unwritten, any unsatisfied curiosity concerning the simple annals now so
+familiar to us, Rolf Boldrewood's novels might be found, within their
+limits, a more satisfying source of information than all the rest of
+contemporary Australian literature combined, the formal chroniclers
+included, as well as the poets: that is to say, the general view they
+would furnish of certain features of pioneer life would be fuller and
+clearer, and, minor details apart, more reliable than could be gathered
+from any other source.
+
+Where is there in the elaborate histories of Rusden, Lang, Blair, and
+Flanagan, or in any of the numerous books of sketches and reminiscences
+written by persons who have visited or temporarily resided in Australia,
+a view of the picturesque variety, colour, and splendid energy of the
+great first race for gold to compare with that given in the second
+volume of _The Miner's Right_, or with the memorable account of what
+Starlight and the Marstons saw at Turon during their temporary
+retirement from the highway?
+
+Boldrewood, in these descriptions, has done what Henry Kingsley, with
+his more eloquent pen, if slighter personal experience, unaccountably
+neglected, and what Charles Reade, though he never saw Australia,
+vividly imagined, and regretted his inability to fully employ. Reade saw
+a theme for a great epic 'in the sudden return of a society far more
+complex, artificial, and conventional than Pericles ever dreamed of, to
+elements more primitive than Homer had to deal with; in this, with its
+novelty and nature and strange contrasts; in the old barbaric force and
+native colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised around the
+gold; in the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning; in
+a desert peopled and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity; in a huge
+army collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man's
+constraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his own
+heart; in the "siege of gold" defended stoutly by rock and disease; in
+the world-wide effect of the discovery, the peopling of the earth at
+last according to Heaven's long-published and resisted design.'
+
+If Boldrewood had not himself realized the literary value of the
+stirring scenes in which his youth was passed, this summary of the
+English novelist, published in 1856, might well have suggested it to
+him. How far has he succeeded in commemorating those scenes, and in what
+directions chiefly?
+
+In the first place, it is the pictorial, the literal, not the
+philosophical, aspect of the subject which has most attracted him. There
+is a personal zest in his remembrance of the general animation of the
+scene, a keen sense of the pleasurable excitement, freedom and
+good-fellowship of the life. His books are essentially men's books. This
+is the universal report of the English libraries. Analytical subtleties
+there are none. Boldrewood is not given to weighing moonbeams. His
+nearest approach to psychology consists in noting the various effects of
+robust, unconventional colonial life upon fortune-seekers and visitors
+from the mother country. This has been a favourite theme with all
+Australian writers, and one of which the female novelists have so far
+made the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had made
+himself as far as possible an exception to the rule--that he had aimed
+at a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborate
+minuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies of
+Australian character.
+
+Maud Stangrove in _The Squatter's Dream_, and Antonia Frankston in _The
+Colonial Reformer_, who seem to offer the best opportunities to typify
+Australian womanhood, are gracefully described; but, save for an
+occasional longing to relieve the monotony of their lives by a taste of
+European travel and culture, they are indistinguishable from such purely
+English types as Ruth Allerton and Estelle Challoner. Very pathetic, and
+marked by some distinctively Antipodean traits, is the sister of the
+bushrangers in _Robbery under Arms_. Aileen Marston has the strong
+self-reliance and independence which are born of the exigencies, as well
+as of the free life, of the country. She and her brothers represent
+much of what is best in Boldrewood's portrayal of native character.
+Maddie and Bella Barnes and Miss Falkland in the same novel, Kate
+Lawless in _Nevermore_, and Possie Barker in _A Sydneyside Saxon_, are
+also Antipodeans, but are only lightly sketched.
+
+Boldrewood claims that in his writings he has always upheld the
+Australian character. It is a fact that he has incidentally done this to
+a considerable extent, but not by any notable portraiture. In the period
+with which the novels deal the population of the colonies was largely
+English; it was, therefore, perhaps only natural that the stranger and
+adventurer from the Old World, so often well born and cultured, should
+prove a more attractive study than the sons of the soil. Moreover, the
+latter, in their monotonous and circumscribed life, lacked much of the
+mystery and romance so vital to the novel of adventure. But when this
+has been admitted in Boldrewood's favour, there still remains a broader
+charge to which he is liable.
+
+He has been accused, and it must be confessed with a good deal of
+justice, of paying too little attention in later novels (taking the
+order of their publication in London) to the development of even those
+characters most concerned in his plots. The fault is purely one of
+judgment. It is hardly possible to suppose any lack of ability in a
+writer who has produced the bright and suggestive dialogue scattered
+through the pages of _Robbery under Arms_ and The _Miner's Right_.
+Giving rein to his passion for reminiscence and descriptive detail, he
+has paid the inevitable penalty of a loss in human interest. So obvious
+is this loss in the stories of pastoral life, that one is almost fain to
+assume it to be the result of deliberate choice. How far the author, in
+this section of his writing, has neglected the social and dramatic
+possibilities of country life, can be judged by noting Mrs. Campbell
+Praed's work in _The Head Station_, _Policy and Passion_, or _The
+Romance of a Station_. But the best contrast to Boldrewood's style is
+furnished by the author of _Geoffry Hamlyn_.
+
+Henry Kingsley decided the movement of his characters with a loving
+care. Their interests were paramount to him. They made their own story;
+the story did not make them. Their author cared little for the externals
+of Australian life except in so far as they helped to tell something,
+especially something good, of his leading personages. His interest in
+them was not semi-scientific, like that of Thackeray or Jane Austen,
+Howells or Henry James, in their studies of human nature; it was that
+mainly of a sympathiser and a partisan.
+
+His frequently expressed anxiety about the impression they were making
+upon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a real
+solicitude in the confidences concerning William Ravenshoe upon his
+sudden promotion from the stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor.
+'I hope you like this fellow, William,' he says in one place, and then
+there is a naïve enumeration of some of the ex-groom's social
+deficiencies. This, at best, is a useless interruption of the story, but
+it helps, with other signs, to show Kingsley's constant interest in his
+characters.
+
+Nearly everything in his descriptions of Australian squatting pursuits
+is intended to have a definite and notable bearing upon them. Thus, the
+view we get of the drafting-yard at Garoopna, with Sam Buckley in torn
+shirt, dust-covered, and wielding a deft pole on the noses of the
+terrified cattle, is not presented as a piece of station-life so much as
+a picturesque means of leading Alice Brentwood into an involuntary
+display of her affection for Sam when he is struck down before her eyes.
+
+Again, the description of the kangaroo-hunt, given in the same novel, is
+remembered chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and Alice in the
+frank enjoyment of their first love as they loiter in the tracks of the
+sportsmen, and, relinquishing the chase with happy indifference, go home
+and sit together under the verandah.
+
+Kingsley avoided the fault, common to his successors, of exaggerating
+the interest which readers are supposed to take in the general aspects
+of life in a new country. He had a keen sense of the value of
+picturesque environment, but wisely contrived that nothing should
+withdraw attention from the progress of his drama. He was ever on the
+watch for opportunities to sketch in lightly and humorously small traits
+of character, and to emphasise salient ones. 'She had an imperial sort
+of way of manoeuvring a frying-pan,' he says, in allusion to the
+cheerful adaptability of the high-bred Agnes Buckley, that fine model of
+English womanhood, during her first rough experiences in Australia. When
+Hamlyn comes to Baroona from the neighbouring station to spend Christmas
+with his old friends, he finds the same lady 'picking raisins in the
+character of a duchess.' Considered apart from the story, these
+Dickensian touches might seem merely humorous exaggeration, but to those
+who have traced the development of Mrs. Buckley's character, how happy
+and pregnant they are!
+
+_Robbery under Arms_ not only contains Boldrewood's most dramatic plot,
+but his most skilful and sympathetic treatment of character. It is a
+distinct exception to the rest of his work. In the later stories the
+characters are brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch that they
+leave no permanent impression with the reader. The best excite no more
+than a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley's win lasting admiration and
+love. There can be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes the one
+indubitable proof of clear vision, sympathy, and correct expression.
+Where the weakness of some of Boldrewood's characters is not due to
+deficiency of interest in them on the part of the author, it is the
+result of an attempt to copy life with an accuracy which sacrifices
+picturesqueness.
+
+The attempt to preserve absolute truth in every detail of the life-story
+of John Redgrave, the hero of _The Squatter's Dream_, seems distinctly a
+case in point. In no other novel is there so complete a description of
+Australian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solid
+comforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is one
+of the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there is
+the fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story is
+plainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. But
+when the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcely
+been once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero's
+misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimate
+success--nothing more.
+
+The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of
+Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim
+is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when
+he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given
+to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud
+Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling
+influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression
+of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type;
+no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour
+with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay.
+There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even
+the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it
+impracticable to dispense.
+
+An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise either
+his characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account of
+Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on
+the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where
+drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the
+stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with
+corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy
+plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the
+back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle
+for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking
+pigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate
+vicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder,' inquired
+Jack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such a
+fragment of Hades _but_ drink?'
+
+The home of the Stangroves, though less depressing, bears painful
+evidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles Agnes
+Buckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but a
+certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore
+silent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants or
+none at all; to the want of average female society; to a little
+loneliness and a great deal of monotony.'
+
+The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarried
+sister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with her
+colourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Another
+eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,' she remarks on his return after a day's
+riding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep were
+lost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo.'
+
+The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character is
+furnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in
+_Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and only
+time to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certain
+judicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for its
+interest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once the
+most real and least possible personage to be found in any of
+Boldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actions
+are conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story.
+Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed a
+bushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private code
+of honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is of
+a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits
+being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of
+reality is maintained.
+
+Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. He has Turpin's
+ubiquity, Claude Duval's _sang-froid_, the personal attractiveness of
+Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing
+gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the
+humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety
+in the same colony a few years later.
+
+Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, that
+it is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen,
+to be a gentleman. But Starlight, unlike Turpin, does not become vain
+with success, and is far from being enamoured with his profession.
+Indeed, he is quite with the orthodox view of it. He is a bushranger,
+apparently, because he no longer hopes or desires to resume his rank in
+certain aristocratic circles from which, by occasional hints, we are
+informed that he has fallen. He indulges in no lugubrious
+moralisings--he is far too agreeable a person for that--but exhibits
+just the required touch of romance by letting you know that in his past
+there is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessary
+to enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser and
+admirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashing
+outlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has
+carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness
+of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical
+bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervised
+by Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as they
+afford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on the
+police. Such raids are not crimes, but comedies.
+
+There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq., of
+Sturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N.S.W.,' while
+awaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or
+as the 'Hon. Frank Haughton,' one of 'the three honourables' on the
+Turon gold-field. The rash daring and cleverness of these disguises
+furnish a combination of amusement and dramatic interest not approached
+in anything else that Boldrewood has written. Starlight's presence at
+dinner with the gold-fields commissioner and police magistrate at
+Turon, when 'in walked Inspector Goring,' the officer who had been so
+long and patiently seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance at Bella
+Barnes' wedding, after a reward of a thousand pounds has been offered
+for his capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the memory long after
+the more commonplace adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow have
+lost their distinctness or been forgotten.
+
+Next to his humour and courage, the qualities which most endear this
+picturesque marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness with which
+he commands the respect of his retainers, and his politeness and
+gallantry to women. When a robbery is to be effected, the plans are laid
+with sound generalship, but there is no unnecessary violence or loss of
+good manners. His conduct at the plundering of the gold-escort is fully
+equal to the traditional suavity of Claude Duval. 'Now, then, all
+aboard!' he calls out to the passengers when the contents of the coach
+have been removed. 'Get in, gentlemen; our business matters are
+concluded for the night. Better luck next time! William, you had better
+drive on. Send back from the next stage, and you will find the mail-bags
+under that tree. They shall not be injured more than can be helped.'
+
+The bushranger of real life, as known to the pioneer colonist, would
+have bagged his booty with much fewer words. That Starlight should have
+'treated all women as if they were duchesses,' and have made it a point
+of honour to keep his pledged word with them, in however slight a
+matter, seems only natural. Not even the women-folk of his enemy are
+allowed to want a protector. When Moran and his gang of ruffians take
+possession of Darjallook station during the absence of the male members
+of the household, Starlight and the Marstons ride twenty miles across
+country and rescue the ladies before the worst has been done. Starlight
+bows to them 'as if he was just coming into a ball-room,' and, retiring,
+raises Miss Falkland's hand to his lips like a knight of old.
+
+These passages are only a few of the many which might be cited to show
+how far the author, fired with the spirit and romance of the story,
+gave freedom to his imagination in shaping the proportions of his
+leading character. Starlight, though he is not, and cannot be, a
+portrait of any single colonial outlaw of real life, is sufficiently
+natural to consistently represent in both his conduct and adventures
+much that was typical of Australian bushranging forty years ago and
+later.
+
+Some of his characteristics, and at least one of the concluding episodes
+of the story, were suggested by the career of a New South Wales
+horse-stealer who became known as 'Captain Moonlight.' So much is
+certain. Boldrewood has himself narrated to a contributor of the
+Australian _Review of Reviews_ his recollections of Moonlight and his
+end: 'Among other horses he stole was a mare called Locket, with a white
+patch on her neck. We had all seen her. This was the horse that brought
+about his downfall, and he was actually killed on the Queensland border
+in the way I have described in _Robbery under Arms_. Before that,
+Moonlight had had some encounters with Sergeant Wallings (Goring); and
+this day, when Wallings rode straight at him, he said: "Keep back, if
+you're wise, Wallings. I don't want your blood on my head; but if you
+must----" But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two of the troopers
+fired point-blank at Moonlight, and both shots told. He never moved, but
+just lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up his arms, and fell off his
+horse a dying man. As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the troopers
+said: "Now you may as well tell us what your name is." But he shook his
+head, and died with the secret.' He was 'a gentlemanly fellow,' probably
+one of that unhappy class of young Englishmen of good birth and no
+character who are exiled to the colonies for their sins, and there often
+acquire new vices or sink into obscurity.
+
+When Archibald Forbes was in New Zealand a few years ago, he met a
+peer's son who was earning his 'tucker' as a station-cook. A Chinaman,
+aspiring to better things, had vacated the billet in his favour! It is
+interesting to note the use Boldrewood makes in his novel of the
+suggestion afforded by the bushranger's concealment of his identity.
+When Starlight is overcome in his last attempt at escape, the curiosity
+long felt concerning his past life seems for the third time in the story
+about to be gratified. But the reader is once more and finally
+disappointed. The bushranger has given his last messages, and is dying
+with some of the indifference to existence which has characterised him
+throughout the story.
+
+    'I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match you and I
+    shot in, at Hurlingham?'
+
+    'Why, good God!' says Sir Ferdinand, bending down, and looking into
+    his face. 'It can't be! Yes; by Jove! it is----'
+
+    He spoke some name I couldn't catch, but Starlight put a finger on
+    his lips, and whispered:
+
+    'You won't tell, will you? Say you won't.'
+
+    The other nodded.
+
+    He smiled just like his old self.
+
+    'Poor Aileen!' he said, quite faint. His head fell back. Starlight
+    was dead!
+
+Boldrewood's characters, as he has said himself, are constructed from
+many models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he has
+drawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers have
+identified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessing
+appearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among the
+settlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of the
+fair sex regarded him as a veritable hero.'
+
+That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood with
+some material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger
+is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. In
+Starlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing but
+what is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was the
+seduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced to
+elope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none of
+the sensational incidents connected with his capture--his escape under a
+legal technicality from the death-penalty suffered by some of his
+associates, his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent exile--are
+made use of in the novel.
+
+The narrative method adopted in _Robbery under Arms_ has so much
+contributed to the success of the story as to be worthy of some
+comparison with the ordinary style of the author. The limitations
+imposed by the choice of a narrator with no pretensions to education or
+sentiment, and writing in the first person, proved in this case salutary
+rather than disadvantageous. They repressed Boldrewood's usual tendency
+to excessive detail, and kept his attention closely fixed on the drama
+of the story.
+
+The occasional deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the
+grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy
+piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in
+Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life
+from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this
+view is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what might
+otherwise have been little better than a commonplace series of
+sensational episodes.
+
+Starlight and the Marstons, as we see them, are reckless and dangerous
+criminals, but they are not exactly the 'bloodthirsty cowards' and
+'murderers' known to the press and police of the period. The little they
+can plead in excuse for their lives is plainly stated, while no
+complaint is urged against their fate, or attempt made to obscure its
+obvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston's career illustrates one of the
+results of the stupidly cruel system of transporting persons from
+England to the colonies for petty offences which in these days are
+punished by a slight fine, and his sons are types of a class who were
+far from being as irreclaimable as their offences made them appear. 'Men
+like us,' Dick Marston is once made to say, 'are only half-and-half bad,
+like a good many more in this world. They are partly tempted into doing
+wrong by opportunity, and kept back by circumstances from getting into
+the straight track afterwards.'
+
+The examples given in the story of the aptness of this remark are often
+very touching. The poor Marston boys are indeed only half bad. Their
+better natures, seconded by the influence of a good mother and sister,
+are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is no
+opportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when the
+first great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes to
+which the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of squatting
+was traceable.
+
+The personal observation strongly marked in all Boldrewood's novels has
+in _Robbery under Arms_ its fullest, as well as most skilful,
+expression. As a squatter, the author had seen the practices of the
+cattle-thief, and learned his language. He had observed the extent to
+which idleness and a love of horseflesh combined to fill the gaols of
+the country, and in later years this knowledge was confirmed in the
+course of his long experience as a magistrate. The judgment with which
+he presents the case of the young Marstons as types of a class is
+excelled only by the literary skill employed upon the character of their
+chief.
+
+But there was no need to make Dick Marston so often emphasise the
+comfort of living 'on the square,' and the folly of ever doing
+otherwise. The story bears a self-evident moral. Humour there is in
+plenty, but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as it is the
+appropriate, tone of the book. In no respect has greater accuracy been
+attained than in the reproduction of the Australian vernacular, that odd
+compound of English, Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and inflexions,
+with its slender admixture of original terms. Visitors to Australia have
+praised the purity of the English spoken there by the middle classes.
+Mr. Froude, as late as 1885, found that 'no provincialism had yet
+developed itself,' but he wrote chiefly of what he had heard in the
+towns. It is in the country that the colonial dialect--if speech so
+largely imitative can yet be called a dialect--is most heard.
+
+Among other interesting features in Dick Marston's narrative is the
+curious half-impersonal view which the outlaws take of the efforts made
+by the Government to capture them, and their strong dislike, on the
+other hand, to the private persons who competed with the police for the
+large rewards offered. This detail is as true to life as the example of
+the sympathy and assistance accorded the bushrangers by settlers in the
+neighbourhood of their mountain retreat.
+
+It was sympathy of this kind, combined with bribery, which so protected
+the Kelly gang as to involve the Government of Victoria in an outlay of
+about one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds before their destruction
+could be accomplished. Effective literary use will be made at some time
+in the future of the exploits of this last and most daring of all the
+bushranging gangs, but many years must elapse before the sordid aspects
+of their career shall have been forgotten, and only its romance be left.
+And nothing short of genius will be required to refine the rude
+proportions of Ned Kelly into something like the gentlemanly exterior of
+the dashing captain, the smooth gallant, the humorist, philosopher, and
+quick-change artist of _Robbery under Arms_.
+
+In _The Miner's Right_, which ranks second in popularity among
+Boldrewood's novels, the personal narrative style is again adopted, but
+with little effect of the kind produced by Dick Marston's vivid
+directness in the earlier novel. Hereward Pole, the hero, is a cultured
+Englishman, sensitive and sentimental, who keeps an eye upon humanity at
+large, as well as upon the business of making a fortune which has
+brought him to the colonies. Half of his record, though a striking
+picture of the gold-fields, is not an inherent part of the story of his
+own career. Confined to their strictly just limits, the events which
+combine to prolong his separation from the sweetheart whom he has left
+in England could have been told in fifty pages. But this would not have
+been all the author wished. He was satisfied with a slender plot and a
+_dénouement_ which can be guessed almost from the outset as soon as he
+saw that they would carry the glowing scenes and episodes of diggings
+life with which his memory was so richly stocked. One cannot believe but
+that, in this case, his slender attention to the long-drawn thread of
+the story was the outcome of choice. Else where was the need for
+elaborateness in such details as the dispute over the Liberator claim
+at Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on Challerson, with their
+rendering of witnesses' depositions in the manner of a newspaper report,
+the riot at Green Valley and Oxley, and the scene at the funeral of the
+agitator Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are given at great length,
+and do not form any essential part of the story of Hereward Pole and
+Ruth Allerton--the vindication of a man's honour and the triumph of a
+woman's invincible devotion--they are told with so much intimate
+knowledge and strength of colouring as almost to supply the absence of a
+plot, and to make the story, apart from artistic considerations, a
+really fine piece of work.
+
+It has a popularity in the English libraries which is itself a proof of
+the service done by the author to those who would know something of the
+careers of varying success and bitter failure, of hardship and romantic
+adventure, upon which so many of their kinsmen set out forty years ago.
+_Nevermore_ and _The Sphinx of Eaglehawk_ give other views of the
+gold-digging days, chiefly of their seamy side, but these stories offer
+nothing that equals in interest the splendid panorama of pioneer life
+revealed in _The Miner's Right_.
+
+Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon the
+general good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been one
+of those all-seeing autocrats, the gold-fields commissioners, he is an
+authority to be believed on the subject. In _Robbery under Arms_ the
+names are given of thirty races represented on the Turon field, and
+Hereward Pole, recounting his early impressions of Yatala, says: 'I was
+never done wondering of what struck me as the chief characteristic of
+this great army of adventurers suddenly gathered together from all seas
+and lands, namely, its outward propriety and submission to the law.'
+Elsewhere he likens the sensible reticence which they observed
+respecting their own affairs and those of their neighbours to the
+demeanour and mode of thought which prevails in club life.
+
+A passage from Dick Marston's account of what he saw at Turon is worth
+reproducing here as characteristic of the author's representation of a
+gold-fields community and as a sample of his humour. The 'three
+honourables,' of whom the disguised bushranger captain is one, are
+together in a hotel.
+
+    'The last time I drank wine as good as this,' says Starlight, 'was
+    at the Caffy Troy, something or other, in Paris. I wouldn't mind
+    being there again, with the Variety Opera to follow--would you,
+    Clifford?'
+
+    'Well, I don't know,' says the other swell. 'I find this amazing
+    good fun for a bit. I never was in such grand condition since I left
+    Oxford. This eight hours' shift business is just the right thing for
+    training. I feel fit to go for a man's life. Just feel this,
+    Despard,' and he holds out his arm to the camp swell. 'There's
+    muscle for you!'
+
+    'Plenty of muscle,' says Mr. Despard, looking round. He was a swell
+    that didn't work, and wouldn't work, and thought it fine to treat
+    the diggers like dogs.... 'Plenty of muscle,' says he, 'but devilish
+    little society.'
+
+    'I don't agree with you,' says the other honourable. 'It's the most
+    amusing, and, in a way, instructive place for a man who wants to
+    know his fellow-creatures I was ever in. I never pass a day without
+    meeting some fresh variety of the human race, man or woman; and
+    their experiences are well worth knowing, I can tell you. Not that
+    they're in a hurry to impart them; for that there's more natural
+    unaffected good manners on a digging than in any society I ever
+    mingled in I shall never doubt. But when they see you don't want to
+    patronise, and are content to be as simple man among men, there's
+    nothing they won't do for you or tell you.'
+
+    'Oh, d----n one's fellow-creatures! present company excepted,' says
+    Mr. Despard, filling his glass, 'and the man that grew this
+    "tipple." They're useful to me now and then, and one has to put up
+    with this crowd; but I never could take much interest in them.'
+
+    'All the worse for you, Despard,' says Clifford: 'you're wasting
+    your chances--golden opportunities in every sense of the word.
+    You'll never see such a spectacle as this, perhaps, again as long as
+    you live. It's a fancy-dress ball with real characters.'
+
+    'Dashed bad characters, if we only knew,' says Despard, yawning.
+    'What do you say, Haughton?' looking at Starlight, who was playing
+    with his glass, and not listening much, by the look of him.
+
+In his latest novels Boldrewood reverts to his familiar themes. _The
+Sphinx of Eaglehawk_, the shortest of all his works, might have been an
+excerpt from The _Miner's Right_; and the scene of _The Crooked Stick_
+is an inland station in New South Wales in the days of bushranging and
+disastrous droughts.
+
+The materials employed in the latter story reproduce the principal
+features of almost a score of other Australian novels published within
+the last few years. The love-affairs of a beautiful, impulsive girl,
+sighing for knowledge of the great world beyond the limits of her narrow
+experience; the influence upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanly
+Englishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; the manly
+young Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a time, is rewarded in
+the end--these are some of the items which go to the making of a class
+of story already somewhat too common. The fact that Boldrewood continues
+to make such subjects interesting is due largely to the pervading sense
+of scrupulous truth, the evident element of personal experience, and the
+general cheerfulness of tone, which are never absent from any product of
+his pen, and which constitute his highest claims to rank in Australian
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.
+
+
+To Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit of being the first to attempt
+to give an extended and impartial view of the social and political life
+of the upper classes in Australia. While she has not ignored whatever
+seemed picturesque in the external aspects of the country, her chief
+concern has been with the people themselves. Some of the best of her
+works--_Policy and Passion_ and _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_, for
+example--might fairly be named as an answer to the somewhat common
+complaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion in colonial life.
+
+In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs. Praed explains it to have
+been her wish to depict 'certain phases of Australian life, in which the
+main interests and dominant passions of the personages concerned are
+identical with those which might readily present themselves upon a
+European stage, but which directly and indirectly are influenced by
+striking natural surroundings and conditions of being inseparable from
+the youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation.'
+
+The point of view here taken by the author at almost the beginning of
+her literary career has been maintained in most cases throughout her
+later work. The same preface might almost, in fact, serve for all her
+Australian stories. They describe broadly, in an attitude of
+good-natured criticism, the leading facts in the intellectual life of
+the people; their proud self-reliance, tempered by an acute sense of
+isolation and its disadvantages; their susceptibility to foreign
+criticism and example; their frank, natural manners in social customs of
+native origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid observance of
+conventionalities which have long since been relaxed in the mother
+country whence they were copied.
+
+Mrs. Praed has turned to account more fully than any other writer the
+little affectations of that small upper crust of Antipodean society
+which is sufficiently cultured to have developed a taste for
+aristocratic European habits, along with an uncomfortable suspicion of
+'bad form' in anything of purely local growth. This is the class which
+maintains an air of portentous solemnity in public ceremonials, and is
+liable at any moment to be convulsed by a question of precedence at a
+Government House dinner.
+
+From a lively appreciation of comedy to caricature is an easy descent
+which the author has not always resisted, but her exaggeration is so
+obviously resorted to in the interests of fun that it is unlikely to
+mislead. There is certainly no need to repudiate as untypical of
+Australian political society the Pickwickian spectacle of a drunken
+Postmaster-General fearfully trying to walk a plank after a Vice-regal
+dinner, in order to win three dozen of champagne wagered by the leader
+of the Opposition, while the Premier looks on and holds his sides with
+merriment; or the case of the Premier's wife, who, on being told by a
+newly-arrived Governor--a musical enthusiast--that he hoped to be able
+to 'introduce Wagner' at the local philharmonic concerts, said: 'I'm
+sure we shall be very pleased to see the gentleman.'
+
+Considering, however, the opportunities which colonial life, and
+especially colonial politics, afford for ridicule, the author has been
+commendably careful to avoid, as far as possible, giving real offence.
+Yet her criticism is sufficiently free to be piquant, and, on the whole,
+as salutary as it is entertaining. 'Why need Australians always be on
+the defensive?' asks more than once an Englishman in one of her novels.
+The author seems to have put the same question to herself as an
+Australian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness is a worse vice
+than affectation, and that her compatriots, by giving way to it, do both
+themselves and their country an injustice. For it implies a too low
+estimate of what is fresh and strong and of real merit in the
+independent life of the nation.
+
+Colonists need a little more of the philosophic and common-sense spirit
+which can look upon deficiencies and crudities merely as phases in the
+natural evolution of society in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed has
+endeavoured to teach in some of her stories. The lesson is often
+surrounded with a good deal of bantering discussion; it may not always
+be apparent to an English reader, but it can hardly be overlooked by an
+Australian. There is rarely anything so pointed as the conversation
+between Miss Jacobsen and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has been
+wondering what the cultivated Englishman thought of a recent noisy and
+rather vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor for whom he is acting
+as private secretary. Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly amused at
+his surroundings. But his view of them is purely rational and
+matter-of-fact.
+
+    'You know, I fancy you colonists think rather too little of
+    yourselves, and we in England rather too much. Or I'll put it in
+    another way. I fancy you colonists think too much about yourselves,
+    and we in England think too little.'
+
+    'You said just now that you think too much.'
+
+    'Yes; it's the same thing put in a different way. We think too much
+    of ourselves, and for that reason too little about ourselves. You
+    are always thinking somebody is laughing at you; we have made up our
+    minds that we are the admiration of everybody. We are often very
+    ridiculous, and don't know it. You often think you are ridiculous
+    when you really are not.'
+
+    'I think we must have seemed very ridiculous the day you landed....
+    I know you are astonished at some of our public men.... You will
+    write home and say how rude and rough and vulgar some of them are.'
+
+    'If one wants to see the ridiculous, one can see it everywhere. We
+    have some public men at home who are rude and rough, and vulgar and
+    ridiculous.... One has to make allowances, of course, for training
+    and habits, and all that.... When our fellows are rough, there is
+    less excuse for them. The more one goes about the world, the less
+    one sees to laugh at, I think....'
+
+English self-complacency is, of course, a growth of centuries, but
+perhaps a deliberate and intelligent effort to acquire some of it in
+Australia would be the best specific for that consciousness which,
+colonists should not forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has been
+said that Australians already have too much to say for themselves and
+their country. The assertion is only applicable to a small boisterous
+class who have never seen anything beyond their own shores.
+
+A much commoner element of Antipodean life, one which some of Mrs.
+Praed's characters notably illustrate, is the desire for wider
+experience and culture produced among educated people by their constant
+use of British and European literature. James Ferguson, the young
+squatter in _The Head Station_, represents those Australians who, though
+stout believers in their own country, feel its intellectual
+deficiencies--perhaps too much; who are more English than the English
+themselves in their veneration for the historic associations of the
+mother land; who, when they go to London, are curiously at home in
+streets and among sights that have been more or less definitely outlined
+in their imagination from early childhood.
+
+While three of his English-bred companions are exchanging reminiscences
+of London life, Ferguson listens with an eager interest, 'putting in a
+remark every now and then which had the savour, so readily detected, of
+acquaintance with the thing in question by means of books rather than
+personal experience.' In Mrs. Praed's stories, as in real life, a
+personal acquaintance with other countries gives the Australian a truer
+appreciation of the good in his own. The man who has taken part in the
+artificialities of a London season, or has been a spectator of its petty
+rivalries, returns joyfully to a simpler life; the woman who is prone to
+deify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns through him to value the more
+homely virtues of colonial manhood.
+
+In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of the
+squatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs.
+Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expression
+with a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely
+commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish
+materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some
+romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create
+'atmosphere,' or anything that a judicious reader would skip.
+
+The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in a hammock under the
+vine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight
+imparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orange
+begonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavas
+on the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on the
+rocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars and
+outlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy
+little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretending
+unconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are some
+of the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthy
+in the warmth and colour of tropical Australia and in the daily life of
+its inhabitants. This fondness for posing her heroines is one of the
+minor features of her work. Its results in some of her later novels are
+not, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history of
+the unhappy Judith Fountain in _Affinities_ are painful, and the
+portrait, in _The Brother of the Shadow_, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies in
+the mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastly
+elaboration.
+
+The hardships suggested by the beginnings of pastoral life amid the
+giant forests and intense loneliness of Australia are never allowed by
+Mrs. Praed to give a gloomy colour to her stories. It is one of their
+distinct merits that they present the humorous incongruities rather than
+the trials of pioneering, though the latter are by no means ignored. In
+the first three chapters of _The Romance of a Station_ some excellent
+humour is provided by the young bride's account of her home-coming to
+the rude mansion on her husbands mosquito-infested island station, and
+the ludicrous privations she encountered there. There is nothing of the
+kind more amusing in the whole of Australian fiction. The description of
+the household pets, and the vermin--including a lizard with an uncanny
+habit of 'unfastening its tail and making off on its stump when
+pursued'--rivals the famous verandah scene in _Geoffry Hamlyn_. An
+intimation in the preface that these experiences are a faithful record
+from the early life of the author herself sufficiently explains their
+graphic quality. Amusing also are the sketches of the aristocratic
+settlers in _Policy and Passion_ and _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ who try to
+apply the principles of æstheticism to the crude surroundings of their
+new-made homes in the backwoods--Dolph Bassett with his ornamental
+bridges and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord Horace Gage explaining
+with his maxim, 'If we can't be comfortable, let us at least be
+artistic,' a neglect to fill up the chinks in his slab hut.
+
+Queensland, the scene of Mrs. Praed's colonial experience and the
+'Leichardt's Land' of her stories, differs notably from the rest of
+Australia only in climate; its social and political conditions are
+essentially the same in character as those in the rest of the country.
+The Englishman acquiring colonial experience, the squatter living in
+various stages of comfort or discomfort, the gentleman spendthrift from
+whom his family has parted with the affectionate injunction, 'God bless
+you, dear boy; let us never see your face again!' and the political
+parties which go in and out of office 'like buckets in a well' (to use
+the author's own expression), are, or have been, common features of
+every colony. Like several of her heroines, Mrs. Praed alternated life
+in the country with the gaieties of the capital.
+
+The position of her father, the Hon. T. L. Murray-Prior, as a member of
+the Legislative Council, brought her into contact with those political
+and vice-regal circles of which she has given entertaining and
+occasionally derisive accounts in _Policy and Passion_, _Miss Jacobsen's
+Chance_, and elsewhere. Her description in the former story of the
+wealthy landowners, who adopt a passive and somewhat disdainful attitude
+towards party strife, applies to a class already large in the colonies.
+Whether such an attitude is consistent with 'the truest conservatism to
+be found in Australia,' which they are said to represent, may be
+questioned. It seems rather to indicate selfishness, petulance, and lack
+of patriotism.
+
+It is not, however, upon the business of politics or the humours and
+makeshifts of colonial life that Mrs. Praed has expended her best
+efforts as a writer. Some study of the human emotions is the primary
+interest in all her novels. There is nearly always love of the
+passionate and romantic kind, prompted on the one side by impulse,
+ignorance or glamour, and on the other by passing fancy or
+self-interest: the love of an innocent, unsophisticated woman for a man
+experienced in the pleasures and some of the darker vices of life; and,
+in contrast, the blunt respect and devotion of the typical Australian
+man for the same woman, and her light estimate of his worth. The
+tragedies of marriage--the union of the refined and imaginative with the
+coarse and commonplace, the high-souled with the worldly and cynical,
+the pure with the impure--are correlative themes of some of the
+strongest of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing tone. We
+have the spectacle of the woman's blind, illogical trust abused, her
+helplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the tenacity with which, in
+temptation, she clings to the safeguards of conventional morality. In
+most cases this tenacity, which the author accounts an instinct rather
+than a virtue, is either allowed to triumph, or is placed by death
+beyond the possibility of a supreme test. In the loves of Hester
+Murgatroyd and Durnford in _The Head Station_, of Mrs. Lomax and Leopold
+D'Acosta in _The Bond of Wedlock_, and of Mrs. Borlase and Esmé
+Colquhoun in _Affinities_, it is the woman who directly, or by
+implication, insists upon respect of the marriage tie so long as it
+remains a legal obligation.
+
+But it should be made clear that Mrs. Praed is not in any sense a
+propagandist on the subject of marriage. She illustrates, often
+impressively, its difficulties and anomalies, but leaves the rest to the
+judgment of the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who marries on
+trust, or is ready to do so, has numerous representatives in these
+novels. Though it is a woman's view of her trials and unhappiness that
+is given, there is nothing in the shape of a crusade against male vices.
+It is not the faults of men that are dwelt upon so much as the
+inevitably lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate which women make
+of men themselves.
+
+The most striking illustration of this feature is probably contained in
+the last scenes of _The Bond of Wedlock_, where the heroine learns at
+once the hypocrisy of her father and the dishonour of her lover. The
+father, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the mean plot by which she
+has been enabled to divorce her husband and marry Sir Leopold D'Acosta.
+The latter, seeing that Mrs. Lomax would never consent to an elopement,
+has paid another woman--a former mistress of his--to incriminate Harvey
+Lomax, while the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law, does the
+business of a detective. Ariana's dream of happiness is dissipated. She
+hardens into indifference. The revelation completes the disillusionment
+which had already begun. 'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, and
+I have found you--a man.' This is the summary of her life's experience,
+which in effect is also that of Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina
+Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappy
+heroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise.
+Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure. Her husband does not
+attempt to conceal the fact that she no longer interests him, but with
+that commonly-accepted philosophy which recognises a wife as at least an
+adjunct to conventional respectability, he reminds her that, after all,
+their union has some advantages:
+
+    'I would much rather have you for a wife than any other woman I ever
+    knew; and if I sometimes think a man is better who hasn't a wife, it
+    is only when you are in one of those reproachful moods, and seem as
+    if you were anxious to make me out a heartless sort of miscreant. In
+    Heaven's name, why not make the best of things? Why need we be
+    melodramatic? We are man and woman of the world. We must take the
+    world as we find it, and ourselves for what it has made us.'
+
+Ariana's answer was given later on when she realized the full extent to
+which she had been self-deluded: 'I am not going to be melodramatic. We
+can be very good friends on the outside. We need never be anything
+more.'
+
+A strong bias towards analysis is the chief characteristic of Mrs.
+Praed's studies in character. As in her illustrations of the perplexing
+uncertainties of married life it is the woman's point of view that is
+most impressively presented, so in each story there is at least one
+woman whose personality stands out in pathetic relief and claims
+paramount attention. She is usually a cultivated woman of romantic
+tendency, living in a restricted social environment, and displaying the
+craving of that class of her sex for change, pleasurable excitement, and
+sympathy. In the satisfaction of her yearnings or ambitions are seen,
+perhaps more often than is typical, the gloomy aspects of marriage, and
+the incompetence of women to manage their own lives.
+
+The average Australian girl of real life is neither very romantic nor
+fastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to be
+thoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Its
+material advantages and status attract her--and, for the rest, she has a
+vague confidence that everything will come right. Nowhere is the horror
+of elderly spinsterhood more potent. The influence of independent
+professional life fostered by the large public schools is still
+infinitesimal.
+
+The type upon which Mrs. Praed has bestowed her most elaborate work
+belongs to a class both higher and far fewer in numbers. It is the class
+that Mr. Froude had chiefly in view when he noted the absence of 'severe
+intellectual interests' as a deficiency of society at Sydney.
+
+Honoria Longleat, the principal study of Mrs. Praed's second novel, may,
+with a few obvious deductions, be taken as a fair example of the
+colonial woman educated beyond sympathy with her native surroundings,
+and unprovided with any employment for her mental energies. With the
+distractions and interests of her narrow circle exhausted, and the
+knowledge that her future--her only possible future--must soon be
+decided by marriage, she is consumed with an intense and reckless desire
+for new emotional experience. Her unrest is like that of the large class
+of American women who are educated above the purely commercial standard
+of their fathers and brothers, and are impelled to satisfy their
+intellectual cravings by frequent European travel.
+
+'This is only a state of half-existence,' said Honoria in reference to
+her country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read them
+greedily at first, then throw them aside in disgust. They never take one
+below the surface.... I want to grow and live.... What is the use of
+living unless one can gauge one's capacity for sensation?' Gretta Reay,
+in whom the same discontent is reproduced, exclaims: 'Ah, we Australians
+are like birds shut up in a large cage--our lives are little and narrow,
+for all that our home is so big.'
+
+By these and other characters of the same type, the cultivated
+Englishman, who offers them the prospect of change and emancipation from
+monotony, is distinctly preferred in marriage to the man of colonial
+birth and experience. 'Don't you know,' says Gretta to one of the
+latter, 'that an Australian girl's first aim is to captivate an
+Englishman of rank and be translated to a higher sphere--failing that,
+to make the best of a rich squatter?'
+
+The heroine of _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ differs from Gretta only in being
+more emphatic in her preference for the doubtful stranger, and
+irrational in her objections to her tried Australian lover, Frank
+Hallett. Once, in a riding-party, 'she had moodily watched his
+(Hallett's) square, determined bushman's back as he jogged along in
+front of her, and compared it with Blake's easy, graceful, rather
+rakish, bearing. Why was Frank so stolid, so good, so commonplace?'
+
+A trifling superficial defect of the same sort turns the tables against
+the gallant young explorer, Dyson Maddox, in his first suit for the hand
+of Miss Longleat. The half-dozen analytical studies of female character
+in the principal novels of Mrs. Praed are far from flattering to her
+countrywomen, and might be somewhat misleading if we permitted ourselves
+to forget that in every case it is only one phase of a colonial girl's
+life that is being given.
+
+The whims, the countless flirtations, the greed for new sensations, the
+inconsistencies and the apparent mercenary attitude towards marriage,
+are not more permanently characteristic of the women of Australia than
+of Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The impulses of the former are
+under few conventional restraints; they have a greater control of their
+lives: that is the only material difference. The matrimonial creed of
+Gretta Reay expresses rather the exaggerated cynicism of a coquette than
+a fact generally true of the class to which she belongs. The experiences
+of herself and of other leading characters in these stories correctly
+show that, although Australian women have an undoubted preference for
+the gentlemanly product of an older civilisation, it is a preference of
+sentiment in which self-interest and prudence are scarcely considered.
+
+Even Weeta Wilson, the professional beauty so strikingly portrayed in
+_The Romance of a Station_, has a soul above her own avowed commercial
+view of marriage. It had been systematically planned that she should
+contract an aristocratic alliance; for years she had co-operated with
+her parents in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half ludicrous;
+she had been guarded and nurtured like a hothouse-plant. At last, when
+her opportunity came, she relinquished her lover on finding that there
+was another who had a prior right to him.
+
+The subtle skill with which some of the nobler qualities of her women
+are brought out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice and
+devotion, marks Mrs. Praed's highest point of achievement in the
+portrayal of character. Her knowledge of the mental complexities of her
+own sex is both deeper and better expressed than her observation of men.
+In the most inconsistent, the most cynical, or the shallowest of her
+women, there is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness, which conquers
+dislike. Thus, it is impossible to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, or
+accept her own estimate of her selfishness, after reading the
+finely-written scene in which she is found kneeling by the bedside of
+her dying child, from whom she has been so cruelly separated, while her
+recreant husband stands apart in awe and humiliation; or, again, in the
+interview with Frederica Barnadine, when the claims of both women to
+the love of Rolf Luard are discussed.
+
+The absence of similar redeeming qualities in several of the principal
+male characters leaves them almost wholly without definite claim on our
+regard, and also lessens the effect of the author's frequent endeavours
+to impartially contrast the unconsciously low moral standard of the
+average worldly man--the standard which society accepts--with the high,
+impracticable ideals of inexperienced womanhood.
+
+The heroines in nearly all of Mrs. Praed's stories have the life of
+sentiment and passion revealed to them by men older in years, and
+skilled in those small arts and graces of refined society which are ever
+attractive to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the men themselves
+are often placed in a strained and artificial pose. The presentation of
+the purely emotional side of their nature inevitably tends to produce an
+appearance of weakness and effeminacy.
+
+There is hardly a single admirable quality in Barrington, the base lover
+of Honoria Longleat; or in George Brand, who deserts Esther Hagart in
+her poverty and loneliness, and years afterwards, on finding her
+recognised as the niece of an English baronet, persuades her into an
+unhappy marriage; or in Brian Gilmore, the profligate in _Moloch_, who
+seeks to rejuvenate his jaded passions with the love of an innocent
+girl, after abandoning another woman whose life he has spoiled. Sir
+Bruce Carr-Gambier forsakes Christina Chard and her child for cowardly
+reasons similar to those pleaded by Brand. When they meet, long-after,
+he offers his devotion again, but only because her developed beauty,
+position, and reputed wealth attract him.
+
+It is true that these characters fairly fulfil the author's intention,
+so far as they bring into vivid juxtaposition the polished life of the
+old world with the simplicity of the new, and help to give the necessary
+dramatic point to the several stories; but there is so much of the cad
+in their nature and conduct, that it is difficult to accept them as
+representatives of any conceivable type of the Englishman of birth and
+refinement. This result, however, does not imply any actual inability on
+the part of the author to realise the standard of true manhood in all
+its varying strength and foibles, its tenderness and honour. Where there
+has not seemed any necessity to bend the character to the requirements
+of the story, admirably life-like sketches of men have been
+produced--such as Rolf Luard in _Christina Chard_ and Bernard Comyn in
+_An Australian Heroine_ among Englishmen; and Dyson Maddox, Frank
+Hallett, and James Ferguson among Australians.
+
+Though it is plain that Mrs. Praed has generally found colonial men
+wanting in interest in proportion as they themselves lack the polish
+that travel and extended experience of social life impart, she has not
+overlooked the rugged dignity, the truth and virility, which are their
+highest characteristics. Alluding to Ferguson as one type of his
+country, she observes that, 'underlying the rough-and-ready manners and
+the prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an old-world chivalry, a
+reverence for women, a purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment....
+This is partly due to the breezy moral atmosphere, and partly to the
+influence of books, which become living realities in the solitude and
+monotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an
+odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who
+learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its
+pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society
+slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits;
+but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the
+soul, he has made his own.'
+
+Ferguson himself echoes the same estimate in pleading his suit with Miss
+Reay. 'It seems to me,' he says, 'that there's a kind of chivalry which
+can be practised in the bush here better than in great cities--the
+chivalry Tennyson writes about--the knighthood that isn't earned by
+sauntering through life in a graceful, smiling sort of way, with your
+heart in your hand, but in simplicity and faith; by love of one woman,
+and reverence of all women for her sake.'
+
+Compared with the fascinating aristocrats and adventurers, the
+Australian man seems crudely provincial. Yet he is never shown in an
+incorrect or merely satirical light. There are, to be sure, occasions
+when he appears too tame and Dobbin-like in acceptance of his lady's
+caprices; but this is partly an evidence of that mixture of stiff native
+pride and independence which forbids servile appeal even to one he
+loves.
+
+The deficiency of which the reader is most often conscious in
+endeavouring to make a general estimate of Mrs. Praed's work is a want
+of breadth in her scope--a presentation too constant and too tense of
+certain phases of the passionate life of men and women, to the
+comparative exclusion of those softer and higher attributes which even
+Charlotte Brontë (whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally resembles)
+did not neglect. In other words, we are not given enough to admire.
+There are few pictures--and none that can be called memorable--of happy
+married life to contrast with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions.
+An inclination towards humorous disdain characterizes the references in
+the stories to conjugal relations of the ordinarily satisfactory kind.
+And when those of a filial nature are brought into prominence, they,
+too, often have only a pathetic or painful aspect--love on the one side
+repelled by indifference; an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy that
+irritates instead of soothes; a sensitive girl writhing under the
+brutalities or _gaucheries_ of a drunken father.
+
+A survey of the author's female characters will recall over a score of
+names of discontented girls experimenting in life--flirts, minxes,
+unhappy wives, and shallow society women; while after passing over half
+a dozen of the _ingénue_, the amusing and the neutral types, there
+remain only about four to represent the highest and most lovable
+qualities of womanhood. A similar division might be made between the
+male characters, though here the preponderance of the bad would not be
+so great as in the first case.
+
+The descriptions of English society which are amongst Mrs. Praed's best
+work are marked by the same clear vision of the darker side of human
+nature that is displayed in the treatment of English character in her
+Australian novels. Her view of the 'smart' section of English society is
+somewhat severe. After reading several of her novels, one could almost
+imagine her defending her literary preference in the words of Esmé
+Colquhoun, in _Affinities_: 'What is our mission--we writers--but to
+distil the essence of the age? The critics tell us that we are complex,
+that we are corrupt, that we are anatomists of diseased minds. We reply:
+The age is complex; the age is corrupt, and the society we depict is the
+outcome of influences which have been gathering through centuries of
+advancing civilization ... the reign of healthy melodrama is over; the
+reign of analysis has commenced. We make dramas of our sensations, not
+of our actions.' The same view is expressed in an article contributed by
+Mrs. Praed to the _North American Review_ in 1890. 'Analysis, not
+action,' she notes as the prevailing characteristic of the fiction
+produced by female writers, 'as it is also of our modern social life.'
+But, 'to dissect human nature under its society swathings needs,' she
+adds, 'the skill of a Balzac or a Thackeray, while the feminine
+counterpart of a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find.'
+
+That indefinable power which includes sympathetic insight and does not
+overlook whatever is good even in the most repulsive character is,
+perhaps, what the describers in fiction of modern society need even more
+than skill in dissection. To observe and dissect what is corrupt is
+easier than to make the record of corruption presentable. Mrs. Praed's
+own tale _The Bond of Wedlock_, with all its undoubted cleverness, its
+realism and dramatic strength, fails in its due impression as a picture
+of latter-day English morals because it is too sordid, too completely
+devoid of any of the better qualities of humanity.
+
+To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable and natural moods one must
+revert to the novels in which the scenery and people of her own country
+are described. In _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_ we have her liveliest
+example of humour and caricature, in _The Head Station_ her most
+cheerful pictures of country life, and in _Christina Chard_ some account
+of the society with which colonists of wealth surround themselves in
+London. The latter story has several finely dramatic scenes and is a
+sample of the author's mature work. Hers is the most comprehensive view
+that we have of the social and political life of the Antipodes, and for
+this and for her minutely recorded knowledge of her own sex she will
+long continue to hold and deserve a foremost place in Australian
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+TASMA.
+
+
+Between the writers who profess not to see anything individual in the
+life of Australia and those others who confine themselves to describing
+a few of its principal scenes and types of character, Tasma holds a
+middle and independent place. She is absolutely without predilections
+and hobbies. Her materials are chosen for some quality of
+picturesqueness rather than for the purpose of illustrating any phase of
+life at the Antipodes or elsewhere. So little are some of her novels
+concerned with the external appearances of the country that the scene of
+their action might easily be transferred to almost any part of Great
+Britain or America.
+
+Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched views of places--of
+Melbourne in midsummer, with its buildings of sombre bluestone and
+stucco, and streets swept by dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid and
+drought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty of rural Tasmania, the home
+of her own youth--but these and other descriptions from the same pen are
+slight compared with similar work in the stories of Kingsley,
+Boldrewood, and Mrs. Campbell Praed.
+
+Tasma, as one of the younger writers, has rightly seen that, for the
+present at all events, more than sufficient use has been made in fiction
+of the natural peculiarities of Australia. Her novels are, moreover, all
+character studies, and little dependent upon local colour for their
+interest. Her quiet, satirical humour and power of rapidly and mordantly
+sketching a portrait, do much to justify a comparison which her friends
+sometimes make of her writings with those of George Eliot and Jane
+Austen. Rolf Boldrewood, after the publication of her first three books,
+hailed her as the 'Australian George Eliot,' and the title is certainly
+more fitting than the praise implied by the other comparison. She has
+much of George Eliot's conscientious literary expression, direct
+masculine way of looking at life, and unsparing criticism of her own
+sex. While reminding one, as she often does, of Jane Austen's humour,
+Tasma does not approach any nearer to that writer's supreme gift of
+describing character in dialogue than scores of others who have followed
+the same model during the last seventy years.
+
+Like most of the chief contributors to Australian literature, Tasma is a
+colonist in experience only. She was born at Highgate, near London, and
+taken during childhood by her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a Dutch
+merchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania, about forty years ago. She displayed
+literary talent at an early age, read extensively, and published
+criticisms in the _Melbourne Review_, and short stories and sketches in
+the lighter colonial periodicals.
+
+In 1879 Tasma went to live in Europe, and has since known Australia only
+as an occasional visitor. Becoming interested in social questions during
+a residence in France, she wrote in the _Nouvelle Revue_, suggesting
+emigration to the colonies and engagement in the fruit-growing industry
+there as a means of relieving some of the poverty of the Old World. She
+afterwards lectured on the subject in French at the invitation of the
+Geographical Society of Paris. So successful were the lectures that she
+was induced to repeat them in various provincial centres, as well as in
+Holland and Belgium. This work occupied from 1880 to 1882, and Tasma was
+presented by the French Government with the decoration of Officier
+d'Académie. The King of the Belgians also honoured the lecturer by
+receiving her in special audience to discuss means of improving
+communication between Belgium and Tasmania.
+
+In 1885, after revisiting Australia, Tasma was married to M. Auguste
+Couvreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he has
+since died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by the
+publication at London of _Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill_, which proved to
+be one of the most notable books of its season.
+
+This novel remains the best example of the author's humour and power of
+describing character that she has produced. It has none of the marks of
+a first effort. Written when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodied
+some of the best fruits of many years' keenly critical study of life, in
+addition to the culture gained by travel and a wide course of reading.
+Of plot there is little--there is still less in some of the later
+novels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope for
+unusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation.
+
+In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar world
+she merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded by
+Nathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke of
+them as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the
+earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going
+about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made
+a show of.' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasma
+reminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy
+_parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet
+tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, that
+wonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man.
+There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especially
+when they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. The
+delightful comradeship of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dry
+New England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for his
+sister and their pride in each other.
+
+The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by their
+secret contempt for the pretensions of the upper classes, is shown in
+various similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ only
+as their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the American
+merchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle
+Piper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a
+religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can
+repress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic
+coldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and
+step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractable
+section of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and
+reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness
+which is irresistible.
+
+The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficult
+to affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that the
+characters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all the
+disadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largely
+in plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed in
+piquant dialogue.
+
+Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of witty
+touches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in the
+office of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint that
+he is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignified
+indifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the local
+press interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, as
+all of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of direct
+narrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading,
+but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create a
+vivid impression of character.
+
+Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly be
+discussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has its
+proportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villas
+in the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammar
+and less generosity than he who was described by one of his fashionable
+English guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and the
+intonation of a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any
+intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the
+existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she
+certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them.
+
+A passage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives her
+views on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. A
+description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an
+Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a
+_habitué_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of
+art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices.
+
+    To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English readers as
+    thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as
+    was that of Dumas _père_ when he declared that all the inhabitants
+    of Antwerp were _roux_ because he had encountered two red-headed
+    girls on his way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless
+    he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their
+    own underlying individualities none the less that they had been
+    influenced in their outward bearing and modes of expressing
+    themselves by a long sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily
+    contact with all sorts and conditions of men--broken-down gentlemen,
+    English yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the moulding of
+    character by outward influences alone is not a work to be achieved
+    in one generation, or what would become of the theory of heredity,
+    upon which everything is supposed to depend, more or less, in our
+    present scientific age? If these people strike the English reader,
+    therefore, as differing in certain respects from those he is
+    accustomed to meet in his daily walk through life, let him remember
+    that the differences which will strike him most are the merely
+    superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure from the
+    conventional rules of speech and behaviour that guide his own
+    outward conduct, and that in all the main essentials they are, _au
+    fond_, neither more like him or more unlike him than though chance
+    had willed that they should be born and brought up on the selfsame
+    patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary of the
+    native-born Australian, or long resident in Australia, of the not
+    too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of
+    voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a
+    corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however,
+    which 'nobody can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection
+    upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs.
+    James would have called 'höfisch' English, and the English that has
+    been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and
+    backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there _is_ a difference, and Portia
+    was never more sensible of it than when she returned, as on the
+    present occasion, from moving among a London society crowd into the
+    Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington house.
+
+Tasma's efforts to give variety to her work, and keep as far as possible
+out of the beaten paths of the Australian writer, have not, however,
+quite excluded from her novels characters which will be recognised as
+typical. There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving colonial man
+who keeps racehorses, gets deeply into debt and love, and has sometimes
+to encounter awkward parental alternatives.
+
+At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best is
+that of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novel
+are the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australian
+sportsman of the upper-middle class more naturally expressed. The
+author's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary of
+the not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial young
+man is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listening
+to the talk of such men all his life.
+
+Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeably
+clever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute to
+the author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for him
+increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agonies
+of rage he occasions his father.
+
+The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that in
+which Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiat
+and George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if a
+marriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sort
+of 'new woman' who maintains a constant attitude of disdain towards her
+stepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together,
+discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignored
+him, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temper
+of a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a passion
+for dictating absolutely to everyone about him.' 'He'd talk' and 'she'd
+talk,' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their scraps of
+poetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhyme
+could show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker a
+favour by condescending to go on living at all!'
+
+An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had done
+most with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determined
+that it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for his
+importation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they and
+his little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance
+of household power in his favour?
+
+It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, the
+Cavendishes, that he determined to put a stop to his son's courtship.
+George, at the outset of the momentous interview with his father,
+speculated inwardly on his chances of being able to soften the old man
+to a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with a
+feeling that savoured of intensity.'
+
+Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him,
+George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziest
+indifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad upon
+his father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man's
+was purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl.'
+
+    As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never have traced the
+    sonship in George. There was nothing in common between the sallow,
+    indolent face of the younger man, and the spreading, heated face of
+    the elder. George looked like any club-lounger--not unwilling to let
+    it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet ready, with perfect
+    acquiescence, to go through with an hour or a forenoon of the
+    infliction of boredom, as conveyed by a father's presence.... Mr.
+    Piper watched him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the
+    baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the outset of
+    an interview with his son creeping over him as he watched. If George
+    could only once have lost his head and sworn, or only once implored
+    or threatened! But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his
+    attitude--the veiled disrespect it implied--spoke of an indifference
+    that was worse than the most open revolt. But surely he would be
+    made to feel now! Mr. Piper had never tried to reach 'my gentleman'
+    through his 'young woman' yet.... A slight elevation of an unruffled
+    brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were looking critically
+    at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his ear took in the sense of his
+    fathers words. Otherwise he might have served as a perfect model of
+    intentness upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all
+    eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn from his
+    foot.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute excitement.
+
+    'I'll see and put a stop to it!' he threatened. 'I'll take and pack
+    her off, and you at the back of her, "my gentleman"!' George knew
+    that the use of this expression signified especial bitterness on
+    his father's part. 'I'll have an end of this nonsense--a painted
+    jade like her!'
+
+    'Wait a minute, please,' said George, shutting the knife with a
+    little snap, and settling himself back upon the window-sill; 'you
+    are a little hard to follow, or I am slow at catching your meaning,
+    perhaps. I understand that you had some object in sending for me.
+    Are you explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen, as
+    you see.'
+
+    'You're very condescending, I'm sure,' said Mr. Piper, with such
+    withering sarcasm that George stroked his moustache and smiled. 'You
+    put yourself about for your father a deal too much, "my gentleman,"
+    there's no doubt of it.' Then, with a sudden break in his voice:
+    'No, George; it's not much of a son you've been to me, and no one
+    can say I've stood in your light. I'd like you to show me another
+    young man who could carry on top ropes like you. There's not many
+    fathers 'ud have stood it. Most fathers 'ud made you turn to long
+    ago.'
+
+    'Do you want anything done for you?' interrupted George, with the
+    air of a man who is laying himself out to oblige--'another tour of
+    inspection in the north?'
+
+    Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George's want of occupation, it
+    was the young man's policy to refer to this tour of inspection--a
+    memorable tour, seeing that it had given him employment for at least
+    three months....
+
+    If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an 'able-bodied
+    young man who wasn't worth his salt,' as a loafer who was hardly fit
+    to 'jackaroo' on a station, as a 'lazy lubber' who would 'go to the
+    dogs if it weren't for his father,' George never betrayed that he
+    felt humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid.
+    Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of
+    profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper
+    stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to
+    yawn.
+
+    'I dare say it's all very true, governor,' was all he said in reply.
+    'It's very nice and complimentary, I'm sure, and I ought to be very
+    much obliged to you. But, _à propos_ of your compliments, may I ask
+    if it was only to treat me to them in full that you brought me up
+    those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I
+    wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man,
+    is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the
+    morning?'
+
+    'If you were like other young men,' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up
+    and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh
+    no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----'
+
+    'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent
+    through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his
+    voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to
+    me?'
+
+    He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the
+    ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he
+    had been over-hasty. For the glass through which Mr. Piper had made
+    a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips
+    worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth; the blood
+    rushing away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready,
+    sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed
+    back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his
+    temples to bursting....
+
+    'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of
+    Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously.
+    'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of
+    a--_sister_?'
+
+    'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly
+    returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable.
+
+    'Of a sister,' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend.'
+
+    'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak
+    distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine,
+    thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see
+    how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn
+    it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got
+    a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill
+    again!'
+
+    'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura
+    wouldn't have me if I wanted!'
+
+    'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful.
+    'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?'
+
+The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not have
+Laura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price,' and that if George choose to
+marry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden of
+turf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his craving
+for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His
+personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara
+Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation
+of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle
+Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her
+other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her Earliest
+Youth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same class, in the short
+story _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsive
+light, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal.
+
+As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara
+Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness
+concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly
+excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat,
+are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger by
+the ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave
+his weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present,
+and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemed
+to be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor.'
+
+But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy for
+imagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe in
+the air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though it
+could be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becoming
+background for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with the
+essentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirable
+qualifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her,
+filled a reasonable space.' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams
+such as it would have seemed to him almost a sacrilege to disturb,
+'though it is probable that the only notion he would have been guilty of
+upsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train.'
+
+The insight and completeness with which Sara's character is depicted in
+the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should
+entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She
+is one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity for
+affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't
+be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful
+suit of her clerical lover; 'I never intended to be a poor man's wife.'
+As a contrast to the cold personality of the beautiful Sara, the author
+gives a charming picture of the elder sister's affection and
+thoughtfulness for others.
+
+Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in _Not Counting the Cost_, are good
+women of a perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is surprising to
+think that the same hand which drew them also found patience to draw the
+unhappy, metaphysical heroines of _In Her Earliest Youth_ and _The
+Knight of the White Feather_. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as when
+describing the characters of children, of whom several figure
+prominently in her novels. There is a delightful picture of romping
+childhood at the opening of _Not Counting the Cost_. The scene is a farm
+in the shadow of Mount Wellington, near Hobart, the city where the
+author spent many of her own early years. 'Chubby,' the eight-year-old
+uncle of the heroine of _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Louey Piper are
+lovable creations, though, it must be said, more quaint than natural.
+One remembers the expansive dignity of the former on his first meeting
+with Pauline's lover, George Drafton. 'How do you do, little man?' says
+the latter condescendingly. 'How do you do, sir?' replies the little man
+stiffly, raising his garden hat. 'You are an acquaintance of Paul--of
+Miss Vyner's, I believe. I have the honour to be her maternal uncle.' No
+wonder George bursts into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragic
+intensity of his love protestations of five minutes before!
+
+Louey Piper's relations with her father are idyllic. She is more
+necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual
+negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not
+have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world
+changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of
+uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things
+outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented
+themselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps....
+The wistful, yearning look that gave her eyes so touching an expression
+in the setting of her small freckled face never gave place to such a
+fulness of satisfaction as when her father, her brother, and her sister
+were all, as it were, under her eye, and safe to remain indoors for the
+night.'
+
+The general praise won by _Uncle Piper_ for its author as a delineator
+of character appears to have decided her to give increased attention to
+her ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happy
+one. The analytical bias disclosed in the first story was largely
+extended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease in
+action and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central figure of _In Her
+Earliest Youth_, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without love
+a man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. In
+tastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything in
+common. The story--an unusually long three-volume one--is mainly a
+minute study of Pauline's disillusionment during the early period of her
+wifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man who
+had formerly attracted her; and how, with the birth of her first child,
+she experienced the dawn of affection for its father.
+
+The story is excessively expanded for the small amount of dramatic
+movement it contains. Only three characters are prominently described,
+and these too seldom through the medium of dialogue. The central motive,
+moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult to appreciate the
+tragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline's, especially
+as George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from the
+ordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to her, and would
+readily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any.
+Tasma's more recent work is better both in spirit and literary
+construction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in
+_Not Counting the Cost_, of the adventures of the Clare family in their
+quixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them a
+long-lost heritage. In this story and _The Penance of Portia James_ the
+author gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the best
+samples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesque
+of Piper's pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendish
+affects to be revolted by the necessity of being indebted to the
+_ci-devant_ butcher, while secretly luxuriating in his munificence.
+Finally, as a means of discharging some of his obligations, he conceives
+the project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, after
+the manner of the enterprising person who opened a 'heraldry office' in
+Sydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provide
+clients with reliable information of their ancestors, together with
+suitable coats of arms.
+
+    True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there _had_ been a
+    Count Piper somewhere or other some centuries ago, and the very
+    rarity of the name proved that every Piper must come from one common
+    stock. Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself up to
+    its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend whole hours in the
+    Melbourne Library poring over books of heraldry. Every chronological
+    or biographical document bearing upon the age in which Count Piper
+    was supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and minute
+    examination. When the monthly mail day came round there would sure
+    to be a budget of letters in Mr. Cavendish's handwriting, addressed
+    to the different colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were
+    to help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the oblivion
+    in which they had hitherto been suffered to remain.
+
+Mr. Piper is at length informed of the progress of the inquiries, but
+shows a provoking obtuseness and indifference concerning them.
+
+    'I am--hem!--I am pursuing a task of the utmost consequence to your
+    family interests,' Mr. Cavendish had told him one day. 'In fact, my
+    dear sir, I am engaged in a work of no less moment than that of
+    reconstructing your family tree.'
+
+    'My what-do-you-call-it tree?' exclaimed Mr. Piper, with a hazy
+    idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable
+    experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. 'Don't you take and
+    put any rubbish in the garden. I've got a new lot of guano, and I
+    don't want it meddled with.'
+
+    'Guano!' echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the most withering
+    compassion. 'I'm afraid you don't quite apprehend my meaning. I am
+    not alluding to coarse material facts at all. I am speaking of a
+    genealogical tree--a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am
+    trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion. I am....'
+
+    'You'd better leave 'em alone,' interrupted Mr. Piper, with the
+    sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not been altogether
+    allayed. '_They_ won't do you any good--no more than they've done
+    for me. You've got some of your own, I expect; that's enough for any
+    man, I should think.'
+
+    Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. If the
+    matter had not become a hobby by this time, he would have abandoned
+    it then and there. As it was, he contented himself by deploring the
+    sad effects of low association upon the undoubted descendant of a
+    count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing a hog in
+    armour instead of a stag at gaze into the coat-of-arms that he
+    foresaw would be the result of his researches.
+
+Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs. Cavendish, on the eve of the
+first meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she could soften the
+heart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother--'how lead
+him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefit
+him,' and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only was
+wealth an acknowledged power, 'even though pork-sausages should have
+been its alleged first cause,' but that, after all, 'politic members of
+the great ruling houses in the old world had been known to make
+concessions to trade,' and he 'was prepared to make concessions too!'
+Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bear
+the semblance of cordiality.
+
+    'This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,' he said, with ten white
+    fingers--the fingers of thoroughbred hands--closing round Mr.
+    Piper's plebeian knuckles. No onlooker could have supposed for an
+    instant that he had come, with the whole of his family, in an
+    entirely destitute condition, to live upon his wife's brother.
+    Besides, we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour is
+    virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities from people
+    you esteem....
+
+    'You're welcome, sir,' said Mr. Piper.
+
+    Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish wiped her eyes,
+    and Mr. Piper said very heartily, 'You're welcome, the lot of you.'
+
+Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a
+consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in
+_Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties
+of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception,
+little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards
+broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her
+somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not
+less pungent, is of a quieter kind.
+
+Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the most
+noteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language.
+The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualities
+and culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than the
+novelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, and
+by the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of her
+chapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large class
+of thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack in
+dramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usually
+faithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate and
+sympathetic view of our common life.
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
+
+_G., C. & CO._
+
+
+
+
+  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                               |
+  | Transcriber's note:                                           |
+  |                                                               |
+  | Inconsistent hyphenation (book-form/book form, gold-fields/   |
+  | goldfields, horse-racing/horseracing, race-horses/racehorses) |
+  | has been retained.                                            |
+  |                                                               |
+  | Minor typographical corrections are documented in the source  |
+  | code of the html version of this e-book. Instructions for     |
+  | viewing those corrections will be found in the transcriber's  |
+  | note at the end of the html file.                             |
+  |                                                               |
+  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1 class="ctr">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Australian Writers, by Desmond Byrne</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Australian Writers</p>
+<p>Author: Desmond Byrne</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 24, 2009  [eBook #28599]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3 class="ctr">E-text prepared by David Wilson<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="main">
+
+<h1><a name="png.001" id="png.001"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">i</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>AUSTRALIAN WRITERS</h1>
+
+<h3><small>BY</small><br
+ />DESMOND BYRNE</h3>
+
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/illus-001.png" width="126" height="146"
+ alt="RB: Fide et Fiducia" title="Publisher's device" /></p>
+
+<p class="ctr top6">LONDON<br
+ /><big class="so">RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON</big><br
+ /><img src="images/queen.png" width="333" height="17"
+ alt="Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen" title="" /><br
+ /><small>1896</small></p>
+
+<p class="ctr"><small>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</small></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="so"><a name="png.003" id="png.003"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">iii</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td class="num" colspan="2">                      <small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>INTRODUCTION               </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.005">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>MARCUS CLARKE             </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.033">29</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>HENRY KINGSLEY            </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.094">90</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>ADA CAMBRIDGE            </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.135">131</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>ADAM LINDSAY GORDON      </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.163">159</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>ROLF BOLDREWOOD          </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.193">189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED      </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.233">229</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>TASMA                    </td><td class="num"><a href="#png.264">260</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.005" id="png.005"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">1</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Any</span> survey of the work done by Australian
+authors suggests a question as to what length
+of time ought to be allowed for the development
+of distinctive national characteristics in
+the literature of a young country self-governing
+to the extent of being a republic in all
+but name, isolated in position, highly civilised,
+enjoying all the modern luxuries available to
+the English-speaking race in older lands, and
+with a population fully two-thirds native.
+The common saying that a country cannot
+be expected to produce literature during the
+earlier state of its growth is too vague a
+generalisation. There are circumstances by
+which its application may be modified. It
+certainly does not apply with equal force to
+<a name="png.006" id="png.006"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">2</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>a country whose early difficulties included
+race conflicts, war with an external power
+and political labours of great magnitude, and
+to another whose commercial and social development,
+carried on under more modern
+conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous,
+has been facile, unbroken and extraordinarily
+rapid.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can paucity of literary product, where
+it exists, be satisfactorily explained by the
+unrest that continues in a new land long
+after it has attained material prosperity and
+the higher refinements of life. The Americans
+are a type of an extremely restless people.
+They have been so throughout the greater
+part of their history, and the characteristic is
+now more marked than ever. It is a fixed
+condition of their national being, an expression
+of the cumulative ambition that is the
+source of their varied progress. Yet from
+time to time men have arisen among them
+who not only have given intimate views of a
+new civilisation, but have added something
+to the permanent stock of what Matthew
+Arnold used to call &lsquo;the best that is known
+<a name="png.007" id="png.007"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">3</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and thought in the world.&rsquo; Even when the
+independent nationhood of the United States
+was still but an aspiration, Benjamin Franklin
+had familiarised Europe with much that has
+since been recognised as inherent in the
+modes of thought and manners of the Western
+race.</p>
+
+<p>The bulk of the literature of America is, of
+course, still small in proportion to the culture
+and intellectual energy of the country; but
+it has been and is sufficient to interpret in a
+more or less distinctive way all the leading
+phases in the evolution of the national
+thought and sentiment. The subtle influence
+of the deeply-grounded religious feeling
+which, implanted by the Puritan pioneers,
+has survived generations of intense absorption
+in material progress and the distractions
+that modern life offers to the possessors of
+newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the
+people in their independence, and their
+natural tendency to overrate it in comparison;
+with the conditions of other countries; the
+contrasts furnished by a society fond of reproducing
+European habits, yet retaining a
+<a name="png.008" id="png.008"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">4</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>simplicity and freshness of its own: these
+and other features in the progress of the
+United States for over a century may be
+found expressed in its literature from the
+native standpoint, and not merely from that
+of the intelligent outside observer.</p>
+
+<p>An American writer in discussing, a few
+years ago, the quality of the literature produced
+before the War of Secession, when
+wealth and leisure were abundant among the
+planters and in the principal New England
+towns, observed that &lsquo;there would seem to
+be something in the relation of a colony to
+the mother-country which dooms the thought
+and art of the former to a hopeless provincialism.&rsquo;
+If a comment so largely fanciful
+could be made respecting Australasia and
+Canada, it would practically mean&mdash;at all
+events from the American point of view&mdash;that
+as long as they remain dependencies of
+Great Britain, and therefore lack the stimulus
+of an active patriotism, so long will much of
+whatever is individual in their social development
+and national aspirations be without
+expression.  In the case of the Australasian
+<a name="png.009" id="png.009"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">5</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>colonies it would further mean (apart from
+any consideration of their future independence)
+that a people far removed from other
+communities of the same race and already
+giving promise of being the greatest power
+south of the equator, must continue for an
+indefinite period to be wholly sustained and
+swayed in matters of thought and art by a
+country over twelve thousand miles distant
+that happens for the present to offer the
+most convenient markets in which to buy
+and sell. The point need hardly be discussed,
+but it suggests some facts in the
+intellectual life of Australia that it will be of
+interest to name. These may not be found
+to explain why there is yet no sign of the
+coming of an Antipodean Franklin or Irving,
+or Hawthorne or Emerson; but they will
+help to show why the literature of the country
+grows so unevenly, why it is chiefly of the
+objective order and leaves large tracts of the
+life of the people untouched.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the paradox that a people may
+read a great deal and yet not be interested
+in literature could hardly be applied to the
+<a name="png.010" id="png.010"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">6</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Australians, but it is a fact that they make
+no special effort to encourage the growth of
+a literature of their own. By no means unconscious
+of their achievements in other
+directions&mdash;in political innovations, in sport
+and athletics&mdash;they appear not to take any
+pride in or see the advantage of promoting
+creative intellectual work. Will this be considered
+natural and reasonable, as already
+they are supplied with books and plays and
+pictures from England and Europe, or as a
+proof of thoughtlessness and neglect? &lsquo;Why,&rsquo;
+asked a critic in the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> in
+1819, &lsquo;should the Americans write books
+when a six weeks&#8217; passage brings them, in
+their own tongue, our sense, science, and
+genius in bales and hogsheads?&rsquo; Are the
+Australians of these days asking themselves
+a similar question? It would seem so. In
+1894 they imported books, magazines and
+newspapers from the United Kingdom to
+the value of £363,741: this, too, at a time
+when most of the colonies were understood
+to be rigidly economising in consequence of
+a financial crisis.  A decade before the
+<a name="png.011" id="png.011"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">7</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>amount was not far short of a hundred
+thousand pounds higher.</p>
+
+<p>Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual
+tendencies of the native population of
+the United States Mr. Bryce places &lsquo;a desire
+to be abreast of the best thought and work
+of the world everywhere, and to have every
+form of literature and art adequately represented
+and excellent of its kind, so that
+America shall be felt to hold her own among
+the nations.&rsquo; And he further attributes to
+them &lsquo;an admiration for literary or scientific
+eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that
+can be called genius, with an over-readiness
+to discover it.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Artistic talent in America has from an
+early period in the history of the country
+enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and
+attention. Mr. Henry James has testified to
+the &lsquo;extreme honour&rsquo; in which writers and
+artists have always been held there. Literature
+is now a subject of special systematic
+study in all the important schools; literary
+organisations are numerous, including no
+fewer than five thousand circles for the study
+<a name="png.012" id="png.012"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">8</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of Shakespeare; authorship has become something
+like a craze in fashionable society; the
+intelligence of the criticism in the weekly
+press is on the whole equal to that in English
+journals; and several of the magazines are
+largely devoted to the more artistic kinds of
+writing. If the results of these incentives to
+production seem comparatively small, as they
+undoubtedly do, it must not be forgotten that
+the profession of letters in America long
+suffered, and is still suffering, from the absence
+of international copyright law. Before
+the year 1891 the markets were filled with
+cheap reprints of British and European works
+(often of an inferior class), and even now
+authors have to encounter competition with
+a vast quantity of foreign matter of which
+copyright, owing to the peculiar conditions
+of the law and of the publishing trade, is
+often obtained at prices much below its real
+value.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, the native literary product
+of America that is noteworthy so much
+as the widespread and conscious taste for
+literature among the people, and the means
+<a name="png.013" id="png.013"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">9</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>which they adopt to promote it. The best
+friend of Australia could not credit it at present
+with any markedly active desire &lsquo;to have
+every form of literature and art adequately
+represented and excellent of its kind.&rsquo; In
+this respect the results of the high standard
+of education attained in the Government
+schools and the subsidised Universities are
+disappointing. The Universities of Sydney
+and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old,
+but neither is yet represented with distinction
+in the higher forms of literature and art.
+The Governments, at least, do their duty.
+Having liberally provided for school education,
+they spend annually large sums in
+making additions to picture-galleries, in
+maintaining libraries (of which there are over
+eleven hundred), technological schools and
+museums, and in other ways adding to the
+comfort and enlightenment of the people.
+But large private contributions are rare, and
+the founding or endowment of public institutions
+still rarer.</p>
+
+<p>Of societies or clubs devoted specially
+to the interests of literature there are very
+<a name="png.014" id="png.014"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">10</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>few&mdash;probably not half a dozen. Here and
+there among the upper classes there are little
+coteries whose members read the English and
+French reviews, and are well posted in all
+movements of interest in the world of letters,
+but there is no actual organisation among
+them, and they do not seek to extend their
+influence. Their ambition is confined to providing
+for their personal improvement and
+pleasure. The reading of the people, though
+extensive, is not serious nor in any way
+specialised, unless a recent notably high
+average of borrowing in the historical departments
+of a few of the free libraries be
+taken into account. The leading book exporters
+in London say that throughout the
+Antipodes the public demand is confined, as
+in England, mainly to the &lsquo;general&rsquo; literature
+of the hour. &lsquo;Whatever has succeeded in
+London will usually succeed in Australia&rsquo; is
+the invariable remark of the exporter and
+the first principle that guides his tentative
+selection in the case of all newly-published
+works. The circulation of the best British
+weekly and monthly reviews by some of the
+<a name="png.015" id="png.015"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">11</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>principal subscription libraries helps the
+reader to choose for himself, but if he should
+wish to buy a new book, however valuable,
+that has not become popular in the business
+sense, he will probably have to send to
+London for it.</p>
+
+<p>The wealthy people seem to select their
+reading-matter chiefly with a view to entertainment.
+Not long ago the manager of one
+of the most fashionable of the Melbourne
+circulating libraries said that about ninety
+per cent. of the female and seventy-five per
+cent. of the male frequenters of such libraries
+in Australia read only novels. But this
+average is perhaps rather over-stated, being
+given at a time when there was an exceptional
+demand for certain novels that had
+obtained notoriety by an audacious treatment
+of sex questions and English society.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the fare which fourteen of the
+London publishers provide in their colonial
+editions is of interest. Excellent value, of
+its kind, is usually offered in these issues, but
+here again we find proclaimed an excessive
+preference for light prose literature. Of 264
+<a name="png.016" id="png.016"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">12</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>volumes in one &lsquo;colonial library,&rsquo; 238 are of
+fiction. Sketches, memoirs, reminiscences
+and a few essays make up most of the
+balance. The taste of the working classes,
+so far as it can be ascertained from the
+records of the principal free libraries, is,
+curious as it may seem, decidedly sounder
+than that attributed to the customers of the
+subscription libraries. It must be remembered,
+however, that the former are seldom
+tempted with new fiction, and never with
+fiction of the spicy or questionable kind.
+Some of the larger institutions are rigidly exclusive
+in regard to the light kinds of literature.</p>
+
+<p>Authorship in Australia loses an important
+incentive in the absence of local magazines.
+All of the better kind have lacked sufficient
+public support. Several of them, including
+the <cite>Colonial Monthly</cite> (established by Marcus
+Clarke), the <cite>Melbourne Review</cite>, the <cite>Centennial
+Magazine</cite>, and the <cite>Australasian Critic</cite>
+(the latter conducted by the professors of the
+Melbourne University) promised so well that
+their want of support is not easily explainable.
+It has been attributed to an unreasoning
+<a name="png.017" id="png.017"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">13</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>prejudice, an assumption that being locally
+produced they must necessarily be inferior;
+but this probably does the reading public less
+than justice. Apparently from their contents,
+most of the magazines failed because
+they were made too Australian in character,
+too unlike the English periodicals to which
+readers had been so long accustomed. There
+are many fine magazines in the United
+States, but their conductors do not make
+the mistake of trying to do without British
+and European contributions. They know
+the value of names as well as of matter.
+Foreign writers supply about one-third of
+the contents of the monthlies. When great
+interest suddenly attaches to some national
+question, their enterprise, like that of the
+newspapers of the country, sometimes takes
+the special form of securing cabled summaries
+of the opinions of influential politicians
+in Great Britain and elsewhere for immediate
+publication.</p>
+
+<p>A contributory cause of the failure of Australian
+magazines is the fact that the cost of
+their mechanical production has always been
+<a name="png.018" id="png.018"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">14</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>higher than that of any of their imported
+competitors. This promises to be a difficulty
+for some years to come. Book-publishing, as
+a separate business, is also practically impossible,
+for like reasons. The Australian reader
+attaches no special value to the possibilities
+of the local magazine, partly because its
+place as a literary and art record is considered
+to be fairly supplied by the weekly
+newspapers. Moreover, it is said he demands
+cheapness as well as high quality in
+his periodicals, and knows that both can be
+got in several English, American and European
+magazines. If this be so, the same
+predilection will no doubt account for the
+spectacle of leading London firms sending
+to the colonies tons of their popular modern
+books in paper covers, and offering them at
+about half the price charged in the United
+Kingdom, where they are obtainable only in
+cloth-bound editions.</p>
+
+<p>That no one has yet lived by the production
+of literature in Australia is not a
+matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would
+seriously think of attempting to do so.
+<a name="png.019" id="png.019"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">15</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker,
+a steeplechase-rider&mdash;anything but a
+professional man of letters; Marcus Clarke
+was a journalist and playwright, and wrote
+only two novels in fourteen years; Rolf
+Boldrewood&#8217;s books were written in spare
+hours before and after his daily duties as a
+country magistrate; Henry Kingsley returned
+to England before publishing anything;
+Kendall held a Government clerkship
+which he exchanged for journalism; Mr.
+Brunton<!-- TN: original reads "Bruton" --> Stephens is in the Queensland Civil
+Service; Mr. B.&nbsp;L. Farjeon&#8217;s colonial work
+was mainly done in connection with the New
+Zealand press; Messrs. Marriott, Watson,
+E. W. Hornung, J.&nbsp;F. Hogan, Haddon
+Chambers and Guy Boothby, among younger
+writers, have taken their talents to London;
+and none of the half-dozen female novelists
+have been dependent upon literature for a
+livelihood.</p>
+
+<p>What, it may be asked, becomes of the
+best talent developed by the Australian
+schools and Universities? It is employed, or
+tries to find employment, in the practice of
+<a name="png.020" id="png.020"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">16</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>law, medicine, journalism and teaching. From
+law to politics is but a step in the colonies,
+and the chances of attaining Cabinet rank,
+rendered frequent by the prevailing aggressive
+form of party government, are often
+attractive to men of ability and ambition.
+The journalists are more or less drenched
+with politics all the year round, and they,
+too, occasionally find it an easy matter to
+vary their occupation by assisting in the
+active business of law-making.  The tension
+of their daily lives, severer than that of the
+majority of press writers in Great Britain,
+leaves them little or no leisure for literary
+work of the higher kind, and generally the
+prospect of being compelled to send whatever
+they might write to the other end of the
+world for the chance of publication discourages
+effort. It may safely be said that there are
+young men on the editorial and reporting
+staffs of a dozen of the principal journals who
+possess ability that would secure them distinction
+in the wider fields of England or
+America. To their skill and spirited rivalry
+is due the universally high quality of the
+<a name="png.021" id="png.021"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">17</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Antipodean press. Mr. David Christie
+Murray, writing after considerable experience
+of the colonies, and as one who had
+been an English journalist, said that on the
+whole he was &lsquo;compelled to think it by far
+and away the best in the world.&rsquo; The remark
+is without exaggeration so far as it
+applies to the large weekly journals.</p>
+
+<p>The extent of the favour shown by Australian
+readers to the works of their own
+novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned
+to that which their merits have previously
+won in England. Booksellers and their
+London agents, who of course treat all literature
+from a purely commercial standpoint,
+are at all events unanimous in discrediting
+the existence in recent years of any prejudice
+against colonial fiction of the better class. It
+is now very seldom sent out in two or three
+volume form, they say, but neither are the
+most popular English novels, except occasionally
+to subscription libraries. For representative
+Australian work, then, there is a
+fair field but no favour. It is as though the
+function and existence of the authors apart
+<a name="png.022" id="png.022"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">18</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>from the rank and file of English letters
+were not recognised. There is an exception
+to this rule in the poet Gordon, as a portion
+of his writings, the Bush <cite>Ballads and Galloping
+Rhymes</cite>, irresistibly commemorate the
+national love of horseflesh and outdoor life.
+Every Australian now knows that <cite>For the
+Term of his Natural Life</cite> is a great novel of
+its class; but as a leading Victorian journalist
+(Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in an
+article in the <cite>Melbourne Review</cite>, Clarke&#8217;s
+real merit was for years undervalued, because
+he was known to be &lsquo;only a colonial writer.&rsquo;
+Thousands of English, European and
+American readers had admired the novel
+before they thought of inquiring who the
+writer was or whence he came. It is true
+that the story attracted a good deal of
+interest in Australia even during its first
+appearance as a serial, but from elsewhere
+came its recognition as one of the novels of
+the century.</p>
+
+<p>The authors whose lives and writings are
+briefly sketched in this volume are all noted
+in some degree for accuracy and sincerity
+<a name="png.023" id="png.023"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">19</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in their representation of life in Australia.
+They have all written from abundant knowledge&mdash;from
+love, also, perhaps it may be
+added&mdash;of this great wide land with its
+brilliant skies, its opportunities and its wholesome
+pleasures. That they should fail to
+cover their field&mdash;that they tell too much of
+country life and adventure and too little of
+the throb and energy of the cities&mdash;is in a
+large measure explained by the fact that
+their books are of necessity primarily written
+for English readers.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow it is assumed that people in
+the mother-country continue to be interested
+only in the picturesque, the curious and
+the unusual in Australian life.  The idea
+is in part a survival from earlier years
+when a host of military officers, Civil Servants,
+journalists and tourists described in
+some form the more obvious peculiarities of
+the colonies: their giant, evergreen forests,
+strange amorphous animals, aristocratic gold-diggers,
+ex-convicts in carriages, and general
+state of topsy-turveydom.  There is quite an
+amazing variety of occasional records of this
+<a name="png.024" id="png.024"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">20</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>class in forgotten books, magazines and
+pamphlets. In at least a score of well-known
+novels there are charming country
+scenes, true in every particular; but there
+is a distinct limit to the power of fiction of
+this kind to interest remote readers, while
+much repetition of it might well be misleading.</p>
+
+<p>A writer in the <cite>Australasian Critic</cite> once
+rightly observed, respecting a batch of short
+stories of the conventionally Australian kind,
+that English readers might &lsquo;fancy from
+them that big cities are unknown in Australia;
+that the population consists of
+squatters, diggers, stock-riders, shepherds
+and bushrangers; that the superior residences
+are weatherboard homesteads with
+wide verandas, while the inferior ones are huts
+and tents.&rsquo; No foreign reader could understand
+from them that &lsquo;more than half the
+Australian population have never seen kangaroos
+or emus outside a zoological garden,
+and that not one in a hundred, or even a
+thousand, has seen a wild black fellow.&rsquo;
+There is a well-known type of Australian
+<a name="png.025" id="png.025"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">21</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>novel to which the same remarks might
+apply with almost equal fitness.</p>
+
+<p>The lack of interest on the part of the
+novelists in the cities is the more noticeable
+because they contain one-third of the whole
+population of the country, a proportion said
+not to have a parallel in any other part of
+the world. This neglect is surely a mistake,
+founded on an erroneous conception of the
+tastes of the English public, and resulting
+partly from the absence of anything like a
+local literary influence upon the writers.
+&lsquo;Have the stress and turmoil of a political
+career no charm?&rsquo; asks Mr. Edmund Gosse,
+in referring to the restricted scope of the
+English novel, and in making a plea for &lsquo;a
+larger study of life.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The same question might with very good
+reason be raised concerning the political
+life of Australia, which has been almost
+entirely neglected since Mrs. Campbell Praed
+used up the best of her early impressions
+and settled in England. The majority of
+the writers of fiction who continue to live
+in the country are women, and possibly
+<a name="png.026" id="png.026"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">22</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>not interested in politics; but the chief
+reason why the romance is seldom written
+of the Cabinet Minister who started life
+as a gold-digger or draper&#8217;s assistant, or of
+the democratic legislator whose first election
+was announced to him through a hole in a
+steam-boiler that he was riveting, is to be
+found in a belief that it would not be appreciated
+in the far-off land whither all Australian
+books must go for the sanction of
+their existence. Here again the British
+reader appears to be misjudged, for has he
+not accepted from another direction, and
+enjoyed, <cite>Democracy</cite> and <cite>Through One Administration</cite>?
+Mrs. Praed, lightly skimming
+the surface of Antipodean political life in
+two of her stories, has shown it to be not
+without humour, nor lacking in the elements
+of more serious interest. But she
+cannot be said to have exhibited any particular
+belief in the political novel, and
+none of the more practised among her
+colonial contemporaries has ever given it a
+trial.</p>
+
+<p>On the main question of a national literature
+<a name="png.027" id="png.027"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">23</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>it will perhaps be concluded that
+Australia has yet scarcely any need to be
+concerned: that not much must be expected
+from a civilisation which, though it has been
+rapid, began little more than a century ago;
+and that the existence of wealth, and the
+possibilities of leisure and culture which
+wealth affords, cannot produce the same
+effect upon art in a new country as in an
+old one. The whole matter no doubt is
+somewhat difficult of decision. It has been
+none the less useful to indicate why so little
+of the work already done is the work of
+native writers&mdash;why the existence of much
+of the best of it may almost be considered
+accidental. And while a refusal to take the
+trouble of independently judging the worth
+of a local artistic product may or may not be
+an invariable characteristic of a new country,
+it was also right to contradict on the best
+available authority the assertion of a &lsquo;prejudice&rsquo;
+against the work of Australian
+authors.</p>
+
+<p>A portion of the talent that cannot be
+absorbed in the already overcrowded ranks
+<a name="png.028" id="png.028"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">24</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of law and medicine might find employment
+in building a literature which should have
+something of national savour in it, if migration
+to England were no longer a condition
+of success to those who would make writing
+a profession, as migration to New York or
+Boston is similarly found to be a necessity to
+the young Canadian man or woman of letters.
+It need not be wished that the colonial
+Governments would do more than they have
+done&mdash;certainly not that they would create a
+sort of civil pension list, as a section of the
+Legislative Assembly of Victoria contemplated
+doing ten years ago in discussing a
+proposed grant to the family of Marcus
+Clarke. But the Universities might extend
+their influence, and those who have leisure
+might combine to introduce some of the
+methods which have helped to create a living
+public interest in literature and art in European
+countries. In other words, there is
+needed an increased sense of responsibility
+in the cultured class: those people, among
+others, who yearly help to fill the luxurious
+ocean steamships on their long journeys to
+<a name="png.029" id="png.029"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">25</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the Old World, and who bring back so
+singularly little practical enthusiasm for their
+own land in the South.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile it is encouraging to note the
+high promise of the work of some of the
+younger writers. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. H.
+Lindsay Miller), the daughter of a well-known
+Victorian judge, has, in <cite>The Moving
+Finger</cite>, raised the short story to an artistic
+level hardly approached by any other Australian
+writer. And Mrs. Alick Macleod,
+author of <cite>An Australian Girl</cite> and <cite>The
+Silent Sea</cite>, has given in the former novel&mdash;a
+fine story, despite some irregularities of form&mdash;the
+most perfect description of the peculiar
+natural features of the country ever written.
+For the first time the Bush is interpreted as
+well as described. In the attitude displayed
+in this story towards the fashionable life of
+the towns there is habitual impatience and
+occasional scorn. The sketches of Mrs.
+Anstey Hobbs&#8217; efforts to found a salon, the
+flirtations of Mrs. Lee-Travers&mdash;who &lsquo;chose
+her admirers to suit her style of dress&rsquo;&mdash;Laurette
+Tareling&#8217;s solemn respect for
+<a name="png.030" id="png.030"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">26</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Government House, and the generally
+satirical view of the &lsquo;incessant mimicking
+of other mimicries,&rsquo; are no doubt justified;
+they are often decidedly entertaining. But
+it would of course be a mistake to accept
+all this as more than a partial view of Melbourne
+society. The book does not pretend
+to deal with it in other than an incidental
+manner. Mrs. Macleod&#8217;s studies of character
+and often clever dialogue suggest that she
+might profitably adapt to the presentation of
+Australian life the quiet intensity of Tourguéneff,
+or the delicately observant style of
+the American critical realists, Henry James,
+W. D. Howells and Richard Harding Davis.
+And here one wonders whether the Australian
+novelists who find so little material in
+Sydney and Melbourne have seen what the
+new writer, Henry B. Fuller, has done with
+the life of modern unromantic Chicago?</p>
+
+<p>According to Mr. Howells, America,
+through the medium of its own particular
+class of novel, &lsquo;is getting represented with
+unexampled fulness.&rsquo; The writers &lsquo;excel in
+small pieces with three or four figures,&rsquo; and
+<a name="png.031" id="png.031"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">27</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>are able conveniently to dispense with sensationalism&mdash;a
+point not yet reached by
+Antipodean novelists. &lsquo;Every now and
+then,&rsquo; he says, referring to the extreme of
+this type, &lsquo;I read a book with perfect comfort
+and much exhilaration, whose scenes the
+average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing
+happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches
+anybody else; there is no arson or
+pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or
+a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or
+a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or
+a lady five thousand years old in the whole
+story; &ldquo;no promenade, no band of music,
+nossing!&rdquo; as Mr. Du Maurier&#8217;s Frenchman
+said of the meet for a fox-hunt. Yet it is all
+alive with the keenest interest for those who
+enjoy the study of individual traits and
+general conditions as they make themselves
+known to American experience.&rsquo; As the
+Transatlantic social conditions, of which the
+realistic novel with only three or four figures
+is understood to be the outcome, are being
+more or less repeated in Australia, a similar
+literary medium will probably be found best
+<a name="png.032" id="png.032"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">28</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>adapted to the portrayal of life there. At
+least it may be claimed that there is no lack
+of material in the shape of individual traits
+which have not yet been suitably described
+in any form.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.033" id="png.033"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">29</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>MARCUS CLARKE.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the peculiarity of his fitful talents, and in
+the character of his best work in fiction&mdash;a
+pathetically slender life&#8217;s product&mdash;Marcus
+Clarke is still alone in Australian literature.
+Others have shown the cheerful, hopeful,
+romantic aspects of the new land; he, not
+less honestly, but with a more concentrated
+and individual view, has pictured some of
+the monotony of its half-grown society, the
+gloom of its scenery, and the painful realities
+of its early penal systems. Reputed only as
+a novelist, he possessed besides imagination
+some of the higher qualities of the critical
+historian. And had his life been prolonged,
+he might almost have done for Australian
+city life what Thackeray did for the London
+of seventy years ago.  He could, at least,
+<a name="png.034" id="png.034"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">30</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>have written a novel of manners that would
+have credited the people of Australia with
+some individuality: such a novel as would
+mark the effects which comparative isolation
+must produce in a people who are educated
+and intelligent beyond the average of the
+British race, intensely self-contained and
+ambitious, and of whom two-thirds are now
+native-born,&mdash;a novel that would have corrected
+the too languidly accepted judgments
+of omniscient elderly gentlemen, who, after
+a few weeks or months spent among the
+smallest and most imitative section of Antipodean
+society, gravely conclude that &lsquo;leaves
+that grow on one branch of an oak are not
+more like leaves that grow upon another,
+than the Australian swarm is like the hive
+it sprang from.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>A rhetorical half-truth of this kind, as
+applied to the entire people, can best be
+answered in the manner of the modern
+realists. The field is narrow in Australia,
+yet not too narrow for the writer who, foregoing
+the taste for sensation, will be content
+to transcribe and interpret impressions of
+<a name="png.035" id="png.035"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">31</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the moving humanity around him to their
+minutest detail; who will forget the pioneer
+squatter, the Oxford scholar disguised as a
+&lsquo;rouseabout,&rsquo; and the digger and bushranger
+of a past generation; who will sacrifice
+something of dramatic effect in the endeavour
+to produce a faithful and finished picture of
+colonial middle-class society. As qualifications
+for such work, Clarke had exceptional
+courage, straightness of eye, and a decided
+taste for exposing shams, superadded to a
+forcible and satirical style of expression.</p>
+
+<p>Whether he had the tact and temperate
+spirit that must form the basis of these
+qualities in the production of serious fiction
+is less certain, if he may be judged by the
+tone of such minor pieces as <cite>Civilization
+without Delusion</cite>, <cite>Beaconsfield&#8217;s Novels</cite>, and
+<cite>Democratic Snobbery</cite>. There is a certain
+violence in these which is more offensive than
+their undoubted cleverness is admirable or
+their satire entertaining. They show that the
+writer retained some of the impetuosity and
+prejudices which were marked features of his
+youth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.036" id="png.036"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">32</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in
+the Beaconsfield novels he saw little beyond
+an expression of the author&#8217;s personal exultation
+as the successful representative
+of a maligned race. In the theological
+controversy of <cite>Civilization without Delusion</cite>,
+an even less effective and becoming performance,
+the young author revealed a deficiency
+which, in any writer, can only be
+regarded as a misfortune and a cause for
+tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his
+nature was an undeveloped, almost a barren
+field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by
+early habits of dissipation, it had no strength
+to resist the agnostic conclusions which were
+the product in later years of a coldly critical
+examination of the general grounds of Christian
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with religion, his characteristic
+independence developed into a stiff intellectual
+pride, and from that into a recklessness
+which disregarded alike his public
+reputation and the feelings of others. But
+these forays into the preserves of theology
+were happily rare.  Such questions obtained
+<a name="png.037" id="png.037"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">33</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>no permanent place in his thoughts: they
+were only the passing expression of an ever-besetting
+mental restlessness. It is indeed<!-- TN: original reads "indeed," -->
+surprising that a writer with artistic instinct
+and a sense of humour should ever have persuaded
+himself to enter the fruitless field of
+religious contention at all.</p>
+
+<p>There are a few facts in the early life
+of Marcus Clarke which are sometimes so
+strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his
+brief career that they form a necessary preface
+to any consideration of his literary work.
+Soon after his birth at Kensington (London)
+in 1846 his mother died, and thenceforward
+through all his youth he seems to have received
+little advice or attention from relations.
+His father, a barrister and literary
+man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised
+over him a merely nominal authority, and so
+he had liberty to gratify a spirit of inquiry
+and curiosity notably beyond his years. At
+his own home he became the pet of his
+father&#8217;s acquaintances, a set of fashionable
+cynics.</p>
+
+<p>In <cite>Human Repetends</cite>, a sketch of his
+<a name="png.038" id="png.038"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">34</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>published several years later, there is a
+passage which substantially records his experiences
+at this time: &lsquo;I was thrown, when
+still a boy, into the society of men thrice my
+age, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent
+in all those wicked and witty circles in which
+virtuous women are conspicuous by their
+absence&hellip;. I was suffered at sixteen to
+ape the vices of sixty&hellip;. So long as I
+was reported to be moving only in that set
+to which my father chose to ally himself, he
+never cared to inquire how I spent the extravagant
+allowance which his indifference,
+rather than his generosity, permitted me to
+waste. You can guess the result of such a
+training.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Left alone in the world at the age of
+eighteen, upon the death of his father, he
+emigrated to Australia. Failing to take any
+interest in a bank-clerkship provided by an
+uncle for him at Melbourne, he was sent to
+a sheep-station near Glenorchy, one hundred
+miles inland. Here again he paid little
+attention to the occupation chosen for him.
+All the day and half the night were dreamed
+<a name="png.039" id="png.039"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">35</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>away in literary thought. Just as he
+wandered alone over fern-hill and creek-bed,
+plain and mountain range, and absorbed
+impressions of a scenery at once repulsive
+and fascinating to him, so he dipped into all
+kinds of literature without method or set
+purpose. But he preferred fiction, and as
+the consignee of an endless succession of
+French novels he became a marked man in
+the eyes of the village postmaster.</p>
+
+<p>Two years had thus been spent, when
+a Dr. Lewins, who was known as a
+&lsquo;materialistic philosopher,&rsquo; visited the station
+and made the young Englishman&#8217;s acquaintance.
+A warm mutual regard resulted, and
+soon Lewins succeeded in obtaining a small
+post for Clarke on the Melbourne <cite>Argus</cite>.
+This was the beginning of the most brilliant
+journalistic career established on the Australian
+press.</p>
+
+<p>A less happy result of the same friendship
+was Clarke&#8217;s conversion to the arid and
+uninspiring doctrines of materialism, though
+perhaps it could hardly be called a conversion
+in the case of one upon whom the deeper
+<a name="png.040" id="png.040"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">36</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>principles of Christian faith had never
+obtained any real hold.</p>
+
+<p>Colonial democracy seems to have been to
+Clarke at once a source of inspiration and of
+scorn. Coming from among the English
+upper classes, with the education and temperament
+of an aristocrat, he was yet readily able
+to sympathise with the higher principles of
+the new society. Its intelligence, virility
+and free intercourse broadened and interested
+him, as it does most young Englishmen. But
+for that common product of a new country,
+the pretentious plutocrat, he had only contempt.</p>
+
+<p>It is the bitterness with which this feeling
+is expressed in his journalistic writings that
+helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for
+work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it
+be true, as some of those who were his
+friends say, that this occasional work was
+seldom much studied, it becomes unreliable
+as an indicator of the writer&#8217;s character. The
+same hand that in the famous <cite>Snob Papers</cite>
+so savagely, and in at least one case so
+intemperately, satirised types of English
+<a name="png.041" id="png.041"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">37</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>society, afterwards produced novels in which
+fidelity to the essential facts of life is the
+most conspicuous quality. So, too, might it
+have been in the case of the &lsquo;Peripatetic
+Philosopher,&rsquo; whose weekly criticisms of
+Melbourne men and manners in 1867-68 has
+correctly been judged the best writing of its
+kind yet done in Australia. In these articles,
+remarkable as the work of one who was only
+in his twenty-second year, there is a closeness
+of observation and incisiveness of style which
+promised much more for their author than
+the circumstances of his life afterwards permitted
+him to realise.</p>
+
+<p>The usual effects of an undirected youth
+and an undisciplined manhood explain Marcus
+Clarke&#8217;s failure to render to his adopted
+country the service which, as a distinctly
+gifted writer of the realist school, he seemed
+well fitted to perform. He was a Bohemian,
+who, while resisting the worst vices of his
+class, shared its carelessness and improvidence
+to a degree that left little energy for ambitious
+work.</p>
+
+<p>His was not an idle nature by any means:
+<a name="png.042" id="png.042"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">38</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>it was only erratic, fond of variety, impatient
+of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen
+years&#8217; literary work, his thoughts make excursions
+from town-life to country-life, from
+social satire to story-telling, from art to
+ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe!
+Here are the titles of a few of his compositions:
+<cite>Lower Bohemia in Melbourne</cite> (a
+sketch), <cite>Plot</cite> (a sensational drama), <cite>Review
+of Comte and Positive Philosophy</cite> (magazine
+article), <cite>The Humbug Papers</cite> (humorous and
+satirical), <cite>The Future Australian Race</cite> (an
+ethnological study), <cite>Goody Two Shoes</cite> (a
+pantomime), <cite>Civilization without Delusion</cite>
+(a theological discussion with the Bishop of
+Melbourne), <cite>The Power of Love</cite> (an extravaganza),
+<cite>Doré and Modern Art</cite> (a review),
+<cite>Cannabis Indica</cite> (a psychological experiment).
+Almost the whole of Clarke&#8217;s life may be said
+to have been devoted to the supply of some
+temporary demand of the periodical press or
+the stage. Even the two novels which represent
+his only sustained work were written
+for serial issue in Melbourne magazines.</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear in either case that he
+<a name="png.043" id="png.043"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">39</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>wrote with any special view to establish a
+literary reputation; indeed, it would seem
+that the story of convict life might not have
+been completed but for the strenuous importunity
+of the firm of publishers with whom
+he had contracted to write it.</p>
+
+<p>Journalism, the early occupation of so
+many eminent men of letters, has usually
+been abandoned as soon as the young writer
+has once shown exceptional ability as a
+novelist. This rule was not followed by
+Clarke. As the leader in his day of the
+journalistic class, who, as the late Mr.
+Francis Adams has said with substantial
+truth, still &lsquo;stand almost entirely for the
+conscious literary culture of the whole
+Antipodean community,&rsquo; he held a position
+which would have unfavourably affected the
+literary tone and ambition of a still more
+energetic and original writer.</p>
+
+<p>He had no predecessors in the special
+work he elected to do; he had to establish
+his own standard of achievement; and he
+was without the constant stimulus which
+intercourse with literary society, such as that
+<a name="png.044" id="png.044"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">40</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of London, affords. The demands of the
+newspapers were then, as now, more for
+purely ephemeral criticism or narrative than
+for matter worthy to rank as permanent
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of
+satirical humour such as Clarke had, and
+developed by a wide range of reading, were
+just the qualities which are always in request
+on the keen, aggressive daily press of
+Australia. One can easily imagine the
+flattering demands made upon the young
+author&#8217;s powers by the men who were his
+personal friends as well as employers.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever he was deficient in taste of
+expression, or in urbanity of criticism (as in
+his treatment of the Jews), he showed the
+effects partly of impetuous haste, and partly
+of his remoteness from those centres of
+literary opinion which always beneficially
+influence a young writer, be he ever so
+original or naturally artistic. It has been
+doubted whether Clarke was ever fully
+convinced of his own powers; but however
+feasibly this may have applied to the first
+<a name="png.045" id="png.045"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">41</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>four or five years of his literary career, there
+was no ground for it after the unanimously
+favourable reception accorded to <cite>For the
+Term of his Natural Life</cite> upon its issue in
+book form in 1874.</p>
+
+<p>In England and America, as well as in
+Australia, this one novel gave him an
+immediate and distinct reputation. With
+it he might have speedily established himself
+as one of the leading writers of the day,
+and, turning from the depressing realism of
+penal cruelties which can have no further
+parallel in British countries to something
+more within our sympathies&mdash;to the realism
+of modern Australian life,&mdash;have supplied
+what is still conspicuously lacking in Australian
+fiction. Yet, during the remaining seven
+years of his life he produced no imaginative
+work worthy his name and ability. The
+ever-ready market of the local newspaper
+press absorbed his best efforts, and such
+intervals as there were he devoted to an
+attempt to establish himself as a writer and
+adapter for the stage.</p>
+
+<p>In this way the years passed without
+<a name="png.046" id="png.046"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">42</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>yielding much beyond a livelihood. Meantime,
+Melbourne was his microcosm: he
+made a systematic study of its life from the
+purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale
+streets to the palace of his &lsquo;model legislator&rsquo;
+on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one
+of his favourite novelists, he made observation
+a severe and regular business, but he
+lacked the energy or the patience to take
+full advantage of its results. Balzac employed
+his accumulated materials in bursts
+of creative energy which, if terrible in their
+intensity and their drain upon his health,
+had at least method in them, and effected
+their purpose. Poverty did not swerve him,
+nor prosperity sate him.</p>
+
+<p>That part of genius which consists in natural
+depth and accuracy of vision Clarke had in
+abundance, but he was weak in the lesser
+gifts of patience and synthetic power, perhaps
+also in ambition. Moreover, an unfortunate
+extravagance, which led from chronic debt
+to bankruptcy, compelled him to continue
+the class of work which gave the surest and
+most regular income.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.047" id="png.047"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">43</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley
+for more fiction were neglected from year to
+year, and similar indifference was shown to
+a flattering invitation to join the staff of the
+<cite>Daily Telegraph</cite> in London, an opportunity
+that would have led to the establishment of
+Clarke in those literary circles outside of
+which no purely Australian writer, with the
+exception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ever yet
+received adequate recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Among Clarke&#8217;s uncompleted writings are
+a few brilliant chapters of a novel which
+promised to be as permanent a record of his
+ability as the well-known convict story,
+though of a different kind. But the author
+had the unlucky faculty of attending to anything
+rather than the work which offered him
+certain fame and fortune, as well as the most
+natural employment of his powers. At the
+time of his death he was only in his thirty-fifth
+year. Probably with advancing life he
+would have become more settled in his tastes
+and habits, realising that the work at which
+he was happiest in every sense was the
+writing of novels, and that alone.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.048" id="png.048"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">44</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The satire and cynicism so noticeable in
+Clarke&#8217;s writings, especially in his critical
+sketches and essays, are liable to give an
+inaccurate conception of his temperament.
+They obscure, as such characteristics nearly
+always do in literature, the gentler aspects of
+the writer&#8217;s nature. His satire is, perhaps,
+too uncompromising. It often seems to
+reflect a personal bitterness, to take too
+little cognisance of the springs of human
+weakness. Undoubtedly brilliant in force
+and keenness, it yet too seldom produces the
+kind of hearty laugh with which Thackeray
+and Swift, for example, relieve their fiercest
+scorn. His personal experience of life had
+been discouraging. He had sounded its
+depths and sipped its pleasures; its rude
+facts found him deficient in self-control and
+fortitude. He had refused to learn the
+common logic of existence.</p>
+
+<p>There is an element of tragedy in the
+rapid change which the unhappy circumstances
+of his private life wrought in his
+temperament. Addressing the disciples of
+Mrs. Grundy in an early essay defending
+<a name="png.049" id="png.049"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">45</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the Bohemianism of his youth, he tells them
+that they are ignorant how easily good spirits,
+good digestion, and jolly companions enable
+a man to triumph over all the ills that flesh
+is heir to. &lsquo;You cannot know,&rsquo; he adds,
+&lsquo;what a fund of humour there is in common
+life, and how ridiculous one&#8217;s shifts and
+strugglings appear when viewed through
+Bohemian glass&hellip;. Life seems to you
+but as a &ldquo;twice told tale, vexing the dull ear
+of a drowsy man&rdquo; seems but as a vale of
+tears, a place of mourning, weeping, and
+wailing&hellip;. I wish ye had lived for a
+while in &ldquo;Austin Friars&rdquo;; it would have
+enlarged your hearts, believe me.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was the cheerful philosophy of Clarke
+as a young bachelor, after he had spent his
+slender patrimony, disappointed the successive
+efforts of friends to make a business
+man of him, and was about to begin the
+earning of a living by his pen. A dozen
+years later we see him with developed
+talents and a valuable name, but broken in
+fortune and spirit, and gloomily anticipating
+death months before it came.  The Jew
+<a name="png.050" id="png.050"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">46</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>usurers, whose race he despised, had long
+been his real masters, and, with a nature
+sensitive in the extreme, he writhed in their
+bondage.</p>
+
+<p>Improvidence had been not merely an
+unhappy incident, as it is in the lives of so
+many young men of artistic tastes; it had
+overweighted him more or less for years,
+and &lsquo;the thoughtless writer of thoughtful
+literature,&rsquo; as the author of his biographical
+memoir has called him, sank beneath it while
+yet at the beginning of a career full of the
+brightest promise. The sort of companionship
+that pleased his careless youth had
+latterly proved unsatisfying, and to some
+extent distasteful to him. Its effects upon
+his character were so unfavourable that some
+who had been his companions in journalism
+felt it necessary, after his death, to credit him
+with a greater capacity for kindly forbearance
+towards humanity than is apparent in the
+bulk of his writings.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;My friend,&rsquo; says one writer, &lsquo;was one of
+those many geniuses who appear to be born
+to prove the vast amount of contradictory
+<a name="png.051" id="png.051"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">47</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>elements which can exist in the same individual.
+In his case these contradictions were
+so apparent&mdash;and, if I may use the term,
+so contradictory&mdash;that, unless one knew
+him, it was impossible to believe what his
+nature was. On the one hand, he was
+recklessly generous, impulsively partisan,
+morbidly sensitive, and highly chivalrous;
+on the other, forgetful of obligations, defiantly
+antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, and
+affectedly cynical&hellip;. His life was one of
+impulse, and the direction of the impulse
+depended solely on surrounding circumstances&hellip;.
+He has passed from us at an
+early age, leaving behind him some enemies
+made, perhaps, by his own waywardness;
+but he has left many friends, too,&mdash;friends
+who loved him for the good that was in
+him.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>In another sketch of the author, his character
+is thus summed up: &lsquo;Caustic he was
+sometimes, and cynical always; but beneath
+there beat a heart of gold&mdash;a heart tender
+and pitiful as a woman&#8217;s.&rsquo; This estimate is
+amply justified by the power of pathos and
+<a name="png.052" id="png.052"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">48</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the often tender analysis of human feeling
+in <cite>For the Term of his Natural Life</cite>, however
+absent the same qualities may seem in
+many of the shorter stories.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting picture of Clarke&#8217;s personality
+is given by a writer in the Sydney
+<cite>Bulletin</cite>: &lsquo;His wit was keen and polished,
+his humour delicate and refined, and his
+powers of description masterly&hellip;. His
+face was a remarkable one&mdash;remarkable for
+its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the
+poet, he was &ldquo;a noticeable man with large
+grey eyes,&rdquo; and one had but to look into
+them to perceive at once the light of genius&hellip;.
+He was one of the best talkers I have
+ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a
+stutter which seemed to emphasise and add
+point to his witticisms. As in his writings,
+he had the knack of saying brilliant things,
+and scattering <i>bons mots</i> with apparent ease,
+so that in listening to him one felt the
+pleasure that is derived from such books as
+Horace Walpole&#8217;s correspondence and those
+of the French memoir-writers&hellip;. He knew
+not how to care for money, yet he had none
+<a name="png.053" id="png.053"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">49</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of those vices which ordinarily reduce men
+of genius to destitution, and are cloaked
+beneath the hackneyed phrase, &ldquo;He had no
+enemy but himself.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus
+Clarke scarcely more than pointed to the
+material which the life of such cities as
+Melbourne and Sydney offer a novelist
+capable of work like that of Mr. W. D.
+Howells, or the series of tales of urban
+society in America by Mr. Marion Crawford.
+There is now an opportunity, and, one might
+almost say, a need, for fiction which shall
+also, in effect, be salutary criticism. The
+Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact
+that a single decade will sometimes witness
+a notable change in the conditions of an
+entire people in a new and rapidly-developing
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, with the struggle for subsistence
+now keen to a degree which could not have
+been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a
+few years ago; with Parliaments, hitherto
+safely democratic, threatened with Socialism
+by the increasing practice of electing artisans
+<a name="png.054" id="png.054"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">50</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and labourers to do the legislative work of
+their respective classes; the crash of fortunes
+which never had substantial existence; the
+pauperising to-day of the paper millionaire
+of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old
+men, after overreaching and ruining themselves,
+starting pitifully the race of life afresh,
+a sinister experience their sole advantage
+over the faltering novice; and that other
+common spectacle of democratic life, the
+secure and cultured rich cynically eschewing
+the active business of government,&mdash;with
+these and some social aspects still less agree
+able to contemplate there is ample subject-matter
+for any novelist who may have the
+disposition and ability to carry on the work
+which Clarke had indicated, but scarcely
+begun, before he died.</p>
+
+<p><cite>Long Odds</cite>, Clarke&#8217;s first story, deals
+with English life, and bears no resemblance
+in quality or kind to the later novel with
+which his name is chiefly associated. It is
+primarily the tragedy of a <i>mésalliance</i>, and
+horseracing and politics assist the plot, with
+the usual complications of gambling and
+<a name="png.055" id="png.055"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">51</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>intrigue. The story has, however, a good
+deal less to do with sport than the title
+suggests. The plot is mainly concerned
+with the selfish, cruel, and infamous in
+human nature&mdash;a singularly dark theme for
+a young beginner in fiction to choose.
+Except at rare intervals when the business
+of characterisation is momentarily set aside,
+as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster
+Steeplechase and the Matcham Hunt,
+there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or
+freshness.</p>
+
+<p>The outlines of plot and incident are
+attractively arranged, the expression of life
+for the most part second-hand and artificial.
+There are traces of Dickens&#8217; burlesque without
+his sympathy, and the high colouring
+of Lytton with less than Lytton&#8217;s wit.
+Disraeli&#8217;s satire, too, is echoed in the political
+scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose
+experiences in England were to have formed
+the main purpose of the book, is allowed no
+opportunity to show the better, and rarely
+even the ordinary, capabilities of the new
+race of which he is ostensibly a type.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.056" id="png.056"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">52</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>It is said to be a well-understood maxim
+of the novelist&#8217;s art that many a liberty taken
+with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if
+the writer keeps a constant eye upon his
+villain, and deals honestly by him. In <cite>Long
+Odds</cite> there are two villains, and at least two
+others villainously inclined. Between the
+four of them the easy-going hero has no
+chance.</p>
+
+<p>It is natural that, in the construction of a
+novel which aims at dramatic point before
+anything else, the &lsquo;simple Australian,&rsquo; as his
+author is at last constrained to regard him,
+should seem less useful than the polished
+and unprincipled man of the world. But in
+this instance the balance of interest is too
+unequal. Dramatic quality has been secured
+at the expense of tone and proportion. Of
+the two male characters whose exploits in
+rascality it becomes the real business of the
+story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more
+natural and entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>There is an attention to detail in his
+portrait which suggests that the lineaments
+of the conventional society villain may have
+<a name="png.057" id="png.057"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">53</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>been filled in with the help of a little personal
+knowledge, perhaps of some of those morally
+doubtful individuals already mentioned as
+having been among the acquaintances of
+Clarke&#8217;s early youth. Dacre is the chief
+cynic of the story, and to him are assigned
+the best of the dialogue and all of the small
+stock of humour to be found in the novel.
+But the man who is both his associate and
+enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of
+dastard, and altogether disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>The author is not entirely forgetful of the
+interests of his nominal hero. If throughout
+three-fourths of the story Calverley is made
+the plaything of circumstances that favour
+only rogues, he is at last allowed a triumph
+in love and sport which, though unsatisfying
+from an artistic point of view, is calculated
+to soothe a not too fastidious taste for poetic
+justice.</p>
+
+<p>Conscious of the conventional character of
+his principal theme, the author apparently
+sought to improve it by deepening its intensity.
+The result of this was to add more
+of weakness than of strength. Incidents
+<a name="png.058" id="png.058"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">54</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>that might have been effectively dramatic
+become melodramatic; the conceivably probable
+is sometimes strained into the
+obviously improbable. The agreeable finish
+to the minor love-story of Calverley and
+Miss Ffrench does not remove the general
+savour of sordidness which the reader carries
+away from the study of so much of the bad
+side of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with criticism of this kind,
+it ought, however, to be noted that other
+hands besides the author&#8217;s are known to have
+contributed to the novel. Shortly after it
+began to appear serially in the <cite>Colonial
+Monthly</cite>, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse
+while hunting, and sustained a fracture of the
+skull which interrupted his literary work for
+many weeks. How much of the writing had
+previously been done seems to be a subject
+of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, in
+order to preserve continuity in the publication
+of the parts, Clarke&#8217;s friends did write some
+portion of the story, but whether in accordance
+with the author&#8217;s <i>scenario</i>, supposing
+one to have existed, has not been stated.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.059" id="png.059"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">55</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>&lsquo;Only a few of the first chapters&#8217; were
+the work of Clarke, says the editor of the
+<cite>Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume</cite>, writing
+in 1884; but in an article published in the
+<cite>Imperial Review</cite> (Melbourne) for 1886, the
+contributed matter is limited to a couple of
+chapters written by Mr. G. A. Walstab, and
+skilfully inserted in the middle of the novel.
+Walstab was one of Clarke&#8217;s best friends, and
+he is no doubt the &lsquo;G.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;W.&rsquo; to whom the
+story is dedicated &lsquo;in grateful remembrance
+of the months of July and August, 1868.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>From the absence of a prefatory explanation
+when <cite>Long Odds</cite> was published in
+book form in 1869, it may be assumed that
+Clarke was satisfied with the quality of the
+contributed work. At least, he was willing
+to take the full responsibility of its authorship.
+But even with this in view, it were
+well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictly
+accountable for the faults of the story. Not
+much must be expected from a first novel
+produced in the circumstances mentioned, and
+issued when the author was only twenty-three.
+In his haste to give it final shape
+<a name="png.060" id="png.060"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">56</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>immediately after the serial publication, he
+was probably ill advised. One can only
+regret that it was not set aside for a year or
+so, and written afresh, or, at least, largely
+revised. Perhaps this would have been expecting
+too much from so unmethodical a
+worker as Clarke. The far finer dramatic
+taste and literary form of his masterpiece,
+issued five years later, showed how little
+indicative of his talent was the earlier
+work.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the large extent to which the
+life of the Australian landed classes has been
+described in fiction during the last twenty
+years, it is curious to read the plea Clarke
+offered to his Antipodean critics for passing
+over the literary material close at hand and
+preferring the well-worn paths of the English
+novelist.</p>
+
+<p>During the serial publication of <cite>Long
+Odds</cite> the colonial press raised some objection
+to the laying of the scene in England
+instead of in Australia. The author replied
+simply that Henry Kingsley&#8217;s <cite>Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite> being the best Australian novel
+<a name="png.061" id="png.061"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">57</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>that had been, or probably would be, written,
+&lsquo;any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting
+life of the colonies could not fail to challenge
+unfavourable comparison with that admirable
+story.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The excuse is just a little too adventitious
+to have convinced even those to whom it was
+originally addressed. None the less, it may
+at the moment have accurately represented
+the opinion of a beginner who at that time
+could scarcely have known the extent of his
+own powers.</p>
+
+<p>Probably he had given the subject little
+thought. His colonial experience was certainly
+less varied than Kingsley&#8217;s had been.
+Above all, his tastes, and in some degree his
+temperament, differed markedly from those
+of his predecessor in the field. The judgment
+or instinct that kept him from coming
+into direct competition with Kingsley&mdash;assuming
+his own questionable belief that
+any effort of his would have been competition&mdash;at
+least erred on the side of safety.
+That the immediate alternative should have
+been an imitative example of a hackneyed
+<a name="png.062" id="png.062"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">58</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>class of English novel, ineffective of purpose,
+book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness
+of cynicism, is something which admits of a
+more definite opinion.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I have often thought,&rsquo; says the writer,
+referring to the hero of <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>
+&lsquo;and I dare say other Australian readers
+have thought also, How would Sam Buckley
+get on in England? My excuse, therefore,
+in offering to the Australian public a novel
+in which the plot, the sympathies, the interest,
+and the moral, are all English, must
+be that I have endeavoured to depict with
+such skill as is permitted to me the fortunes
+of a young Australian in that country which
+young Australians still call &ldquo;Home.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Without this prefatory sign-post, the reader
+could never have suspected such a purpose.
+Clarke may have had it definitely in his mind
+when he first sat down to the work; but if
+so, it was put aside, consciously or unconsciously,
+after the completion of the first few
+chapters, in favour of more complex characterisation.
+Bob Calverley, the young
+squatter, really holds a third or fourth place
+<a name="png.063" id="png.063"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">59</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in relation to the main motive of the story,
+and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar
+of anything typically Australian. He
+does not bear any active part in the drama
+of passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted
+to be a passive spectator of it.</p>
+
+<p>To say that he was good-natured, jovial,
+popular, &lsquo;the sort of man that one involuntarily
+addresses by his Christian name&rsquo;; that
+although he was shy and awkward in the
+society of ladies, at ease with his own sex
+only when cattle and horses were the subject
+of conversation, ignorant of music, and unable
+to tell Millais from Tenniel, he &lsquo;could
+pick you out any bullock in a herd &hellip; shear
+a hundred sheep a day &hellip; and drive four
+horses down a sidling in a Gippsland range
+with any man in Australia,&rsquo;&mdash;to say all this
+by way of preliminary, to add that Calverley
+was no fool, and yet to show him in scarcely
+any other guise than that of a trusting victim
+of rogues, is to go a very short distance in
+the portrayal of a typical Australian.</p>
+
+<p>In the slack-baked condition in which we
+find him, he merely repeats the ordinary
+<a name="png.064" id="png.064"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">60</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>spectacle of green youth in the process of
+seeing life and buying experience at the
+usual high figure. Compared with the real
+squatter (who, ordinarily, is college-trained,
+and does not shear sheep nor risk his neck
+unnecessarily), Bob, the son of rich &lsquo;Old
+Calverley,&rsquo; and nephew of an English baronet,
+is as an exaggerated stock-figure of the stage
+to the commonplace blood and brain of everyday
+life. A childlike trust in one&#8217;s fellows,
+a reputation for good-nature, an untamable<!-- TN: sic -->
+taste for horseflesh and the pursuits of the
+Bush, belong to every young squatter in a
+certain class of Australian fiction; they are
+qualities which may be applied indiscriminately,
+with always some effect.</p>
+
+<p>The real squatter is a more civilised and
+reliable, if less picturesque, person. He
+likes both work and pleasure, provided they
+be suitably proportioned. His work is in
+the personal management of his properties;
+his pleasure is taken in the large cities.
+He entertains no fantastic prejudices against
+urban life, in proof of which he often spends
+his later years in some city hundreds of miles
+<a name="png.065" id="png.065"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">61</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>from the scene of his early toil and pastoral
+successes.</p>
+
+<p>As a young man in London, he can be
+found with rooms at the Langham, the
+Métropole, or some other of the half-dozen
+fashionable hotels known to colonial visitors.
+There he will entertain his friends, joining
+with them, in turn, the continuous movements
+of the society season. He frankly
+lacks much of the ease and polish of the
+young Englishman, but his natural amiability
+and good spirits largely compensate for these
+deficiencies, while they preclude any feeling
+of discomfort on his own part.</p>
+
+<p>During his three or six months&#8217; stay in
+London (the combination usually of a little
+business with a very full programme of
+pleasure) he spends freely, and in his tour
+of the clubs plays here and there a little at
+cards&mdash;perchance loses. Worldly beyond his
+reputation, and somewhat Chesterfieldian in
+his principles, he consents to be a Roman
+while at Rome. He has inherited the British
+hatred of fuss and personal peculiarity, and
+none shall call him mean. But, unlike many
+<a name="png.066" id="png.066"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">62</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of his English friends at club and course, he
+has watched and taken some part in the hard
+process of making money, and knows the
+difference between a little gentlemanly extravagance
+and the reckless hazarding of a
+fortune. At least, it may be affirmed of him
+that in nine cases out of ten he is decidedly
+no fool.</p>
+
+<p>These are only a few of the prominent
+outlines of the type of young man who, his
+holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on
+his own or his father&#8217;s estates. Those whose
+passion for a horse destroys all self-control,
+who spend thousands in gambling and betting,
+who innocently take every smooth gentleman
+at his own valuation, are merely individuals&mdash;persons
+who may as unfailingly be found
+in England or elsewhere as in Australia.</p>
+
+<p>Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of
+the British pioneer colonists, as every Australian
+knows. In attempting to give an
+answer to his own speculation of &lsquo;How would
+Sam Buckley get on in England?&rsquo; Clarke
+presumably undertook to continue the portrayal
+of this type. The result, considered
+<a name="png.067" id="png.067"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">63</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>apart from the function Calverley fulfils in
+<cite>Long Odds</cite>, must be held as emphatically a
+failure.</p>
+
+<p>Never was a novel written with a franker
+or more deliberate purpose than that shown
+in <cite>For the Term of his Natural Life</cite>. The
+author had the twofold object of picturing
+the dreadful crudities and brutalities of the
+early system of convict &lsquo;reformation&rsquo; in
+Australia, and of preventing their possible
+repetition elsewhere. The first of these aims
+was attained with a fuller employment, and
+perhaps more moderate statement of historical
+facts, than can be found in any other fiction of
+the same class; the second was ineffective,
+because, when it found expression, the abuses
+which had suggested it no longer continued
+at the Antipodes, and could not conceivably
+be repeated on the existing settlements at
+Port Blair and Noumea.</p>
+
+<p>The story was written a quarter of a
+century too late to assist the abolition of
+convict transportation to Australia. Had it
+appeared at the right time, it might have
+done much where formal inquiries and the
+<a name="png.068" id="png.068"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">64</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>testimonies of disinterested and humane
+observers had repeatedly failed. For sixty
+years the practice of deporting criminals had
+been carried on, upheld in England by
+official indifference and callousness, and in
+the colonies themselves by the greed of a
+small class of private persons who grew
+rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned
+convict labour, until the free emigrants by
+the authority of their numbers were able to
+insist upon its cessation. For so long as the
+colonies were willing to receive a population
+of criminals, so long was England only too
+anxious to supply them and make a virtue
+out of it. It mattered little to the official
+mind that the system was incurably bad and
+immoral; the main thing was to speedily and
+effectually transfer an awkward burden to
+other shoulders. The entire history of penal
+transportation from Great Britain throws a
+sinister light upon the national character.
+The practice originated with banishment of
+convicts to the American colonies under
+conditions which constituted a form of
+slavery.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.069" id="png.069"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">65</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The criminal on being sentenced became a
+marketable chattel of the State. His services
+were sold by public auction, the purchaser
+acquiring the right to transport him and sell
+him for the term of his sentence to a builder,
+planter, manufacturer, or other employer
+beyond the Atlantic. The price paid to the
+British Government averaged five pounds per
+head, and some of the more useful prisoners
+were resold in America for twenty-five
+pounds each. One of these dealers in
+convict labour, in giving evidence before a
+committee of the House of Commons, made
+a matter-of-fact complaint that &lsquo;the trade&rsquo;
+was not so remunerative as people supposed.
+Artisans sold well, but the profit realised
+upon them was often consumed by losses
+upon some of the others. One-seventh of his
+purchases died on his hands, and in the course
+of business he had been obliged to give the
+old, the halt and the lame in for nothing.
+When the War of Independence closed the
+United States against the traffic, Britain
+was given a fresh opportunity to reconsider
+and place its penal system upon a more
+<a name="png.070" id="png.070"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">66</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>humane basis; but the temptation to adopt
+sweeping measures was once more too strong
+to be resisted. The promoters of the
+Australian scheme were in so great a hurry
+to seize their chance that they despatched
+over seven hundred convicts before even the
+site for the first settlement was chosen. The
+hardships which this characteristic act afterwards
+entailed are too familiar in history to
+need repetition. After such recklessness, it is
+no wonder that, as Sir Roger Therry has
+observed, &lsquo;the first-fruits of the system
+exhibited a state of society in New South
+Wales which the world might be challenged
+to surpass in depravity.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>A generation passed before the British
+Government reluctantly admitted transportation
+to be a failure. Lord John Russell, as
+late as 1847, discovered that it had been
+&lsquo;too much the custom to consult the convenience
+of Great Britain by getting rid of
+persons of evil habits, and to take that view
+alone.&rsquo; In planting provinces which might
+become empires, they &lsquo;should endeavour to
+make them, not seats of malefactors and
+<a name="png.071" id="png.071"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">67</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>convicts, but communities which may set
+examples of virtue and happiness.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>This mild, platitudinous rebuke came
+when all the damage was done. It remained
+for the free inhabitants of Australia to point
+to a plainer principle in declaring that &lsquo;the
+inundating of feeble and dependent colonies
+with the criminals of the parent State is
+opposed to that arrangement of Providence
+by which the virtue of each community is
+destined to combat its own vice.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>To illustrate in a single story all the most
+prominent and pernicious features of the
+transportation system, Clarke had to invent
+a case of crime in which the criminal, unlike
+the majority of the worst offenders sent to
+the settlements, should always be worthy of
+the reader&#8217;s sympathy. It was necessary
+that the felon be a victim as well as a felon;
+that he should not regain his liberty in any
+form, but continue by a series of offences
+against the authority of his gaolers to experience
+and display all the successive
+severities of Macquarie Harbour, Port
+Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental
+<a name="png.072" id="png.072"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">68</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>fact to be exhibited was the impassable gulf
+of misunderstanding that might exist between
+capricious or incompetent prison officials and
+a criminal who, for any reason, had once
+come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious.
+&lsquo;We must treat brutes like brutes,&rsquo; says the
+prime martinet of the story: &lsquo;keep &#8217;em
+down, sir; make &#8217;em <em>feel</em> what they are.
+They&#8217;re here to work, sir. If they won&#8217;t
+work, flog &#8217;em until they will. If they work&mdash;why,
+a taste of the cat now and then keeps
+&#8217;em in mind of what they may expect if they
+get lazy.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The author chose to represent the extreme
+case of a man who, innocent of a murder
+charged against him, allowed himself to be
+transported under an assumed name in order
+to prevent the exposure of a long-concealed
+act of unfaithfulness on the part of a beloved
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Devine is the bastard son of an
+aristocratic Englishwoman who in early youth
+was forced by her father into a loveless union
+with a rich plebeian. The single fault of the
+mother&#8217;s life is confessed after twenty years,
+<a name="png.073" id="png.073"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">69</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>when the husband in a moment of anger
+strikes her high-spirited and obstinate son.
+The latter consents to leave his home for
+ever, and relinquish the name he has borne.
+On these terms the wife is spared. Richard
+Devine goes on the instant. Crossing
+Hampstead Heath, he comes upon a robbed
+and murdered man, and presently is arrested
+for the crime. The explanation that would
+save him would also cause the dreaded
+exposure of his mother, and so he withholds
+it, gives a false name, and, having put himself
+beyond the means of defence and the
+recognition of friends, is convicted and
+sentenced to transportation for life.</p>
+
+<p>In making all the subsequent career of
+Rufus Dawes abnormally painful&mdash;that of a
+dumb sufferer who in sixteen years&#8217; confinement,
+ending only in a tragic death, experiences
+by turns every form of punishment
+and oppression&mdash;the author often touches,
+though it cannot be said he ever exceeds,
+the limits of possibility.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Need one who was not a hardened
+criminal have suffered so much and so long?&rsquo;
+<a name="png.074" id="png.074"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">70</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>is the question that continually recurs to the
+mind of the reader; but it is suggested by
+the prolonged and pitiful sense of unsatisfied
+justice rather than by any doubting that the
+extremes of penal discipline as practised in
+the name of the British Government between
+forty and sixty years ago could have been
+successively applied to a single human being.
+The writer adheres relentlessly to his central
+idea to the end. Dawes&#8217; unameliorated
+servitude and unavenged fate were intended
+to symbolise glaring anomalies of justice
+which never were remedied. The &lsquo;correction&rsquo;
+he is subjected to was that which the
+laws of the time permitted, and which in
+many cases goaded its victims to draw lots
+to murder one another in order to escape
+from their misery.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the least creditable features of
+convict transportation, of which it was said
+by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence
+had been a disgrace to the nation, came to
+an end only when the system itself was
+abolished. But novelist and statesman alike
+struck at the abuses without feeling it necessary
+<a name="png.075" id="png.075"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">71</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to mention any of the good results of
+the system. Its inherent merits were strictly
+few, indeed; yet they ought to be sought in
+history by anyone who would get a fair idea
+of the prison policy of the period. It is, of
+course, inevitable that the criticism conveyed
+in a strong imaginative work should fail to
+give a full view of results so complex as
+those produced by the largely haphazard
+method of the Australian penal settlements.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of assigning prisoners to
+private employment, for example, produced
+notable effects upon society, of which Marcus
+Clarke&#8217;s story gives but the faintest indication.
+If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinary first
+offender, he might have regained liberty
+soon after his arrival in Van Diemen&#8217;s Land.
+But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of
+the author to make him exhibit all the rigours
+of convict discipline. His case must therefore
+be regarded as more exceptional than
+typical. As a rule, only men inveterate in
+crime were detained in constant punishment.
+Transportation for life meant servitude only
+for eight years if the convict conducted himself
+<a name="png.076" id="png.076"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">72</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>well, a condition which, of course, depended
+largely on the sort of master who
+secured his services. Major de Winton, an
+officer who served for some years on Norfolk
+Island, has mentioned that a prisoner by
+good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after
+he had been twice sentenced to death, thrice
+to transportation for life, and to cumulative
+periods of punishment amounting to over a
+hundred years!</p>
+
+<p>An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a
+literary workman is obtained from the story
+of the conception and laborious writing of
+<cite>For the Term of his Natural Life</cite>. It
+affords the first, and unhappily the last,
+evidence of how far he recognised the claims
+of realism in fiction; and from the account of
+his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery
+of keeping to the strict line of history, we
+see the man as his friends knew him contrasted
+with the conscientious artist known
+to the general reader of his famous novel.</p>
+
+<p>The best of Clarke&#8217;s minor writings display
+the results of much general culture, but give
+no proof of special preparation.  They are
+<a name="png.077" id="png.077"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">73</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>short, concentrated, forcible&mdash;the natural
+expression of a brilliant, impetuous, and
+spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural
+repugnance to lengthened toil and minute
+thoroughness when he saw them to be
+essential conditions of his task. But the
+effort was a severe one.</p>
+
+<p>In 1871, when about twenty-five years of
+age, he was ordered to recruit his health by
+a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over
+three years writing extensively for the press,
+and joining in the gaieties of Melbourne life
+at a rate which a constitution much stronger
+than his could not have withstood. The
+idea of writing a story of prison life had
+suggested itself previously during his reading
+of Australian history. Finding himself now
+without sufficient money for the proposed
+holiday, he decided to put into active progress
+this literary project which had hitherto
+been only vaguely outlined.</p>
+
+<p>Printed records of the convict days there
+were in abundance at Melbourne, and from
+these alone such a writer could have made a
+sufficiently striking story.  But he concluded
+<a name="png.078" id="png.078"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">74</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>that he could make his picture at once truer
+and more vivid when the surroundings of
+the old settlements had become a full reality
+to his mind. Messrs. Clarson, Massina and
+Co. readily contracted with the young novelist
+for the first publication of the story in their
+monthly, the <cite>Australian Journal</cite>, and made
+him an advance of money. Off he went
+with characteristic confidence, and some weeks
+later returned ready primed and eager for
+the new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled.
+The story commenced to appear after the
+first few chapters were written, and the unbroken
+industry necessary to maintain a
+regular supply of the parts was more than
+Clarke could give.</p>
+
+<p>Writing against time, he is said to have
+felt like a convict himself. The irregular
+dribbling out of the story so injured the
+reputation of the journal that for a time its
+circulation was reduced to one-half the
+ordinary issue.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a
+sympathetic memoir of Clarke, has given an
+entertaining account of what followed: &lsquo;The
+<a name="png.079" id="png.079"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">75</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>author would be frequently interviewed by
+the publishers, and would as frequently
+promise the copy. When moral suasion was
+apparently powerless to effect the required
+object, payments in advance were made with
+somewhat better results; but as this could
+not go on <i>ad libitum</i>, copy would fall into
+arrears again. At last it was found that the
+only way to get the author to finish his tale
+was to induce him into a room in the
+publishing-house, where, under the benign
+influences of a pipe, etc., and a lock on the
+door, the necessary work would be done by
+the facile pen; and in such manner was <cite>His
+Natural Life</cite> produced.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>In a note of apology to their readers in
+January, 1871, the publishers print a somewhat
+comical letter which they had received
+from the delinquent author. Forwarding a
+single chapter of the story, he tells them that
+they must make shift with it as best they can,
+and he will let them have a larger supply
+during the following month. The letter concludes
+nonchalantly as follows: &lsquo;This is
+awkward, I admit, and I suppose some good-natured
+<a name="png.080" id="png.080"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">76</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>friend or other will say that I have
+over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself
+in honour of the so-called festive season, but
+I can&#8217;t help it.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The story as first published was much
+longer than the form in which it appears in
+the English edition. At the request of the
+present writer, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who
+was one of Clarke&#8217;s literary friends, supplies
+the following account of how the novel came
+to be so extensively curtailed:</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;As one of the trustees to the public
+library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke constantly,
+and had always a friendly, and sometimes
+a confidential, conversation with him. He
+visited me now and then at Sorrento, and
+on one of these occasions he spoke of a
+story he had running through a Melbourne
+periodical about which he was perplexed.
+He asked me to read it, and tell him unreservedly
+what I thought of it. I read the
+story carefully, making notes on the margin,
+and wrote him frankly the impression it had
+made on me.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;After twenty years I can recall the substance
+<a name="png.081" id="png.081"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">77</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of the letter, which is probably still in
+existence. A powerful story, I said, but
+painful as it is powerful. The incidents,
+instead of being depressing, would be tragic if
+they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But
+there was no one in the story whom he could
+have intended us to love or honour. The
+hero underwent a lifelong torture without any
+credible, or even intelligible, motive, and on
+the whole was a <i>mauvais sujet</i> himself. To
+win the reader&#8217;s sympathy, all this must be
+altered. I strongly advised that the latter
+part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak
+was described under a leader whom he
+named Peter Brawler, should be omitted;
+and I objected to the publication of a song
+in French <i>argot</i> with a spirited translation,
+as the latter would naturally be attributed
+to the author of the novel, whereas I had
+read it in an early <cite>Blackwood</cite> before he was
+born.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and
+said he would adopt all my suggestions. He
+wrote a new prologue, in which he made the
+protection of his mother&#8217;s good name the
+<a name="png.082" id="png.082"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">78</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>motive of the hero&#8217;s silence, and he omitted
+both the things I had objected to.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the
+artistic unity of the novel is thus preserved,
+and the dominant aim of the author
+emphasised. Many of those who read it in
+the serial parts strongly disapproved of the
+excisions, but there can be little doubt that
+the story is the stronger for their having been
+made.</p>
+
+<p>It was as the work of a vivid historian,
+rather than of a social reformer, that Marcus
+Clarke&#8217;s masterpiece won its popularity, and,
+for its dramatic and substantially accurate
+view of the worst (always the worst) aspect
+of convict life, it will continue to be read
+while anyone remains to take an interest in
+the unhappiest period of Australian history.
+From its pages may be learned how long it
+has taken the intelligent theorist of the
+British Government to acquire a practical
+method of treating a difficult social question;
+how long stupidity and inhumanity may be
+practised with the sanction of what Major
+Vickers was fond of respectfully calling &lsquo;the
+<a name="png.083" id="png.083"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">79</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>King&#8217;s regulations&rsquo;; and how far English
+gentlemen, remote from the influence of
+public opinion and invested with more power
+than single individuals should ever possess,
+may become despots, and even blackguards.</p>
+
+<p>It is a grim record. Let those who are
+inclined to doubt it turn to the originals,
+especially to the report of the House of
+Commons Committee of 1837-38, and they
+will find facts which the creator of Rufus
+Dawes, with all his supple fancy and delicacy
+of language, could not bring himself even to
+indicate. There are episodes which the more
+matter-of-fact historians barely mention, but
+do not take advantage of their great privileges
+to describe. For example, there were
+times during the first thirty years of the
+century when the open and general lewdness
+of the officials on some of the principal
+settlements, in their relations with the female
+convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the
+positions they held.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke in his researches obtained abundant
+knowledge of this, but made no use of it
+save in adding a few luminous touches to his
+<a name="png.084" id="png.084"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">80</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>portrait of Dawes&#8217; passionate and licentious
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the novel for its historical
+interest, it is necessary throughout to remember
+the limitation that the writer has
+specifically put upon himself. He did not
+undertake to illustrate any of the good effects
+of exile upon a section of the first offenders
+sent to the colonies, and scarcely touches the
+travesties of justice so often wrought by that
+lottery in human life known as the assignment
+system. His purpose is to describe
+&lsquo;the dismal condition of a felon during his
+term of transportation,&rsquo; and to show the
+futility of a prison system loosely planned at
+one end of the world and roughly executed
+at the other by men who found it easier,
+and in some cases more agreeable, to their
+undiscerning hearts to coerce than to
+ameliorate.</p>
+
+<p>The Parliamentary Committee defined
+transportation as &lsquo;a series of punishments
+embracing every degree of human suffering,
+from the lowest, consisting of a slight
+restraint upon freedom of action, to the
+<a name="png.085" id="png.085"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">81</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>highest, consisting of long and tedious
+torture.&rsquo; It was with the latter part of the
+definition in mind that Clarke told his story.
+He chose to represent servitude in the
+chain-gangs of Van Diemen&#8217;s Land and
+Norfolk Island as the condition of slavery
+which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir George
+Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure
+described by the experienced Dr. Ullathorne,
+and as the system recommended by the
+House of Commons Committee to be
+abolished as incapable of improvement and
+&lsquo;remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but
+still further corrupting those who undergo
+punishment.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke&#8217;s
+plot was always seen clearly, but never
+obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme
+that of the impetuous reformer Charles
+Reade. In his crusade against the form of
+punishment known as the &lsquo;silent system,&rsquo;
+the English novelist obtrudes his moral with
+a frequency that weakens the effect of his
+often splendid eloquence. The direct opposite
+of this style is seen in the Australian novel.
+<a name="png.086" id="png.086"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">82</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>The author never openly preaches. His best
+effects are obtained by quiet satire conveyed
+in the gradual limning of his characters, and
+by occasional incidents of which each is
+allowed to give its own lesson to the reader.
+The facts have all the advantage of a
+studiously calm and impersonal presentation.</p>
+
+<p>In the rapid progress of the plot the reader
+is kept keenly interested. If he have an eye
+for the moral he will detect it at once; if not,
+there is no importunate author to force it
+upon him. In either case he will find the
+story an absorbing one. &lsquo;It has all the
+solemn ghastliness of truth,&rsquo; said Lord
+Rosebery, writing to the novelist&#8217;s widow
+in 1884. He confessed that the book had a
+fascination for him. Not once or twice,
+but many times, had he read it, and during
+his visit to Australia he spent some time in
+viewing the scene of the old settlements and
+examining the reports upon which the novel
+is so largely based.</p>
+
+<p>That there are some exaggerations in the
+treatment of facts need hardly be stated, but
+they are few in number, not serious in import,
+<a name="png.087" id="png.087"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">83</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and outbalanced by numerous cases in which
+it has been necessary to modify the description
+of incidents either too painful or horrible to
+be fully depicted. As a compensation for its
+occasional storical inaccuracy, <cite>His Natural
+Life</cite> is notably free of the melodramatic
+excesses that most young writers would have
+been tempted to commit. Clarke was too
+good an artist to think of pleading the
+sanction of facts for any misuse of the
+privileges of good fiction. To maintain a
+strong impression on the reader, his touch is
+occasionally strong and fearless, like that of
+Kipling. But this object attained, he uses
+his materials with an almost unnecessary
+reticence. The episode of the cannibalism
+of Gabbett and his fellow-convicts is exceptional.
+Yet it purposely falls short of the
+terrible original, which is happily hidden
+away from general view between the covers
+of an old Parliamentary report.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said of Clarke, by one of his
+friends, that in his estimate of motives he was
+invariably cynical. Though the assertion
+goes too far, it seems to suggest the best
+<a name="png.088" id="png.088"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">84</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>explanation of his notable preference for
+delineating the dark side of human nature.
+He appeared ever to see vice more clearly,
+or at any rate to find it more interesting for
+the purposes of fiction, than the good or the
+neutral in character. But his cynicism&mdash;if it
+really formed a settled feature of his character&mdash;was
+not of the kind that implies any indifference
+to injustice or dishonesty. In this
+particular, both his fiction and essays have no
+uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke
+that his bad characters are in most cases
+wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a
+life of debauchery under the influence of a
+pure woman&#8217;s affection, but the effect is
+afterwards destroyed by evidences that the
+attachment on the man&#8217;s side is sensual and
+based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison
+tyrant and base denier of Dawes&#8217; heroism
+remains unexcused.</p>
+
+<p>Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only
+important representatives of the ordinary
+virtues in <cite>Long Odds</cite>, are little more than
+dim shadows contrasted with the clearly-marked
+personalities of half a dozen others
+<a name="png.089" id="png.089"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">85</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in the story who are rogues, or the associates
+and instruments of rogues. &lsquo;The human
+anguish of every page&rsquo; of <cite>His Natural
+Life</cite> which Lord Rosebery found so compelling
+to his attention, need not have been
+so continuous and unqualified.</p>
+
+<p>The author seems purposely to have
+ignored the opportunity afforded by the story
+for the introduction of a character who, while
+asserting the claims of Rufus Dawes and the
+broader interests of humanity, need not have
+defeated the main motive of the plot. It
+was a decided error not to gratify in this
+way the combative instinct of the reader.
+The Rev. James North&mdash;&lsquo;gentleman, scholar,
+and Christian priest&rsquo;&mdash;might have been an
+active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the
+clergyman in <cite>It&#8217;s Never Too Late to Mend</cite>,
+instead of being made a pitiable example of
+a confirmed and self-accusing drunkard.</p>
+
+<p>The strength of <cite>His Natural Life</cite> lies
+not so much in the ingenuity and dramatic
+quality of its plot, as in the number of striking
+personalities among its leading characters.
+That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is distinct
+<a name="png.090" id="png.090"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">86</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>only at intervals. It represents, for the most
+part, a hopeless sufferer passing through a
+series of punishments which become almost
+monotonous in their unvaried severity.</p>
+
+<p>But what could be more luminous than the
+portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the clever, self-possessed
+adventuress with the single redeeming
+quality of an invincible love for her
+worthless and villainous convict-husband? or
+that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered,
+coarsely good-humoured convict-driver, glorying
+in his knowledge of the heights and depths
+of criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly
+ignorant of all else?</p>
+
+<p>How naturally from such a person comes
+that savagely humorous dissertation upon the
+treatment of prisoners! &lsquo;There is a sort of
+satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping
+the scoundrels in order. I like to see the
+fellows&#8217; eyes glint at you as you walk past
+&#8217;em. Gad! they&#8217;d tear me to pieces if they
+dared, some of &#8217;em.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Frere is a triumph of consistent literary
+portraiture. He is generally understood to
+have been a study from life.  But as the
+<a name="png.091" id="png.091"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">87</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>official whose name has sometimes been associated
+with the character was a considerably
+more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor
+of Rufus Dawes, it must be assumed
+that Clarke aimed only at the representation
+of a type.</p>
+
+<p>Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates,
+Burgess and Troke, there undoubtedly
+were on the settlements, but the average
+official has probably a better representative
+in Major Vickers, the Commandant. Vickers
+is not an unkind man, but does not trust
+himself to do anything unprovided for in
+the &lsquo;regulations,&rsquo; for which he has an abject
+respect. &lsquo;It is not for me to find fault with
+the system,&rsquo; he says; &lsquo;but I have sometimes
+wondered if kindness would not succeed
+better than the chain-gang and the cat.&rsquo;
+But he never gives intelligence, much less
+kindness, a fair trial.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture
+of a good woman to be found in any of the
+author&#8217;s stories. Taken in childhood by her
+parents to the penal settlements, and separated
+there for years from youthful society,
+<a name="png.092" id="png.092"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">88</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>familiarised with the constant aspects of
+crime and suffering, and habitually in the
+society of her elders, she early develops into
+a quaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such
+as might well disconcert a peacock like the
+Reverend Meekin.</p>
+
+<p>To Frere, whose knowledge of other
+women has been mainly immoral, her innocence
+and wilfulness, and her instinctive
+dislike of him, serve as a strong attraction.
+Though he becomes her husband by means
+of a cruel fraud, he never fully gains her
+trust, and the estrangement so tragically
+sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes
+almost as a relief to the sympathetic reader
+of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers, despite
+the gloomy environment of her youth, is
+throughout an intensely womanly woman,
+the delicate conception of whose character
+surely places her creator far above the rank
+of the cynics in literature.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least of the elements which combine
+to make <cite>His Natural Life</cite> one of the
+most remarkable novels of the century is the
+occasional skilful varying of its painful realism
+<a name="png.093" id="png.093"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">89</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with a colouring of romance, as in the relations
+between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing
+devotion when she is so strangely made
+dependent upon him at the deserted settlement;
+his long-continued confidence that she
+will effect his vindication and deliverance;
+and, finally, the dominant motive of securing
+her safety against North with which he
+escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, and
+joins her in the doomed schooner on its last
+voyage to Van Diemen&#8217;s Land.</p>
+
+<p>What Oliver Wendell Holmes called &lsquo;the
+Robinson Crusoe touches&rsquo; in the story&mdash;including
+the experiences of the marooned
+party at Macquarie Harbour, and those of
+Rex in his escape through the Devil&#8217;s Blowhole&mdash;also
+help to leave with the reader of
+the novel an ineffaceable memory.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.094" id="png.094"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">90</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>HENRY KINGSLEY.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">What</span> are the special qualities that constitute
+the permanent charm of Henry Kingsley&#8217;s
+early novels? Some English critics, judging
+him by principles of literary art, have said
+that his best work is in many places of
+slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic
+power, and imitative in expression. A series
+of episodes, they observe, supply the place
+of a plot in <cite>The Recollections of Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite>; the central motive of <cite>The Hillyars
+and the Burtons</cite> is an impossible story
+of a young woman&#8217;s self-sacrifice; and the
+Thackerayan mannerisms in <cite>Ravenshoe</cite> are
+an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine
+novel.</p>
+
+<p>As a set-off to these defects, which are of
+less real consequence than may appear from
+<a name="png.095" id="png.095"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">91</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been
+freely credited with a certain ever-pleasing
+vivacity and gallantry of style far too rare in
+literature to be overlooked. The warmest
+of his admirers in his own country have
+even attempted to raise him to a position
+above that of his more celebrated brother.</p>
+
+<p>The task of comparing Kingsley the poet,
+preacher, and reformer, with Kingsley the
+laughing, genial teller of stories who never
+cherished a hobby in his life, would seem to
+be as superfluous on general grounds as it is
+premature in respect of the only possible
+question as to which of them is likely to be
+best remembered a generation or two hence.
+Only in one particular does it seem quite
+safe to predict&mdash;namely, that whatever may
+be the future standing of one who is said to
+have never penned a story without a didactic
+purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is
+certain of a permanent place in the literature
+of the young country where he encountered
+both the best and the worst experiences of
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>The English estimate of his novels&mdash;mainly
+<a name="png.096" id="png.096"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">92</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>a technical one&mdash;having been recorded, it
+seems to the present writer that something
+of interest might be said of them from, as
+far as possible, the Australian point of view,
+the standpoint of the reader who knows the
+country of Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood,
+and has lived some of their life. Two
+out of the three best novels are largely
+Australian in matter, and the reasons for
+their enduring popularity in the colonies are
+among the best grounds of the favour in
+which the author is held by the average
+English reader, to leave out of reckoning
+for the moment the literary expert. <cite>Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite> and <cite>The Hillyars and the Burtons</cite>
+have obvious faults, but in most respects
+they are the highest, because the least artificial,
+expression of Kingsley&#8217;s powers. A
+consideration of some of their more noticeable
+qualities will perhaps afford the clearest
+answer to the question which opens this
+essay.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Kingsley was one of the many
+impecunious young Englishmen of education
+and adventurous spirit who sought fortune
+<a name="png.097" id="png.097"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">93</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>on the gold-fields of Australia between 1851
+and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases
+with ready wealth, but in far more with bitter
+disappointment. Leaving Oxford without a
+degree in the company of two fellow-students,
+he hurried off to the Victorian gold-fields,
+which were then in the early sensational
+period of their development, and attracting
+people from all parts of the world. It was
+the time when the ordinary business of the
+colonies could scarcely be carried on at any
+sacrifice&mdash;when some of the more perplexed
+employers in the adjoining territory of New
+South Wales had urged Governor Fitzroy to
+proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit
+mining, &lsquo;in order that the inducement
+which seemed so irresistible to persons to
+quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.&rsquo;
+In the country districts crops were
+left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the
+towns masters did their own work or paid
+excessively to have it half done; while the
+harbours were filled with vessels whose crews
+had deserted to join in the general scramble
+for gold.  No one was content to stand
+<a name="png.098" id="png.098"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">94</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets
+being found up-country which sold for over
+four thousand pounds. &lsquo;As well attempt to
+stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to
+the diggings,&rsquo; was the reply given by Fitzroy
+to his petitioners.</p>
+
+<p>Ex-military and naval officers, professional
+men, convicts from Van Diemen&#8217;s Land,
+picturesque cut-throats from the Californian
+and Mexican mines, Chinese, and many
+other varieties of the human species, rubbed
+shoulders and lived generally in remarkable
+order and amity in the crowded canvas cities
+of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and
+Bendigo. In 1852, the year before Kingsley&#8217;s
+arrival, seventy thousand of them were toiling
+in Victoria alone.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the times and the people which
+gave the future novelist his first practical
+experience of colonial life. The varied
+knowledge that he accumulated, first of the
+gold-fields and later of pastoral life and the
+towns, was the only reward of his five years&#8217;
+voluntary exile from England. During his
+absence he never wrote to his parents, and
+<a name="png.099" id="png.099"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">95</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>they thought him dead. His reticence as to
+his unsuccessful struggles was continued
+when he returned home, and not relaxed in
+later life even to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement
+Shorter, prefixed to a new edition of
+Kingsley&#8217;s novels, briefly describes his
+school-days and literary career, but is almost
+wholly silent concerning the eventful years
+spent in the colonies. There is a single
+reference to the period which succeeded his
+gold-digging days, when want forced him to
+seek a less precarious occupation. For a
+time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman
+in New South Wales, until, &lsquo;compelled by
+duty to attend an execution, he was so much
+affected that he threw up the appointment
+in disgust.&rsquo; Then, like many another unlucky
+digger, he was obliged to travel the
+country in search of work on the sheep and
+cattle stations.</p>
+
+<p>A well-known pastoralist of the western
+district of Victoria, the late Hon. Philip
+Russell, was accustomed to describe to his
+friends the arrival at his station many years
+<a name="png.100" id="png.100"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">96</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>ago of a party of &lsquo;sundowners&rsquo; (<i>i.e.</i>, tramps),
+among whom was Kingsley, looking &lsquo;very
+much down on his luck.&rsquo; Soon found to be
+no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest
+at the station, where he remained for several
+months. The most agreeable glimpse obtainable
+of his colonial life is given in <cite>Old
+Melbourne Memories</cite>, a little collection of
+sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood
+twelve years ago.</p>
+
+<p>At the period which they recall, Boldrewood
+was a young man, and making the
+experiment in squatting which, though disastrous
+in its ultimate commercial results,
+was afterwards turned to a rich literary
+account by him. A friend of his named
+Mitchell occupied a station in western
+Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on
+one occasion Boldrewood met Kingsley.
+The passage in which he gracefully records
+the event is worth quoting in full.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Why Langa-willi,&rsquo; he says, &lsquo;will always
+be a point of interest in my memory, apart
+from other reasons, for I spent many a
+pleasant day there, was that Henry Kingsley
+<a name="png.101" id="png.101"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">97</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>lived there the chief part of a year as a guest
+of Mitchell&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;It was at Langa-willi that <cite>Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite>, that immortal work, the best
+Australian novel, and for long the only one,
+was written. In the well-appointed sitting-room
+of that most comfortable cottage one
+can imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated
+author sitting down comfortably after
+breakfast to his &ldquo;copy,&rdquo; when his host had
+ridden forth with his overseer to make-believe
+to inspect the flocks, but in reality to get an
+appetite for lunch.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I like to think of them both spending the
+evening sociably in their own way, both
+rather silent men&mdash;Kingsley writing away
+till he had covered the regulation number of
+sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when
+the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell
+reading steadily, or writing up his home
+correspondence; the old housekeeper coming
+in with the glasses at ten o&#8217;clock; then a
+tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the verandah,
+or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed.
+Peaceful, happy, unexciting days and nights,
+<a name="png.102" id="png.102"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">98</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and
+for his talented guest, who was not always
+so profitably employed. I suspect that in
+England, where both abode in later years,
+they often looked back with regret to the
+peerless climate, the calm days, the restful
+evenings spent so far beyond the southern
+main at Langa-willi.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>At least one of them must often have
+recalled those days as being among the
+happiest of a none too happy life. The
+main features of Kingsley&#8217;s career after he
+returned to England may be summarised
+here in a few words. The distinct success
+as a novelist which he won during the first
+four or five years was not maintained. His
+work lessened in interest as he lost the <i>verve</i>
+of youth, increased his leaning towards
+romance, and became more conventional in
+his methods.</p>
+
+<p>He essayed journalism for a time, first as
+editor of the Edinburgh <cite>Daily Review</cite>, and
+later as a correspondent of the same journal
+at the Franco-German War. As an editor
+he was a failure, through being without the
+<a name="png.103" id="png.103"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">99</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>necessary technical training, and it does not
+appear that he had much opportunity to
+distinguish himself as a war correspondent.
+The writing of fiction was his proper work,
+and his success at it seemed always to be
+in proportion to the amount of personal
+experience which he employed to support
+the superstructure of his somewhat reckless
+fancy. Those of Kingsley&#8217;s friends
+who contribute to the brief memoir of his
+life bear unanimous testimony to the personal
+brightness and kindness of which he
+has left so worthy a memorial in his first
+novels.</p>
+
+<p>It is characteristic of Kingsley that he
+never wrote an ungenerous word of the
+country which sent him away empty-handed
+from the store of its riches. Not even a
+suggestion of the fruitless toil and the disillusionment
+which he shared with scores of
+other amateur diggers during the first two
+years of his colonial life finds expression
+in any of his novels. His choice of incident
+and adventure in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> seems to
+imply a deliberate ignoring of what was
+<a name="png.104" id="png.104"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">100</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>by far the most striking development of
+Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.</p>
+
+<p>The gold-fields were then in a sense an
+epitome of the world, the centre at which
+all men&#8217;s thoughts converged, an ever-changing
+spectacle, a daily source of novelty
+and suggestion. The life of the squatters
+was primitive, inferior in variety, and marked
+only by a rapid accumulation of wealth, which
+was in itself but a part of the general prosperity
+created by the discovery of gold. If
+Kingsley wished to repress memories which
+it would have been against his cheerful
+nature to perpetuate, he succeeded with
+singular completeness.</p>
+
+<p>Save the technical knowledge of geology
+shown by Trevittick in <cite>The Hillyars and
+the Burtons</cite>, and by the encyclopædic Dr.
+Mulhaus in his lecture at the picnic in the
+grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is
+nothing to suggest that the author had any
+personal acquaintance with mining in the
+colonies. The experience that was so fresh
+and abundant in his mind is put aside in
+favour of a set of facts and pictures not even
+<a name="png.105" id="png.105"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">101</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields.</p>
+
+<p>As if to emphasise the motive of his choice,
+if motive there was, he selected the pre-auriferous
+period for the Australian parts of
+his stories. His squatters become wealthy by
+a comparatively slow process, extending over
+some sixteen years. The squatters of the
+gold period would certainly seem better
+adapted to the purposes of fiction. There
+is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance
+in the sudden burst of fortune which within
+the first few years after 1851 raised so many
+of them from positions of struggling uncertainty
+to affluence, with incomes varying from
+ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some
+few cases as high as thirty thousand pounds,
+a year.</p>
+
+<p>The first and last use Kingsley made of his
+gold-fields experience is seen in the sketch of
+mining of the successful sort in the third
+volume of <cite>The Hillyars and the Burtons</cite>,
+but this is so slight that it might have been
+imagined by a writer who had never handled
+a shovel or a washing-cradle in his life.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.106" id="png.106"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">102</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The Australian people have so often been
+the subject of flippant and ill-natured criticisms,
+that they can readily appreciate any
+liberal estimate of themselves in whatever
+form it may be placed before their kindred in
+Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is
+undeniable, that they are very sensitive to
+praise or blame. What wounds them more
+than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance
+of its often proceeding from persons
+who have accepted without warning their too
+prompt and trustful hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>To anyone but the incorrigibly confident
+and good-natured Antipodean, the lesson
+would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished
+visitor should be petted less, and
+left more dependent upon his own devices
+in the collection of materials for the inevitable
+book or magazine article. Though the result
+might be the same, there would be no ingratitude,
+and the critic would be less able
+to pose as an impartial inside observer of
+Australian society.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a
+somewhat wild flight of imagination, he
+<a name="png.107" id="png.107"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">103</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>might altogether escape the fatal sense of
+compulsion towards printers&#8217;-ink, under which
+the traveller of a few weeks&#8217; or months&#8217; experience
+commonly labours when once he has
+extricated himself from the blandishments of
+Toorak or Darling Point.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Australia has received many
+a compliment from casual writers, but to
+Australians themselves it is always a question
+whether these kindnesses are not outbalanced
+by the inaccuracies which surround them.
+For it may as well be said at once that the
+younger colonists do not relish being denied
+all native individuality, and depicted with a
+complaisant condescension as mere imitators
+of English life. It is well to be a Briton,
+they say, but better to be an Australian. And
+who shall say that their self-satisfaction is not
+healthy and pardonable?</p>
+
+<p>By contrast with the judgments of persons
+to whom candour concerning the colonies
+seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley&#8217;s
+pictures of the pioneer life of Australia fifty
+years ago, and his liberal estimate (since
+largely realised) of the future of the country,
+<a name="png.108" id="png.108"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">104</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>find more enduring appreciation than would,
+perhaps, be accorded such writing in ordinary
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The good feeling that shines on every
+page of <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> would earn gratitude
+from Australian readers were the story
+not in itself spirited and absorbing. If
+from the personal experiences with which
+this first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded
+everything that might be unfavourable to the
+reputation of Australia and its people, he at
+least told nothing that was untrue. His
+record of the country is a generous one, but
+there is no flattery&mdash;at least, none of the
+grosser sort.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that
+while delighting to preserve unmodified the
+British spirit and traditions in his emigrant
+colonists, he surrounds their offspring with
+a subtle distinction. Some of the manly
+strength and courtly serenity, the truth,
+honour, and delicacy of the ideal Englishman
+and Englishwoman they reproduce; and then
+there is added a something caught from the
+warm air and the broader expanses of the
+<a name="png.109" id="png.109"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">105</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>South&mdash;a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the
+blood, a greater trust in human nature.</p>
+
+<p>As befitting the early period of which the
+novelist wrote, this difference is not strongly
+marked, and is more readily recognisable in
+the light of colonial experience than without
+it; but it clearly exists. Its continuation at
+the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley&#8217;s
+young Australians are home-taught, and
+necessarily display most of the characteristics
+of their British parents. But, still, they show
+themselves types of a new race, which has
+now its hundreds of representatives in the
+homes of the Australian gentry.</p>
+
+<p>Of such was the young squatter who so
+attracted the attention of Mr. Froude at the
+first station he visited in Victoria. &lsquo;He had
+till within a month or two been herding cattle
+in Queensland, doing the work for four years
+of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had
+retained the manners of the finest of fine
+gentlemen&mdash;tall, spare-loined, agile as a deer,
+and with a face that might have belonged to
+Sir Lancelot.&rsquo; Of course, the genial author
+of <cite>Oceana</cite> made no pretence of minute
+<a name="png.110" id="png.110"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">106</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>observation in the account of his travels.
+Had he not been content to fly through the
+country, viewing it mainly, as he admits,
+from &lsquo;softest sofas&rsquo; of &lsquo;a superlative carriage
+lined with blue satin,&rsquo; he might have seen
+not one, but many fine specimens of what
+Sir George Bowen has aptly called the working
+aristocracy of Australia.</p>
+
+<p>The little Arcadian kingdom&mdash;cheerful,
+self-contained, and picturesque&mdash;of the Buckleys,
+the Brentwoods, and their historian,
+Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom
+Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the rest, far
+from illustrates all the intermittent successes
+and hardships which have commonly attended
+squatting in Australia. The toil, loneliness,
+and monotony of the occupation are scarcely
+mentioned. The aspect represented is almost
+entirely the agreeable one.</p>
+
+<p>There is, it must be admitted, some ground
+for the charge that he has made squatting
+life &lsquo;too much like a prolonged picnic.&rsquo; Had
+Kingsley been himself a pastoralist, a hundred
+minute experiences might have obtained expression
+which he has avoided.  In this
+<a name="png.111" id="png.111"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">107</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>respect the historical value of his work is
+less than it might have been. But the compensating
+gain in human interest more than
+justifies the author&#8217;s choice of treatment. He
+never allowed himself to forget that he was
+telling a story, that he was writing the adventures
+of a small group of emigrant English
+families, not a history of colonial settlement
+and its difficulties. Nor does he ever take
+advantage of the fact that, with the exception
+of two or three others whose works are collections
+of sketches rather than novels, and
+whose names are now almost forgotten, he
+was the first to describe in fiction the rural
+life of the country, to recognise the beginning
+of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate
+the pervading spirit of cheerful
+confidence to which so much of the rapid
+early development of Australia was due.</p>
+
+<p>It may well be regretted that one who had
+so keen an eye for all that was best in the
+social life of the country, at one of its most
+interesting periods, should not have written a
+volume or two of reminiscences, but no
+colonial reader would wish <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>
+<a name="png.112" id="png.112"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">108</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>or <cite>The Hillyars and the Burtons</cite> to have
+been made the vehicle of more descriptive
+matter than they contain. Kingsley was
+more sparing in the use of local colour and
+incident than Boldrewood and some of the
+younger writers are, though in his first novel
+a few passages occur which may be considered
+unnecessary, including the story told
+by the hut-keeper to Hamlyn in the presence
+of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of
+Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off
+the stage, and the story of the lost child. The
+latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus&#8217; geological
+lecture, has the merit of being one of the best
+pieces of prose the author ever wrote, and
+gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an
+opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the
+order of their suit for the hand of Alice Brentwood.
+In the main narrative the periods of
+&lsquo;dull prosperity&rsquo; are expressly avoided. After
+that first beautiful picture of the pioneer
+settlement, &lsquo;the scene so venerable, so
+ancient, so seldom seen in the old world&mdash;the
+patriarchs moving into the desert with all
+their wealth to find a new pasture land&rsquo;&mdash;the
+<a name="png.113" id="png.113"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">109</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>action of the story is rapidly advanced to
+the later days of their success. The estate
+which has been the home of Major Buckley&#8217;s
+forefathers for generations no longer providing
+a competence, he has resolutely left it
+for the land where he is to find &lsquo;a new heaven
+and a new earth.&rsquo; Unlike so many of the
+pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to
+England, but that it is <em>not</em> &lsquo;for ever&rsquo; one can
+safely predict from the outset. He sees the
+old country in long years after, when, with
+some of the wealth garnered on the rolling
+prairies of Northern Australia, his son has
+proudly bought back the family domain of
+Clere in all the completeness of its original
+acres. Within a few brief chapters the
+colonists are discovered in the security of
+assured wealth. Sitting under their station
+verandahs, they can contemplate almost with
+calmness the death of their cattle by hundreds,
+and the devastation of their runs by Bush
+fires. They have arrived at the period when
+&lsquo;there was money in the bank, claret in the
+cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.&rsquo;
+Meanwhile, the old Devonshire life is
+<a name="png.114" id="png.114"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">110</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>becoming a dim memory. They have kept
+their promise to create a new Drumston in
+the wilderness, and are well content with
+their homes among the southern fern-clad
+hills. The history of their intercourse
+approaches the character of an epic. Over
+his structure of realism&mdash;of life as he saw it
+and lived it himself&mdash;the writer has cast a
+softening glow of romance, through which
+are seen the beauties of ideal friendship, of
+youthful love, family affection, pride of
+nationality, and charity towards all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and
+wont to declare that the proportion of good
+to bad in human nature was as ten to one
+the world over. This tenet of his religion
+he infused in some measure into all his
+novels. It is this they teach if they teach
+anything. From it spring their most vital
+qualities. The best of the stories possess
+that &lsquo;certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,&rsquo;
+which Matthew Arnold assigned as
+the gift of literary genius. Their virility
+and right feeling are unmistakable, and
+insensibly teach the practice of a silent and
+<a name="png.115" id="png.115"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">111</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>kindly forbearance towards the foibles of
+our fellow-creatures. The names alone of
+the principal characters in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>
+recall scene after scene in their idyllic life to
+which it refreshes the mind to return. There
+is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo,
+gigantic in stature, refined, calmly courageous&mdash;a
+fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs.
+Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a
+model English matron; Tom Troubridge,
+the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity
+weighty and didactic in his speech,
+and thinking of turning his attention to
+politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet
+old maid, born to spend her life in uncomplaining
+service of others; Mary Hawker,
+tragic, passionate, paying the slow penalty of
+youthful wilfulness; Captain Brentwood, of
+Wellington&#8217;s artillery, and his gallant son
+Jim, who is sighing for a red coat and a
+commission; Sam and Alice, the young
+lovers so nearly lost to each other &lsquo;in the
+year when the bushrangers came down&rsquo;;
+and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German,
+with his good-humoured roar, first heard at
+<a name="png.116" id="png.116"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">112</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>old Drumston, and with us to the end, who
+is everybody&#8217;s friend and counsellor, and
+beloved by all&mdash;except George Hawker, of
+whose &lsquo;tom-cat&rsquo; skull he has made that
+amusingly audacious examination at the
+beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful
+to find all the faces familiar in the old
+land reappearing in the new, even though
+the coincidences which attend their coming
+seem too good to be true.</p>
+
+<p>But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness
+of the story in contemplation of
+the swift succession of happy scenes created
+for him. In these there is nothing dubious
+or artificial. They are sketches straight from
+the life of the country, and it is their beauty
+that makes <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> a classic in Australian
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>Among the characters, there are so many
+who inspire us with love rather than mere
+interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes,
+of conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions,
+and other intercourse, which in another book
+might prove wearisome, becomes here the
+best enjoyment of the reader. With what
+<a name="png.117" id="png.117"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">113</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>vivacity and gusto the author describes the
+visits exchanged between the home stations,
+and the comforts and happiness which they
+reveal! Half the book is made up of them,
+and yet the majority remain sufficiently clear
+in the memory to be recalled separately.
+Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away,
+buys a station near at hand, he and Buckley
+having become inseparable, and now Baroona,
+Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles
+apart. &lsquo;There was always a hostage from
+one staying as a guest at the other.&rsquo; The
+visits were generally unannounced, and the
+visitors stayed as long as they felt inclined
+to. The effects of this custom are once
+amusingly illustrated at the home of Captain
+Brentwood. It is when the members of the
+little colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful
+daughter from Sydney, where she has
+been at school. &lsquo;That week one of those
+runs upon the Captain&#8217;s hospitality took place
+which are common enough in the Bush, and,
+although causing a temporary inconvenience,
+are generally as much enjoyed by the entertainers
+as the entertained. Everybody during
+<a name="png.118" id="png.118"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">114</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>this next week came to see them, and nobody
+went back again. So by the end of the
+week there were a dozen or fourteen guests
+assembled, all uninvited, and apparently bent
+on making a long stay of it.&rsquo; They help
+one another when there is work to be
+done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously.
+Kingsley has properly made eating and
+drinking a noticeable part of the hearty
+full-bodied existence of his squatters and
+their friends.</p>
+
+<p>There is no class of people who have a
+better capacity for enjoying the material comforts
+of life than the country gentlemen of
+Australia. Major Buckley is just the sort of
+person one might have expected to hold
+decided views on the subject of dining as
+an art. To dine in the middle of the day
+was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the
+gifts of Providence. &lsquo;I eat my dinner not
+so much for the sake of the dinner itself
+as for the after-dinnerish feeling which
+follows&mdash;a feeling that you have nothing
+to do, and that, if you had, you&#8217;d be shot
+if you&#8217;d do it.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.119" id="png.119"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">115</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>On another occasion the author himself
+preaches a similarly agreeable doctrine, concluding
+with the advice: &lsquo;My brother, let us
+breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Australia, and
+dine in France, till our lives end.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in
+midsummer forgotten. Anyone in an armchair
+under a broad Australian verandah,
+who fetched anything for himself, would, in
+the author&#8217;s opinion, &lsquo;show himself a man
+of weak mind.&rsquo; Niggers were all that a
+Southern gentleman wanted to complete his
+comfort when the sun was at baking-point.
+Mrs. Beecher Stowe&#8217;s teachings undergo a
+playful deprecation. Did she know the
+exertion required for cutting up a pipe of
+tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount
+of perspiration and anger superinduced by
+knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in
+January; or the physical prostration caused
+by breaking two lumps of hard white sugar
+in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The
+Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that
+she didn&#8217;t.</p>
+
+<p>In the conversation of Kingsley&#8217;s colonists,
+<a name="png.120" id="png.120"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">116</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the business of the squatter, his hopes, fears
+and struggles, find no place, and the idea of
+hard work is never obtruded for its own sake.
+The talk is the talk of a cultured class who
+live wholesome lives and have no cares. The
+twelve thousand miles that separate them
+from the centre of their intellectual life are
+obliterated. The men preserve their individual
+tastes, together with that comradeship
+and mutual considerateness which have their
+origin in the best traditions of college life.
+The same loyalty and chivalry are prominently
+reproduced in the characters of <cite>Ravenshoe</cite>
+and <cite>Silcote of Silcotes</cite>. But in <cite>Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite> these qualities are perhaps more
+noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader)
+than in the later novels, because of the
+contrast they furnish to the essentially competitive
+life of modern Australia. Brentwood
+is &lsquo;excessively attached to mathematics, and
+has leisure to gratify his hobby&rsquo;; Harding,
+&lsquo;an Oxford man,&rsquo; is &lsquo;an inveterate writer of
+songs,&rsquo; a pastime which only the annual
+business of shearing is permitted to interrupt;
+Buckley is intent on the education of his son,
+<a name="png.121" id="png.121"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">117</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in which he is careful to provide for a knowledge
+of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor
+Mulhaus finds the new country an even
+better field than the old one for his researches
+as a naturalist and geologist. In telling his
+story, Kingsley seems, in short, to have
+treated pioneer squatting in Australia as the
+brighter aspects of English country life have
+been treated in fiction for generations past.
+He expends his best efforts in showing the
+picturesque surroundings and interior comfort
+of Australian homes. Neither their tables
+nor their bookshelves lack any of the best
+luxuries of the hour. The greyness and
+rawness of their environment are not touched
+upon. Marcus Clarke could never have
+shown the Australian people so much of the
+beauty of their strange fauna and flora as
+can be found in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>. He would
+have allowed the budding civilisation of the
+country to be swallowed up in sombre
+desolate forests, or appear as lonely specks
+on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he
+might intend the contrary, that, substantially,
+would be the final impression left on the
+<a name="png.122" id="png.122"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">118</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>mind of the reader. Australian scenery
+awed and depressed him. With all his
+powers of graphic expression, he could
+seldom write of it without exaggeration. It
+was the fascination of the grotesque rather
+than the picturesque that he felt. Kingsley,
+though scarcely so graceful and vivid a
+describer, had a keener and more constant
+sense of natural beauty. His vision was
+unclouded by the peculiar susceptibility of
+temperament which narrowed the view of
+his brilliant contemporary. He could not
+have indulged in rhetorical flourishes at
+the expense of accuracy, as in the familiar
+passage professing to give the Australian
+view of &lsquo;our trees without shade, our flowers
+without perfume, our birds who cannot fly,
+our beasts who have not yet learned to walk
+on all fours.&rsquo; A comparison of Marcus
+Clarke&#8217;s too often quoted description with
+the sketches of landscape given in, say,
+the twentieth, twenty-eighth and thirty-sixth
+chapters of <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> and at the beginning
+of the third volume of <cite>The Hillyars
+and the Burtons</cite> curiously illustrates how
+<a name="png.123" id="png.123"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">119</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>far the appreciation of Australian scenery
+depends upon the point of view of the
+observer.</p>
+
+<p>Kingsley&#8217;s descriptions, like all else that
+he wrote of the country, breathe an unmistakable
+personal enjoyment. They are the
+natural expression of a happy disposition,
+just as is the boyish fun with which he
+surrounds the love-making of his characters.
+&lsquo;Halbert kicked Jim&#8217;s shins under the table,
+and whispered: &ldquo;You&#8217;ve lost your money,
+old fellow!&rdquo;&rsquo; when Sam Buckley, flushed
+and happy, rejoined his friends in the sitting-room
+at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in
+the garden. Jim Brentwood had peevishly
+bet his friend that the lovers would go on
+shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert,
+with keener vision, had foreseen the very
+hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of
+five pounds on the event. More comical
+still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking
+under the bedclothes to escape the boot that
+is about to be flung at him, for laughingly
+discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend
+Stockbridge has tragically unburdened
+<a name="png.124" id="png.124"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">120</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>himself concerning the evaporation of his
+love for Mary Hawker.</p>
+
+<p>Whether in recording the actions and
+dialogue of his characters, or in describing
+scenery and the habits of the birds and
+animals which figure so often in his first
+novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his
+own happiness. It is not wit nor subtle
+humour, but a combination of pure mirth
+with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that
+maintains one&#8217;s interest in the simple life of
+the new Drumston. There is an abundance
+of farcical fun and playfulness which force
+laughter, and never approach an unkindness.
+The men avoid being smart at each other&#8217;s
+expense; and if they cannot claim to be
+clever or heroic, they are at least good
+fellows, any one of whom might serve as a
+model of manliness.</p>
+
+<p>Kingsley&#8217;s knowledge of household pets
+was of the kind exhibited by persons who
+have spent some period of their lives in
+loneliness, with only the companionship of
+dumb creatures. He was an acute observer
+of their peculiarities, with the noting of
+<a name="png.125" id="png.125"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">121</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>which he combined a whimsical exaggeration.
+The account of the menagerie which
+Sam Buckley found at Garoopna on the
+occasion of his memorable first meeting with
+Alice Brentwood is almost unique in Australian
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>Buckley&#8217;s ride to rescue his sweetheart
+from the bushrangers is one of the most
+moving and dramatic incidents in the book,
+and a good specimen of Kingsley&#8217;s graphic
+narrative style. A band of the outlaws who
+were the terror of pioneer colonists fifty
+years ago have risen in the district, and, after
+committing outrages at one station, are reported
+to be riding on to another twenty
+miles distant. At the latter, Captain Brentwood&#8217;s
+home, Alice happens to be alone.
+When the terrible news comes to her young
+lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest
+road is ten miles from Brentwood&#8217;s. What
+start have the bushrangers had, and will they
+arrive before him?</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Sam&#8217;s noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree
+a hundred years old, stood in the stable. The buying
+of that horse had been Sam&#8217;s only extravagance, for
+<a name="png.126" id="png.126"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">122</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>which he had often reproached himself, and now this
+day he would see whether he would get his money&#8217;s-worth
+out of that horse or no.</p>
+
+<p>I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting
+the bridle on Widderin&#8217;s beautiful little head. Neither
+of us spoke; only when I handed him the saddle, and
+helped him with the girths, he said, &lsquo;God bless you!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he
+rode by, he said, &lsquo;Good-bye, Uncle Jeff; perhaps you
+won&#8217;t see me again&rsquo;; and I cried out, &lsquo;Remember your
+God and your mother, Sam, and don&#8217;t do anything
+foolish.&rsquo; Then he was gone&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>Looking across the plains the way he should go, I
+saw another horseman toiling far away, and recognised
+Doctor Mulhaus. Good Doctor! he had seen the danger
+in a moment, and by his ready wit had got a start of
+everyone else by ten minutes. The Doctor, on his
+handsome, long-bodied Arabian mare, was making good
+work of it across the plains, when he heard the rush
+of a horse&#8217;s feet behind him, and turning, he saw tall
+Widderin bestridden by Sam, springing over the turf,
+gaining on him stride after stride. In a few minutes
+they were alongside of one another.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Good lad!&rsquo; cried the Doctor. &lsquo;On, forwards; catch
+her, and away to the woods with her! Bloodhound
+Desborough will be on their trail in half an hour. Save
+her, and we will have noble vengeance!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on
+across the plain like a solitary ship at sea. The good
+horse, with elastic and easy motion, fled on his course
+like a bird, lifting his feet clearly and rapidly through
+the grass. The brisk south wind filled his wide nostrils
+<a name="png.127" id="png.127"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">123</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>as he turned his graceful neck from side to side, till,
+finding that work was meant, and not play, he began to
+hold his head straight before him, and rush steadily
+forward&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on
+the plain and die. He was in the hands of God, and
+he felt it. He said one short prayer, but that towards
+the end was interrupted by the wild current of his
+thoughts. Was there any hope? They, the devils,
+would have been drinking at the Mayfords&#8217;, and perhaps
+would go slow; or would they ride fast and wild? After
+thinking a short time, he feared the latter. They had
+tasted blood, and knew that the country would be roused
+on them shortly&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>Here are a brace of good pistols, and they with care
+shall give account, if need be, of two men. After that,
+nothing. It were better&mdash;so much better&mdash;not to live if
+one were only ten minutes too late&hellip;. Now he was
+in the forest again, and now as he rode quickly down
+the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the
+hoarse rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end
+was well-nigh come&hellip;. Now the house was in sight,
+and now he cried aloud some wild inarticulate sound of
+thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful as ever, and
+Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah,
+feeding her birds.</p>
+
+<p>As he rode up he shouted to her and beckoned. She
+came running through the house, and met him breathless
+at the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;The bushrangers, Alice, my love!&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;We
+must fly this instant; they are close to us now.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty
+<a name="png.128" id="png.128"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">124</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>well, for her father had often told her what to do. No
+tears! no hysterics! She took Sam&#8217;s hand without a
+word, and, placing her fairy foot upon his boot, vaulted
+up into the saddle before him&hellip;. They crossed the
+river, and dismounting, they led the tired horse up the
+steep slope of turf that surrounded a little castellated tor
+of bluestone&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I do not see them anywhere, Alice,&rsquo; said Sam
+presently. &lsquo;I see no one coming across the plains.
+They must be either very near us in the hollow of the
+river-valley, or else a long way off.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;There they are!&rsquo; said Alice. &lsquo;Surely there is a large
+party of horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or
+eight miles off.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Ay, ten,&rsquo; said Sam. &lsquo;I am not sure that they are
+horsemen.&rsquo; Then he said suddenly in a whisper, &lsquo;Lie
+down, my love, in God&#8217;s name! Here they are, close
+to us!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>There burst on his ear a confused round of talking
+and laughing, and out of one of the rocky gullies leading
+towards the river came the men they had been flying
+from, in number about fourteen. They had crossed the
+river, for some unknown reason, and to the fear-struck
+hiders it seemed as though they were making straight
+towards their lair.</p>
+
+<p>He had got Widderin&#8217;s head in his breast, blindfolding
+him with his coat, for should he neigh now they were
+undone indeed! As the bushrangers approached, the
+horse began to get uneasy and paw the ground, putting
+Sam in such an agony of terror that the sweat rolled
+down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on
+his arm, and Alice&#8217;s voice, which he scarcely recognised,
+<a name="png.129" id="png.129"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">125</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>said in a fierce whisper: &lsquo;Give me one of your pistols,
+sir!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Leave that to me!&rsquo; he replied, in the same tone.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;As you please,&rsquo; she said; &lsquo;but I must not fall alive
+into their hands. Never look your mother in the face
+again if I do.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>He gave one more glance around, and saw that the
+enemy would come within a hundred yards of their
+hiding-place. Then he held the horse faster than ever
+and shut his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Was it a minute only, or an hour, until they heard
+the sound of the voices dying away in the roar of the
+river, and, opening their eyes once more, looked into
+one another&#8217;s faces? Faces they thought that they had
+never seen before&mdash;so each told the other afterwards&mdash;so
+wild, so haggard, and so strange.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>If, as Professor Masson says, &lsquo;it is by his
+characters that a novelist is chiefly judged,&rsquo;
+Henry Kingsley&#8217;s future reputation will be
+found to depend almost solely on what
+he accomplished in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>, <cite>The
+Hillyars and the Burtons</cite> and <cite>Ravenshoe</cite>.
+In the first two of these there is an abundance
+of original observation and little conscious
+study of character. The vivid
+Australian scenes of the one, and the Chelsea
+life of the other, are transcripts of the
+author&#8217;s own memories.  His knowledge of
+<a name="png.130" id="png.130"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">126</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the squatters he got by working for them and
+living with them; what he knew of police and
+convicts and bushrangers he learned in doing
+police duty; the life of the Burtons, as told
+in &lsquo;Jim Burton&#8217;s Story,&rsquo; was that which the
+author saw during his boyhood round his
+father&#8217;s old rectory on Chelsea Embankment.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;He seemed to me,&rsquo; says Mrs.<!-- TN: period invisible in scan --> Thackeray
+Ritchie, &lsquo;to have lived his own books, battled
+them out and forced them into their living
+shapes, to have felt them and been them all.&rsquo;
+Hardly all&mdash;one feels bound to say. The
+remark is entirely true of nearly everything
+in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> and of three-fourths of
+<cite>The Hillyars and the Burtons</cite>, but to <cite>Ravenshoe</cite>
+it applies in a more limited degree, and
+to some of the later novels scarcely ever.
+Either through carelessness (of which one
+often suspects him) or deficiency of judgment,
+Kingsley more than once allowed the
+exigencies of his plots to destroy all consistency
+in his characters.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer,
+is made to retire from the world and
+brood for many years, and on quite
+<a name="png.131" id="png.131"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">127</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>insufficient grounds, in the belief that his first
+wife had been unfaithful, and had tried
+to poison him. Nothing short of a condition
+of semi-insanity could explain his
+conduct. In other respects the character
+is finely conceived. Emma Burton, too, is a
+perfectly natural and charming person until
+she is employed to revive the old problem of
+how far a sense of duty can triumph over the
+power of love. Her devotion to her deformed
+brother is wrong, because it is unnecessary.
+But even if this were not the
+case, it would be irrational in a woman so
+eminently sensible and unromantic as she
+is shown to be in the first half of the story.
+Almost at the beginning of her voluntary
+service she is represented as realising &lsquo;the
+hideous fate to which she has condemned
+herself in her fanaticism.&rsquo; It is quite impossible
+to make the reader believe that,
+loving Erne Hillyar as she did, she could for
+years persist in rejecting him, and that her
+brother would permit so much sacrifice on
+his account.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is
+<a name="png.132" id="png.132"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">128</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>another instance of perversion. Her silliness
+is exaggerated in order that she shall
+weary and disgust the <i>blasé</i> aristocrat who
+has married her. Some of her chatter is
+more inconceivable than the &lsquo;coo-ee-ing&rsquo;
+which Mr. Hornung&#8217;s &lsquo;Bride from the Bush&rsquo;
+employed to attract the attention of a colonial
+acquaintance of hers in Rotten Row.</p>
+
+<p>But the distortion which the character of
+Emma Burton undergoes, and the caricature
+of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable
+faults in a story rich in noble thought
+and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious
+nonsense, and containing such real personages
+as Jim Burton and his father and mother, Erne
+Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson.</p>
+
+<p>Even in <cite>Silcote of Silcotes</cite> there are
+intermittent glimpses of finely-conceived
+character which almost outbalance the eccentricities
+of the Dark Squire and his sister,
+the fantastic meddler in foreign intrigue.
+Kingsley&#8217;s skill lay chiefly in his portrayal
+of men, especially of young men, such as the
+dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his philosophic
+friend Marston (a study of the George
+<a name="png.133" id="png.133"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">129</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Warrington type); Lord Welter, Lieutenant
+Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless
+profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank
+Maberly, the athletic curate; and Sam
+Buckley, the type of an Australian country
+gentleman. With old men he was less successful.
+Lord Saltire, the placid good-natured
+cynic of <cite>Ravenshoe</cite>, is, however,
+a clever exception. &lsquo;All old women are
+beautiful,&rsquo; says Kingsley in one of his stories,
+and he never portrayed one that was not.
+His best are Miss Thornton and Lady Ascot.
+The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker
+and Adelaide Summers, are rather slightly
+drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat
+indistinct personage compared with the
+Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and
+Ada Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>The superior position usually accorded
+to <cite>Ravenshoe</cite> among Kingsley&#8217;s novels is
+merited more by the soundness of its plot
+than by the naturalness of its characters. It
+was the author&#8217;s first essay in pure romance,
+and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character
+from imagination was always largely,
+<a name="png.134" id="png.134"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">130</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>sometimes extravagantly, to idealise.  He loved
+to people old country houses with walking
+mysteries, to unravel tangled genealogies,
+and discover secrets of youthful folly, to
+apportion property to rightful heirs, and
+endow his characters with a superhuman
+generosity.  When Charles Ravenshoe is
+recovering from the long illness which terminates
+the full series of his misfortunes, he
+sends for Welter, the man who might be
+considered his arch-enemy, who not so long
+before that had seduced Charles&#8217;s sister and
+stole his <i>fiancée</i>. Ravenshoe is represented
+as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs,
+and thinking only of Welter as his favourite
+schoolfellow and youthful companion. Anticipating
+doubts as to the feasibility of this,
+the author proceeds to discuss the point with
+the reader, as he does in many similar instances
+throughout the story.  He appears
+to have a constant anxiety about the impression
+he is making, and his comments and
+confidences certainly become distasteful. But
+this foible goes only a small way to discount
+the sterling merits of the novel.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.135" id="png.135"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">131</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>ADA CAMBRIDGE.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Towards</span> the close of 1890 the Australian
+booksellers&mdash;a cautious, conservative class in
+their attitude towards new fiction, especially
+that produced by the adventurous female
+writer of these latter days&mdash;began to display
+so marked an interest in the work of Ada
+Cambridge, that one not acquainted with
+the circumstances of the case might have
+credited them with a friendly&mdash;possibly a
+patriotic&mdash;desire to give due place to a
+newly-risen native genius. And when, in
+the following year, another story from the
+same pen appeared, the popularity of the
+author was firmly established.</p>
+
+<p>The neat red volumes were on every
+stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave them
+a place of honour in his show-window, and
+<a name="png.136" id="png.136"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">132</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the leading critical review said that the
+second story possessed a charm which ought
+to induce even the person who ignored
+fiction on principle to make an exception in
+its favour. It was the kind of gratifying
+recognition that the public always believes
+itself eager to offer the deserving young
+writer. Yet Ada Cambridge&#8217;s literary work
+had extended over no less a period than
+fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay
+in securing recognition might have been
+avoided. Probably in England she could
+have won a substantial reputation in a third
+of the time, and with half the labour expended
+by her in contributing to the Australian
+press. But, as the wife of a country
+clergyman, she had other matters besides
+literature to occupy her attention, and was
+content to write when there happened to be
+leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of
+the leading colonial newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>About half a dozen novels were issued
+in this way, besides occasional articles and
+poems. The publication of the longer stories
+in the <cite>Australasian</cite>, a high-class weekly
+<a name="png.137" id="png.137"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">133</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>journal, ought in itself to have made a name
+for the author, and possibly would have done
+so, were they not in most cases so obviously
+a local product, and therefore not to be
+seriously considered. It was a repetition of
+the experience of Rolf Boldrewood. In the
+end, as usual, it was the English public that
+first accepted her novels for what they were
+worth.</p>
+
+<p>Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the
+lonely fens and quaint villages of which are
+a picturesque background of some of her best
+stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage,
+she went with her husband, the Rev. George
+Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church
+of England, to Wangaratta, in Victoria.
+After residing successively in several other
+country towns of this colony, they settled in
+1893 at Williamstown, a waterside suburb of
+Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p>A novel entitled <cite>Up the Murray</cite>, dealing
+with life in the colonies, was published by
+Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue
+her work under her maiden name) in the
+Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the
+<a name="png.138" id="png.138"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">134</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>same character followed at irregular intervals.
+Two were issued in book-form by a London
+firm of publishers, but did not attain to much
+more than a library circulation.</p>
+
+<p>When the author again came before the
+English public, it was with a novel in which
+the purely Australian interest was rigidly
+subordinated to dramatic quality and a richly
+sympathetic study of character. <cite>A Marked
+Man</cite> is the story of a younger son of an old
+English county family who, while sharing
+the pride and indomitable spirit of his
+ancestry, develops a hatred for conventional
+prejudices and religious cant, and, after
+making a final assertion of independence by
+marrying a farmer&#8217;s daughter, emigrates to
+New South Wales to establish a name and
+fortune on his own account.</p>
+
+<p>The first half of the action takes place in
+England, the remainder in the colonies. The
+natural beauties surrounding the home of the
+Delavels at Sydney are not less delicately
+and poetically described than the village life
+they have left behind in the mother country&mdash;the
+patriarchal rule of an old-fashioned,
+<a name="png.139" id="png.139"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">135</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>rather pompous house, over a people retaining
+the hereditary respect of vassals for
+their feudal lord; but the view given of
+Australian society is, in keeping with the
+relation to it of Richard Delavel and his
+household, of the slightest kind.</p>
+
+<p>Delavel and the only daughter whom he
+has trained to be his second self, whose
+comradeship makes him almost forget the
+long-drawn thraldom of his early <i>mésalliance</i>,
+live in a world so much and so necessarily
+their own, that one is grateful for the good
+taste which excluded from it the bustle and
+commoner interests of colonial life. The
+novel met with general, and in several instances
+cordial, favour in England, and since
+then the author has yearly increased her
+reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Three out of five of the later novels are,
+like <cite>A Marked Man</cite>, made comparatively
+independent of the distinctively local interest
+to which we have been accustomed in the
+works of most Australian authors. It is not
+possible, for example, to point out anything
+in the shape of an essentially local first cause
+<a name="png.140" id="png.140"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">136</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>for any of the principal incidents of <cite>Not All
+in Vain</cite> and <cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>. The
+passionate half-brute, Neil Hammond, who
+pursues the heroine of the former story
+across the world, and terrorises her with his
+unwelcome attentions, would have met a
+violent death, or himself have murdered
+someone, in his own country or elsewhere
+as inevitably as in Australia; and the man
+who killed him would not have found
+Katherine Knowles less faithful during the
+long years of his imprisonment had her sacrifice
+been under the daily observation of
+Hammond&#8217;s family and her own strait-laced
+aunts in their East Norfolk home.</p>
+
+<p>In <cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>, the only advantage
+secured by taking the story from
+London to Melbourne&mdash;instead of to New
+York, let us say&mdash;seems to lie in whatever
+added strength the sense of greater distance
+imparts to the temporary appearance of a
+final separation between Betty Ochiltree and
+her strangely-wedded husband. The marriage
+that was a condition of their inheritance
+having been performed, bride and
+<a name="png.141" id="png.141"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">137</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>bridegroom part in accordance with a previous
+agreement. The former reappears as
+a prominent figure in the society of modern
+Melbourne&mdash;the Melbourne of 1893, when
+the failure of banks and land companies was
+a regular subject of morning news.</p>
+
+<p>Here, it might be supposed, was an opportunity
+for one or two vivid and instructive
+sketches of the sensational period that witnessed
+the proof of so much folly and its
+punishment, and wrought so many more
+effects on all classes of Australian society
+than could be noted in the common records
+of the time. But the great crisis is almost
+ignored in the novel. There are merely a
+few passing references to its progress, and a
+mention of the loss on the part of Mrs.
+Ochiltree of some of the wealth which she is
+beginning to regard as having been rather
+spuriously acquired.</p>
+
+<p>Even the very successful story of the
+<cite>Three Miss Kings</cite> and <cite>A Mere Chance</cite> tell
+little of the city life of Australia, though
+their action is placed in it almost exclusively.
+The latter is a tale of match-making intrigue
+<a name="png.142" id="png.142"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">138</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and money-worship in Toorak, but the main
+interest of the plot apart, the account of
+fashionable Melbourne is a singularly colourless
+one. As for Mrs. Duff-Scott and her
+Major, the amiable pair who in the character
+of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to
+find husbands for Elizabeth King and her
+sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are
+so effectually forestalled, they are as conventionally
+English as though they belonged
+to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry
+Wood.</p>
+
+<p>Again, though during half of <cite>Fidelis</cite> we
+are given occasional impressive and delightful
+glimpses of Nature under southern skies, the
+principal characters are English, and in
+England is centred first and last the dominant
+pathos of the story. A complete absence
+of dialect from the novels helps to emphasise
+the author&#8217;s slender use of extraneous aids to
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Ada Cambridge&#8217;s twenty-five
+years&#8217; Australian experience is shown in
+her general outlook upon life, rather than in the
+details of her work. The prevailing tone of
+<a name="png.143" id="png.143"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">139</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>her books is one of marked cheerfulness,
+sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty
+dislike for conventional stupidities, especially
+for the mock-modesty that stifles honest
+sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement
+to the pleasant dictum (which seems so
+much more feasible in sunny Australia than
+in colder northern lands) that the second half
+of life is not less fruitful and satisfying than
+the first.</p>
+
+<p>As the general effect of Ada Cambridge&#8217;s
+teaching, so far as it can be gathered from
+her plots, and the few instances in which she
+has permitted herself anything in the shape
+of didactic expression, is to make us more
+patient with life&#8217;s complexities and perceptive
+of its compensations, and more content with
+whatever happiness may be drawn in our
+way by the chain of accidents called Destiny,
+so do her principal characters, in their foibles
+and their strength&mdash;in the little acts and
+impulses which qualify alike their heroism
+and their baseness&mdash;tend to make us more
+discriminative and charitable.</p>
+
+<p>In almost every case they are strong
+<a name="png.144" id="png.144"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">140</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>studies from some point of view. Of deliberate
+analysis there is very little; but
+there are numerous realistic touches not
+commonly admitted in fiction, which, handled
+with skill and insight, keep the character
+within the pale of common experience and
+increase rather than alienate the reader&#8217;s
+sympathy. Thus, Richard Delavel&#8217;s outburst
+of relief upon the death of his first
+wife, so far from being vulgar and brutal,
+as it might have seemed in other circumstances,
+recalls and emphasises the high sense
+of duty and honour and the iron self-restraint
+which had enabled him to be in all essentials
+a good husband for twenty-five years to a
+cold-hearted creature, between whom and
+himself there had never been either common
+interest or feeling, and for whose sake he
+had relinquished the woman that would have
+been his real mate in intellect and sympathy.
+Delavel&#8217;s housekeeper, who is also a privileged
+friend, takes him to task for his unseemly
+hurry to go in search of this old love
+before his wife had been a week in her grave.
+He makes no secret of his relief.  &lsquo;The
+<a name="png.145" id="png.145"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">141</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>sense that I am free is turning my brain with
+joy,&rsquo; he confesses.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;I say it because I feel it. I am aware that it is in
+very bad taste, but that doesn&#8217;t make it the less true.
+Do you suppose people are never glad when their relations
+die? They are&mdash;very often; they can&#8217;t help it;
+only they pretend they are not, because it seems so
+shocking. I don&#8217;t pretend&mdash;at least, I need not pretend
+to you. The fault is not always&mdash;not all&mdash;on the side
+of the survivors, Hannah. I don&#8217;t think I am any worse
+than those who pretend a grief that they don&#8217;t feel. I
+was never unkind to her&mdash;never in my life, that I can
+remember. I did not kill her; I would have kept her
+alive as long as I possibly could. I think&mdash;I hope&mdash;that
+if I could have saved her by the sacrifice of my own
+life, I should have done it without a single moment&#8217;s
+hesitation.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I am sure you would,&rsquo; said Hannah.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;But,&rsquo; he continued, with that unwonted fire blazing
+in his eyes, &lsquo;since dead she is, I <em>am</em> glad&mdash;I am, I am!
+I am glad as a man who has been kept in prison is to be
+let out. It is not my fault; I would be sorry if I could.
+Some day, Hannah&mdash;some day, when we have been dust
+for a few hundred years&mdash;perhaps for a few score only&mdash;people
+will wake up to see how stupid it is to drive a
+man to be glad when his wife is dead. They are finding
+out so many things; they will find that out too in time.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Probably it will still appear to many that
+Delavel&#8217;s admission was at least indelicate
+<a name="png.146" id="png.146"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">142</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and inconsistent with his chivalrous nature.
+It is not here possible to convey an adequate
+impression of his fiery spirit, his long heart-hunger,
+and the magnitude of the loss which
+a wholly uncongenial marriage must ever
+mean to such a man. When the full story of
+his life and that of his quietly &lsquo;implacable&rsquo;
+wife is read, his conduct seems natural and
+excusable. It is as much a part of himself
+as the tremulous tenderness with which he
+ministers to the comfort of the frail Constance
+Bethune, after finding and bringing her home,
+or as his fierce grief when she dies.</p>
+
+<p>Another very human spectacle that illustrates
+the author&#8217;s method is the reunion of
+Betty and Rutherford Ochiltree&mdash;the frank
+selfishness of their mutual joy while the poor
+woman who had been an unconscious barrier
+between them lies dead under their roof. It
+is a somewhat painful episode, and precludes
+anything like high esteem for Rutherford, but
+it has the quality of intense actuality.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner is Adam Drewe shorn of
+some of the merit of his devotion to the
+heroine of <cite>Fidelis</cite> by being shown in
+<a name="png.147" id="png.147"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">143</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>successive attachments to other women during
+his long exile in Australia. The author recognises
+that, &lsquo;the laws of literary romance
+being so much at variance with the laws of
+Nature,&rsquo; Adam is certain to suffer in the
+reader&#8217;s good opinion for having &lsquo;continued
+to hunger for feminine sympathy as well as
+his daily dinner.&rsquo; No doubt his stature as a
+hero lessens when it appears that though the
+absent Fidelia was ever in his thoughts, and
+a daily source of inspiration to him as a
+writer, he twice narrowly escaped marriage&mdash;first
+with a servant girl at his lodgings, and
+afterwards with the daughter of his landlady&mdash;and
+that at another period of his colonial
+life he became involved in a disreputable
+kind of Bohemianism. But he is not disgraced
+by these lapses to the extent that the
+author anticipates; at all events, they make
+him more human than he could otherwise
+have been.</p>
+
+<p>It is this power of infusing a robust
+humanity into her characters that makes the
+distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge&#8217;s best
+novels. In each, whatever the quality of the
+<a name="png.148" id="png.148"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">144</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>plot, there are always two or three personages
+who talk and act as real men and women
+do&mdash;now rationally or in obedience to custom,
+now passionately or with that perversity
+which, as the author once describes it, &lsquo;is
+like a natural law, independent of other laws,
+the only one that persistently defies our calculations.&rsquo;
+They are mostly big people with
+big appetites. The beauty of the women is
+the beauty of mind and of sound physical
+health.</p>
+
+<p>Susy Delavel was tall, well grown, straight
+and graceful, with an intelligent, eager face,
+though &lsquo;her mouth was large, her nose not
+all it should have been, and her complexion
+showed the want of parasols and veils.&rsquo; She
+was &lsquo;not handsome at all, but decidedly
+attractive.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sarah French, the girl in <cite>Fidelis</cite> whose
+comeliness so nearly drew the hero from his
+old allegiance, has &lsquo;a strong and good, rather
+than a pretty, face,&rsquo; with a &lsquo;large and substantial
+figure.&rsquo; Adam Drewe concluded on
+first sight of her that she was a nice woman.
+Later on he finds her &lsquo;looking the very
+<a name="png.149" id="png.149"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">145</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>incarnation of home, with her cheerful healthy
+face, her strong busy hands, her neat hair,
+her neat dress&hellip;. She might have sat for
+a statue of Motherhood&mdash;of Charity with a
+babe at her ample breast, and others clinging
+to her supporting hand; Nature had so evidently
+intended her to play the part.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Katherine Knowles has fine physical
+symmetry and a strong, frank face. While
+lacking &lsquo;the airs and graces, the superficial
+brightness, of conventional girlhood,&rsquo; she is
+&lsquo;singularly vivid in her more substantial
+way.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Betty Ochiltree&#8217;s beauty, too, is of the
+kind that wears well. She has a face &lsquo;frank
+and spirited, firm of mouth and chin, kind
+and sweet, as honest as the day,&rsquo; surmounting
+an ample body, and she carries herself with
+dignity, &lsquo;as few Australian girls can do.&rsquo;
+And how impressive and consistent with her
+character is the noble, placid figure of
+Elizabeth King, &lsquo;perfect in proportion, fine
+in texture, full of natural dignity and ease!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The author is fond of showing the attractiveness
+of such women at the age of thirty,
+<a name="png.150" id="png.150"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">146</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>or even more. &lsquo;In real life,&rsquo; she once
+observes, &lsquo;the supremely interesting woman
+is not a girl of eighteen, as she is in fiction.
+Every man worth calling a man knows that.
+A girl of that age &hellip; knows as much about
+love as does a young animal in the spring,
+and not a bit more. And the human male of
+these days&mdash;so highly developed, so subtly
+compounded&mdash;has grown out of the stage
+when that much would satisfy him. I mean,
+of course, the human male who in real life
+answers to the hero in fiction&mdash;a man who
+must have left, not only his teens, but his
+twenties behind him.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>When one comes to the heroes, it is easy
+to recall half a dozen commanding figures
+who blunder in the most natural and amiable
+manner in their affairs; who think a good
+deal more of their immediate personal comforts
+than of religious or ethical abstractions;
+who like their own way and try to get it;
+who, in short, are mostly what the author
+wishes them to appear&mdash;&lsquo;the men out of
+books that we meet every day.&rsquo; Of little
+men, in the physical sense, there are only
+<a name="png.151" id="png.151"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">147</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>two of any importance, but even these are
+virile and masterful. A general aim of the
+stories would seem to be to show the sexes
+what each chiefly admires in the other. It
+is first a sort of apotheosis of the <i>mens sana
+in corpore sano</i>, and after that an illustration
+of the independent attractions of sympathy,
+gentleness, culture, and high character.</p>
+
+<p>Though in most cases the strongest attachments
+are formed between men and women
+arrived at an age to discriminate beyond
+mere physical charm, nevertheless physical
+charm is the most powerful, though not
+always acknowledged, motive of their choice.
+&lsquo;Because of this,&rsquo; says the pathetic Hilda
+Donne in <cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>, touching
+her cheek, which is terribly disfigured by a
+birth-mark, &lsquo;I have never had <em>love</em>. Can
+you think what that means? You can&#8217;t.
+Once I thought I was not going to be quite
+shut out&mdash;once; but I was mistaken. I
+have found out that it is for one&#8217;s body that
+one is loved, and not for one&#8217;s soul.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hilda unconsciously exaggerates, for it
+appears that Rutherford Hope, though at
+<a name="png.152" id="png.152"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">148</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>first affected with disgust by her disfigurement,
+and convinced that no healthy man
+could consort with &lsquo;so unnatural a woman,&rsquo;
+had come at last to regard her as a possible
+wife&mdash;before he was confronted with the
+sudden temptation to secure a fortune by
+wedding Betty Ochiltree, in compliance with
+the conditions of her millionaire uncle&#8217;s will.
+Yet Hilda&#8217;s comment is substantially sound.
+Even Rutherford, with all the sense of his
+mature years, and all the culture that enabled
+him to appreciate her poetic gift, would
+have had to argue himself into a marriage
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>The ugliness of Adam Drewe, from which
+his mother turned in disgust at his birth,
+and which in youth drove him across the
+seas in an agony of sensitiveness from the
+woman he loved, was a less serious affliction
+than that of Hilda Donne; but we know that
+he continued to be keenly reminded of its
+disadvantages long after time had proved
+the sterling qualities of his manhood, lessened
+his deformity, and brought him fame and
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.153" id="png.153"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">149</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Compared with the previous illustration,
+however, his case is at fault in failing to give
+a sufficient description of his deformity. But
+that he himself long thought it an insuperable
+bar to his happiness is clear. When he
+fell in love with Fidelia Plunket, she was
+temporarily blind. His affection for her was
+returned, and he knew it, but dreading the
+disillusionment that would ensue when her
+sight was restored, he fled to Australia and
+determined to abandon all thought of her as
+a wife. Urged to return, because &lsquo;when a
+woman <em>is</em> a woman,&rsquo; and really in love with
+a man, &lsquo;there&#8217;s no camel she won&#8217;t swallow
+for him,&rsquo; Drewe replied that his camel was
+just the one camel that no woman had been
+known to swallow, or, at any rate, to digest.
+And he remained&mdash;for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>The plots of Ada Cambridge&#8217;s novels are
+of the episodical order, and the author, despite
+her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness
+of the average conventional novel, has
+not disdained employment of some of its
+time-honoured methods. Occasionally she
+is at pains to explain the feasibility of
+<a name="png.154" id="png.154"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">150</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>coincidences employed to secure dramatic
+interest. They are certainly never of an
+impossible kind, and no one would deny the
+truism that real life abounds in them. But
+has not a distinguished writer aptly pointed
+out that there are matters in which fiction
+cannot compete with life? As a rule, however,
+where a few such weaknesses exist, they
+do not count for much with the average
+reader when the principal scenes are as
+finely drawn as those in <cite>A Marked Man</cite>
+or <cite>Fidelis</cite>, or <cite>The Three Miss Kings</cite>. The
+latter story in some details puts a greater
+strain upon the credulity than any of the
+other novels, yet so well conceived and
+absolutely natural are the characters of the
+three girls, and so humorously and pictorially
+presented the chief incidents in their development,
+that the dubious points of the plot
+become almost insignificant. The qualities
+of the novel as a whole are similar to those
+which obscure the artistic defects of <cite>Geoffry
+Hamlyn</cite>, and which for thirty-seven years
+have made it one of the most popular of
+Australian stories.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.155" id="png.155"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">151</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>In the presentation of tragic or pathetic
+incidents lies Ada Cambridge&#8217;s chief power,
+as far as her plots are concerned. In <cite>A
+Marked Man</cite> it is accompanied by her
+highest achievements in portraying a variety
+of well-contrasted character<!-- TN: sic -->. <cite>Fidelis</cite>, which
+opens at the Norfolk village of the earlier
+novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains
+fewer developed characters, as may also be
+said of <cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>. But the
+three novels are equal in the high standard
+of their emotional quality. No quotation of
+moderate size could do justice to any of the
+principal scenes of <cite>A Marked Man</cite>: the
+chivalrous sacrifice of Richard Delavel&#8217;s
+youthful marriage; the inward repentance
+of it for twenty-two years; the revival of his
+love for Constance Bethune; his painful
+anxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of
+her companionship, and anguish at her death;
+and his own death soon afterwards. In the
+more briefly detailed tragedy that brings into
+such striking relief the sprightly drama of
+<cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>, there is a scene
+giving a fair example of the author&#8217;s style in
+<a name="png.156" id="png.156"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">152</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>touching passages. When Hilda, deeply in
+love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his
+union with another woman, she takes the
+readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly
+marrying a shallow coxcomb who seeks her
+for mercenary reasons, and going with him to
+Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected
+by the sudden reappearance of Rutherford,
+and by subsequent ill-treatment received from
+her jealous husband, that an exhausting
+illness follows, and to save herself from
+insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile
+the long separation of Rutherford and Betty
+Ochiltree, which began on the day of their
+marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda&#8217;s
+death removes the final impediment. Together
+they pay a last visit to the dead
+woman:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Incapable of speech, he lifted a tress of hair&mdash;flowing
+free over the rigid arms, because it was really pretty, and
+thus had to be made the most of&mdash;and pressed it a
+moment to his bearded mouth. In that gesture he
+seemed to ask her forgiveness for having been a man
+like other men, as Nature made them.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Kiss <em>her</em>,&rsquo; Betty whispered, pushing him a little.
+She, too, felt that it would be something, if not much,
+<a name="png.157" id="png.157"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">153</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to put to the account that was so frightfully ill-balanced&mdash;a
+kiss from Rutherford before all was wholly over.</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and laid his lips&mdash;scarcely laid them&mdash;on
+the waxen forehead. And he thought how he had nearly
+kissed her once, in the scented spring dusk, at her
+father&#8217;s gate, and been repelled at the last moment by
+the thought of something that he could not see&hellip;.
+He turned back the sheet and straightened it, and
+nobody but hired undertakers had anything more to do
+with Hilda Donne. He put out the lamps, leaving her
+in the dark, which, as a living, nervous woman, she had
+always been afraid of; and he took Betty in his arms to
+comfort her a little, before he opened the door upon the
+light and life of their own transfigured world.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There is a characteristic vein of realism
+in the subsequent view of the lovers&#8217; self-absorption
+and short-lived sorrow, and the
+callousness of Donne.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>No later than the same Saturday afternoon [Hilda was
+buried in the morning], her Edward was cheering himself
+with his preparations for New Zealand, whither he
+was easily persuaded to set off at once as a means of
+distracting his mind from his domestic woes, and of
+retiring gracefully from a Civil Service that was otherwise
+certain to dismiss him; and there he shortly found
+a number of absorbing interests, including&mdash;as Rutherford
+had predicted&mdash;a rosy-cheeked second wife, who, as
+he wrote to Mrs. Ochiltree when announcing his engagement,
+was all that heart could wish, and had apparently
+been made on purpose for him&hellip;. No later than
+<a name="png.158" id="png.158"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">154</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Saturday afternoon&mdash;and early at that&mdash;Rutherford,
+having parted with the widower and seen him off the
+premises, ran upstairs to his wife&#8217;s door, with a spring in
+his step and a light in his eyes that plainly showed his
+mourning to be over. Hilda was dead and gone, but
+Betty was alive in her splendid strength and beauty, and
+he was her husband and bridegroom, and his hour had
+come! The grave had closed over that broken heart,
+which had ached as long as it could feel, and ached
+most for him; but the world was still glorious for him
+and his love, and never so glorious as now. They began
+to bask in their happiness, as the house in the sunshine
+that flooded it, now that the blinds were drawn up. The
+shadow of death, close and terrible as it was, could not
+dim it for them any more.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In all the novels there are memorable
+scenes of tenderness, among the best of
+which are those between Fidelia and Adam
+Drewe, first in their brief meetings as girl
+and youth&mdash;she with her weak eyes bandaged,
+but reading him through his voice and bashful
+deprecation; he yearning to remain with
+her, but forcing himself away&mdash;and then in
+long years after, when he returns to find her
+in widowhood and poverty, and to all seeming
+hopelessly blind.</p>
+
+<p>The conception of the latter scene is quite
+the best to be found in the whole of Ada
+<a name="png.159" id="png.159"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">155</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Cambridge&#8217;s work, and has not been equalled
+in its kind by any other Australian writer.
+The simplicity and verbal reticence of this
+chapter of intense feeling gives also a good
+sample of the author&#8217;s style of expression.
+Seldom ornate or much studied, it is ever a
+lucid and easy style. As a narrative specimen,
+the following, from the same novel, is
+conveniently quotable:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>It was not much of an accident, but it was enough.
+The engine buried its fore-paws in the soft earth of the
+embankment, where engines were not meant to go, and
+then paused abruptly in the attitude of a little dog hiding
+a bone in a flower-bed; the embankment sloped down
+instead of up, and the monster hung upon the edge of it,
+nose to the ground and hind-quarters in the air, looking
+as if a baby&#8217;s touch would send it over. Several carriages,
+violently running upon it and being checked suddenly,
+stood on tip-toes, so to speak, and fell into each other&#8217;s
+arms with a vehemence that completely overset them;
+one rolled right down the bank, head first, and the others
+tumbled upon its kicking wheels. It was all over in a
+moment; and the dazed passengers, realising in a second
+moment that the end of the world was still an event in
+the future, picked themselves up as best they could. No
+one was killed, but some were badly shaken, and most of
+them screamed horribly. The sound of those screams,
+mingled with the clanking and crashing of riven wood
+and metal, and the hissing of escaping steam, conveyed
+<a name="png.160" id="png.160"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">156</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the idea of such an appalling catastrophe as would make
+history for the world.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Though not a satirist&mdash;she does not hate
+well enough to be that&mdash;Ada Cambridge has
+occasionally a neat and forcible way of describing
+character. Richard Delavel&#8217;s first
+wife was &lsquo;a gentle and complaisant being,
+soft and smooth, apparently yielding to the
+touch, but dense, square, and solid as a well-dumped
+wool-bale.&rsquo; When opposed in will
+or contradicted in her opinion, she smiled
+resignedly, and, if it appeared due to her
+dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally
+she was &lsquo;the evenest-tempered woman that
+ever a well-meaning husband found it difficult
+to get on with.&rsquo; A pattern of order and
+conscientiousness, &lsquo;governed by principles
+that were as correct as her manners and
+costume, and as firmly established as the
+everlasting hills,&rsquo; she might have made an
+admirable wife for a clergyman, but was
+totally unsuited to Delavel, as he to her.</p>
+
+<p>Still, she was very proud of the look of
+&lsquo;blood&rsquo; in her Richard, and when he became
+wealthy, and she a fashionable hostess in
+<a name="png.161" id="png.161"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">157</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Sydney society, nothing delighted her more
+than her opportunities of making the aristocratic
+connection known. Her own origin
+as the daughter of a farmer was quite
+forgotten. &lsquo;Annie might have been a
+Delavel from the beginning, in her own
+right, for all the recollection that remained
+to her of the real character of her bringing
+up&hellip;. Years and certain circumstances
+will often affect a woman&#8217;s memory that way&mdash;a
+man somehow manages to keep a better
+grasp of facts.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Yelverton, the lover of Elizabeth King,
+an English aristocrat spending some of his
+wealth in lessening the misery and vice of
+London, was &lsquo;not the orthodox philanthropist,
+the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist with
+a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with
+a mission to set the world right; his benevolence
+was simply the natural expression of a
+sense of sympathy and brotherhood between
+him and his fellows, and the spirit which
+produced that was not limited in any direction.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>His friend, Major Duff-Scott, &lsquo;an
+<a name="png.162" id="png.162"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">158</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>ex-officer of dragoons, and a late prominent
+public man of his colony (he was prominent
+still, but for his social and not his official
+qualifications), was a well-dressed and well-preserved
+old gentleman who, having sown
+a large and miscellaneous crop of wild oats
+in the course of a long career, had been
+rewarded with great wealth, and all the
+privileges of the highest respectability.&rsquo;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.163" id="png.163"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">159</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> strongest note of Adam Lindsay Gordon&#8217;s
+poetry is a personal one. When he represents
+Australia best, he best represents his own
+striking character. Yet that character had
+clearly shown itself, as had also his lyric gift,
+before he saw Australia. He is the favourite
+poet of the country by a happy fortuity
+rather than by the merit of special native
+inspiration. Those tastes of the people
+which he has expressed in manner and
+degree so rare as to make a parallel difficult
+of conception were also his own dominant
+tastes. From early boyhood they had controlled
+his life, and in the end they wrecked
+it.</p>
+
+<p>That any man living an adventurous and
+precarious life, often in rude associations and
+<a name="png.164" id="png.164"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">160</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>without the stimulus of ambition or of
+intellectual society, should write poetry at
+all is a matter for some wonder. And when
+several of the compositions of such a writer
+are marked by rare vigour and melody, and
+some few are worthy to rank with the best of
+their kind produced in the century, it must
+be held that the gift of the author is genuine
+and spontaneous. It is impossible to believe
+that Gordon would have been less a poet had
+he never lived under the Southern Cross;
+that he would have cared less for horses and
+wild riding, for manliness and the exhilaration
+of danger. Had he become a country gentleman
+in England, or a soldier, like his father,
+should we not still have had &lsquo;The Rhyme of
+Joyous Garde,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Romance of Britomarte,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;By Flood and Field,&rsquo; and &lsquo;How we beat
+the Favourite.&rsquo; And do these not form the
+majority of his best poems? A man apt
+alike for the risks of the chase or the cavalry
+charge, with a delicate ear for the music of
+words, with natural promptings to write,
+would in any conditions have found time to
+celebrate the things which his daring and
+<a name="png.165" id="png.165"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">161</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>gallant spirit loved. Had he not ridden as
+well as written the rides related by his &lsquo;Sick
+Stockrider,&rsquo; he might have been foremost in
+that more glorious one so often present to his
+fiery fancy, and have wielded</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl6">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div class="i6">          &lsquo;The splendid bare sword</div>
+<div>Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Gordon was a true soldier in sentiment all
+his life, as he was also a true Englishman, and
+it is the soldier and the Englishman in him far
+more than the Australian that the people of his
+adopted country, consciously or unconsciously,
+admire. It is yet difficult to consider his
+work as a writer apart from his personality.
+And it is natural that this should be so in
+the case of a man whose career was itself
+a romance, who led as strange a double
+life as ever poet lived, and who, through all,
+retained the marked essentials of a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>In his character as a sportsman and a rider
+there is an element of the ideal which largely
+helps to commend him to the majority of
+Australians. Though his liking for horses
+and the turf became a destroying passion,
+<a name="png.166" id="png.166"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">162</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>there was never anything sordid in it. He
+was not a gambler, for long after he had
+won recognition as the first steeplechase rider
+in a country of accomplished riders, he
+declined payment for his services on the
+race-track, accepting it only when compelled
+at last by poverty to do so; and the distaste
+with which he had always viewed the meaner
+associations of the sport latterly became
+dislike and scorn. In the period of disappointment
+that preceded his death he
+refused a remunerative post on the sporting
+staff of a leading Melbourne journal because
+he wished to dissociate himself completely
+and finally from everything connected with
+the professionalism of sport.</p>
+
+<p>As a Bush rider he became noted for the
+performance of feats which no one else would
+think of attempting. The Australians often
+speak and write of it as courage absence of
+fear&mdash;but it surely had a large admixture of
+pure recklessness. It is at least evident that
+danger had a certain irresistible fascination
+for him. &lsquo;Name a jump, and he was on fire
+to ride at it,&rsquo; is the description given of this
+<a name="png.167" id="png.167"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">163</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>curious predilection which made his company
+in a riding party a somewhat exciting pleasure.
+The day in 1868 when he won three steeplechases
+at Melbourne is still remembered;
+and at Mount Gambier, in South Australia,
+a granite obelisk marks where once he leaped
+his horse over a fence surmounting the headland
+of a lake, and then across a chasm &lsquo;more
+than forty feet wide.&rsquo; A single false step
+would have cast horse and rider into the lake
+two hundred feet below. Of the same wild
+character was his riding during boyhood in
+the hunting-fields of Gloucestershire. It
+would be natural to suspect some measure of
+vanity or bravado in all this, but no hint of
+either is given by any of his acquaintances;
+and the few who knew him well are emphatic
+in placing him, as a man and a sportsman,
+apart from and above the majority of those
+with whom the conditions of his life brought
+him into contact. &lsquo;Gordon,&rsquo; says one of his
+intimate friends, &lsquo;was always a quiet, modest,
+pure-minded gentleman&hellip;. I never knew
+such a noble-hearted man, especially where
+women were concerned.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.168" id="png.168"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">164</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The deep melancholy in many of Gordon&#8217;s
+poems has been attributed to the influence of
+Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of
+the earlier years of his life in the colonies.
+This explanation, if not wholly erroneous,
+is at least much exaggerated. It ignores the
+most obvious elements of the poet&#8217;s temperament.
+It takes no account of the history of
+wasted opportunities and regrets, of defeat
+and discontent, of self-wrought failure and
+remorse, that may plainly be read in &lsquo;To my
+Sister,&rsquo; &lsquo;An Exile&#8217;s Farewell,&rsquo; &lsquo;Early Adieux,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Whispering in the Wattle Boughs,&rsquo; &lsquo;Quare
+Fatigasti,&rsquo; &lsquo;Wormwood and Nightshade,&rsquo; and
+other poems. The writer, as he himself says,
+has no reserve in the criticism of his own
+career.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl6">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Let those who will their failings mask,</div>
+<div class="i2">  To mine I frankly own;</div>
+<div>But for their pardon I will ask</div>
+<div class="i2">  Of none&mdash;save Heaven alone.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Gordon&#8217;s youth was wild and ungoverned.
+Before his twenty-first year his folly had lost
+him home, friends, love, and the one profession
+that might have steadied him, as well as
+<a name="png.169" id="png.169"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">165</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>afforded him distinction. He was the son of
+Captain Adam D. Gordon (an officer who
+had seen service in India) and the grandson
+of a wealthy Scotch merchant. Captain
+Gordon settled at Cheltenham in the later
+years of his life, and intended that his son
+should study for the army; but a mad wilfulness
+and passion for outdoor sport had taken
+possession of the youth, and nothing could be
+done with him. He rode to hounds with all
+the daring that marked his horsemanship in
+later life; he rode in steeplechases, he
+frequented the company of pugilists at
+country fairs and public-houses, and joined
+in their contests; he was removed from two
+schools for unruly conduct, and a more serious
+escapade, though innocent of any bad intention,
+nearly caused his arrest by the police.
+At last it was agreed that he should emigrate
+to Australia. He was glad to go, but bitter
+at the thought of what his going implied.
+The knowledge that he suffered solely through
+his own fault did not make less disagreeable
+to him the censure of others, even that of the
+gallant father whom, in his wildest moments
+<a name="png.170" id="png.170"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">166</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of rebellion, he never ceased to love and
+admire. The unhappiness attending this
+severance from the home that he felt he
+would never see again is told in a poem to
+his sister, written (August, 1853) a few days
+before he sailed.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl6">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Across the trackless seas I go,</div>
+<div class="i2">  No matter when or where;</div>
+<div>And few my future lot will know,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And fewer still will care.</div>
+<div>My hopes are gone, my time is spent,</div>
+<div class="i2">  I little heed their loss,</div>
+<div>And if I cannot feel content,</div>
+<div class="i2">  I cannot feel remorse.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;My parents bid me cross the flood,</div>
+<div class="i2">  My kindred frowned at me;</div>
+<div>They say I have belied my blood,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And stained my pedigree.</div>
+<div>But I must turn from those who chide,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And laugh at those who frown;</div>
+<div>I cannot quench my stubborn pride,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Or keep my spirits down.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;I once had talents fit to win</div>
+<div class="i2">  Success in life&#8217;s career;</div>
+<div>And if I chose a part of sin,</div>
+<div class="i2">  My choice has cost me dear.</div>
+<div><a name="png.171" id="png.171"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">167</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>But those who brand me with disgrace,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Will scarcely dare to say</div>
+<div>They spoke the taunt before my face</div>
+<div class="i2">  And went unscathed away.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The stanzas (there are ten more in the
+poem) have all the bitterness of a youthful
+sorrow and all the vigour of a youthful
+defiance. But at the moment of his deepest
+depression it is upon himself that the writer
+casts the real blame. This is characteristic
+of his judgment of himself throughout life.
+He has ever too much honour and spirit to
+shirk the responsibility of his own acts. And
+the same qualities keep him from doing injury
+to others. He is consoled by remembering
+this in bidding good-bye to his native land.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl7">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div class="i6">          &lsquo;If to error I incline,</div>
+<div>Truth whispers comfort strong,</div>
+<div>That never reckless act of mine</div>
+<div>E&#8217;er worked a comrade wrong.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>As a colonist, Gordon might have justified
+his Scotch descent by making a fortune.
+Wealth was to be gained in other and surer
+ways than by groping for it in the goldfields.
+But he was indifferent, and allowed himself
+<a name="png.172" id="png.172"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">168</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>to drift. Australia was attractive to him only
+as a place of adventure, of freedom, of retirement,
+of oblivion. All but the latter he
+found it. He readily adapted himself to the
+rough conditions of the country, but could
+never overcome the thought that in those
+first false steps he had lost all worth striving
+for. Time softened the gloomy defiance of
+his farewell verses, but did not alter his
+determination to efface himself, to be forgotten
+even by his family. He held no
+communication with anyone in England, and
+heard nothing from his home until ten years
+later, when a lawyer&#8217;s letter notified him that
+both his mother and father were dead, and
+that under the will of the latter he was to
+receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds.
+Meanwhile, Gordon appears to have made
+no attempt to win any of the prizes that were
+the common reward of pluck and industry in
+the Australia of the fifties. He joined the
+mounted police force of South Australia, but,
+impatient of its discipline, soon left it, and for
+long afterwards was content with the rough
+employment of a horse-breaker.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.173" id="png.173"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">169</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this
+time. He broke in horses during the day,
+and read the classic poets at night. Think
+of the refined Englishman in blue blouse,
+fustian, and half-Wellington boots, seated
+among the boisterous company of a &lsquo;men&#8217;s
+hut&rsquo; on a Bush station, reading Horace by
+the aid of a rude lamp, &lsquo;consisting of a
+honeysuckle cone stuck in clay in a pannikin,
+and surrounded with mutton fat!&rsquo; Or sitting
+at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining,
+as he so finely did, the famous Balaclava
+Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity
+and admiration a year after he arrived in
+Australia. How he would have liked to be
+among the actors in that scene!</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl5">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride</div>
+<div class="i2">  Long years of pleasure outvie!&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">he exclaims, and wishes that his own end
+could be fair as that of one &lsquo;who died in his
+stirrups there.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gordon seemed not only to be reconciled
+to his Bush life, but to have become attached
+to it.  He once declared it to be better in
+<a name="png.174" id="png.174"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">170</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>many respects than any other. He was
+temperate, skilful in his work, and as popular
+as one of reserved manner can be. Most
+of the squatters of the period made it a
+practice to receive into their social circle any
+companionable and educated man, whether
+their equal in position or not. It was a
+generous custom, typical of the most hospitable
+country in the world, and worked
+well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike
+Henry Kingsley and others of the same
+class, took no advantage of it. That the
+squatters did not themselves recognise the
+worth of one so unassertive was not to be
+wondered at. He saw this, and never blamed
+them. They could not, as he remarked on
+one occasion, be expected to know that he
+was as well born as any of them, and perhaps
+better educated. One of them saw there was
+&lsquo;something above the common&rsquo; in him; but
+that was all. At length he was discovered
+by a good-natured and scholarly Roman
+Catholic priest (the Rev. Julian E. Tenison
+Woods), who, though he does not say so,
+evidently took a pleasure during the five
+<a name="png.175" id="png.175"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">171</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>years of their acquaintance in making the
+merits of the solitary Englishman known in
+the colony. Their tastes accorded excellently.
+They talked &lsquo;horses or poetry&rsquo; as they rode
+together, or smoked by their camp-fires.
+Gordon&#8217;s reserve thawed for the first time.
+He had a well-trained memory, and occasionally
+would recite Latin or Greek verse,
+or a scene from Shakespeare, or passages
+from Byron and other modern poets. Greek
+he had taught himself in lonely hours after
+his arrival in Australia, having neglected it
+while at college.</p>
+
+<p>In the end his disposition left the good
+cleric, like many another, much puzzled.
+Was there anything of foolish pride or
+misanthropy in Gordon&#8217;s avoidance of society
+that would have welcomed him? Both his
+recorded speech and his poems are without
+evidence of either. Those who remember
+his taciturnity and little eccentricities also
+speak of his kindness of heart, generosity
+and trustfulness of others. Did he ever
+complain that he was oppressed and saddened
+by his self-chosen life in the Bush? We have
+<a name="png.176" id="png.176"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">172</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>seen the high estimate he once gave of it;
+and Mr. Woods, who has recorded many
+proofs of close observation of his friend,
+testifies that the melancholy of his poems
+found little or no expression in his conversation.
+Gordon may have been shy (as Marcus
+Clarke noted), but he early formed a fairly
+accurate judgment of his literary powers. He
+said &lsquo;he was sure he would rise to the top of
+the tree in poetry, and that the world should
+talk of him before he died.&rsquo; Coming from
+one who was far from being vain or boastful,
+the remark suggests hope and ambition. But
+neither, it would seem from his colonial
+career, was ever more than a passing mood
+with him. Why did he remain in obscurity
+during several of the best years of his life,
+doing rough and dangerous work, when he
+might have obtained some remunerative post
+in one of the cities? Why did he marry a
+domestic servant&mdash;one who could never be
+an intellectual companion for him?</p>
+
+<p>It appears that he considered himself to
+have &lsquo;irretrievably lost caste.&rsquo; It is a
+fantastic idea, and could not have any justification
+<a name="png.177" id="png.177"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">173</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in a country where an Englishman of
+good manners and behaviour need never
+want congenial society. Gordon was abnormally
+proud, independent and sensitive:
+an unfortunate disposition for anyone who
+has his way to make in an imperfect world.
+Such a man constantly misunderstands himself
+and is misunderstood. He takes severe,
+unpractical views of his own character and of
+life generally. Not necessarily morose or
+ungenial, he is always apt to be thought so.
+Gordon&#8217;s conclusion that he had lost caste is
+a proof of supersensitiveness, and the deep
+effect produced upon his temperament by the
+incidents of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>There is a touching and significant little
+story of an acquaintance which he formed
+with a young lady at Cape Northumberland,
+and how he ended it. We are delicately
+told that, having become a warm admirer of
+his dashing horsemanship, the lady used to
+walk in early morning to a neighbouring
+field to see him training a favourite mare
+over hurdles. Something more than a
+mutual liking for horses and racing is plainly
+<a name="png.178" id="png.178"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">174</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>hinted at as existing between them. But
+after they had met thus a few times, Gordon
+asked abruptly whether her mother knew
+that she came there every morning to see
+him ride. She replied in the negative, adding
+that her mother disapproved of racing.
+&lsquo;Well, don&#8217;t come again,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;I know
+the world, and you don&#8217;t. Good-bye. Don&#8217;t
+come again.&rsquo; Surprised and wounded, the
+lady silently gave him her hand in farewell.
+&lsquo;He looked at it as if it were some natural
+curiosity, and said, &ldquo;It&#8217;s the first time I have
+touched a lady&#8217;s hand for many a day&mdash;my
+own fault, my own fault&mdash;good-bye.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>For a brief period after the receipt of his
+father&#8217;s legacy Gordon looked towards his
+future with some interest and confidence.
+He spoke of a proposal to undertake regular
+journalistic work at Melbourne, and to make
+an attempt at writing novels. It was at this
+time also that he foresaw that he would make
+a name as a poet. The people of Mount
+Gambier, finding him presently settled as the
+owner of a small estate in the district, made
+him their representative in the Legislative
+<a name="png.179" id="png.179"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">175</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Assembly of South Australia. In this new
+character he seems to have achieved only a
+reputation for drawing humorous sketches.
+Having delivered a few speeches highly
+embellished with classical allusions which
+failed to make any impression upon the plain
+business men of the House, he subsided, and
+was afterwards seldom heard. And when
+his seat became vacant in due course, he did
+not seek re-election. He had been unable
+to take his Parliamentary experience seriously.
+He is said to have always looked back upon
+it as something of a joke.</p>
+
+<p>And now, with a revival of his former
+attachment to the excitements and uncertainties
+of the turf, begin a series of misfortunes
+which pursued him until his death.
+His property, mismanaged and neglected,
+had to be sold, and he set out a poor man
+once more for the adjoining colony of
+Victoria. Here, while suffering ill-health
+and poverty&mdash;starving in his own proud way&mdash;after
+failing in a small business which he had
+undertaken, Gordon learned that he would
+probably come into possession of the barony
+<a name="png.180" id="png.180"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">176</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of Esselmont in Scotland, then producing an
+income of about two thousand pounds a year.
+But on further inquiry it was found that his
+title to the estate ceased with the abolition
+of the entail under the Entail Amendment
+Act of 1848. The excitement of his ill-fortune
+and the effects of a recent wound on
+the head combined to unhinge his mind,
+and in June, 1870, at the age of thirty-seven
+he ended his life by shooting himself at
+Brighton, near Melbourne. In comparing
+the impressions of Gordon&#8217;s disposition given
+by his friends, it is curious to note that among
+the few things in which they agree is an
+absence of surprise at his suicide.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be difficult to imagine a more
+representative poet in the provincial sense
+than Gordon. His description of the colonies
+as</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl5">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Lands where bright blossoms are scentless,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And songless bright birds,&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">would be strangely misleading were it not
+contradicted by other lines from the same
+hand, showing a delicate appreciation of the
+rugged features of Australian scenery. But
+<a name="png.181" id="png.181"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">177</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>he sees them only in passing, or as a symbol
+of something he is pondering, or as a contrast
+to what he has left behind &lsquo;on far English
+ground.&rsquo; No sight or sound of Australian
+Nature is a sole subject of any of his poems.
+His &lsquo;Whispering in the Wattle Boughs&rsquo; does
+not express the voices of the forest, but the
+echoes of a sad youth, the yearnings of an
+exile; his &lsquo;Song of Autumn&rsquo; is not a song of
+autumn, but a forecast of his own death&mdash;a
+forecast that was fulfilled. If he ever felt
+any enthusiasm for the future nationhood of
+Australia, he did not express it. And such
+few native legends as there were, he left to
+other pens.</p>
+
+<p>In all of his best poems, there is some
+central human interest, something that tells
+for courage, honour, manly resignation.
+When a story does not come readily to his
+hand in the new world, he seeks one in the
+old. He fondly turns to the spacious days
+of the old knighthood, when men drank and
+loved deeply, when they were ready to put
+happiness or life itself upon a single hazard.
+The subjects that Gordon best liked were
+<a name="png.182" id="png.182"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">178</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>short dramatic romances, which he found it
+easier to evolve from literature than from
+the life and history of his adopted country.
+Beyond the compositions upon the national
+sport of horse-racing, the only noteworthy
+Australian subjects in his three slender
+volumes are &lsquo;The Sick Stockrider&#8217;s Review of
+the Excitements and Pleasures of a Careless
+Bush Life, and his Pathetic Self-satisfaction&rsquo;;
+&lsquo;The Story of a Shipwreck&rsquo;; &lsquo;Wolf and
+Hound,&rsquo; which describes a duel between the
+hunted-down bushranger and a trooper; and
+some verses on the death of the explorer
+Burke. &lsquo;Ashtaroth,&rsquo; an elaborate attempt
+at a sustained dramatic lyric in the manner
+of Goethe&#8217;s &lsquo;Faust&rsquo; and &lsquo;Manfred,&rsquo; fills one
+of the three volumes, and among shorter
+pieces in the other two are more than a dozen
+suggested by the poet&#8217;s reading, by his recollections
+of English life, and, in a notable
+instance, by one of the most memorable of
+modern European wars.</p>
+
+<p>In a dedication prefixed to the <cite>Bush
+Ballads</cite>, Gordon suggests some of the local
+sources of his inspiration. He obviously
+overstates his obligations to the country.
+<a name="png.183" id="png.183"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">179</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Some of the best of the poems in this,
+the most characteristic collection of his work,
+have no association with it whatever. &lsquo;The
+Sick Stockrider,&rsquo; &lsquo;From the Wreck,&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Wolf and Hound&rsquo; are colonial experiences,
+finely described. But most of the remaining
+poems, while they owe something to Tennyson,
+Browning, and Swinburne, are not in
+any sense Australian.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl5">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles</div>
+<div class="i2">  &#8217;Twixt shadow and shine,</div>
+<div>When each dew-laden air resembles</div>
+<div class="i2">  A long draught of wine,</div>
+<div>When the skyline&#8217;s blue burnished resistance</div>
+<div>Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,</div>
+<div>Some songs in all hearts have existence:</div>
+<div class="i2">  Such songs have been mine.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>But where, save in the retrospect of &lsquo;The
+Sick Stockrider&rsquo; and a verse or two of &lsquo;From
+the Wreck,&rsquo; shall we find any of the air of
+the lovely, transient Australian spring? It
+is rather absurd to place with <cite>Bush Ballads</cite>
+the &lsquo;Rhyme of Joyous Garde,&rsquo; a recital of
+the old tragedy of Arthur and Launcelot;
+the story of seventeenth-century siege and
+gallantry in the &lsquo;Romance of Britomarte&rsquo;;
+<a name="png.184" id="png.184"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">180</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the dramatic scenes from the &lsquo;Road to Avernus;&rsquo;
+&lsquo;The Friends&rsquo; (a translation from the
+French); and the psychological musings of
+&lsquo;De Te&rsquo; and &lsquo;Doubtful Dreams.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there
+is indeed one galloping rhyme&mdash;&lsquo;How we
+beat the Favourite&rsquo;&mdash;with a ring and a rush,
+a spirit and swiftness of colour, not approached
+by the best verse of Egerton Warburton
+or Whyte-Melville. Especially vivid
+and terse is the description of the latter part
+of the race, where the favourite (The Clown)
+overtakes Iseult, the mare leading in the run
+home.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl4">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;She rose when I hit her. I saw the stream glitter,</div>
+<div class="i2">  A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee;</div>
+<div>Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her;</div>
+<div class="i2">  The space that he cleared was a caution to see.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;And forcing the running, discarding all cunning,</div>
+<div class="i2">  A length to the front went the rider in green;</div>
+<div>A long strip of stubble, and then the big double,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;She raced at the rasper, I felt my knees grasp her,</div>
+<div class="i2">  I found my hands give to the strain on the bit;</div>
+<div>She rose when The Clown did&mdash;our silks as we bounded</div>
+<div class="i2">  Brushed lightly, our stirrups clashed loud as we lit.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div><a name="png.185" id="png.185"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">181</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>&lsquo;A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping,</div>
+<div class="i2">  The last&mdash;we diverged round the base of the hill;</div>
+<div>His path was the nearer, his leap was the clearer,</div>
+<div class="i2">  I flogged up the straight, and he led sitting still.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew;</div>
+<div>A short prayer from Neville just reached me, &ldquo;The Devil!&rdquo;</div>
+<div class="i2">  He muttered&mdash;lock&#8217;d level the hurdles we flew.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>After a glance at the crowd where, as seen
+by the rider, all &lsquo;figures are blended and
+features are blurred&rsquo;&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl4">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Still struggles, &ldquo;The Clown by a short neck at most!&rdquo;</div>
+<div>He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges,</div>
+<div class="i2">  And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Aye! so ends the tussle&mdash;I knew the tan muzzle</div>
+<div class="i2">  Was first, though the ring men were yelling &ldquo;Dead Heat!&rdquo;</div>
+<div>A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said &ldquo;The mare by</div>
+<div class="i2">  A short head.&rdquo; And that&#8217;s how the favourite was beat.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>It was by this piece, according to Marcus
+Clarke, that the poet&#8217;s early reputation was
+made.  &lsquo;Intensely nervous, and feeling much
+<a name="png.186" id="png.186"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">182</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of that shame at the exercise of the higher
+intelligence which besets those who are
+known to be renowned in field sports,
+Gordon produced his poems shyly, scribbled
+them on scraps of paper, and sent them
+anonymously to magazines. It was not
+until he discovered one morning that everybody
+knew a couplet or two of &ldquo;How we
+beat the Favourite&rdquo; that he consented to
+forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected
+character of a verse-maker.&rsquo; Even
+in this picture of the excitements of the turf,
+there is nothing that would not be as true of
+Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or Flemington.
+Yet, it <em>is</em> Australian in the sense that it
+expresses the one taste which, of all those inherited
+by the people from their British
+ancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as
+it was by the American colonists)&mdash;which,
+on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the
+new land. Gordon was a pronounced
+believer in the efficacy of field sports as a
+means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood
+of the race. In one of his minor pieces
+he vigorously affirms that</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl6">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div><a name="png.187" id="png.187"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">183</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>&lsquo;If once we efface the joys of the chase</div>
+<div class="i2">  From the land, and out-root the Stud,</div>
+<div>Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon Race,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Farewell to the Norman Blood.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>With him the fearless huntsman makes the
+fearless soldier. Both are to be cultivated
+and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly,
+as at Balaclava, we are to be none the
+less proud of him,</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl7">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;As a type of our chivalry.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Of the longer poems, the two best in
+artistic quality are &lsquo;The Rhyme of Joyous
+Garde&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Sick Stockrider.&rsquo; They
+afford a complete contrast in subject, tone
+and treatment. The old Arthurian story is
+the finer and more finished. There is a
+nobility in its expression not elsewhere
+equalled by the author. But the other poem
+is more direct and simple in its pathos, more
+easily understood. It tells something of
+familiar experience in language irresistibly
+touching and musical. It would be interesting
+and a favourite if only through the
+obvious fact that it describes in part some of
+Gordon&#8217;s own early life.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl3">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div><a name="png.188" id="png.188"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">184</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>&lsquo;&#8217;Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass</div>
+<div class="i2">  To wander as we&#8217;ve wandered many a mile,</div>
+<div>And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.</div>
+<div>&#8217;Twas merry &#8217;mid the backwoods, when we spied the station roofs,</div>
+<div class="i2">  To wheel the wild-scrub cattle at the yard,</div>
+<div>With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;</div>
+<div class="i2">  Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.</div>
+<br /></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,</div>
+<div class="i2">  When they bolted from Sylvester&#8217;s on the flat;</div>
+<div>How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang</div>
+<div class="i2">  To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat!</div>
+<div>Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed;</div>
+<div>And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath!</div>
+<div class="i2">  And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>&lsquo;The Rhyme of Joyous Garde&rsquo; loses in
+appreciation by assuming familiarity on the
+part of the reader with all the details of the
+story.  It is too allusive.  It is a description
+<a name="png.189" id="png.189"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">185</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>more of Launcelot&#8217;s remorse than of the
+crime which occasions it. As to the other
+classic themes, they probably avail as little
+to the reputation of the author as did the
+elegant quotations which he inflicted upon
+the South Australian legislators. &lsquo;He talked
+of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more
+interested in the land valuators.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gordon&#8217;s work was introduced to the
+English public by an article in <cite>Temple Bar</cite>
+in 1884, and in 1888 a short memoir of him,
+entitled <cite>The Laureate of the Centaurs</cite> (now
+out of print), was published. Since then his
+poems have become known throughout the
+English-speaking world. Is this because he
+is called an Australian poet&mdash;because people
+wish to learn something of Australian life
+from his pages? Do English readers ever
+ask for the poems of Harpur, or Henry
+Kendall, or Brunton Stephens? No;
+Gordon&#8217;s poems are admired for the human
+interest in them; for what they tell of tastes
+and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-loving
+and fighting Briton in whatever land
+he may be.  It is the sort of admiration that
+<a name="png.190" id="png.190"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">186</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>finds fit expression when an English officer
+and artist makes a present to the publishers
+of a spirited and valuable set of drawings to
+illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge.
+No other Australian poet has yet found
+entrance to the great popular libraries of
+England. Kendall, who almost deserves to
+be called the Australian Shelley, tells more
+of Nature in one of his graceful pages than
+can be found in a volume of his contemporary.
+But his thoughts are too remote from the
+common interests of life; and of his own
+character he has recorded only what is sad
+and painful. For the rest, his brief history
+seems to prove that scarce any service may
+be less noticed or thanked in Australia than
+the describing of its natural beauties or the
+writing of its national odes.</p>
+
+<p>Gordon has more than once been misrepresented
+with respect to his religious
+views. He has been called an agnostic, an
+atheist, even a pagan. Passages in nearly a
+score of his poems must be read and compared
+before an opinion can properly be
+given on the point. That he was a doubter,
+<a name="png.191" id="png.191"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">187</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain;
+but there is nothing to support the charge of
+atheism. He shows a very clear conception
+of the Christian ideas respecting right and
+wrong, and of the Divine mercy, but hesitates
+to accept any theories of punishment in a
+future state. His general attitude is one of
+hope, and of desire to believe. He often
+thinks&mdash;too often&mdash;of the transiency<!-- TN: original reads "transciency" --> of life,
+and of the question to be solved &lsquo;beyond the
+dark beneath the dust.&rsquo; But there is no
+despair. And meanwhile his practical creed is</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl7">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;Question not, but live and labour</div>
+<div class="i2">  Till yon goal be won,</div>
+<div>Helping every feeble neighbour,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Seeking help from none.</div>
+<div>Life is mostly froth and bubble,</div>
+<div class="i2">  Two things stand like stone&mdash;</div>
+<div><span class="smcap">Kindness</span> in another&#8217;s trouble,</div>
+<div class="i2">  <span class="smcap">Courage</span> in your own.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>It conveys at once the highest and truest
+of the many views he has given of his own
+character. Generous to others, he was too
+seldom just to himself. It was well there
+remained among the friends he left behind a
+few who knew him for what he was, and who
+<a name="png.192" id="png.192"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">188</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>were unwilling that qualities often clouded
+during his life by an unhappy temperament
+should be undervalued or forgotten. Kendall&#8217;s
+&lsquo;In Memoriam&rsquo; is a worthy tribute, and
+finely summarizes the general impression of
+Gordon which one obtains from his verse:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="pl5">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div>&lsquo;The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived</div>
+<div>That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps</div>
+<div>The splendid fire of English chivalry</div>
+<div>From dying out; the one who never wronged</div>
+<div>A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged</div>
+<div>The many anxious to be loved of him</div>
+<div>By what he saw, and not by what he heard,</div>
+<div>As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul</div>
+<div>That never told a lie, or turned aside</div>
+<div>To fly from danger; he, I say, was one</div>
+<div>Of that bright company this sin-stained world</div>
+<div>Can ill afford to lose.&rsquo;</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.193" id="png.193"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">189</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>ROLF BOLDREWOOD.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">English</span> readers of Rolf Boldrewood&#8217;s novels
+have often wondered why he has ignored in
+his writings the modern social life of Australia.
+He has a unique knowledge of the country
+extending over sixty years, but his literary
+materials have been drawn only from the
+first half of this period. No other purely
+Australian novelist has succeeded in making
+a considerable reputation without feeling the
+necessity of fleeing to the more congenial
+atmosphere of literary London.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that even he had to find acceptance
+at home through the circuitous
+route of the press and the libraries of Great
+Britain, but he was able to wait for his long-delayed
+popularity, and when it came and
+found him in advanced age, he had no
+<a name="png.194" id="png.194"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">190</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>inclination to leave the land of his adoption.
+Probably if literature had been to him more
+of a profession and less of a taste and
+pastime, he would long ago have felt inclined
+to turn his back upon the indifference with
+which the colonies usually treat their own
+products in authorship until English approval
+has imparted new virtues to them.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the other writers who have contributed
+to the portrayal of a certain few
+aspects of Antipodean life have gone to
+London or elsewhere. Many years absent
+from Australia, they know little of its later
+developments. Boldrewood has spent a long
+and eventful life there. Of the southern half
+of the continent he must possess a specially
+intimate knowledge. Melbourne he has
+known in all the stages of its growth from a
+canvas-built hamlet to the finest city in the
+Southern Hemisphere. When he saw it first,
+the great golden wealth of the country lay
+unsuspected, and Ballarat and Bendigo were
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Though English by birth, he is wholly
+Australian in training and experience.  In
+<a name="png.195" id="png.195"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">191</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>1830, being then four years old, he was taken
+by his parents to Sydney, and there educated.
+Early in youth he became one of the pioneer
+squatters of Western Victoria, sharing with a
+few others the danger of dispossessing the
+aboriginals, and soon acquiring considerable
+wealth. But some years later, going back to
+New South Wales, and venturing to establish
+himself there on a larger scale as a sheep-owner,
+he was involved in a disastrous
+drought and lost nearly everything.</p>
+
+<p>In <cite>The Squatters Dream</cite>, which is understood
+to be partly autobiographical, he has
+minutely recorded the varying fortunes of
+pastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness
+of failure never caused him to forget the
+happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to
+speak ill of a pursuit so much identified with
+the prosperity of the country. He refers to
+it as &lsquo;that freest of all free lives, that
+pleasantest of all pleasant professions&mdash;the
+calling of a squatter.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Abandoning his ambition to rank with the
+wool-kings, he entered the Civil Service
+as a police magistrate and gold-fields
+<a name="png.196" id="png.196"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">192</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>commissioner. In these combined offices he
+spent twenty-five years, and, while continuing
+a good public servant, contrived, like Anthony
+Trollope, to find time for substantial work in
+literature. Though during a period of about
+twenty years he contributed several stories
+and other literary matter to the Sydney and
+Melbourne press, it was not until the publication
+of <cite>Robbery under Arms</cite>, at London in
+1889, that his work obtained due recognition
+even in the colonies. Ten years earlier he
+had made an unsuccessful bid for an English
+reputation by the publication of <cite>Ups and
+Downs</cite>, the novel which, under the more
+attractive title of <cite>The Squatter&#8217;s Dream</cite>,
+reappeared in 1890 as a successor to the
+famous bushranging story. That the spirited
+opening chapters of <cite>Robbery under Arms</cite>
+should have been thought lightly of by
+Australian editors when the serial rights of
+the story were offered to them is somewhat
+astonishing. The author has related how
+these chapters were successively rejected by
+a number of the leading journals, including
+two of the best weeklies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.197" id="png.197"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">193</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>At length the manuscript was read by Mr.
+Hugh George, manager of the <cite>Sydney
+Morning Herald</cite> and the <cite>Sydney Mail</cite>, who
+promptly accepted it for publication in the
+latter newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Boldrewood at this time (1880) was well
+known to the Australian press. It must,
+however, be pointed out in justice to the
+editors, whom his story failed to impress,
+that his previous work had revealed little
+of the dramatic sense that contributed so
+materially to his success in presenting the
+careers of his highwaymen. But it is less
+easy to see why, when the full possibilities of
+the story had been realised, there should
+have remained a second difficulty, that of
+securing a publisher to issue it in book form.
+&lsquo;An Australian house,&rsquo; the author has said,
+&lsquo;refused to undertake the risk;&rsquo; and he adds,
+&lsquo;as a matter of fact I had to publish it partly
+on my own account in England.&rsquo; This proof
+of his confidence in the attractions of the
+story has since been justified by its complete
+success throughout the English-speaking
+world.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.198" id="png.198"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">194</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A writer with so much experience of
+Australia, and continuing to reside in it,
+cannot be surprised if he is expected to take
+a large share of responsibility for the fact
+that Australian fiction&mdash;the fiction produced
+by writers known to the British public&mdash;only
+in a slight degree reflects the most interesting
+features in the present-day life of the country.
+At the same time, no such considerations can
+detract from the sterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood&#8217;s
+actual services to Australian literature.
+It is hardly possible to believe that the
+English people still prefer to look to Australia
+only for stories of adventure; but if
+they do&mdash;and as the first to welcome and appreciate
+colonial writers they are perhaps entitled
+to exercise a choice&mdash;it is well that such
+stories be written from complete local knowledge,
+and thus at least correctly describe the
+broader aspects of the country.</p>
+
+<p>If Boldrewood were asked to explain his
+silence respecting Antipodean life of the
+present day, he might reply that the novel
+of modern manners did not form any part of
+the work which he had chosen to do. At
+<a name="png.199" id="png.199"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">195</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>all events, he could claim to be as much a
+historian as a novelist. It has been his
+ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he
+saw it in his youth, about forty years ago&mdash;as
+it was immediately before and after the
+discovery of gold. That his record <i>per se</i> is
+strikingly vivid and faithful is the first general
+impression which his novels make upon the
+reader, whether English or colonial. There
+is about them much of that air of &lsquo;rightness&rsquo;
+which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the
+most enduring qualities of good fiction, whatever
+its literary style may be. They are
+cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far
+more account of the good than of the bad in
+human nature. There is no fondness of the
+sensational for its own sake. The conditions
+of probability are observed with a closeness
+which, in books dependent for their interest
+so largely upon plot and incident, amounts
+almost to a fault.</p>
+
+<p>An English historian is said to have declared
+that he would willingly exchange a
+library full of the poets for a single good
+novel of the period in which he was
+<a name="png.200" id="png.200"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">196</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>interested. One can readily imagine that if a
+generation or two hence there should be any
+Australian history left unwritten, any unsatisfied
+curiosity concerning the simple
+annals now so familiar to us, Rolf Boldrewood&#8217;s
+novels might be found, within their
+limits, a more satisfying source of information
+than all the rest of contemporary
+Australian literature combined, the formal
+chroniclers included, as well as the poets:
+that is to say, the general view they would
+furnish of certain features of pioneer life
+would be fuller and clearer, and, minor
+details apart, more reliable than could be
+gathered from any other source.</p>
+
+<p>Where is there in the elaborate histories
+of Rusden, Lang, Blair, and Flanagan, or in
+any of the numerous books of sketches and
+reminiscences written by persons who have
+visited or temporarily resided in Australia, a
+view of the picturesque variety, colour, and
+splendid energy of the great first race for
+gold to compare with that given in the second
+volume of <cite>The Miner&#8217;s Right</cite>, or with the
+memorable account of what Starlight and
+<a name="png.201" id="png.201"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">197</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the Marstons saw at Turon during their
+temporary retirement from the highway?</p>
+
+<p>Boldrewood, in these descriptions, has
+done what Henry Kingsley, with his more
+eloquent pen, if slighter personal experience,
+unaccountably neglected, and what Charles
+Reade, though he never saw Australia, vividly
+imagined, and regretted his inability to fully
+employ. Reade saw a theme for a great epic
+&lsquo;in the sudden return of a society far more
+complex, artificial, and conventional than
+Pericles ever dreamed of, to elements more
+primitive than Homer had to deal with; in
+this, with its novelty and nature and strange
+contrasts; in the old barbaric force and native
+colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised
+around the gold; in the hundred
+and one personal combats and trials of cunning;
+in a desert peopled and cities thinned
+by the magic of cupidity; in a huge army
+collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore
+by one man&#8217;s constraining will, but each
+human unit spurred into the crowd by his
+own heart; in the &ldquo;siege of gold&rdquo; defended
+stoutly by rock and disease; in the world-wide
+<a name="png.202" id="png.202"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">198</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>effect of the discovery, the peopling of
+the earth at last according to Heaven&#8217;s long-published
+and resisted design.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>If Boldrewood had not himself realized the
+literary value of the stirring scenes in which
+his youth was passed, this summary of the
+English novelist, published in 1856, might
+well have suggested it to him. How far has
+he succeeded in commemorating those scenes,
+and in what directions chiefly?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it is the pictorial, the
+literal, not the philosophical, aspect of the
+subject which has most attracted him. There
+is a personal zest in his remembrance of the
+general animation of the scene, a keen sense
+of the pleasurable excitement, freedom and
+good-fellowship of the life. His books are
+essentially men&#8217;s books. This is the universal
+report of the English libraries. Analytical
+subtleties there are none. Boldrewood is
+not given to weighing moonbeams. His
+nearest approach to psychology consists in
+noting the various effects of robust, unconventional
+colonial life upon fortune-seekers
+and visitors from the mother country.  This
+<a name="png.203" id="png.203"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">199</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>has been a favourite theme with all Australian
+writers, and one of which the female novelists
+have so far made the most effective use. One
+could wish that Boldrewood had made himself
+as far as possible an exception to the
+rule&mdash;that he had aimed at a praiseworthy
+provinciality by matching with the elaborate
+minuteness of his local colour some finished
+and memorable studies of Australian character.</p>
+
+<p>Maud Stangrove in <cite>The Squatter&#8217;s Dream</cite>,
+and Antonia Frankston in <cite>The Colonial Reformer</cite>,
+who seem to offer the best opportunities
+to typify Australian womanhood, are
+gracefully described; but, save for an occasional
+longing to relieve the monotony of
+their lives by a taste of European travel and
+culture, they are indistinguishable from such
+purely English types as Ruth Allerton and
+Estelle Challoner. Very pathetic, and marked
+by some distinctively Antipodean traits, is
+the sister of the bushrangers in <cite>Robbery under
+Arms</cite>. Aileen Marston has the strong self-reliance
+and independence which are born of
+the exigencies, as well as of the free life, of
+<a name="png.204" id="png.204"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">200</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the country. She and her brothers represent
+much of what is best in Boldrewood&#8217;s
+portrayal of native character. Maddie and
+Bella Barnes and Miss Falkland in the same
+novel, Kate Lawless in <cite>Nevermore</cite>, and Possie
+Barker in <cite>A Sydneyside Saxon</cite>, are also
+Antipodeans, but are only lightly sketched.</p>
+
+<p>Boldrewood claims that in his writings he
+has always upheld the Australian character.
+It is a fact that he has incidentally done this
+to a considerable extent, but not by any
+notable portraiture. In the period with which
+the novels deal the population of the colonies
+was largely English; it was, therefore, perhaps
+only natural that the stranger and
+adventurer from the Old World, so often
+well born and cultured, should prove a more
+attractive study than the sons of the soil.
+Moreover, the latter, in their monotonous
+and circumscribed life, lacked much of the
+mystery and romance so vital to the novel of
+adventure. But when this has been admitted
+in Boldrewood&#8217;s favour, there still remains a
+broader charge to which he is liable.</p>
+
+<p>He has been accused, and it must be
+<a name="png.205" id="png.205"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">201</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>confessed with a good deal of justice, of paying
+too little attention in later novels (taking the
+order of their publication in London) to the
+development of even those characters most
+concerned in his plots. The fault is purely
+one of judgment. It is hardly possible to
+suppose any lack of ability in a writer who
+has produced the bright and suggestive
+dialogue scattered through the pages of
+<cite>Robbery under Arms</cite> and The <cite>Miner&#8217;s
+Right</cite>. Giving rein to his passion for reminiscence
+and descriptive detail, he has paid
+the inevitable penalty of a loss in human
+interest. So obvious is this loss in the stories
+of pastoral life, that one is almost fain to
+assume it to be the result of deliberate choice.
+How far the author, in this section of his
+writing, has neglected the social and dramatic
+possibilities of country life, can be judged by
+noting Mrs. Campbell Praed&#8217;s work in <cite>The
+Head Station</cite>, <cite>Policy and Passion</cite>, or <cite>The
+Romance of a Station</cite>. But the best contrast
+to Boldrewood&#8217;s style is furnished by the
+author of <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Kingsley decided the movement of
+<a name="png.206" id="png.206"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">202</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>his characters with a loving care. Their
+interests were paramount to him. They
+made their own story; the story did not
+make them. Their author cared little for
+the externals of Australian life except in so
+far as they helped to tell something, especially
+something good, of his leading personages.
+His interest in them was not semi-scientific,
+like that of Thackeray or Jane
+Austen, Howells or Henry James, in their
+studies of human nature; it was that mainly
+of a sympathiser and a partisan.</p>
+
+<p>His frequently expressed anxiety about the
+impression they were making upon the reader
+was not always an affectation. There is a
+real solicitude in the confidences concerning
+William Ravenshoe upon his sudden promotion
+from the stable to the drawing-room
+of Ravenshoe Manor. &lsquo;I hope you like
+this fellow, William,&rsquo; he says in one place,
+and then there is a naïve enumeration of
+some of the ex-groom&#8217;s social deficiencies.
+This, at best, is a useless interruption of the
+story, but it helps, with other signs, to show
+Kingsley&#8217;s constant interest in his characters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.207" id="png.207"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">203</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Nearly everything in his descriptions of
+Australian squatting pursuits is intended to
+have a definite and notable bearing upon
+them. Thus, the view we get of the drafting-yard
+at Garoopna, with Sam Buckley in torn
+shirt, dust-covered, and wielding a deft pole
+on the noses of the terrified cattle, is not presented
+as a piece of station-life so much as a
+picturesque means of leading Alice Brentwood
+into an involuntary display of her affection
+for Sam when he is struck down before
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the description of the kangaroo-hunt,
+given in the same novel, is remembered
+chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and
+Alice in the frank enjoyment of their first
+love as they loiter in the tracks of the sportsmen,
+and, relinquishing the chase with happy
+indifference, go home and sit together under
+the verandah.</p>
+
+<p>Kingsley avoided the fault, common to his
+successors, of exaggerating the interest which
+readers are supposed to take in the general
+aspects of life in a new country. He had
+a keen sense of the value of picturesque
+<a name="png.208" id="png.208"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">204</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>environment, but wisely contrived that
+nothing should withdraw attention from the
+progress of his drama. He was ever on the
+watch for opportunities to sketch in lightly
+and humorously small traits of character, and
+to emphasise salient ones. &lsquo;She had an
+imperial sort of way of man&oelig;uvring a frying-pan,&rsquo;
+he says, in allusion to the cheerful
+adaptability of the high-bred Agnes Buckley,
+that fine model of English womanhood,
+during her first rough experiences in Australia.
+When Hamlyn comes to Baroona
+from the neighbouring station to spend
+Christmas with his old friends, he finds the
+same lady &lsquo;picking raisins in the character
+of a duchess.&rsquo; Considered apart from the
+story, these Dickensian touches might seem
+merely humorous exaggeration, but to those
+who have traced the development of Mrs.
+Buckley&#8217;s character, how happy and pregnant
+they are!</p>
+
+<p><cite>Robbery under Arms</cite> not only contains
+Boldrewood&#8217;s most dramatic plot, but his most
+skilful and sympathetic treatment of character.
+It is a distinct exception to the rest of his
+<a name="png.209" id="png.209"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">205</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>work. In the later stories the characters are
+brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch
+that they leave no permanent impression
+with the reader. The best excite no more
+than a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley&#8217;s
+win lasting admiration and love. There can
+be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes
+the one indubitable proof of clear vision,
+sympathy, and correct expression. Where
+the weakness of some of Boldrewood&#8217;s characters
+is not due to deficiency of interest in
+them on the part of the author, it is the
+result of an attempt to copy life with an
+accuracy which sacrifices picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to preserve absolute truth in
+every detail of the life-story of John Redgrave,
+the hero of <cite>The Squatter&#8217;s Dream</cite>,
+seems distinctly a case in point. In no other
+novel is there so complete a description of
+Australian squatting life&mdash;its varying success
+and failure, its solid comforts and wholesome
+happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave
+is one of the most elaborately drawn of all
+the author&#8217;s characters; there is the fullest
+sense of probability in every incident; the
+<a name="png.210" id="png.210"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">206</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>entire story is plainly a direct transcript of
+life; nothing at first seems wanting. But
+when the book is laid aside, the reader
+realises that he has scarcely been once moved
+by it. He has felt a transient pity for the
+hero&#8217;s misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at
+his modified ultimate success&mdash;nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>The main defect here appears to consist in
+the central motive of Redgrave&#8217;s struggles
+being limited to purely personal ambition.
+His aim is no higher than that of a speculator
+in a hurry to be rich, and when he fails, he
+gets little more than the sympathy which is
+commonly given to the man who plays for a
+high stake and loses. His love for Maud
+Stangrove, which might have been made a
+controlling and ennobling influence, ranks
+only as an incident. It comes after the main
+impression of his character has been given.
+Beyond doubt he represents a real type; no
+error has been made in this respect; his
+failure to win higher favour with us arises
+from his too close approximation to the
+common clay. There is absent just that
+small element of the ideal with which even
+<a name="png.211" id="png.211"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">207</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the sternest of the apostles of realism in
+letters have found it impracticable to dispense.</p>
+
+<p>An illustration of how little Boldrewood
+was inclined to idealise either his characters
+or their surroundings is afforded by the
+account of Redgrave&#8217;s first visit to the home
+of the Stangroves, his neighbours on the
+Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush
+inn of the period where drunkenness was the
+normal condition of everyone, from the owner
+to the stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly
+slab building roofed with corrugated iron,
+&lsquo;stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare
+sandy plain.&rsquo; It faced the dusty track which
+did duty as a highroad; at the back of the
+slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a
+receptacle for rubbish and broken bottles. A
+half-score of gaunt, savage-looking pigs lay
+in the verandah or stirred the dust and
+bones in the immediate vicinity of the front-entrance.
+&lsquo;What, in the name of wonder,&rsquo;
+inquired Jack of himself as he rode away,
+&lsquo;can a man do who lives in such a fragment
+of Hades <em>but</em> drink?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.212" id="png.212"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">208</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The home of the Stangroves, though less
+depressing, bears painful evidence of its
+isolation. The settler&#8217;s wife little resembles
+Agnes Buckley&mdash;she is too typically colonial
+for that. &lsquo;She was young, but a certain
+worn look told of the early trials of matronhood.
+Her face bore silent witness to the
+toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants
+or none at all; to the want of average female
+society; to a little loneliness and a great deal
+of monotony.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The visitor meets another member of the
+household, Stangrove&#8217;s unmarried sister, a
+beautiful and spirited young woman whose
+impatience with her colourless life is outwardly
+subdued to ironical resignation.
+&lsquo;Another eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,&rsquo;
+she remarks on his return after a day&#8217;s
+riding over the station with her brother;
+&lsquo;yesterday the sheep were lost&mdash;to-day the
+sheep are found; so passes our life on the
+Warroo.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The best argument against Boldrewood&#8217;s
+usual treatment of character is furnished by
+the great bushranger chief who is the central
+<a name="png.213" id="png.213"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">209</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>figure in <cite>Robbery under Arms</cite>. The author
+here submits for the first and only time to
+that fundamental law of fiction which
+demands a certain judicious exaggeration in
+the characters of a story depending for its
+interest mainly on the charm of circumstance.
+Starlight is at once the most real
+and least possible personage to be found in
+any of Boldrewood&#8217;s novels. He becomes
+real because his character and actions are
+conceived in harmony with the romance and
+pathos of the story. Though it is obvious
+enough that there never could have existed a
+bushranger with quite so much of the <i>bel air</i>,
+or with a private code of honour so admirable,
+the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He
+is of a stature suited to the deeds he performs,
+and, both he and his exploits being often
+closely associated with historical facts, a strong
+sense of reality is maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Starlight seems to be a compound of
+several characters. He has Turpin&#8217;s ubiquity,
+Claude Duval&#8217;s <i>sang-froid</i>, the personal attractiveness
+of Gardiner (leader of a gang
+which made a business of robbing gold-escorts
+<a name="png.214" id="png.214"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">210</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>in New South Wales about forty
+years ago), and the humorous daredevilry of
+the &lsquo;Captain Thunderbolt&rsquo; who obtained
+notoriety in the same colony a few years
+later.</p>
+
+<p>Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed
+with the dictum of Turpin, that it is necessary
+for a highwayman, at all events a captain of
+highwaymen, to be a gentleman.  But Starlight,
+unlike Turpin, does not become vain
+with success, and is far from being enamoured
+with his profession. Indeed, he is quite with
+the orthodox view of it. He is a bushranger,
+apparently, because he no longer hopes or
+desires to resume his rank in certain aristocratic
+circles from which, by occasional hints,
+we are informed that he has fallen.  He
+indulges in no lugubrious moralisings&mdash;he is
+far too agreeable a person for that&mdash;but
+exhibits just the required touch of romance
+by letting you know that in his past there is
+a sadness which a career of excitement and
+danger is necessary to enable him to forget.
+Having been won over as a sympathiser and
+admirer, the reader is ready to believe that
+<a name="png.215" id="png.215"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">211</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>at worst the dashing outlaw could never have
+been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author
+has carefully kept him from participation in
+the grosser acts of lawlessness of which his
+revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more
+typical bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing
+and highway robbery as supervised by
+Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious,
+in so far as they afford him opportunities to
+practise some facetious deception on the
+police. Such raids are not crimes, but
+comedies.</p>
+
+<p>There is excellent fun in his posing as
+&lsquo;Charles Carisforth, Esq., of Sturton, Yorkshire,
+and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs,
+N.S.W.,&rsquo; while awaiting the arrival at Adelaide
+of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or
+as the &lsquo;Hon. Frank Haughton,&rsquo; one of &lsquo;the
+three honourables&rsquo; on the Turon gold-field.
+The rash daring and cleverness of these disguises
+furnish a combination of amusement
+and dramatic interest not approached in anything
+else that Boldrewood has written.
+Starlight&#8217;s presence at dinner with the gold-fields
+commissioner and police magistrate at
+<a name="png.216" id="png.216"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">212</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Turon, when &lsquo;in walked Inspector Goring,&rsquo;
+the officer who had been so long and patiently
+seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance
+at Bella Barnes&#8217;<!-- TN: original reads "Barns'" --> wedding, after a reward of
+a thousand pounds has been offered for his
+capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the
+memory long after the more commonplace
+adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow
+have lost their distinctness or been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Next to his humour and courage, the
+qualities which most endear this picturesque
+marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness
+with which he commands the respect of
+his retainers, and his politeness and gallantry
+to women. When a robbery is to be effected,
+the plans are laid with sound generalship, but
+there is no unnecessary violence or loss of
+good manners. His conduct at the plundering
+of the gold-escort is fully equal to the
+traditional suavity of Claude Duval. &lsquo;Now,
+then, all aboard!&rsquo; he calls out to the passengers
+when the contents of the coach have
+been removed. &lsquo;Get in, gentlemen; our
+business matters are concluded for the night.
+Better luck next time! William, you had
+<a name="png.217" id="png.217"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">213</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>better drive on. Send back from the next
+stage, and you will find the mail-bags under
+that tree. They shall not be injured more
+than can be helped.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bushranger of real life, as known to
+the pioneer colonist, would have bagged his
+booty with much fewer words. That Starlight
+should have &lsquo;treated all women as if
+they were duchesses,&rsquo; and have made it a
+point of honour to keep his pledged word
+with them, in however slight a matter, seems
+only natural. Not even the women-folk of
+his enemy are allowed to want a protector.
+When Moran and his gang of ruffians take
+possession of Darjallook station during the
+absence of the male members of the household,
+Starlight and the Marstons ride twenty
+miles across country and rescue the ladies
+before the worst has been done. Starlight
+bows to them &lsquo;as if he was just coming into
+a ball-room,&rsquo; and, retiring, raises Miss Falkland&#8217;s
+hand to his lips like a knight of old.</p>
+
+<p>These passages are only a few of the
+many which might be cited to show how far
+the author, fired with the spirit and romance
+<a name="png.218" id="png.218"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">214</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of the story, gave freedom to his imagination
+in shaping the proportions of his leading
+character. Starlight, though he is not, and
+cannot be, a portrait of any single colonial
+outlaw of real life, is sufficiently natural to
+consistently represent in both his conduct
+and adventures much that was typical of
+Australian bushranging forty years ago and
+later.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his characteristics, and at least
+one of the concluding episodes of the story,
+were suggested by the career of a New South
+Wales horse-stealer who became known as
+&lsquo;Captain Moonlight.&rsquo; So much is certain.
+Boldrewood has himself narrated to a contributor
+of the Australian <cite>Review of Reviews</cite>
+his recollections of Moonlight and his end:
+&lsquo;Among other horses he stole was a mare
+called Locket, with a white patch on her
+neck. We had all seen her. This was the
+horse that brought about his downfall, and
+he was actually killed on the Queensland
+border in the way I have described in <cite>Robbery
+under Arms</cite>. Before that, Moonlight had
+had some encounters with Sergeant Wallings
+<a name="png.219" id="png.219"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">215</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>(Goring); and this day, when Wallings rode
+straight at him, he said: &ldquo;Keep back, if
+you&#8217;re wise, Wallings.  I don&#8217;t want your
+blood on my head; but if you <span class="nw">must&mdash;&mdash;</span>&rdquo;
+But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two
+of the troopers fired point-blank at Moonlight,
+and both shots told. He never moved,
+but just lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up
+his arms, and fell off his horse a dying man.
+As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the
+troopers said: &ldquo;Now you may as well tell
+us what your name is.&rdquo; But he shook his
+head, and died with the secret.&rsquo; He was
+&lsquo;a gentlemanly fellow,&rsquo; probably one of that
+unhappy class of young Englishmen of good
+birth and no character who are exiled to the
+colonies for their sins, and there often acquire
+new vices or sink into obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>When Archibald Forbes was in New
+Zealand a few years ago, he met a peer&#8217;s son
+who was earning his &lsquo;tucker&rsquo; as a station-cook.
+A Chinaman, aspiring to better things,
+had vacated the billet in his favour! It is
+interesting to note the use Boldrewood makes
+in his novel of the suggestion afforded by
+<a name="png.220" id="png.220"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">216</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the bushranger&#8217;s concealment of his identity.
+When Starlight is overcome in his last
+attempt at escape, the curiosity long felt
+concerning his past life seems for the third
+time in the story about to be gratified. But
+the reader is once more and finally disappointed.
+The bushranger has given his last
+messages, and is dying with some of the
+indifference to existence which has characterised
+him throughout the story.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match
+you and I shot in, at Hurlingham?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Why, good God!&rsquo; says Sir Ferdinand, bending down,
+and looking into his face. &lsquo;It can&#8217;t be! Yes; by Jove!
+it <span class="nw">is&mdash;&mdash;</span>&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke some name I couldn&#8217;t catch, but Starlight
+put a finger on his lips, and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You won&#8217;t tell, will you? Say you won&#8217;t.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled just like his old self.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Poor Aileen!&rsquo; he said, quite faint. His head fell
+back. Starlight was dead!</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Boldrewood&#8217;s characters, as he has said
+himself, are constructed from many models.
+And the Marstons are, it seems, the only
+personages he has drawn solely from life.
+Gardiner, with whom some readers have
+<a name="png.221" id="png.221"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">217</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>identified Starlight, was, it is recorded,
+&lsquo;a man of prepossessing appearance and
+plausible address, who had many friends
+even among the settlers never suspected
+of sympathy with criminals, while many of
+the fair sex regarded him as a veritable
+hero.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>That the romantic life of this noted
+criminal furnished Boldrewood with some
+material there cannot be any doubt, but the
+fictitious bushranger is far from being in any
+respect a mere copy of the real one. In
+Starlight&#8217;s relations with women, for instance,
+there is nothing but what is manly and
+honourable, whereas one of Gardiner&#8217;s exploits
+was the seduction of a settler&#8217;s wife,
+a beautiful woman whom he induced to elope
+with him to a remote district in Queensland.
+And, further, none of the sensational incidents
+connected with his capture&mdash;his escape
+under a legal technicality from the death-penalty
+suffered by some of his associates,
+his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent
+exile&mdash;are made use of in the novel.</p>
+
+<p>The narrative method adopted in <cite>Robbery
+<a name="png.222" id="png.222"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">218</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>under Arms</cite> has so much contributed to the
+success of the story as to be worthy of some
+comparison with the ordinary style of the
+author. The limitations imposed by the
+choice of a narrator with no pretensions
+to education or sentiment, and writing in
+the first person, proved in this case salutary
+rather than disadvantageous. They repressed
+Boldrewood&#8217;s usual tendency to excessive
+detail, and kept his attention closely fixed
+on the drama of the story.</p>
+
+<p>The occasional deficiency of local colour
+and loss of effect in the grouping of the
+characters is more than compensated for by
+the racy piquancy of Dick Marston&#8217;s vernacular,
+and the aspect, unrivalled in Australian
+literature, which his account affords
+of bushranging life from the bushranger&#8217;s
+own point of view. In the truth with which
+this view is presented lies the strength and
+lasting merit of what might otherwise have
+been little better than a commonplace series
+of sensational episodes.</p>
+
+<p>Starlight and the Marstons, as we see
+them, are reckless and dangerous criminals,
+<a name="png.223" id="png.223"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">219</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>but they are not exactly the &lsquo;bloodthirsty
+cowards&rsquo; and &lsquo;murderers&rsquo; known to the
+press and police of the period. The little
+they can plead in excuse for their lives is
+plainly stated, while no complaint is urged
+against their fate, or attempt made to obscure
+its obvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston&#8217;s
+career illustrates one of the results of the
+stupidly cruel system of transporting persons
+from England to the colonies for petty
+offences which in these days are punished
+by a slight fine, and his sons are types of
+a class who were far from being as irreclaimable
+as their offences made them appear.
+&lsquo;Men like us,&rsquo; Dick Marston is once made
+to say, &lsquo;are only half-and-half bad, like a
+good many more in this world. They are
+partly tempted into doing wrong by opportunity,
+and kept back by circumstances from
+getting into the straight track afterwards.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The examples given in the story of the
+aptness of this remark are often very touching.
+The poor Marston boys are indeed only
+half bad. Their better natures, seconded by
+the influence of a good mother and sister,
+<a name="png.224" id="png.224"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">220</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>are continually urging them to reformation,
+but for this there is no opportunity. The
+decision of their fate by the turn of a coin
+when the first great temptation comes is
+symbolical of the trifling causes to which
+the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the
+early days of squatting was traceable.</p>
+
+<p>The personal observation strongly marked
+in all Boldrewood&#8217;s novels has in <cite>Robbery
+under Arms</cite> its fullest, as well as most
+skilful, expression. As a squatter, the author
+had seen the practices of the cattle-thief, and
+learned his language. He had observed the
+extent to which idleness and a love of horseflesh
+combined to fill the gaols of the country,
+and in later years this knowledge was confirmed
+in the course of his long experience
+as a magistrate. The judgment with which
+he presents the case of the young Marstons
+as types of a class is excelled only by the
+literary skill employed upon the character of
+their chief.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no need to make Dick
+Marston so often emphasise the comfort of
+living &lsquo;on the square,&rsquo; and the folly of ever
+<a name="png.225" id="png.225"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">221</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>doing otherwise. The story bears a self-evident
+moral. Humour there is in plenty,
+but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as
+it is the appropriate, tone of the book. In
+no respect has greater accuracy been attained
+than in the reproduction of the Australian
+vernacular, that odd compound of English,
+Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and
+inflexions, with its slender admixture of
+original terms. Visitors to Australia have
+praised the purity of the English spoken
+there by the middle classes. Mr. Froude,
+as late as 1885, found that &lsquo;no provincialism
+had yet developed itself,&rsquo; but he wrote chiefly
+of what he had heard in the towns. It is in
+the country that the colonial dialect&mdash;if speech
+so largely imitative can yet be called a dialect&mdash;is
+most heard.</p>
+
+<p>Among other interesting features in Dick
+Marston&#8217;s narrative is the curious half-impersonal
+view which the outlaws take
+of the efforts made by the Government to
+capture them, and their strong dislike, on the
+other hand, to the private persons who competed
+with the police for the large rewards
+<a name="png.226" id="png.226"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">222</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>offered. This detail is as true to life as the
+example of the sympathy and assistance
+accorded the bushrangers by settlers in the
+neighbourhood of their mountain retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It was sympathy of this kind, combined
+with bribery, which so protected the Kelly
+gang as to involve the Government of
+Victoria in an outlay of about one hundred
+and fifteen thousand pounds before their
+destruction could be accomplished. Effective
+literary use will be made at some time in the
+future of the exploits of this last and most
+daring of all the bushranging gangs, but
+many years must elapse before the sordid
+aspects of their career shall have been forgotten,
+and only its romance be left. And
+nothing short of genius will be required to
+refine the rude proportions of Ned Kelly
+into something like the gentlemanly exterior
+of the dashing captain, the smooth gallant,
+the humorist, philosopher, and quick-change
+artist of <cite>Robbery under Arms</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>In <cite>The Miner&#8217;s Right</cite>, which ranks second
+in popularity among Boldrewood&#8217;s novels, the
+personal narrative style is again adopted, but
+<a name="png.227" id="png.227"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">223</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with little effect of the kind produced by
+Dick Marston&#8217;s vivid directness in the earlier
+novel. Hereward Pole, the hero, is a
+cultured Englishman, sensitive and sentimental,
+who keeps an eye upon humanity at
+large, as well as upon the business of making
+a fortune which has brought him to the
+colonies. Half of his record, though a
+striking picture of the gold-fields, is not an
+inherent part of the story of his own career.
+Confined to their strictly just limits, the
+events which combine to prolong his separation
+from the sweetheart whom he has left in
+England could have been told in fifty pages.
+But this would not have been all the author
+wished. He was satisfied with a slender
+plot and a <i>dénouement</i> which can be guessed
+almost from the outset as soon as he saw that
+they would carry the glowing scenes and
+episodes of diggings life with which his
+memory was so richly stocked. One cannot
+believe but that, in this case, his slender
+attention to the long-drawn thread of the
+story was the outcome of choice. Else where
+was the need for elaborateness in such details
+<a name="png.228" id="png.228"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">224</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>as the dispute over the Liberator claim at
+Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on
+Challerson, with their rendering of witnesses&#8217;
+depositions in the manner of a newspaper
+report, the riot at Green Valley and Oxley,
+and the scene at the funeral of the agitator
+Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are
+given at great length, and do not form any
+essential part of the story of Hereward Pole
+and Ruth Allerton&mdash;the vindication of a
+man&#8217;s honour and the triumph of a woman&#8217;s
+invincible devotion&mdash;they are told with so
+much intimate knowledge and strength of
+colouring as almost to supply the absence of
+a plot, and to make the story, apart from
+artistic considerations, a really fine piece
+of work.</p>
+
+<p>It has a popularity in the English libraries
+which is itself a proof of the service done by
+the author to those who would know something
+of the careers of varying success and
+bitter failure, of hardship and romantic
+adventure, upon which so many of their
+kinsmen set out forty years ago. <cite>Nevermore</cite>
+and <cite>The Sphinx of Eaglehawk</cite> give other
+<a name="png.229" id="png.229"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">225</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>views of the gold-digging days, chiefly of
+their seamy side, but these stories offer
+nothing that equals in interest the splendid
+panorama of pioneer life revealed in <cite>The
+Miner&#8217;s Right</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>Boldrewood has more than once insisted
+with evident pleasure upon the general good
+behaviour and manliness of the miners, and,
+having been one of those all-seeing autocrats,
+the gold-fields commissioners, he is an authority
+to be believed on the subject. In <cite>Robbery
+under Arms</cite> the names are given of thirty
+races represented on the Turon field, and
+Hereward Pole, recounting his early impressions
+of Yatala, says: &lsquo;I was never done
+wondering of what struck me as the chief
+characteristic of this great army of adventurers
+suddenly gathered together from all
+seas and lands, namely, its outward propriety
+and submission to the law.&rsquo; Elsewhere he
+likens the sensible reticence which they observed
+respecting their own affairs and those
+of their neighbours to the demeanour and
+mode of thought which prevails in club life.</p>
+
+<p>A passage from Dick Marston&#8217;s account
+<a name="png.230" id="png.230"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">226</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of what he saw at Turon is worth reproducing
+here as characteristic of the author&#8217;s representation
+of a gold-fields community and as
+a sample of his humour. The &lsquo;three
+honourables,&rsquo; of whom the disguised bushranger
+captain is one, are together in a
+hotel.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;The last time I drank wine as good as this,&rsquo; says
+Starlight, &lsquo;was at the Caffy Troy, something or other, in
+Paris. I wouldn&#8217;t mind being there again, with the
+Variety Opera to follow&mdash;would you, Clifford?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Well, I don&#8217;t know,&rsquo; says the other swell. &lsquo;I find this
+amazing good fun for a bit. I never was in such grand
+condition since I left Oxford. This eight hours&#8217; shift
+business is just the right thing for training. I feel fit to
+go for a man&#8217;s life. Just feel this, Despard,&rsquo; and he
+holds out his arm to the camp swell. &lsquo;There&#8217;s muscle
+for you!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Plenty of muscle,&rsquo; says Mr. Despard, looking round.
+He was a swell that didn&#8217;t work, and wouldn&#8217;t work, and
+thought it fine to treat the diggers like dogs&hellip;. &lsquo;Plenty
+of muscle,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;but devilish little society.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I don&#8217;t agree with you,&rsquo; says the other honourable.
+&lsquo;It&#8217;s the most amusing, and, in a way, instructive place
+for a man who wants to know his fellow-creatures I was
+ever in. I never pass a day without meeting some fresh
+variety of the human race, man or woman; and their
+experiences are well worth knowing, I can tell you. Not
+that they&#8217;re in a hurry to impart them; for that there&#8217;s
+<a name="png.231" id="png.231"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">227</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>more natural unaffected good manners on a digging than
+in any society I ever mingled in I shall never doubt.
+But when they see you don&#8217;t want to patronise, and are
+content to be as simple man among men, there&#8217;s nothing
+they won&#8217;t do for you or tell you.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, <span class="nw">d&mdash;&mdash;n</span> one&#8217;s fellow-creatures! present company
+excepted,&rsquo; says Mr. Despard, filling his glass, &lsquo;and the
+man that grew this &ldquo;tipple.&rdquo; They&#8217;re useful to me now
+and then, and one has to put up with this crowd; but I
+never could take much interest in them.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;All the worse for you, Despard,&rsquo; says Clifford:
+&lsquo;you&#8217;re wasting your chances&mdash;golden opportunities in
+every sense of the word. You&#8217;ll never see such a spectacle
+as this, perhaps, again as long as you live. It&#8217;s a fancy-dress
+ball with real characters.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Dashed bad characters, if we only knew,&rsquo; says Despard,
+yawning. &lsquo;What do you say, Haughton?&rsquo; looking
+at Starlight, who was playing with his glass, and not
+listening much, by the look of him.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In his latest novels Boldrewood reverts to
+his familiar themes. <cite>The Sphinx of Eaglehawk</cite>,
+the shortest of all his works, might
+have been an excerpt from The <cite>Miner&#8217;s
+Right</cite>; and the scene of <cite>The Crooked Stick</cite>
+is an inland station in New South Wales in
+the days of bushranging and disastrous
+droughts.</p>
+
+<p>The materials employed in the latter story
+reproduce the principal features of almost a
+<a name="png.232" id="png.232"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">228</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>score of other Australian novels published
+within the last few years. The love-affairs
+of a beautiful, impulsive girl, sighing for
+knowledge of the great world beyond the
+limits of her narrow experience; the influence
+upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanly
+Englishman, with aristocratic connections
+and a dubious past; the manly young
+Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a
+time, is rewarded in the end&mdash;these are some
+of the items which go to the making of a
+class of story already somewhat too common.
+The fact that Boldrewood continues to make
+such subjects interesting is due largely to the
+pervading sense of scrupulous truth, the evident
+element of personal experience, and the
+general cheerfulness of tone, which are never
+absent from any product of his pen, and
+which constitute his highest claims to rank in
+Australian literature.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.233" id="png.233"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">229</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To</span> Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit
+of being the first to attempt to give an extended
+and impartial view of the social and
+political life of the upper classes in Australia.
+While she has not ignored whatever seemed
+picturesque in the external aspects of the
+country, her chief concern has been with the
+people themselves. Some of the best of her
+works&mdash;<cite>Policy and Passion</cite> and <cite>Miss Jacobsen&#8217;s
+Chance</cite>, for example&mdash;might fairly be
+named as an answer to the somewhat common
+complaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion
+in colonial life.</p>
+
+<p>In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs.
+Praed explains it to have been her wish to
+depict &lsquo;certain phases of Australian life, in
+which the main interests and dominant
+<a name="png.234" id="png.234"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">230</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>passions of the personages concerned are
+identical with those which might readily
+present themselves upon a European stage,
+but which directly and indirectly are influenced
+by striking natural surroundings and
+conditions of being inseparable from the
+youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The point of view here taken by the
+author at almost the beginning of her literary
+career has been maintained in most cases
+throughout her later work. The same
+preface might almost, in fact, serve for all
+her Australian stories. They describe
+broadly, in an attitude of good-natured criticism,
+the leading facts in the intellectual life
+of the people; their proud self-reliance,
+tempered by an acute sense of isolation and
+its disadvantages; their susceptibility to
+foreign criticism and example; their frank,
+natural manners in social customs of native
+origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid
+observance of conventionalities which have
+long since been relaxed in the mother
+country whence they were copied.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Praed has turned to account more
+<a name="png.235" id="png.235"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">231</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>fully than any other writer the little affectations
+of that small upper crust of Antipodean
+society which is sufficiently cultured to have
+developed a taste for aristocratic European
+habits, along with an uncomfortable suspicion
+of &lsquo;bad form&rsquo; in anything of purely local
+growth. This is the class which maintains
+an air of portentous solemnity in public
+ceremonials, and is liable at any moment to
+be convulsed by a question of precedence at
+a Government House dinner.</p>
+
+<p>From a lively appreciation of comedy to
+caricature is an easy descent which the author
+has not always resisted, but her exaggeration
+is so obviously resorted to in the interests of
+fun that it is unlikely to mislead. There is
+certainly no need to repudiate as untypical of
+Australian political society the Pickwickian
+spectacle of a drunken Postmaster-General
+fearfully trying to walk a plank after a Vice-regal
+dinner, in order to win three dozen
+of champagne wagered by the leader of the
+Opposition, while the Premier looks on and
+holds his sides with merriment; or the case
+of the Premier&#8217;s wife, who, on being told by
+<a name="png.236" id="png.236"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">232</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>a newly-arrived Governor&mdash;a musical enthusiast&mdash;that
+he hoped to be able to &lsquo;introduce
+Wagner&rsquo; at the local philharmonic concerts,
+said: &lsquo;I&#8217;m sure we shall be very pleased to
+see the gentleman.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Considering, however, the opportunities
+which colonial life, and especially colonial
+politics, afford for ridicule, the author has
+been commendably careful to avoid, as far as
+possible, giving real offence. Yet her criticism
+is sufficiently free to be piquant, and, on
+the whole, as salutary as it is entertaining.
+&lsquo;Why need Australians always be on the
+defensive?&rsquo; asks more than once an Englishman
+in one of her novels. The author seems
+to have put the same question to herself as
+an Australian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness
+is a worse vice than affectation,
+and that her compatriots, by giving way to
+it, do both themselves and their country an
+injustice. For it implies a too low estimate
+of what is fresh and strong and of real merit
+in the independent life of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Colonists need a little more of the philosophic
+and common-sense spirit which can
+<a name="png.237" id="png.237"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">233</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>look upon deficiencies and crudities merely
+as phases in the natural evolution of society
+in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed has
+endeavoured to teach in some of her stories.
+The lesson is often surrounded with a good
+deal of bantering discussion; it may not
+always be apparent to an English reader,
+but it can hardly be overlooked by an Australian.
+There is rarely anything so pointed
+as the conversation between Miss Jacobsen
+and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has
+been wondering what the cultivated Englishman
+thought of a recent noisy and rather
+vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor
+for whom he is acting as private secretary.
+Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly
+amused at his surroundings. But his view
+of them is purely rational and matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;You know, I fancy you colonists think rather too
+little of yourselves, and we in England rather too much.
+Or I&#8217;ll put it in another way. I fancy you colonists
+think too much about yourselves, and we in England
+think too little.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You said just now that you think too much.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Yes; it&#8217;s the same thing put in a different way. We
+<a name="png.238" id="png.238"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">234</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>think too much of ourselves, and for that reason too
+little about ourselves. You are always thinking somebody
+is laughing at you; we have made up our minds
+that we are the admiration of everybody. We are often
+very ridiculous, and don&#8217;t know it. You often think you
+are ridiculous when you really are not.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I think we must have seemed very ridiculous the day
+you landed&hellip;. I know you are astonished at some of
+our public men&hellip;. You will write home and say how
+rude and rough and vulgar some of them are.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;If one wants to see the ridiculous, one can see it
+everywhere. We have some public men at home who
+are rude and rough, and vulgar and ridiculous&hellip;.
+One has to make allowances, of course, for training and
+habits, and all that&hellip;. When our fellows are rough,
+there is less excuse for them. The more one goes about
+the world, the less one sees to laugh at, I think&hellip;.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>English self-complacency is, of course, a
+growth of centuries, but perhaps a deliberate
+and intelligent effort to acquire some of it in
+Australia would be the best specific for that
+consciousness which, colonists should not
+forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has
+been said that Australians already have too
+much to say for themselves and their country.
+The assertion is only applicable to a small
+boisterous class who have never seen anything
+beyond their own shores.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.239" id="png.239"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">235</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>A much commoner element of Antipodean
+life, one which some of Mrs. Praed&#8217;s characters
+notably illustrate, is the desire for
+wider experience and culture produced among
+educated people by their constant use of
+British and European literature. James Ferguson,
+the young squatter in <cite>The Head
+Station</cite>, represents those Australians who,
+though stout believers in their own country,
+feel its intellectual deficiencies&mdash;perhaps too
+much; who are more English than the
+English themselves in their veneration for
+the historic associations of the mother land;
+who, when they go to London, are curiously
+at home in streets and among sights that
+have been more or less definitely outlined in
+their imagination from early childhood.</p>
+
+<p>While three of his English-bred companions
+are exchanging reminiscences of
+London life, Ferguson listens with an eager
+interest, &lsquo;putting in a remark every now and
+then which had the savour, so readily detected,
+of acquaintance with the thing in
+question by means of books rather than personal
+experience.&rsquo; In Mrs. Praed&#8217;s stories,
+<a name="png.240" id="png.240"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">236</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>as in real life, a personal acquaintance with
+other countries gives the Australian a truer
+appreciation of the good in his own. The
+man who has taken part in the artificialities
+of a London season, or has been a spectator
+of its petty rivalries, returns joyfully to a
+simpler life; the woman who is prone to
+deify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns
+through him to value the more homely virtues
+of colonial manhood.</p>
+
+<p>In the difficult task of rendering attractive
+the restricted life of the squatting class, who
+form the country aristocracy of Australia,
+Mrs. Praed has combined humour and a terse
+cultivated style of expression with a dramatic
+sense, which has guided her past details that
+are merely commonplace. The natural surroundings
+of a head station furnish materials
+for bright little sketches immediately associated
+with some romantic episode in the
+story; there is no vague straining to create
+&lsquo;atmosphere,&rsquo; or anything that a judicious
+reader would skip.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in
+a hammock under the vine-trellised verandah
+<a name="png.241" id="png.241"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">237</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight imparting
+a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing
+withe of orange begonia touching her
+shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of
+guavas on the ground beside her; Elsie
+Valliant waiting for her lover on the rocky
+crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two
+giant cedars and outlined cameo-like against
+the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy
+little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves
+at her churn, pretending unconcern when she
+is surprised by her English visitors&mdash;these
+are some of the pictures in which the author
+commemorates much that is noteworthy in
+the warmth and colour of tropical Australia
+and in the daily life of its inhabitants. This
+fondness for posing her heroines is one of
+the minor features of her work. Its results
+in some of her later novels are not, however,
+always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the
+history of the unhappy Judith Fountain in
+<cite>Affinities</cite> are painful, and the portrait, in <cite>The
+Brother of the Shadow</cite>, of Mrs. Vascher as
+she lies in the mesmerist&#8217;s blue-silk-lined
+room is an unnecessary ghastly elaboration.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.242" id="png.242"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">238</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The hardships suggested by the beginnings
+of pastoral life amid the giant forests and
+intense loneliness of Australia are never
+allowed by Mrs. Praed to give a gloomy
+colour to her stories. It is one of their distinct
+merits that they present the humorous
+incongruities rather than the trials of pioneering,
+though the latter are by no means
+ignored. In the first three chapters of <cite>The
+Romance of a Station</cite> some excellent humour
+is provided by the young bride&#8217;s account of
+her home-coming to the rude mansion on her
+husbands mosquito-infested island station,
+and the ludicrous privations she encountered
+there. There is nothing of the kind more
+amusing in the whole of Australian fiction.
+The description of the household pets, and
+the vermin&mdash;including a lizard with an uncanny
+habit of &lsquo;unfastening its tail and making
+off on its stump when pursued&rsquo;&mdash;rivals the
+famous verandah scene in <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite>.
+An intimation in the preface that these
+experiences are a faithful record from the
+early life of the author herself sufficiently
+explains their graphic quality. Amusing also
+<a name="png.243" id="png.243"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">239</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>are the sketches of the aristocratic settlers in
+<cite>Policy and Passion</cite> and <cite>Outlaw and Lawmaker</cite>
+who try to apply the principles of
+æstheticism to the crude surroundings of
+their new-made homes in the backwoods&mdash;Dolph
+Bassett with his ornamental bridges
+and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord
+Horace Gage explaining with his maxim, &lsquo;If
+we can&#8217;t be comfortable, let us at least be
+artistic,&rsquo; a neglect to fill up the chinks in his
+slab hut.</p>
+
+<p>Queensland, the scene of Mrs. Praed&#8217;s
+colonial experience and the &lsquo;Leichardt&#8217;s
+Land&rsquo; of her stories, differs notably from the
+rest of Australia only in climate; its social
+and political conditions are essentially the
+same in character as those in the rest of the
+country. The Englishman acquiring colonial
+experience, the squatter living in various
+stages of comfort or discomfort, the gentleman
+spendthrift from whom his family has
+parted with the affectionate injunction, &lsquo;God
+bless you, dear boy; let us never see your
+face again!&rsquo; and the political parties which
+go in and out of office &lsquo;like buckets in a
+<a name="png.244" id="png.244"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">240</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>well&rsquo; (to use the author&#8217;s own expression),
+are, or have been, common features of every
+colony. Like several of her heroines, Mrs.
+Praed alternated life in the country with the
+gaieties of the capital.</p>
+
+<p>The position of her father, the Hon. T. L.
+Murray-Prior, as a member of the Legislative
+Council, brought her into contact with those
+political and vice-regal circles of which she
+has given entertaining and occasionally
+derisive accounts in <cite>Policy and Passion</cite>,
+<cite>Miss Jacobsen&#8217;s Chance</cite>, and elsewhere. Her
+description in the former story of the wealthy
+landowners, who adopt a passive and somewhat
+disdainful attitude towards party strife,
+applies to a class already large in the colonies.
+Whether such an attitude is consistent with
+&lsquo;the truest conservatism to be found in Australia,&rsquo;
+which they are said to represent, may
+be questioned. It seems rather to indicate
+selfishness, petulance, and lack of patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, upon the business of
+politics or the humours and makeshifts of
+colonial life that Mrs. Praed has expended
+her best efforts as a writer. Some study of
+<a name="png.245" id="png.245"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">241</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the human emotions is the primary interest
+in all her novels. There is nearly always
+love of the passionate and romantic kind,
+prompted on the one side by impulse,
+ignorance or glamour, and on the other by
+passing fancy or self-interest: the love of an
+innocent, unsophisticated woman for a man
+experienced in the pleasures and some of
+the darker vices of life; and, in contrast, the
+blunt respect and devotion of the typical
+Australian man for the same woman, and her
+light estimate of his worth. The tragedies
+of marriage&mdash;the union of the refined and
+imaginative with the coarse and commonplace,
+the high-souled with the worldly and
+cynical, the pure with the impure&mdash;are
+correlative themes of some of the strongest
+of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing
+tone. We have the spectacle of the
+woman&#8217;s blind, illogical trust abused, her
+helplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the
+tenacity with which, in temptation, she clings
+to the safeguards of conventional morality.
+In most cases this tenacity, which the author
+accounts an instinct rather than a virtue, is
+<a name="png.246" id="png.246"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">242</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>either allowed to triumph, or is placed by
+death beyond the possibility of a supreme
+test. In the loves of Hester Murgatroyd
+and Durnford in <cite>The Head Station</cite>, of Mrs.
+Lomax and Leopold D&#8217;Acosta in <cite>The Bond
+of Wedlock</cite>, and of Mrs. Borlase and Esmé
+Colquhoun in <cite>Affinities</cite>, it is the woman who
+directly, or by implication, insists upon
+respect of the marriage tie so long as it
+remains a legal obligation.</p>
+
+<p>But it should be made clear that Mrs.
+Praed is not in any sense a propagandist on
+the subject of marriage. She illustrates,
+often impressively, its difficulties and anomalies,
+but leaves the rest to the judgment of
+the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who
+marries on trust, or is ready to do so, has
+numerous representatives in these novels.
+Though it is a woman&#8217;s view of her trials
+and unhappiness that is given, there is
+nothing in the shape of a crusade against
+male vices. It is not the faults of men that
+are dwelt upon so much as the inevitably
+lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate
+which women make of men themselves.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.247" id="png.247"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">243</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The most striking illustration of this
+feature is probably contained in the last
+scenes of <cite>The Bond of Wedlock</cite>, where the
+heroine learns at once the hypocrisy of her
+father and the dishonour of her lover. The
+father, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the
+mean plot by which she has been enabled to
+divorce her husband and marry Sir Leopold
+D&#8217;Acosta. The latter, seeing that Mrs.
+Lomax would never consent to an elopement,
+has paid another woman&mdash;a former mistress
+of his&mdash;to incriminate Harvey Lomax, while
+the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law,
+does the business of a detective. Ariana&#8217;s
+dream of happiness is dissipated. She
+hardens into indifference. The revelation
+completes the disillusionment which had
+already begun. &lsquo;I had set you up as my
+hero, and my ideal, and I have found you&mdash;a
+man.&rsquo; This is the summary of her life&#8217;s
+experience, which in effect is also that of
+Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina
+Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of
+Mrs. Praed&#8217;s unhappy heroines. Married
+life, as they illustrate it, is usually a
+<a name="png.248" id="png.248"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">244</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>compromise. Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not
+quite a failure. Her husband does not
+attempt to conceal the fact that she no longer
+interests him, but with that commonly-accepted
+philosophy which recognises a wife
+as at least an adjunct to conventional respectability,
+he reminds her that, after all,
+their union has some advantages:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;I would much rather have you for a wife than any
+other woman I ever knew; and if I sometimes think a
+man is better who hasn&#8217;t a wife, it is only when you are
+in one of those reproachful moods, and seem as if you
+were anxious to make me out a heartless sort of miscreant.
+In Heaven&#8217;s name, why not make the best of
+things? Why need we be melodramatic? We are man
+and woman of the world. We must take the world as we
+find it, and ourselves for what it has made us.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Ariana&#8217;s answer was given later on when
+she realized the full extent to which she had
+been self-deluded: &lsquo;I am not going to be
+melodramatic. We can be very good friends
+on the outside. We need never be anything
+more.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>A strong bias towards analysis is the chief
+characteristic of Mrs. Praed&#8217;s studies in
+<a name="png.249" id="png.249"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">245</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>character. As in her illustrations of the perplexing
+uncertainties of married life it is the
+woman&#8217;s point of view that is most impressively
+presented, so in each story there is at
+least one woman whose personality stands
+out in pathetic relief and claims paramount
+attention. She is usually a cultivated woman
+of romantic tendency, living in a restricted
+social environment, and displaying the craving
+of that class of her sex for change, pleasurable
+excitement, and sympathy. In the
+satisfaction of her yearnings or ambitions
+are seen, perhaps more often than is typical,
+the gloomy aspects of marriage, and the incompetence
+of women to manage their own
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>The average Australian girl of real life is
+neither very romantic nor fastidious. She is
+cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to
+be thoughtful, and has a decided inclination
+towards married life. Its material advantages
+and status attract her&mdash;and, for the rest, she
+has a vague confidence that everything will
+come right. Nowhere is the horror of elderly
+spinsterhood more potent.  The influence of
+<a name="png.250" id="png.250"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">246</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>independent professional life fostered by the
+large public schools is still infinitesimal.</p>
+
+<p>The type upon which Mrs. Praed has
+bestowed her most elaborate work belongs to
+a class both higher and far fewer in numbers.
+It is the class that Mr. Froude had chiefly in
+view when he noted the absence of &lsquo;severe
+intellectual interests&rsquo; as a deficiency of
+society at Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Honoria Longleat, the principal study of
+Mrs. Praed&#8217;s second novel, may, with a few
+obvious deductions, be taken as a fair example
+of the colonial woman educated beyond sympathy
+with her native surroundings, and unprovided
+with any employment for her mental
+energies. With the distractions and interests
+of her narrow circle exhausted, and the knowledge
+that her future&mdash;her only possible future&mdash;must
+soon be decided by marriage, she is
+consumed with an intense and reckless desire
+for new emotional experience. Her unrest
+is like that of the large class of American
+women who are educated above the purely
+commercial standard of their fathers and
+brothers, and are impelled to satisfy their
+<a name="png.251" id="png.251"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">247</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>intellectual cravings by frequent European
+travel.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;This is only a state of half-existence,&rsquo;
+said Honoria in reference to her country life
+in Australia. &lsquo;Books are so unsatisfying! I
+read them greedily at first, then throw them
+aside in disgust. They never take one below
+the surface&hellip;. I want to grow and live&hellip;.
+What is the use of living unless one can
+gauge one&#8217;s capacity for sensation?&rsquo; Gretta
+Reay, in whom the same discontent is reproduced,
+exclaims: &lsquo;Ah, we Australians are
+like birds shut up in a large cage&mdash;our lives
+are little and narrow, for all that our home is
+so big.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>By these and other characters of the same
+type, the cultivated Englishman, who offers
+them the prospect of change and emancipation
+from monotony, is distinctly preferred in
+marriage to the man of colonial birth and
+experience. &lsquo;Don&#8217;t you know,&rsquo; says Gretta
+to one of the latter, &lsquo;that an Australian girl&#8217;s
+first aim is to captivate an Englishman of rank
+and be translated to a higher sphere&mdash;failing
+that, to make the best of a rich squatter?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.252" id="png.252"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">248</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The heroine of <cite>Outlaw and Lawmaker</cite>
+differs from Gretta only in being more
+emphatic in her preference for the doubtful
+stranger, and irrational in her objections to
+her tried Australian lover, Frank Hallett.
+Once, in a riding-party, &lsquo;she had moodily
+watched his (Hallett&#8217;s) square, determined
+bushman&#8217;s back as he jogged along in front
+of her, and compared it with Blake&#8217;s easy,
+graceful, rather rakish, bearing. Why was
+Frank so stolid, so good, so commonplace?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>A trifling superficial defect of the same
+sort turns the tables against the gallant young
+explorer, Dyson Maddox, in his first suit for
+the hand of Miss Longleat. The half-dozen
+analytical studies of female character in the
+principal novels of Mrs. Praed are far from
+flattering to her countrywomen, and might be
+somewhat misleading if we permitted ourselves
+to forget that in every case it is only
+one phase of a colonial girl&#8217;s life that is being
+given.</p>
+
+<p>The whims, the countless flirtations, the
+greed for new sensations, the inconsistencies
+and the apparent mercenary attitude towards
+<a name="png.253" id="png.253"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">249</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>marriage, are not more permanently characteristic
+of the women of Australia than of
+Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The
+impulses of the former are under few conventional
+restraints; they have a greater control
+of their lives: that is the only material difference.
+The matrimonial creed of Gretta
+Reay expresses rather the exaggerated
+cynicism of a coquette than a fact generally
+true of the class to which she belongs. The
+experiences of herself and of other leading
+characters in these stories correctly show
+that, although Australian women have an
+undoubted preference for the gentlemanly
+product of an older civilisation, it is a preference
+of sentiment in which self-interest
+and prudence are scarcely considered.</p>
+
+<p>Even Weeta Wilson, the professional
+beauty so strikingly portrayed in <cite>The
+Romance of a Station</cite>, has a soul above her
+own avowed commercial view of marriage.
+It had been systematically planned that she
+should contract an aristocratic alliance; for
+years she had co-operated with her parents
+in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half
+<a name="png.254" id="png.254"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">250</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>ludicrous; she had been guarded and nurtured
+like a hothouse-plant. At last, when
+her opportunity came, she relinquished her
+lover on finding that there was another who
+had a prior right to him.</p>
+
+<p>The subtle skill with which some of the
+nobler qualities of her women are brought
+out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice
+and devotion, marks Mrs. Praed&#8217;s highest
+point of achievement in the portrayal of
+character. Her knowledge of the mental
+complexities of her own sex is both deeper
+and better expressed than her observation of
+men. In the most inconsistent, the most
+cynical, or the shallowest of her women, there
+is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness,
+which conquers dislike. Thus, it is impossible
+to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, or
+accept her own estimate of her selfishness,
+after reading the finely-written scene in which
+she is found kneeling by the bedside of
+her dying child, from whom she has been so
+cruelly separated, while her recreant husband
+stands apart in awe and humiliation; or,
+again, in the interview with Frederica
+<a name="png.255" id="png.255"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">251</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Barnadine, when the claims of both women to
+the love of Rolf Luard are discussed.</p>
+
+<p>The absence of similar redeeming qualities
+in several of the principal male characters
+leaves them almost wholly without definite
+claim on our regard, and also lessens the
+effect of the author&#8217;s frequent endeavours
+to impartially contrast the unconsciously low
+moral standard of the average worldly man&mdash;the
+standard which society accepts&mdash;with
+the high, impracticable ideals of inexperienced
+womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>The heroines in nearly all of Mrs. Praed&#8217;s
+stories have the life of sentiment and passion
+revealed to them by men older in years,
+and skilled in those small arts and graces
+of refined society which are ever attractive
+to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the
+men themselves are often placed in a strained
+and artificial pose. The presentation of the
+purely emotional side of their nature inevitably
+tends to produce an appearance of weakness
+and effeminacy.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly a single admirable quality
+in Barrington, the base lover of Honoria
+<a name="png.256" id="png.256"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">252</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Longleat; or in George Brand, who deserts
+Esther Hagart in her poverty and loneliness,
+and years afterwards, on finding her recognised
+as the niece of an English baronet,
+persuades her into an unhappy marriage; or
+in Brian Gilmore, the profligate in <cite>Moloch</cite>,
+who seeks to rejuvenate his jaded passions
+with the love of an innocent girl, after abandoning
+another woman whose life he has
+spoiled. Sir Bruce Carr-Gambier forsakes
+Christina Chard and her child for cowardly
+reasons similar to those pleaded by Brand.
+When they meet, long-after, he offers his
+devotion again, but only because her developed
+beauty, position, and reputed wealth
+attract him.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that these characters fairly fulfil
+the author&#8217;s intention, so far as they bring
+into vivid juxtaposition the polished life of
+the old world with the simplicity of the new,
+and help to give the necessary dramatic
+point to the several stories; but there is so
+much of the cad in their nature and conduct,
+that it is difficult to accept them as representatives
+of any conceivable type of the
+<a name="png.257" id="png.257"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">253</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Englishman of birth and refinement. This
+result, however, does not imply any actual
+inability on the part of the author to realise
+the standard of true manhood in all its varying
+strength and foibles, its tenderness and
+honour. Where there has not seemed any
+necessity to bend the character to the requirements
+of the story, admirably life-like
+sketches of men have been produced&mdash;such
+as Rolf Luard in <cite>Christina Chard</cite> and
+Bernard Comyn in <cite>An Australian Heroine</cite>
+among Englishmen; and Dyson Maddox,
+Frank Hallett, and James Ferguson among
+Australians.</p>
+
+<p>Though it is plain that Mrs. Praed has
+generally found colonial men wanting in interest
+in proportion as they themselves lack
+the polish that travel and extended experience
+of social life impart, she has not overlooked
+the rugged dignity, the truth and
+virility, which are their highest characteristics.
+Alluding to Ferguson as one type
+of his country, she observes that, &lsquo;underlying
+the rough-and-ready manners and the
+prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an
+<a name="png.258" id="png.258"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">254</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>old-world chivalry, a reverence for women, a
+purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment&hellip;.
+This is partly due to the breezy moral
+atmosphere, and partly to the influence of
+books, which become living realities in the
+solitude and monotony of existence among
+the gum-trees. The typical Australian is
+an odd combination of the practical and the
+ideal. He is a student who learns to read
+to himself a foreign language, but does not
+attain to its pronunciation. He has no
+knowledge of the current jargon or society
+slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms
+and shallow conceits; but all the deeper
+thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to
+the soul, he has made his own.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ferguson himself echoes the same estimate
+in pleading his suit with Miss Reay. &lsquo;It
+seems to me,&rsquo; he says, &lsquo;that there&#8217;s a kind
+of chivalry which can be practised in the
+bush here better than in great cities&mdash;the
+chivalry Tennyson writes about&mdash;the knighthood
+that isn&#8217;t earned by sauntering through
+life in a graceful, smiling sort of way, with
+your heart in your hand, but in simplicity
+<a name="png.259" id="png.259"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">255</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>and faith; by love of one woman, and reverence
+of all women for her sake.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Compared with the fascinating aristocrats
+and adventurers, the Australian man seems
+crudely provincial. Yet he is never shown
+in an incorrect or merely satirical light.
+There are, to be sure, occasions when he
+appears too tame and Dobbin-like in acceptance
+of his lady&#8217;s caprices; but this is partly
+an evidence of that mixture of stiff native
+pride and independence which forbids servile
+appeal even to one he loves.</p>
+
+<p>The deficiency of which the reader is most
+often conscious in endeavouring to make a
+general estimate of Mrs. Praed&#8217;s work is a
+want of breadth in her scope&mdash;a presentation
+too constant and too tense of certain phases
+of the passionate life of men and women, to
+the comparative exclusion of those softer and
+higher attributes which even Charlotte Brontë
+(whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally
+resembles) did not neglect. In other words,
+we are not given enough to admire. There
+are few pictures&mdash;and none that can be called
+memorable&mdash;of happy married life to contrast
+<a name="png.260" id="png.260"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">256</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions.
+An inclination towards humorous disdain
+characterizes the references in the stories
+to conjugal relations of the ordinarily satisfactory
+kind. And when those of a filial
+nature are brought into prominence, they, too,
+often have only a pathetic or painful aspect&mdash;love
+on the one side repelled by indifference;
+an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy
+that irritates instead of soothes; a
+sensitive girl writhing under the brutalities
+or <i>gaucheries</i> of a drunken father.</p>
+
+<p>A survey of the author&#8217;s female characters
+will recall over a score of names of discontented
+girls experimenting in life&mdash;flirts,
+minxes, unhappy wives, and shallow society
+women; while after passing over half a dozen
+of the <i>ingénue</i>, the amusing and the neutral
+types, there remain only about four to represent
+the highest and most lovable qualities
+of womanhood. A similar division might be
+made between the male characters, though
+here the preponderance of the bad would
+not be so great as in the first case.</p>
+
+<p>The descriptions of English society which
+<a name="png.261" id="png.261"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">257</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>are amongst Mrs. Praed&#8217;s best work are
+marked by the same clear vision of the
+darker side of human nature that is displayed
+in the treatment of English character in her
+Australian novels. Her view of the &lsquo;smart&rsquo;
+section of English society is somewhat severe.
+After reading several of her novels, one could
+almost imagine her defending her literary
+preference in the words of Esmé Colquhoun,
+in <cite>Affinities</cite>: &lsquo;What is our mission&mdash;we
+writers&mdash;but to distil the essence of the age?
+The critics tell us that we are complex, that
+we are corrupt, that we are anatomists of
+diseased minds. We reply: The age is
+complex; the age is corrupt, and the society
+we depict is the outcome of influences which
+have been gathering through centuries of
+advancing civilization &hellip; the reign of healthy
+melodrama is over; the reign of analysis has
+commenced. We make dramas of our sensations,
+not of our actions.&rsquo; The same view
+is expressed in an article contributed by Mrs.
+Praed to the <cite>North American Review</cite> in
+1890. &lsquo;Analysis, not action,&rsquo; she notes as
+the prevailing characteristic of the fiction
+<a name="png.262" id="png.262"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">258</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>produced by female writers, &lsquo;as it is also of
+our modern social life.&rsquo; But, &lsquo;to dissect
+human nature under its society swathings
+needs,&rsquo; she adds, &lsquo;the skill of a Balzac or a
+Thackeray, while the feminine counterpart of
+a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>That indefinable power which includes
+sympathetic insight and does not overlook
+whatever is good even in the most repulsive
+character is, perhaps, what the describers in
+fiction of modern society need even more
+than skill in dissection. To observe and
+dissect what is corrupt is easier than to make
+the record of corruption presentable. Mrs.
+Praed&#8217;s own tale <cite>The Bond of Wedlock</cite>, with
+all its undoubted cleverness, its realism and
+dramatic strength, fails in its due impression
+as a picture of latter-day English morals
+because it is too sordid, too completely devoid
+of any of the better qualities of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable
+and natural moods one must revert to the
+novels in which the scenery and people of
+her own country are described. In <cite>Miss
+Jacobsen&#8217;s Chance</cite> we have her liveliest
+<a name="png.263" id="png.263"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">259</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>example of humour and caricature, in <cite>The
+Head Station</cite> her most cheerful pictures of
+country life, and in <cite>Christina Chard</cite> some
+account of the society with which colonists of
+wealth surround themselves in London. The
+latter story has several finely dramatic scenes
+and is a sample of the author&#8217;s mature work.
+Hers is the most comprehensive view that
+we have of the social and political life of the
+Antipodes, and for this and for her minutely
+recorded knowledge of her own sex she will
+long continue to hold and deserve a foremost
+place in Australian literature.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="png.264" id="png.264"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">260</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>TASMA.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Between</span> the writers who profess not to
+see anything individual in the life of Australia
+and those others who confine themselves
+to describing a few of its principal
+scenes and types of character, Tasma holds a
+middle and independent place. She is absolutely
+without predilections and hobbies. Her
+materials are chosen for some quality of
+picturesqueness rather than for the purpose
+of illustrating any phase of life at the Antipodes
+or elsewhere. So little are some of
+her novels concerned with the external appearances
+of the country that the scene of
+their action might easily be transferred to
+almost any part of Great Britain or America.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched
+views of places&mdash;of Melbourne in
+<a name="png.265" id="png.265"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">261</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>midsummer, with its buildings of sombre
+bluestone and stucco, and streets swept by
+dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid and
+drought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty
+of rural Tasmania, the home of her own
+youth&mdash;but these and other descriptions from
+the same pen are slight compared with
+similar work in the stories of Kingsley,
+Boldrewood, and Mrs. Campbell Praed.</p>
+
+<p>Tasma, as one of the younger writers, has
+rightly seen that, for the present at all events,
+more than sufficient use has been made in
+fiction of the natural peculiarities of Australia.
+Her novels are, moreover, all character
+studies, and little dependent upon local
+colour for their interest. Her quiet, satirical
+humour and power of rapidly and mordantly
+sketching a portrait, do much to justify a
+comparison which her friends sometimes
+make of her writings with those of George
+Eliot and Jane Austen. Rolf Boldrewood,
+after the publication of her first three books,
+hailed her as the &lsquo;Australian George Eliot,&rsquo;
+and the title is certainly more fitting than the
+praise implied by the other comparison. She
+<a name="png.266" id="png.266"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">262</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>has much of George Eliot&#8217;s conscientious
+literary expression, direct masculine way of
+looking at life, and unsparing criticism of
+her own sex. While reminding one, as she
+often does, of Jane Austen&#8217;s humour, Tasma
+does not approach any nearer to that writer&#8217;s
+supreme gift of describing character in dialogue
+than scores of others who have followed
+the same model during the last seventy years.</p>
+
+<p>Like most of the chief contributors to Australian
+literature, Tasma is a colonist in experience
+only. She was born at Highgate,
+near London, and taken during childhood by
+her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a
+Dutch merchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania,
+about forty years ago. She displayed literary
+talent at an early age, read extensively, and
+published criticisms in the <cite>Melbourne Review</cite>,
+and short stories and sketches in the lighter
+colonial periodicals.</p>
+
+<p>In 1879 Tasma went to live in Europe,
+and has since known Australia only as an
+occasional visitor. Becoming interested in
+social questions during a residence in France,
+she wrote in the <cite>Nouvelle Revue</cite>, suggesting
+<a name="png.267" id="png.267"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">263</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>emigration to the colonies and engagement
+in the fruit-growing industry there as a means
+of relieving some of the poverty of the Old
+World. She afterwards lectured on the
+subject in French at the invitation of the
+Geographical Society of Paris. So successful
+were the lectures that she was induced to
+repeat them in various provincial centres, as
+well as in Holland and Belgium. This work
+occupied from 1880 to 1882, and Tasma was
+presented by the French Government with the
+decoration of Officier d&#8217;Académie. The King
+of the Belgians also honoured the lecturer by
+receiving her in special audience to discuss
+means of improving communication between
+Belgium and Tasmania.</p>
+
+<p>In 1885, after revisiting Australia, Tasma
+was married to M.&nbsp;Auguste Couvreur, a distinguished
+Belgian politician and journalist
+(he has since died), and four years later
+began her career as a novelist by the publication
+at London of <cite>Uncle Piper of Piper&#8217;s
+Hill</cite>, which proved to be one of the most
+notable books of its season.</p>
+
+<p>This novel remains the best example of
+<a name="png.268" id="png.268"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">264</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>the author&#8217;s humour and power of describing
+character that she has produced. It has
+none of the marks of a first effort. Written
+when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodied
+some of the best fruits of many years&#8217;
+keenly critical study of life, in addition to the
+culture gained by travel and a wide course of
+reading. Of plot there is little&mdash;there is still
+less in some of the later novels&mdash;but sufficient
+variety of incident is given to afford scope
+for unusually rich faculties of sympathy and
+philosophic observation.</p>
+
+<p>In her desire to present only real persons
+moving in a familiar world she merits, in
+<cite>Uncle Piper</cite>, praise almost equal to that
+accorded by Nathaniel Hawthorne to the
+novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke
+of them as being &lsquo;as real as if some giant
+had hewn a great lump out of the earth and
+put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants
+going about their daily business
+and not suspecting that they were being
+made a show of.&rsquo; It is, however, less of
+Trollope than of Howells that Tasma reminds
+the reader in this first story. The
+<a name="png.269" id="png.269"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">265</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>character of the wealthy <i>parvenu</i> uncle, sensitive,
+boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet
+tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls
+<cite>Silas Lapham</cite>, that wonderfully natural and
+sympathetic presentment of a commonplace
+man. There are numerous points of resemblance
+between the two, especially when they
+are shown contrasted with their aristocratic
+friends. The delightful comradeship of Lapham
+and his wife, with its curiously dry New
+England expression, has its counterpart in
+Piper&#8217;s affection for his sister and their pride
+in each other.</p>
+
+<p>The half-acknowledged social ambitions
+of both men, qualified by their secret contempt
+for the pretensions of the upper classes,
+is shown in various similar ways, as is also
+their love of display. They differ only as
+their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives
+in the American merchant and his wife,
+and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle
+Piper&#8217;s conception of the Deity is of the
+vaguest kind, but he has a religion of
+generosity and love which in the end nothing
+can repress&mdash;which survives the effects of a
+<a name="png.270" id="png.270"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">266</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>temper soured by systematic coldness and
+opposition on the part of a rebellious son and
+step-daughter. While in his relations with
+his womenkind&mdash;the tractable section of
+them&mdash;there is nothing of that quaint
+American delicacy and reserve noted by
+Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing
+tenderness which is irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>The superiority of Silas Lapham as a
+realistic portrait is not difficult to affirm;
+still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that
+the characters thus far approximate. Uncle
+Piper is under all the disadvantage that a
+figure in fiction suffers in being described
+largely in plain statement by the author
+instead of being gradually revealed in piquant
+dialogue.</p>
+
+<p>Readers of <cite>Silas Lapham</cite> will remember
+the rapid series of witty touches with which
+the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in
+the office of his warehouse, surrounded by
+samples of the mineral paint that he is so
+pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a
+dignified indifference as he answers the rather
+flippant curiosity of the local press
+<a name="png.271" id="png.271"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">267</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is
+introduced, as all of Tasma&#8217;s characters are,
+in sundry solid-looking pages of direct narrative.
+It is true that their humour and epigram
+make bright reading, but they are necessarily
+without the power of pithy dialogue
+to create a vivid impression of character.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian
+plutocracy need hardly be discussed.
+Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every
+community has its proportion. It may, however,
+be said that the owners of luxurious
+villas in the suburbs of Melbourne have
+individually a good deal more grammar and
+less generosity than he who was described
+by one of his fashionable English guests as
+possessing &lsquo;the home of a West-End magnate
+and the intonation of a groom.&rsquo; The
+author herself would probably disclaim any
+intention to represent a type. She is one
+of those writers who doubt the existence of
+types in the ordinary meaning of the term,
+and she certainly makes no conscious attempt
+to delineate them.</p>
+
+<p>A passage in her third novel, <cite>The Penance
+<a name="png.272" id="png.272"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">268</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>of Portia James</cite>, gives her views on this
+subject, and incidentally upon Australian
+character. A description is furnished of a
+breakfast-party in the London home of an
+Australian who has made his fortune in a
+silver-mine, and from being a <i>habitué</i> of
+colonial racecourses has lately developed
+into a patron of art and a purchaser of
+dubious &lsquo;old masters&rsquo; at exorbitant prices.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English
+readers as thoroughly typical Australians would be as
+unjust a proceeding as was that of Dumas <i>père</i> when he
+declared that all the inhabitants of Antwerp were <i>roux</i>
+because he had encountered two red-headed girls on his
+way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless
+he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives
+retained their own underlying individualities none the
+less that they had been influenced in their outward
+bearing and modes of expressing themselves by a long
+sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily contact
+with all sorts and conditions of men&mdash;broken-down
+gentlemen, English yokels, bush-hands, and the like.
+After all, the moulding of character by outward influences
+alone is not a work to be achieved in one
+generation, or what would become of the theory of
+heredity, upon which everything is supposed to depend,
+more or less, in our present scientific age? If these
+people strike the English reader, therefore, as differing
+in certain respects from those he is accustomed to meet
+in his daily walk through life, let him remember that the
+<a name="png.273" id="png.273"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">269</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>differences which will strike him most are the merely
+superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure
+from the conventional rules of speech and behaviour that
+guide his own outward conduct, and that in all the main
+essentials they are, <i>au fond</i>, neither more like him or
+more unlike him than though chance had willed that
+they should be born and brought up on the selfsame
+patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary
+of the native-born Australian, or long resident in
+Australia, of the not too highly educated order, as well
+as a difference in his tone of voice and enunciation, from
+that of a person belonging to a corresponding class in
+England, is one of those facts, however, which &lsquo;nobody
+can deny.&rsquo; I am not going to enter in this connection
+upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what
+Mrs. James would have called &lsquo;höfisch&rsquo; English, and
+the English that has been coined out of entirely new
+conditions by pioneers and backwoodsmen. Suffice it
+to say there <em>is</em> a difference, and Portia was never more
+sensible of it than when she returned, as on the present
+occasion, from moving among a London society crowd
+into the Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington
+house.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Tasma&#8217;s efforts to give variety to her work,
+and keep as far as possible out of the beaten
+paths of the Australian writer, have not, however,
+quite excluded from her novels characters
+which will be recognised as typical.
+There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving
+<a name="png.274" id="png.274"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">270</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>colonial man who keeps racehorses,
+gets deeply into debt and love, and has
+sometimes to encounter awkward parental
+alternatives.</p>
+
+<p>At least three excellent portraits of such
+men are given. The best is that of George
+Drafton, in <cite>In Her Earliest Youth</cite>. In no
+other novel are the rough good-nature and
+loose, slangy talk of the young Australian
+sportsman of the upper-middle class more
+naturally expressed. The author&#8217;s knowledge
+of the cant terms and short cuts in the
+vocabulary of the not necessarily ill-educated
+but supremely careless colonial young man is
+almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who
+has been listening to the talk of such men all
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Piper&#8217;s exasperating &lsquo;gentleman&rsquo;
+son George is also a noticeably clever
+creation in a book full of good portraits;
+and it is a tribute to the author&#8217;s skill that
+as the story progresses our sympathy for
+him increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding
+the needless agonies of rage he
+occasions his father.</p>
+
+<p><a name="png.275" id="png.275"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">271</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>The most vivid chapter to be found in any
+of Tasma&#8217;s novels is that in which Uncle
+Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between
+Laura Lydiat and George, sends for the
+latter and threatens to cast him off if a
+marriage of the pair should take place.
+Laura is an agnostic and a sort of &lsquo;new
+woman&rsquo; who maintains a constant attitude
+of disdain towards her stepfather. She and
+George have spent much of their youth
+together, discussed pessimistic theories in
+Piper&#8217;s hearing, and generally ignored him,
+and made him feel his ignorance in ways
+very trying to the temper of a man who,
+&lsquo;now that his money-making days were over,
+had a passion for dictating absolutely to
+everyone about him.&rsquo; &lsquo;He&#8217;d talk&rsquo; and &lsquo;she&#8217;d
+talk,&rsquo; as Mr. Piper would complain; &lsquo;and
+they&#8217;d spout their scraps of poetry that hadn&#8217;t
+an ounce of the sense any good, honest old
+rhyme could show; and you&#8217;d think, to hear
+them, they were doing their Maker a favour
+by condescending to go on living at all!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>An alliance of this kind between the two
+people for whom he had done most with his
+<a name="png.276" id="png.276"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">272</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was
+determined that it should not become a closer
+one. Was this not one reason for his importation
+of an entire family of impoverished
+relatives, that they and his little pet daughter,
+the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance
+of household power in his favour?</p>
+
+<p>It was on the eve of the arrival of his
+aristocratic connections, the Cavendishes,
+that he determined to put a stop to his son&#8217;s
+courtship. George, at the outset of the
+momentous interview with his father, speculated
+inwardly on his chances of being able
+to soften the old man to a favourable view of
+&lsquo;the only wish that he had ever framed with
+a feeling that savoured of intensity.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before entering the ornamental tower where
+his father awaited him, George had composed
+his face to its usual expression of
+laziest indifference. His imperturbability
+always &lsquo;had the effect of a goad upon
+his father&#8217;s temper. His face never changed
+colour when the old man&#8217;s was purple. His
+voice never lost its measured drawl.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never
+<a name="png.277" id="png.277"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">273</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>have traced the sonship in George. There was nothing
+in common between the sallow, indolent face of the
+younger man, and the spreading, heated face of the
+elder. George looked like any club-lounger&mdash;not unwilling
+to let it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet
+ready, with perfect acquiescence, to go through with an
+hour or a forenoon of the infliction of boredom, as conveyed
+by a father&#8217;s presence&hellip;. Mr. Piper watched
+him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the
+baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the
+outset of an interview with his son creeping over him as
+he watched. If George could only once have lost his
+head and sworn, or only once implored or threatened!
+But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his
+attitude&mdash;the veiled disrespect it implied&mdash;spoke of an
+indifference that was worse than the most open revolt.
+But surely he would be made to feel now! Mr. Piper
+had never tried to reach &lsquo;my gentleman&rsquo; through his
+&lsquo;young woman&rsquo; yet&hellip;. A slight elevation of an unruffled
+brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were
+looking critically at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his
+ear took in the sense of his fathers words. Otherwise
+he might have served as a perfect model of intentness
+upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all
+eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn
+from his foot.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute
+excitement.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;I&#8217;ll see and put a stop to it!&rsquo; he threatened. &lsquo;I&#8217;ll
+take and pack her off, and you at the back of her, &ldquo;my
+gentleman&rdquo;!&rsquo; George knew that the use of this expression
+<a name="png.278" id="png.278"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">274</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>signified especial bitterness on his father&#8217;s part.
+&lsquo;I&#8217;ll have an end of this nonsense&mdash;a painted jade like
+her!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Wait a minute, please,&rsquo; said George, shutting the
+knife with a little snap, and settling himself back upon
+the window-sill; &lsquo;you are a little hard to follow, or I am
+slow at catching your meaning, perhaps. I understand
+that you had some object in sending for me. Are you
+explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen,
+as you see.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You&#8217;re very condescending, I&#8217;m sure,&rsquo; said Mr. Piper,
+with such withering sarcasm that George stroked his
+moustache and smiled. &lsquo;You put yourself about for
+your father a deal too much, &ldquo;my gentleman,&rdquo; there&#8217;s
+no doubt of it.&rsquo; Then, with a sudden break in his
+voice: &lsquo;No, George; it&#8217;s not much of a son you&#8217;ve been
+to me, and no one can say I&#8217;ve stood in your light. I&#8217;d
+like you to show me another young man who could carry
+on top ropes like you. There&#8217;s not many fathers &#8217;ud
+have stood it. Most fathers &#8217;ud made you turn to long
+ago.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Do you want anything done for you?&rsquo; interrupted
+George, with the air of a man who is laying himself out
+to oblige&mdash;&lsquo;another tour of inspection in the north?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George&#8217;s want
+of occupation, it was the young man&#8217;s policy to refer to
+this tour of inspection&mdash;a memorable tour, seeing that it
+had given him employment for at least three months&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an
+&lsquo;able-bodied young man who wasn&#8217;t worth his salt,&rsquo; as a
+loafer who was hardly fit to &lsquo;jackaroo&rsquo; on a station, as
+a &lsquo;lazy lubber&rsquo; who would &lsquo;go to the dogs if it weren&#8217;t
+<a name="png.279" id="png.279"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">275</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>for his father,&rsquo; George never betrayed that he felt humiliated
+by so much as the twitching of an eyelid. Persistently
+stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of
+profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as
+Mr. Piper stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing
+an inclination to yawn.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;I dare say it&#8217;s all very true, governor,&rsquo; was all he said
+in reply. &lsquo;It&#8217;s very nice and complimentary, I&#8217;m sure,
+and I ought to be very much obliged to you. But,
+<i>à propos</i> of your compliments, may I ask if it was only
+to treat me to them in full that you brought me up those
+confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that
+case, I wouldn&#8217;t have minded waiting, you know. It&#8217;s
+hardly fair upon a man, is it, to put him to the treadmill
+before he&#8217;s well awake in the morning?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;If you were like other young men,&rsquo; retorted Mr.
+Piper, &lsquo;you&#8217;d be up and down them steps twenty times
+a day&rsquo; (George shuddered); &lsquo;but oh no! my gentleman
+can crawl on to the lawn and carry on <span class="nw">with a&mdash;&mdash;</span>&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Stop there!&rsquo; cried George, in a tone that made his
+father silent through sheer astonishment (George had
+never been known to raise his voice before). &lsquo;Do you
+know the relation in which Laura stands to me?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and
+seeing the ghastly change that came over the face as he
+looked, he felt that he had been over-hasty. For the
+glass through which Mr. Piper had made a feint of
+looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips
+worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth;
+the blood rushing away from his florid cheeks left them
+streaked with thready, sanguineous veins, mottling the
+ash-coloured patches; and rushed back again with a
+<a name="png.280" id="png.280"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">276</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>force that seemed to swell the veins round his temples
+to bursting&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;What&#8217;s the matter, father?&rsquo; said George at last, not
+with any of Louey&#8217;s vehement alarm, but eyeing him
+rather gravely and curiously. &lsquo;Do you object to my
+looking upon Laura in the light of a&mdash;<em>sister</em>?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Eh?&rsquo; said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was
+slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to
+the monosyllable.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Of a sister,&rsquo; repeated George slowly, &lsquo;and a friend.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Your <em>sister</em>!&rsquo; said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could
+speak distinctly. &lsquo;That&#8217;s as you choose to take it.
+She&#8217;s none o&#8217; mine, thank God! But you take and
+make her more than your sister, and see how soon you&#8217;ll
+come to repent it. It&#8217;s down in my will. I&#8217;ve sworn it.
+Dead or alive, I won&#8217;t have the jade in my family! If
+you&#8217;ve got a fancy for her, you may take her, but never
+come anigh Piper&#8217;s Hill again!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You mistake the position of affairs,&rsquo; said George
+calmly. &lsquo;Laura wouldn&#8217;t have me if I wanted!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Ho, ho!&rsquo; Mr. Piper&#8217;s laugh was more insulting than
+mirthful. &lsquo;That&#8217;s why she comes and hugs you on the
+lawn of a morning, is it?&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The interview ended with an intimation that
+Mr. Piper will not have Laura as a daughter-in-law
+&lsquo;at any price,&rsquo; and that if George
+choose to marry her it must be as a pauper,
+and unrelieved of his heavy burden of turf
+debts.  Piper&#8217;s stormy, almost speechless
+<a name="png.281" id="png.281"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">277</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>anger, like his craving for sympathy and
+approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic.
+His personality, though less delicately drawn
+than that of his niece, Sara Cavendish, is a
+striking figure throughout the book. A good
+delineation of an old man is sufficiently rare
+in fiction to make that of Uncle Piper notable.
+Tasma has not equalled this performance in
+any of her other works. Josiah Carp, the
+Melbourne merchant in <cite>In Her Earliest
+Youth</cite>, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of
+the same class, in the short story <cite>Monsieur
+Caloche</cite>, are shown only in a satirical and
+repulsive light, which necessarily makes
+them appear somewhat unreal.</p>
+
+<p>As a vivid study, combined with excellent
+comedy, the portrait of Sara Cavendish
+would not have been unworthy of Thackeray.
+The selfishness concealed by her demure
+exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly
+excessive estimate of her virtues made by
+the Reverend Francis Lydiat, are a warning
+to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a
+passenger by the ship which carried Sara
+and her parents to Australia.  When he
+<a name="png.282" id="png.282"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">278</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>gave his weekly sermons during the voyage,
+Miss Cavendish was always present, and
+looked at him with her large eyes to such
+purpose that they &lsquo;seemed to be absorbing
+his meaning into the soul of their possessor.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing ethereal in Sara&#8217;s
+thoughts. &lsquo;She had a fancy for imagining
+becoming dresses. She would build up a
+delightful wardrobe in the air, entering into
+as many details of her airy outfit as though it
+could be instantly materialised. And she
+liked to imagine a becoming background for
+her own beautiful person, in which a husband
+with the essentials of good birth and unlimited
+money, and the desirable qualifications
+of an air of distinction and great
+devotion to her, filled a reasonable space.&rsquo;
+Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams
+such as it would have seemed to him almost
+a sacrilege to disturb, &lsquo;though it is probable
+that the only notion he would have been
+guilty of upsetting had reference to the
+shape of an imaginary velvet train.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The insight and completeness with which
+<a name="png.283" id="png.283"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">279</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>Sara&#8217;s character is depicted in the course of
+the story make it impossible that the reader
+should entirely dislike her as a mere sample
+of the calculating coquette. She is one of
+that large class of women, with a limited
+capacity for affection, whose natures expand
+only in an atmosphere of luxury. &lsquo;Don&#8217;t be
+shocked,&rsquo; she says to her sister in reference
+to the unsuccessful suit of her clerical lover;
+&lsquo;I never intended to be a poor man&#8217;s wife.&rsquo;
+As a contrast to the cold personality of the
+beautiful Sara, the author gives a charming
+picture of the elder sister&#8217;s affection and
+thoughtfulness for others.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in
+<cite>Not Counting the Cost</cite>, are good women of a
+perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is
+surprising to think that the same hand which
+drew them also found patience to draw the
+unhappy, metaphysical heroines of <cite>In Her
+Earliest Youth</cite> and <cite>The Knight of the White
+Feather</cite>. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as
+when describing the characters of children,
+of whom several figure prominently in her
+novels.  There is a delightful picture of
+<a name="png.284" id="png.284"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">280</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>romping childhood at the opening of <cite>Not
+Counting the Cost</cite>. The scene is a farm in
+the shadow of Mount Wellington, near
+Hobart, the city where the author spent
+many of her own early years. &lsquo;Chubby,&rsquo;
+the eight-year-old uncle of the heroine of
+<cite>In Her Earliest Youth</cite>, and Louey Piper
+are lovable creations, though, it must be said,
+more quaint than natural. One remembers
+the expansive dignity of the former on his
+first meeting with Pauline&#8217;s lover, George
+Drafton. &lsquo;How do you do, little man?&rsquo;
+says the latter condescendingly. &lsquo;How do
+you do, sir?&rsquo; replies the little man stiffly,
+raising his garden hat. &lsquo;You are an acquaintance
+of Paul&mdash;of Miss Vyner&#8217;s, I
+believe. I have the honour to be her
+maternal uncle.&rsquo; No wonder George bursts
+into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragic
+intensity of his love protestations of five
+minutes before!</p>
+
+<p>Louey Piper&#8217;s relations with her father are
+idyllic. She is more necessary to him than
+Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual
+negotiator of peace in his divided house, and
+<a name="png.285" id="png.285"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">281</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>&lsquo;in this she could not have displayed more
+courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world
+changeling with centuries of experience
+respecting rich fathers of uncertain testamentary
+inclinations.&rsquo; In her limited knowledge
+of things outside Piper&#8217;s Hill, &lsquo;street-crossings
+and railway-platforms presented
+themselves to her in the light of shocking
+and mysterious man-traps&hellip;. The wistful,
+yearning look that gave her eyes so touching
+an expression in the setting of her small
+freckled face never gave place to such a
+fulness of satisfaction as when her father,
+her brother, and her sister were all, as it
+were, under her eye, and safe to remain
+indoors for the night.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>The general praise won by <cite>Uncle Piper</cite>
+for its author as a delineator of character
+appears to have decided her to give increased
+attention to her ability in this direction. The
+immediate result was scarcely a happy one.
+The analytical bias disclosed in the first story
+was largely extended in the second, with the
+usual accompaniment of a decrease in action
+and humour.  Pauline Vyner, the central
+<a name="png.286" id="png.286"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">282</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>figure of <cite>In Her Earliest Youth</cite>, a sensitive
+and speculative girl, marries without love a
+man who has saved the life of a child to
+whom she is much attached. In tastes and
+intellectual bent the pair are almost without
+anything in common. The story&mdash;an unusually
+long three-volume one&mdash;is mainly a
+minute study of Pauline&#8217;s disillusionment
+during the early period of her wifehood:
+how she escaped the temptations placed in
+her way by a man who had formerly attracted
+her; and how, with the birth of her first child,
+she experienced the dawn of affection for its
+father.</p>
+
+<p>The story is excessively expanded for the
+small amount of dramatic movement it contains.
+Only three characters are prominently
+described, and these too seldom through the
+medium of dialogue. The central motive,
+moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult
+to appreciate the tragic pathos of so
+common a matrimonial error as Pauline&#8217;s,
+especially as George, though uncongenial in
+his tastes, and not exempt from the ordinary
+weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to
+<a name="png.287" id="png.287"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">283</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>her, and would readily have improved under
+her influence, had she chosen to exert any.
+Tasma&#8217;s more recent work is better both
+in spirit and literary construction. Very
+sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative,
+in <cite>Not Counting the Cost</cite>, of the adventures
+of the Clare family in their quixotic travels
+in search of the cousin who is to restore
+them a long-lost heritage. In this story and
+<cite>The Penance of Portia James</cite> the author
+gives some interesting scenes of Paris life.
+But to get the best samples of her humour,
+one must return to her first novel. The
+burlesque of Piper&#8217;s pompous, genteel brother-in-law
+is delicious. Mr. Cavendish affects to
+be revolted by the necessity of being indebted
+to the <i>ci-devant</i> butcher, while secretly luxuriating
+in his munificence. Finally, as a
+means of discharging some of his obligations,
+he conceives the project of hunting up a
+pedigree for his plebeian relative, after the
+manner of the enterprising person who opened
+a &lsquo;heraldry office&rsquo; in Sydney about fifty
+years ago, and announced his readiness to
+provide clients with reliable information of
+<a name="png.288" id="png.288"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">284</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>their ancestors, together with suitable coats
+of arms.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there
+<em>had</em> been a Count Piper somewhere or other some
+centuries ago, and the very rarity of the name proved
+that every Piper must come from one common stock.
+Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself
+up to its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend
+whole hours in the Melbourne Library poring over books
+of heraldry. Every chronological or biographical document
+bearing upon the age in which Count Piper was
+supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and
+minute examination. When the monthly mail day came
+round there would sure to be a budget of letters in
+Mr. Cavendish&#8217;s handwriting, addressed to the different
+colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were to
+help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the
+oblivion in which they had hitherto been suffered to
+remain.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Piper is at length informed of the
+progress of the inquiries, but shows a provoking
+obtuseness and indifference concerning
+them.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;I am&mdash;hem!&mdash;I am pursuing a task of the utmost
+consequence to your family interests,&rsquo; Mr. Cavendish
+had told him one day. &lsquo;In fact, my dear sir, I am
+engaged in a work of no less moment than that of
+reconstructing your family tree.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;My what-do-you-call-it tree?&rsquo; exclaimed Mr. Piper,
+<a name="png.289" id="png.289"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">285</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>with a hazy idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying
+some unwarrantable experiments upon his lemon and
+orange bushes. &lsquo;Don&#8217;t you take and put any rubbish in
+the garden. I&#8217;ve got a new lot of guano, and I don&#8217;t
+want it meddled with.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;Guano!&rsquo; echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the
+most withering compassion. &lsquo;I&#8217;m afraid you don&#8217;t quite
+apprehend my meaning. I am not alluding to coarse
+material facts at all. I am speaking of a genealogical
+tree&mdash;a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am
+trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion.
+I am&hellip;.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You&#8217;d better leave &#8217;em alone,&rsquo; interrupted Mr. Piper,
+with the sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not
+been altogether allayed. &lsquo;<em>They</em> won&#8217;t do you any good&mdash;no
+more than they&#8217;ve done for me. You&#8217;ve got some
+of your own, I expect; that&#8217;s enough for any man, I
+should think.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his
+peace. If the matter had not become a hobby by
+this time, he would have abandoned it then and there.
+As it was, he contented himself by deploring the sad
+effects of low association upon the undoubted descendant
+of a count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing
+a hog in armour instead of a stag at gaze into the
+coat-of-arms that he foresaw would be the result of his
+researches.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs.
+Cavendish, on the eve of the first meeting
+of the two men, humbly wondering how she
+<a name="png.290" id="png.290"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">286</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>could soften the heart of her discontented
+lord towards the low-born brother&mdash;&lsquo;how
+lead him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor
+for having dared to benefit him,&rsquo; and the
+subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not
+only was wealth an acknowledged power,
+&lsquo;even though pork-sausages should have been
+its alleged first cause,&rsquo; but that, after all,
+&lsquo;politic members of the great ruling houses
+in the old world had been known to make
+concessions to trade,&rsquo; and he &lsquo;was prepared
+to make concessions too!&rsquo; Accordingly, he
+resolved that the meeting with his relative
+should bear the semblance of cordiality.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,&rsquo; he said, with ten
+white fingers&mdash;the fingers of thoroughbred hands&mdash;closing
+round Mr. Piper&#8217;s plebeian knuckles. No onlooker
+could have supposed for an instant that he had
+come, with the whole of his family, in an entirely destitute
+condition, to live upon his wife&#8217;s brother. Besides,
+we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour
+is virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities
+from people you esteem&hellip;.</p>
+
+<p>&lsquo;You&#8217;re welcome, sir,&rsquo; said Mr. Piper.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish
+wiped her eyes, and Mr. Piper said very heartily, &lsquo;You&#8217;re
+welcome, the lot of you.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><a name="png.291" id="png.291"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">287</span><span class="ns">]<br
+ /></span>Cavendish is the only character that the
+author has treated in a consistently farcical
+vein. Eila Frost&#8217;s canting old father-in-law
+in <cite>Not Counting the Cost</cite> is made ridiculous
+in his harangue on the duties of the young
+wife to her insane husband; but, with this
+exception, little is said of him in the story.
+It would seem that Tasma regards broadly
+humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible
+with her somewhat grave style, for
+in all the later stories her satire, if not less
+pungent, is of a quieter kind.</p>
+
+<p>Next to their humour and skilful presentation
+of character, the most noteworthy feature
+of these novels is their lucid and polished
+language. The style is, perhaps, scarcely
+easy enough for fiction. Its qualities and
+culture are those that equip the essayist or
+critic rather than the novelist. Indeed, judged
+by some of her early work in the reviews,
+and by the little philosophic exordiums with
+which she opens so many of her chapters,
+Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist.
+To a large class of thoughtful readers it will
+always seem that what her novels lack in
+<a name="png.292" id="png.292"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span
+ class="pgmark">288</span><span class="ns">]
+ </span>dramatic interest is fully compensated for
+by their more than usually faithful sketches
+of both men and women, and by their intimate
+and sympathetic view of our common
+life.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="ctr allcaps top6">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="ctr top6"><small>BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.</small></p>
+
+<p class="rt"><small><i class="nw">G., C. &amp; CO.</i></small></p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3>
+
+<p>Inconsistent hyphenation (book-form/book form, gold-fields/goldfields,
+horse-racing/horseracing, race-horses/racehorses) has been retained.<br />
+<br />
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected. The corrections
+are included as comments in the html code which are not displayed
+on the screen. Readers who want to see the corrections can do so
+by looking at the html code in a text editor. Readers whe do not
+have text editing software can access the code from their browser
+by clicking on "view/source." Once the code is available, search
+for the string "TN" (upper case only) to find each change.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Australian Writers, by Desmond Byrne
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Australian Writers
+
+
+Author: Desmond Byrne
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2009  [eBook #28599]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Wilson and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN WRITERS
+
+by
+
+DESMOND BYRNE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Richard Bentley and Son
+Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
+1896
+
+[All rights reserved]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                PAGE
+  INTRODUCTION                     1
+
+  MARCUS CLARKE                   29
+
+  HENRY KINGSLEY                  90
+
+  ADA CAMBRIDGE                  131
+
+  ADAM LINDSAY GORDON            159
+
+  ROLF BOLDREWOOD                189
+
+  MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED            229
+
+  TASMA                          260
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Any survey of the work done by Australian authors suggests a question
+as to what length of time ought to be allowed for the development of
+distinctive national characteristics in the literature of a young
+country self-governing to the extent of being a republic in all but
+name, isolated in position, highly civilised, enjoying all the modern
+luxuries available to the English-speaking race in older lands, and with
+a population fully two-thirds native. The common saying that a country
+cannot be expected to produce literature during the earlier state of its
+growth is too vague a generalisation. There are circumstances by which
+its application may be modified. It certainly does not apply with equal
+force to a country whose early difficulties included race conflicts,
+war with an external power and political labours of great magnitude, and
+to another whose commercial and social development, carried on under
+more modern conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous, has been
+facile, unbroken and extraordinarily rapid.
+
+Nor can paucity of literary product, where it exists, be satisfactorily
+explained by the unrest that continues in a new land long after it has
+attained material prosperity and the higher refinements of life. The
+Americans are a type of an extremely restless people. They have been so
+throughout the greater part of their history, and the characteristic is
+now more marked than ever. It is a fixed condition of their national
+being, an expression of the cumulative ambition that is the source of
+their varied progress. Yet from time to time men have arisen among them
+who not only have given intimate views of a new civilisation, but have
+added something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used to
+call 'the best that is known and thought in the world.' Even when the
+independent nationhood of the United States was still but an aspiration,
+Benjamin Franklin had familiarised Europe with much that has since been
+recognised as inherent in the modes of thought and manners of the
+Western race.
+
+The bulk of the literature of America is, of course, still small in
+proportion to the culture and intellectual energy of the country; but it
+has been and is sufficient to interpret in a more or less distinctive
+way all the leading phases in the evolution of the national thought and
+sentiment. The subtle influence of the deeply-grounded religious feeling
+which, implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations of
+intense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modern
+life offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the
+people in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate it
+in comparison; with the conditions of other countries; the contrasts
+furnished by a society fond of reproducing European habits, yet
+retaining a simplicity and freshness of its own: these and other
+features in the progress of the United States for over a century may be
+found expressed in its literature from the native standpoint, and not
+merely from that of the intelligent outside observer.
+
+An American writer in discussing, a few years ago, the quality of the
+literature produced before the War of Secession, when wealth and leisure
+were abundant among the planters and in the principal New England towns,
+observed that 'there would seem to be something in the relation of a
+colony to the mother-country which dooms the thought and art of the
+former to a hopeless provincialism.' If a comment so largely fanciful
+could be made respecting Australasia and Canada, it would practically
+mean--at all events from the American point of view--that as long as
+they remain dependencies of Great Britain, and therefore lack the
+stimulus of an active patriotism, so long will much of whatever is
+individual in their social development and national aspirations be
+without expression. In the case of the Australasian colonies it would
+further mean (apart from any consideration of their future independence)
+that a people far removed from other communities of the same race and
+already giving promise of being the greatest power south of the equator,
+must continue for an indefinite period to be wholly sustained and swayed
+in matters of thought and art by a country over twelve thousand miles
+distant that happens for the present to offer the most convenient
+markets in which to buy and sell. The point need hardly be discussed,
+but it suggests some facts in the intellectual life of Australia that it
+will be of interest to name. These may not be found to explain why there
+is yet no sign of the coming of an Antipodean Franklin or Irving, or
+Hawthorne or Emerson; but they will help to show why the literature of
+the country grows so unevenly, why it is chiefly of the objective order
+and leaves large tracts of the life of the people untouched.
+
+Perhaps the paradox that a people may read a great deal and yet not be
+interested in literature could hardly be applied to the Australians,
+but it is a fact that they make no special effort to encourage the
+growth of a literature of their own. By no means unconscious of their
+achievements in other directions--in political innovations, in sport and
+athletics--they appear not to take any pride in or see the advantage of
+promoting creative intellectual work. Will this be considered natural
+and reasonable, as already they are supplied with books and plays and
+pictures from England and Europe, or as a proof of thoughtlessness and
+neglect? 'Why,' asked a critic in the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1819,
+'should the Americans write books when a six weeks' passage brings them,
+in their own tongue, our sense, science, and genius in bales and
+hogsheads?' Are the Australians of these days asking themselves a
+similar question? It would seem so. In 1894 they imported books,
+magazines and newspapers from the United Kingdom to the value of
+L363,741: this, too, at a time when most of the colonies were understood
+to be rigidly economising in consequence of a financial crisis. A decade
+before the amount was not far short of a hundred thousand pounds
+higher.
+
+Foremost in his list of the salient intellectual tendencies of the
+native population of the United States Mr. Bryce places 'a desire to be
+abreast of the best thought and work of the world everywhere, and to
+have every form of literature and art adequately represented and
+excellent of its kind, so that America shall be felt to hold her own
+among the nations.' And he further attributes to them 'an admiration for
+literary or scientific eminence, an enthusiasm for anything that can be
+called genius, with an over-readiness to discover it.'
+
+Artistic talent in America has from an early period in the history of
+the country enjoyed the stimulus of local respect and attention. Mr.
+Henry James has testified to the 'extreme honour' in which writers and
+artists have always been held there. Literature is now a subject of
+special systematic study in all the important schools; literary
+organisations are numerous, including no fewer than five thousand
+circles for the study of Shakespeare; authorship has become something
+like a craze in fashionable society; the intelligence of the criticism
+in the weekly press is on the whole equal to that in English journals;
+and several of the magazines are largely devoted to the more artistic
+kinds of writing. If the results of these incentives to production seem
+comparatively small, as they undoubtedly do, it must not be forgotten
+that the profession of letters in America long suffered, and is still
+suffering, from the absence of international copyright law. Before the
+year 1891 the markets were filled with cheap reprints of British and
+European works (often of an inferior class), and even now authors have
+to encounter competition with a vast quantity of foreign matter of which
+copyright, owing to the peculiar conditions of the law and of the
+publishing trade, is often obtained at prices much below its real value.
+
+It is not, however, the native literary product of America that is
+noteworthy so much as the widespread and conscious taste for literature
+among the people, and the means which they adopt to promote it. The
+best friend of Australia could not credit it at present with any
+markedly active desire 'to have every form of literature and art
+adequately represented and excellent of its kind.' In this respect the
+results of the high standard of education attained in the Government
+schools and the subsidised Universities are disappointing. The
+Universities of Sydney and Melbourne will soon be fifty years old, but
+neither is yet represented with distinction in the higher forms of
+literature and art. The Governments, at least, do their duty. Having
+liberally provided for school education, they spend annually large sums
+in making additions to picture-galleries, in maintaining libraries (of
+which there are over eleven hundred), technological schools and museums,
+and in other ways adding to the comfort and enlightenment of the people.
+But large private contributions are rare, and the founding or endowment
+of public institutions still rarer.
+
+Of societies or clubs devoted specially to the interests of literature
+there are very few--probably not half a dozen. Here and there among the
+upper classes there are little coteries whose members read the English
+and French reviews, and are well posted in all movements of interest in
+the world of letters, but there is no actual organisation among them,
+and they do not seek to extend their influence. Their ambition is
+confined to providing for their personal improvement and pleasure. The
+reading of the people, though extensive, is not serious nor in any way
+specialised, unless a recent notably high average of borrowing in the
+historical departments of a few of the free libraries be taken into
+account. The leading book exporters in London say that throughout the
+Antipodes the public demand is confined, as in England, mainly to the
+'general' literature of the hour. 'Whatever has succeeded in London will
+usually succeed in Australia' is the invariable remark of the exporter
+and the first principle that guides his tentative selection in the case
+of all newly-published works. The circulation of the best British weekly
+and monthly reviews by some of the principal subscription libraries
+helps the reader to choose for himself, but if he should wish to buy a
+new book, however valuable, that has not become popular in the business
+sense, he will probably have to send to London for it.
+
+The wealthy people seem to select their reading-matter chiefly with a
+view to entertainment. Not long ago the manager of one of the most
+fashionable of the Melbourne circulating libraries said that about
+ninety per cent. of the female and seventy-five per cent. of the male
+frequenters of such libraries in Australia read only novels. But this
+average is perhaps rather over-stated, being given at a time when there
+was an exceptional demand for certain novels that had obtained notoriety
+by an audacious treatment of sex questions and English society.
+
+A glance at the fare which fourteen of the London publishers provide in
+their colonial editions is of interest. Excellent value, of its kind, is
+usually offered in these issues, but here again we find proclaimed an
+excessive preference for light prose literature. Of 264 volumes in one
+'colonial library,' 238 are of fiction. Sketches, memoirs, reminiscences
+and a few essays make up most of the balance. The taste of the working
+classes, so far as it can be ascertained from the records of the
+principal free libraries, is, curious as it may seem, decidedly sounder
+than that attributed to the customers of the subscription libraries. It
+must be remembered, however, that the former are seldom tempted with new
+fiction, and never with fiction of the spicy or questionable kind. Some
+of the larger institutions are rigidly exclusive in regard to the light
+kinds of literature.
+
+Authorship in Australia loses an important incentive in the absence of
+local magazines. All of the better kind have lacked sufficient public
+support. Several of them, including the _Colonial Monthly_ (established
+by Marcus Clarke), the _Melbourne Review_, the _Centennial Magazine_,
+and the _Australasian Critic_ (the latter conducted by the professors of
+the Melbourne University) promised so well that their want of support is
+not easily explainable. It has been attributed to an unreasoning
+prejudice, an assumption that being locally produced they must
+necessarily be inferior; but this probably does the reading public less
+than justice. Apparently from their contents, most of the magazines
+failed because they were made too Australian in character, too unlike
+the English periodicals to which readers had been so long accustomed.
+There are many fine magazines in the United States, but their conductors
+do not make the mistake of trying to do without British and European
+contributions. They know the value of names as well as of matter.
+Foreign writers supply about one-third of the contents of the monthlies.
+When great interest suddenly attaches to some national question, their
+enterprise, like that of the newspapers of the country, sometimes takes
+the special form of securing cabled summaries of the opinions of
+influential politicians in Great Britain and elsewhere for immediate
+publication.
+
+A contributory cause of the failure of Australian magazines is the fact
+that the cost of their mechanical production has always been higher
+than that of any of their imported competitors. This promises to be a
+difficulty for some years to come. Book-publishing, as a separate
+business, is also practically impossible, for like reasons. The
+Australian reader attaches no special value to the possibilities of the
+local magazine, partly because its place as a literary and art record is
+considered to be fairly supplied by the weekly newspapers. Moreover, it
+is said he demands cheapness as well as high quality in his periodicals,
+and knows that both can be got in several English, American and European
+magazines. If this be so, the same predilection will no doubt account
+for the spectacle of leading London firms sending to the colonies tons
+of their popular modern books in paper covers, and offering them at
+about half the price charged in the United Kingdom, where they are
+obtainable only in cloth-bound editions.
+
+That no one has yet lived by the production of literature in Australia
+is not a matter for surprise. No one, indeed, would seriously think of
+attempting to do so. Gordon was a mounted policeman, a horse-breaker, a
+steeplechase-rider--anything but a professional man of letters; Marcus
+Clarke was a journalist and playwright, and wrote only two novels in
+fourteen years; Rolf Boldrewood's books were written in spare hours
+before and after his daily duties as a country magistrate; Henry
+Kingsley returned to England before publishing anything; Kendall held a
+Government clerkship which he exchanged for journalism; Mr. Brunton
+Stephens is in the Queensland Civil Service; Mr. B. L. Farjeon's
+colonial work was mainly done in connection with the New Zealand press;
+Messrs. Marriott, Watson, E. W. Hornung, J. F. Hogan, Haddon Chambers
+and Guy Boothby, among younger writers, have taken their talents to
+London; and none of the half-dozen female novelists have been dependent
+upon literature for a livelihood.
+
+What, it may be asked, becomes of the best talent developed by the
+Australian schools and Universities? It is employed, or tries to find
+employment, in the practice of law, medicine, journalism and teaching.
+From law to politics is but a step in the colonies, and the chances of
+attaining Cabinet rank, rendered frequent by the prevailing aggressive
+form of party government, are often attractive to men of ability and
+ambition. The journalists are more or less drenched with politics all
+the year round, and they, too, occasionally find it an easy matter to
+vary their occupation by assisting in the active business of law-making.
+The tension of their daily lives, severer than that of the majority of
+press writers in Great Britain, leaves them little or no leisure for
+literary work of the higher kind, and generally the prospect of being
+compelled to send whatever they might write to the other end of the
+world for the chance of publication discourages effort. It may safely be
+said that there are young men on the editorial and reporting staffs of a
+dozen of the principal journals who possess ability that would secure
+them distinction in the wider fields of England or America. To their
+skill and spirited rivalry is due the universally high quality of the
+Antipodean press. Mr. David Christie Murray, writing after considerable
+experience of the colonies, and as one who had been an English
+journalist, said that on the whole he was 'compelled to think it by far
+and away the best in the world.' The remark is without exaggeration so
+far as it applies to the large weekly journals.
+
+The extent of the favour shown by Australian readers to the works of
+their own novelists is, as a rule, exactly proportioned to that which
+their merits have previously won in England. Booksellers and their
+London agents, who of course treat all literature from a purely
+commercial standpoint, are at all events unanimous in discrediting the
+existence in recent years of any prejudice against colonial fiction of
+the better class. It is now very seldom sent out in two or three volume
+form, they say, but neither are the most popular English novels, except
+occasionally to subscription libraries. For representative Australian
+work, then, there is a fair field but no favour. It is as though the
+function and existence of the authors apart from the rank and file of
+English letters were not recognised. There is an exception to this rule
+in the poet Gordon, as a portion of his writings, the Bush _Ballads and
+Galloping Rhymes_, irresistibly commemorate the national love of
+horseflesh and outdoor life. Every Australian now knows that _For the
+Term of his Natural Life_ is a great novel of its class; but as a
+leading Victorian journalist (Mr. James Smith) once pointed out in an
+article in the _Melbourne Review_, Clarke's real merit was for years
+undervalued, because he was known to be 'only a colonial writer.'
+Thousands of English, European and American readers had admired the
+novel before they thought of inquiring who the writer was or whence he
+came. It is true that the story attracted a good deal of interest in
+Australia even during its first appearance as a serial, but from
+elsewhere came its recognition as one of the novels of the century.
+
+The authors whose lives and writings are briefly sketched in this volume
+are all noted in some degree for accuracy and sincerity in their
+representation of life in Australia. They have all written from abundant
+knowledge--from love, also, perhaps it may be added--of this great wide
+land with its brilliant skies, its opportunities and its wholesome
+pleasures. That they should fail to cover their field--that they tell
+too much of country life and adventure and too little of the throb and
+energy of the cities--is in a large measure explained by the fact that
+their books are of necessity primarily written for English readers.
+
+Somehow it is assumed that people in the mother-country continue to be
+interested only in the picturesque, the curious and the unusual in
+Australian life. The idea is in part a survival from earlier years when
+a host of military officers, Civil Servants, journalists and tourists
+described in some form the more obvious peculiarities of the colonies:
+their giant, evergreen forests, strange amorphous animals, aristocratic
+gold-diggers, ex-convicts in carriages, and general state of
+topsy-turveydom. There is quite an amazing variety of occasional records
+of this class in forgotten books, magazines and pamphlets. In at least
+a score of well-known novels there are charming country scenes, true in
+every particular; but there is a distinct limit to the power of fiction
+of this kind to interest remote readers, while much repetition of it
+might well be misleading.
+
+A writer in the _Australasian Critic_ once rightly observed, respecting
+a batch of short stories of the conventionally Australian kind, that
+English readers might 'fancy from them that big cities are unknown in
+Australia; that the population consists of squatters, diggers,
+stock-riders, shepherds and bushrangers; that the superior residences
+are weatherboard homesteads with wide verandas, while the inferior ones
+are huts and tents.' No foreign reader could understand from them that
+'more than half the Australian population have never seen kangaroos or
+emus outside a zoological garden, and that not one in a hundred, or even
+a thousand, has seen a wild black fellow.' There is a well-known type of
+Australian novel to which the same remarks might apply with almost
+equal fitness.
+
+The lack of interest on the part of the novelists in the cities is the
+more noticeable because they contain one-third of the whole population
+of the country, a proportion said not to have a parallel in any other
+part of the world. This neglect is surely a mistake, founded on an
+erroneous conception of the tastes of the English public, and resulting
+partly from the absence of anything like a local literary influence upon
+the writers. 'Have the stress and turmoil of a political career no
+charm?' asks Mr. Edmund Gosse, in referring to the restricted scope of
+the English novel, and in making a plea for 'a larger study of life.'
+
+The same question might with very good reason be raised concerning the
+political life of Australia, which has been almost entirely neglected
+since Mrs. Campbell Praed used up the best of her early impressions and
+settled in England. The majority of the writers of fiction who continue
+to live in the country are women, and possibly not interested in
+politics; but the chief reason why the romance is seldom written of the
+Cabinet Minister who started life as a gold-digger or draper's
+assistant, or of the democratic legislator whose first election was
+announced to him through a hole in a steam-boiler that he was riveting,
+is to be found in a belief that it would not be appreciated in the
+far-off land whither all Australian books must go for the sanction of
+their existence. Here again the British reader appears to be misjudged,
+for has he not accepted from another direction, and enjoyed, _Democracy_
+and _Through One Administration_? Mrs. Praed, lightly skimming the
+surface of Antipodean political life in two of her stories, has shown it
+to be not without humour, nor lacking in the elements of more serious
+interest. But she cannot be said to have exhibited any particular belief
+in the political novel, and none of the more practised among her
+colonial contemporaries has ever given it a trial.
+
+On the main question of a national literature it will perhaps be
+concluded that Australia has yet scarcely any need to be concerned: that
+not much must be expected from a civilisation which, though it has been
+rapid, began little more than a century ago; and that the existence of
+wealth, and the possibilities of leisure and culture which wealth
+affords, cannot produce the same effect upon art in a new country as in
+an old one. The whole matter no doubt is somewhat difficult of decision.
+It has been none the less useful to indicate why so little of the work
+already done is the work of native writers--why the existence of much of
+the best of it may almost be considered accidental. And while a refusal
+to take the trouble of independently judging the worth of a local
+artistic product may or may not be an invariable characteristic of a new
+country, it was also right to contradict on the best available authority
+the assertion of a 'prejudice' against the work of Australian authors.
+
+A portion of the talent that cannot be absorbed in the already
+overcrowded ranks of law and medicine might find employment in building
+a literature which should have something of national savour in it, if
+migration to England were no longer a condition of success to those who
+would make writing a profession, as migration to New York or Boston is
+similarly found to be a necessity to the young Canadian man or woman of
+letters. It need not be wished that the colonial Governments would do
+more than they have done--certainly not that they would create a sort of
+civil pension list, as a section of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria
+contemplated doing ten years ago in discussing a proposed grant to the
+family of Marcus Clarke. But the Universities might extend their
+influence, and those who have leisure might combine to introduce some of
+the methods which have helped to create a living public interest in
+literature and art in European countries. In other words, there is
+needed an increased sense of responsibility in the cultured class: those
+people, among others, who yearly help to fill the luxurious ocean
+steamships on their long journeys to the Old World, and who bring back
+so singularly little practical enthusiasm for their own land in the
+South.
+
+Meanwhile it is encouraging to note the high promise of the work of some
+of the younger writers. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. H. Lindsay Miller), the
+daughter of a well-known Victorian judge, has, in _The Moving Finger_,
+raised the short story to an artistic level hardly approached by any
+other Australian writer. And Mrs. Alick Macleod, author of _An
+Australian Girl_ and _The Silent Sea_, has given in the former novel--a
+fine story, despite some irregularities of form--the most perfect
+description of the peculiar natural features of the country ever
+written. For the first time the Bush is interpreted as well as
+described. In the attitude displayed in this story towards the
+fashionable life of the towns there is habitual impatience and
+occasional scorn. The sketches of Mrs. Anstey Hobbs' efforts to found a
+salon, the flirtations of Mrs. Lee-Travers--who 'chose her admirers to
+suit her style of dress'--Laurette Tareling's solemn respect for
+Government House, and the generally satirical view of the 'incessant
+mimicking of other mimicries,' are no doubt justified; they are often
+decidedly entertaining. But it would of course be a mistake to accept
+all this as more than a partial view of Melbourne society. The book does
+not pretend to deal with it in other than an incidental manner. Mrs.
+Macleod's studies of character and often clever dialogue suggest that
+she might profitably adapt to the presentation of Australian life the
+quiet intensity of Tourgueneff, or the delicately observant style of the
+American critical realists, Henry James, W. D. Howells and Richard
+Harding Davis. And here one wonders whether the Australian novelists who
+find so little material in Sydney and Melbourne have seen what the new
+writer, Henry B. Fuller, has done with the life of modern unromantic
+Chicago?
+
+According to Mr. Howells, America, through the medium of its own
+particular class of novel, 'is getting represented with unexampled
+fulness.' The writers 'excel in small pieces with three or four
+figures,' and are able conveniently to dispense with sensationalism--a
+point not yet reached by Antipodean novelists. 'Every now and then,' he
+says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect
+comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would
+gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody
+else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or
+a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster
+of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story;
+"no promenade, no band of music, nossing!" as Mr. Du Maurier's Frenchman
+said of the meet for a fox-hunt. Yet it is all alive with the keenest
+interest for those who enjoy the study of individual traits and general
+conditions as they make themselves known to American experience.' As the
+Transatlantic social conditions, of which the realistic novel with only
+three or four figures is understood to be the outcome, are being more or
+less repeated in Australia, a similar literary medium will probably be
+found best adapted to the portrayal of life there. At least it may be
+claimed that there is no lack of material in the shape of individual
+traits which have not yet been suitably described in any form.
+
+
+
+
+MARCUS CLARKE.
+
+
+In the peculiarity of his fitful talents, and in the character of his
+best work in fiction--a pathetically slender life's product--Marcus
+Clarke is still alone in Australian literature. Others have shown the
+cheerful, hopeful, romantic aspects of the new land; he, not less
+honestly, but with a more concentrated and individual view, has pictured
+some of the monotony of its half-grown society, the gloom of its
+scenery, and the painful realities of its early penal systems. Reputed
+only as a novelist, he possessed besides imagination some of the higher
+qualities of the critical historian. And had his life been prolonged, he
+might almost have done for Australian city life what Thackeray did for
+the London of seventy years ago. He could, at least, have written a
+novel of manners that would have credited the people of Australia with
+some individuality: such a novel as would mark the effects which
+comparative isolation must produce in a people who are educated and
+intelligent beyond the average of the British race, intensely
+self-contained and ambitious, and of whom two-thirds are now
+native-born,--a novel that would have corrected the too languidly
+accepted judgments of omniscient elderly gentlemen, who, after a few
+weeks or months spent among the smallest and most imitative section of
+Antipodean society, gravely conclude that 'leaves that grow on one
+branch of an oak are not more like leaves that grow upon another, than
+the Australian swarm is like the hive it sprang from.'
+
+A rhetorical half-truth of this kind, as applied to the entire people,
+can best be answered in the manner of the modern realists. The field is
+narrow in Australia, yet not too narrow for the writer who, foregoing
+the taste for sensation, will be content to transcribe and interpret
+impressions of the moving humanity around him to their minutest detail;
+who will forget the pioneer squatter, the Oxford scholar disguised as a
+'rouseabout,' and the digger and bushranger of a past generation; who
+will sacrifice something of dramatic effect in the endeavour to produce
+a faithful and finished picture of colonial middle-class society. As
+qualifications for such work, Clarke had exceptional courage,
+straightness of eye, and a decided taste for exposing shams, superadded
+to a forcible and satirical style of expression.
+
+Whether he had the tact and temperate spirit that must form the basis of
+these qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, if
+he may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as _Civilization
+without Delusion_, _Beaconsfield's Novels_, and _Democratic Snobbery_.
+There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than their
+undoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. They
+show that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudices
+which were marked features of his youth.
+
+Clarke was an anti-Semite, therefore in the Beaconsfield novels he saw
+little beyond an expression of the author's personal exultation as the
+successful representative of a maligned race. In the theological
+controversy of _Civilization without Delusion_, an even less effective
+and becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which,
+in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause for
+tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped,
+almost a barren field. Neglected in boyhood and sapped by early habits
+of dissipation, it had no strength to resist the agnostic conclusions
+which were the product in later years of a coldly critical examination
+of the general grounds of Christian belief.
+
+In dealing with religion, his characteristic independence developed into
+a stiff intellectual pride, and from that into a recklessness which
+disregarded alike his public reputation and the feelings of others. But
+these forays into the preserves of theology were happily rare. Such
+questions obtained no permanent place in his thoughts: they were only
+the passing expression of an ever-besetting mental restlessness. It is
+indeed surprising that a writer with artistic instinct and a sense of
+humour should ever have persuaded himself to enter the fruitless field
+of religious contention at all.
+
+There are a few facts in the early life of Marcus Clarke which are
+sometimes so strongly, and even painfully, reflected in his brief career
+that they form a necessary preface to any consideration of his literary
+work. Soon after his birth at Kensington (London) in 1846 his mother
+died, and thenceforward through all his youth he seems to have received
+little advice or attention from relations. His father, a barrister and
+literary man of retired and eccentric habits, exercised over him a
+merely nominal authority, and so he had liberty to gratify a spirit of
+inquiry and curiosity notably beyond his years. At his own home he
+became the pet of his father's acquaintances, a set of fashionable
+cynics.
+
+In _Human Repetends_, a sketch of his published several years later,
+there is a passage which substantially records his experiences at this
+time: 'I was thrown, when still a boy, into the society of men thrice my
+age, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent in all those wicked and
+witty circles in which virtuous women are conspicuous by their
+absence.... I was suffered at sixteen to ape the vices of sixty.... So
+long as I was reported to be moving only in that set to which my father
+chose to ally himself, he never cared to inquire how I spent the
+extravagant allowance which his indifference, rather than his
+generosity, permitted me to waste. You can guess the result of such a
+training.'
+
+Left alone in the world at the age of eighteen, upon the death of his
+father, he emigrated to Australia. Failing to take any interest in a
+bank-clerkship provided by an uncle for him at Melbourne, he was sent to
+a sheep-station near Glenorchy, one hundred miles inland. Here again he
+paid little attention to the occupation chosen for him. All the day and
+half the night were dreamed away in literary thought. Just as he
+wandered alone over fern-hill and creek-bed, plain and mountain range,
+and absorbed impressions of a scenery at once repulsive and fascinating
+to him, so he dipped into all kinds of literature without method or set
+purpose. But he preferred fiction, and as the consignee of an endless
+succession of French novels he became a marked man in the eyes of the
+village postmaster.
+
+Two years had thus been spent, when a Dr. Lewins, who was known as a
+'materialistic philosopher,' visited the station and made the young
+Englishman's acquaintance. A warm mutual regard resulted, and soon
+Lewins succeeded in obtaining a small post for Clarke on the Melbourne
+_Argus_. This was the beginning of the most brilliant journalistic
+career established on the Australian press.
+
+A less happy result of the same friendship was Clarke's conversion to
+the arid and uninspiring doctrines of materialism, though perhaps it
+could hardly be called a conversion in the case of one upon whom the
+deeper principles of Christian faith had never obtained any real hold.
+
+Colonial democracy seems to have been to Clarke at once a source of
+inspiration and of scorn. Coming from among the English upper classes,
+with the education and temperament of an aristocrat, he was yet readily
+able to sympathise with the higher principles of the new society. Its
+intelligence, virility and free intercourse broadened and interested
+him, as it does most young Englishmen. But for that common product of
+a new country, the pretentious plutocrat, he had only contempt.
+
+It is the bitterness with which this feeling is expressed in his
+journalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for
+work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of
+those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom
+much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's
+character. The same hand that in the famous _Snob Papers_ so savagely,
+and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English
+society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential
+facts of life is the most conspicuous quality. So, too, might it have
+been in the case of the 'Peripatetic Philosopher,' whose weekly
+criticisms of Melbourne men and manners in 1867-68 has correctly been
+judged the best writing of its kind yet done in Australia. In these
+articles, remarkable as the work of one who was only in his
+twenty-second year, there is a closeness of observation and incisiveness
+of style which promised much more for their author than the
+circumstances of his life afterwards permitted him to realise.
+
+The usual effects of an undirected youth and an undisciplined manhood
+explain Marcus Clarke's failure to render to his adopted country the
+service which, as a distinctly gifted writer of the realist school, he
+seemed well fitted to perform. He was a Bohemian, who, while resisting
+the worst vices of his class, shared its carelessness and improvidence
+to a degree that left little energy for ambitious work.
+
+His was not an idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond of
+variety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years'
+literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life to
+country-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art to
+ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a few
+of his compositions: _Lower Bohemia in Melbourne_ (a sketch), _Plot_ (a
+sensational drama), _Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy_ (magazine
+article), _The Humbug Papers_ (humorous and satirical), _The Future
+Australian Race_ (an ethnological study), _Goody Two Shoes_ (a
+pantomime), _Civilization without Delusion_ (a theological discussion
+with the Bishop of Melbourne), _The Power of Love_ (an extravaganza),
+_Dore and Modern Art_ (a review), _Cannabis Indica_ (a psychological
+experiment). Almost the whole of Clarke's life may be said to have been
+devoted to the supply of some temporary demand of the periodical press
+or the stage. Even the two novels which represent his only sustained
+work were written for serial issue in Melbourne magazines.
+
+It does not appear in either case that he wrote with any special view
+to establish a literary reputation; indeed, it would seem that the story
+of convict life might not have been completed but for the strenuous
+importunity of the firm of publishers with whom he had contracted to
+write it.
+
+Journalism, the early occupation of so many eminent men of letters, has
+usually been abandoned as soon as the young writer has once shown
+exceptional ability as a novelist. This rule was not followed by Clarke.
+As the leader in his day of the journalistic class, who, as the late Mr.
+Francis Adams has said with substantial truth, still 'stand almost
+entirely for the conscious literary culture of the whole Antipodean
+community,' he held a position which would have unfavourably affected
+the literary tone and ambition of a still more energetic and original
+writer.
+
+He had no predecessors in the special work he elected to do; he had to
+establish his own standard of achievement; and he was without the
+constant stimulus which intercourse with literary society, such as that
+of London, affords. The demands of the newspapers were then, as now,
+more for purely ephemeral criticism or narrative than for matter worthy
+to rank as permanent literature.
+
+An alert, pithy style and a distinct gift of satirical humour such as
+Clarke had, and developed by a wide range of reading, were just the
+qualities which are always in request on the keen, aggressive daily
+press of Australia. One can easily imagine the flattering demands made
+upon the young author's powers by the men who were his personal friends
+as well as employers.
+
+Whenever he was deficient in taste of expression, or in urbanity of
+criticism (as in his treatment of the Jews), he showed the effects
+partly of impetuous haste, and partly of his remoteness from those
+centres of literary opinion which always beneficially influence a young
+writer, be he ever so original or naturally artistic. It has been
+doubted whether Clarke was ever fully convinced of his own powers; but
+however feasibly this may have applied to the first four or five years
+of his literary career, there was no ground for it after the unanimously
+favourable reception accorded to _For the Term of his Natural Life_ upon
+its issue in book form in 1874.
+
+In England and America, as well as in Australia, this one novel gave him
+an immediate and distinct reputation. With it he might have speedily
+established himself as one of the leading writers of the day, and,
+turning from the depressing realism of penal cruelties which can have no
+further parallel in British countries to something more within our
+sympathies--to the realism of modern Australian life,--have supplied
+what is still conspicuously lacking in Australian fiction. Yet, during
+the remaining seven years of his life he produced no imaginative work
+worthy his name and ability. The ever-ready market of the local
+newspaper press absorbed his best efforts, and such intervals as there
+were he devoted to an attempt to establish himself as a writer and
+adapter for the stage.
+
+In this way the years passed without yielding much beyond a livelihood.
+Meantime, Melbourne was his microcosm: he made a systematic study of its
+life from the purlieus of Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets to the
+palace of his 'model legislator' on Eastern Hill. Like Balzac, one of
+his favourite novelists, he made observation a severe and regular
+business, but he lacked the energy or the patience to take full
+advantage of its results. Balzac employed his accumulated materials in
+bursts of creative energy which, if terrible in their intensity and
+their drain upon his health, had at least method in them, and effected
+their purpose. Poverty did not swerve him, nor prosperity sate him.
+
+That part of genius which consists in natural depth and accuracy of
+vision Clarke had in abundance, but he was weak in the lesser gifts of
+patience and synthetic power, perhaps also in ambition. Moreover, an
+unfortunate extravagance, which led from chronic debt to bankruptcy,
+compelled him to continue the class of work which gave the surest and
+most regular income.
+
+Repeated requests by the Messrs. Bentley for more fiction were neglected
+from year to year, and similar indifference was shown to a flattering
+invitation to join the staff of the _Daily Telegraph_ in London, an
+opportunity that would have led to the establishment of Clarke in those
+literary circles outside of which no purely Australian writer, with the
+exception of Rolf Boldrewood, has ever yet received adequate
+recognition.
+
+Among Clarke's uncompleted writings are a few brilliant chapters of a
+novel which promised to be as permanent a record of his ability as the
+well-known convict story, though of a different kind. But the author had
+the unlucky faculty of attending to anything rather than the work which
+offered him certain fame and fortune, as well as the most natural
+employment of his powers. At the time of his death he was only in his
+thirty-fifth year. Probably with advancing life he would have become
+more settled in his tastes and habits, realising that the work at which
+he was happiest in every sense was the writing of novels, and that
+alone.
+
+The satire and cynicism so noticeable in Clarke's writings, especially
+in his critical sketches and essays, are liable to give an inaccurate
+conception of his temperament. They obscure, as such characteristics
+nearly always do in literature, the gentler aspects of the writer's
+nature. His satire is, perhaps, too uncompromising. It often seems to
+reflect a personal bitterness, to take too little cognisance of the
+springs of human weakness. Undoubtedly brilliant in force and keenness,
+it yet too seldom produces the kind of hearty laugh with which Thackeray
+and Swift, for example, relieve their fiercest scorn. His personal
+experience of life had been discouraging. He had sounded its depths and
+sipped its pleasures; its rude facts found him deficient in self-control
+and fortitude. He had refused to learn the common logic of existence.
+
+There is an element of tragedy in the rapid change which the unhappy
+circumstances of his private life wrought in his temperament. Addressing
+the disciples of Mrs. Grundy in an early essay defending the
+Bohemianism of his youth, he tells them that they are ignorant how
+easily good spirits, good digestion, and jolly companions enable a man
+to triumph over all the ills that flesh is heir to. 'You cannot know,'
+he adds, 'what a fund of humour there is in common life, and how
+ridiculous one's shifts and strugglings appear when viewed through
+Bohemian glass.... Life seems to you but as a "twice told tale, vexing
+the dull ear of a drowsy man" seems but as a vale of tears, a place of
+mourning, weeping, and wailing.... I wish ye had lived for a while in
+"Austin Friars"; it would have enlarged your hearts, believe me.'
+
+This was the cheerful philosophy of Clarke as a young bachelor, after he
+had spent his slender patrimony, disappointed the successive efforts of
+friends to make a business man of him, and was about to begin the
+earning of a living by his pen. A dozen years later we see him with
+developed talents and a valuable name, but broken in fortune and spirit,
+and gloomily anticipating death months before it came. The Jew usurers,
+whose race he despised, had long been his real masters, and, with a
+nature sensitive in the extreme, he writhed in their bondage.
+
+Improvidence had been not merely an unhappy incident, as it is in the
+lives of so many young men of artistic tastes; it had overweighted him
+more or less for years, and 'the thoughtless writer of thoughtful
+literature,' as the author of his biographical memoir has called him,
+sank beneath it while yet at the beginning of a career full of the
+brightest promise. The sort of companionship that pleased his careless
+youth had latterly proved unsatisfying, and to some extent distasteful
+to him. Its effects upon his character were so unfavourable that some
+who had been his companions in journalism felt it necessary, after his
+death, to credit him with a greater capacity for kindly forbearance
+towards humanity than is apparent in the bulk of his writings.
+
+'My friend,' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appear
+to be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which can
+exist in the same individual. In his case these contradictions were so
+apparent--and, if I may use the term, so contradictory--that, unless one
+knew him, it was impossible to believe what his nature was. On the one
+hand, he was recklessly generous, impulsively partisan, morbidly
+sensitive, and highly chivalrous; on the other, forgetful of
+obligations, defiantly antagonistic, unnecessarily caustic, and
+affectedly cynical.... His life was one of impulse, and the direction of
+the impulse depended solely on surrounding circumstances.... He has
+passed from us at an early age, leaving behind him some enemies made,
+perhaps, by his own waywardness; but he has left many friends,
+too,--friends who loved him for the good that was in him.'
+
+In another sketch of the author, his character is thus summed up:
+'Caustic he was sometimes, and cynical always; but beneath there beat a
+heart of gold--a heart tender and pitiful as a woman's.' This estimate
+is amply justified by the power of pathos and the often tender analysis
+of human feeling in _For the Term of his Natural Life_, however absent
+the same qualities may seem in many of the shorter stories.
+
+An interesting picture of Clarke's personality is given by a writer in
+the Sydney _Bulletin_: 'His wit was keen and polished, his humour
+delicate and refined, and his powers of description masterly.... His
+face was a remarkable one--remarkable for its singular beauty. Like
+Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and
+one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of
+genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles
+Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his
+witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant
+things, and scattering _bons mots_ with apparent ease, so that in
+listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived from such books
+as Horace Walpole's correspondence and those of the French
+memoir-writers.... He knew not how to care for money, yet he had none
+of those vices which ordinarily reduce men of genius to destitution, and
+are cloaked beneath the hackneyed phrase, "He had no enemy but
+himself."'
+
+In all his journalistic criticism, Marcus Clarke scarcely more than
+pointed to the material which the life of such cities as Melbourne and
+Sydney offer a novelist capable of work like that of Mr. W. D. Howells,
+or the series of tales of urban society in America by Mr. Marion
+Crawford. There is now an opportunity, and, one might almost say, a
+need, for fiction which shall also, in effect, be salutary criticism.
+The Antipodes have lately illustrated the fact that a single decade will
+sometimes witness a notable change in the conditions of an entire people
+in a new and rapidly-developing country.
+
+Thus, with the struggle for subsistence now keen to a degree which could
+not have been foretold by the gloomiest pessimist a few years ago; with
+Parliaments, hitherto safely democratic, threatened with Socialism by
+the increasing practice of electing artisans and labourers to do the
+legislative work of their respective classes; the crash of fortunes
+which never had substantial existence; the pauperising to-day of the
+paper millionaire of yesterday; the spectacle of worn, old men, after
+overreaching and ruining themselves, starting pitifully the race of life
+afresh, a sinister experience their sole advantage over the faltering
+novice; and that other common spectacle of democratic life, the secure
+and cultured rich cynically eschewing the active business of
+government,--with these and some social aspects still less agree able to
+contemplate there is ample subject-matter for any novelist who may have
+the disposition and ability to carry on the work which Clarke had
+indicated, but scarcely begun, before he died.
+
+_Long Odds_, Clarke's first story, deals with English life, and bears no
+resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is
+chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a _mesalliance_, and
+horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications
+of gambling and intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to
+do with sport than the title suggests. The plot is mainly concerned with
+the selfish, cruel, and infamous in human nature--a singularly dark
+theme for a young beginner in fiction to choose. Except at rare
+intervals when the business of characterisation is momentarily set
+aside, as in the vivid descriptions of the Kirkminster Steeplechase and
+the Matcham Hunt, there is little suggestion of youthful spirit or
+freshness.
+
+The outlines of plot and incident are attractively arranged, the
+expression of life for the most part second-hand and artificial. There
+are traces of Dickens' burlesque without his sympathy, and the high
+colouring of Lytton with less than Lytton's wit. Disraeli's satire, too,
+is echoed in the political scenes. The young Australian squatter, whose
+experiences in England were to have formed the main purpose of the book,
+is allowed no opportunity to show the better, and rarely even the
+ordinary, capabilities of the new race of which he is ostensibly a type.
+
+It is said to be a well-understood maxim of the novelist's art that many
+a liberty taken with hero or heroine, or both, is forgiven if the writer
+keeps a constant eye upon his villain, and deals honestly by him. In
+_Long Odds_ there are two villains, and at least two others villainously
+inclined. Between the four of them the easy-going hero has no chance.
+
+It is natural that, in the construction of a novel which aims at
+dramatic point before anything else, the 'simple Australian,' as his
+author is at last constrained to regard him, should seem less useful
+than the polished and unprincipled man of the world. But in this
+instance the balance of interest is too unequal. Dramatic quality has
+been secured at the expense of tone and proportion. Of the two male
+characters whose exploits in rascality it becomes the real business of
+the story to tell, Rupert Dacre is the more natural and entertaining.
+
+There is an attention to detail in his portrait which suggests that the
+lineaments of the conventional society villain may have been filled in
+with the help of a little personal knowledge, perhaps of some of those
+morally doubtful individuals already mentioned as having been among the
+acquaintances of Clarke's early youth. Dacre is the chief cynic of the
+story, and to him are assigned the best of the dialogue and all of the
+small stock of humour to be found in the novel. But the man who is both
+his associate and enemy, Cyril Chatteris, is a common sort of dastard,
+and altogether disagreeable.
+
+The author is not entirely forgetful of the interests of his nominal
+hero. If throughout three-fourths of the story Calverley is made the
+plaything of circumstances that favour only rogues, he is at last
+allowed a triumph in love and sport which, though unsatisfying from an
+artistic point of view, is calculated to soothe a not too fastidious
+taste for poetic justice.
+
+Conscious of the conventional character of his principal theme, the
+author apparently sought to improve it by deepening its intensity. The
+result of this was to add more of weakness than of strength. Incidents
+that might have been effectively dramatic become melodramatic; the
+conceivably probable is sometimes strained into the obviously
+improbable. The agreeable finish to the minor love-story of Calverley
+and Miss Ffrench does not remove the general savour of sordidness which
+the reader carries away from the study of so much of the bad side of
+human nature.
+
+In connection with criticism of this kind, it ought, however, to be
+noted that other hands besides the author's are known to have
+contributed to the novel. Shortly after it began to appear serially in
+the _Colonial Monthly_, Marcus Clarke fell from a horse while hunting,
+and sustained a fracture of the skull which interrupted his literary
+work for many weeks. How much of the writing had previously been done
+seems to be a subject of dispute. It is, however, quite clear that, in
+order to preserve continuity in the publication of the parts, Clarke's
+friends did write some portion of the story, but whether in accordance
+with the author's _scenario_, supposing one to have existed, has not
+been stated.
+
+'Only a few of the first chapters' were the work of Clarke, says the
+editor of the _Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume_, writing in 1884; but in
+an article published in the _Imperial Review_ (Melbourne) for 1886, the
+contributed matter is limited to a couple of chapters written by Mr.
+G. A. Walstab, and skilfully inserted in the middle of the novel.
+Walstab was one of Clarke's best friends, and he is no doubt the
+'G. A. W.' to whom the story is dedicated 'in grateful remembrance of
+the months of July and August, 1868.'
+
+From the absence of a prefatory explanation when _Long Odds_ was
+published in book form in 1869, it may be assumed that Clarke was
+satisfied with the quality of the contributed work. At least, he was
+willing to take the full responsibility of its authorship. But even with
+this in view, it were well, perhaps, not to hold him too strictly
+accountable for the faults of the story. Not much must be expected from
+a first novel produced in the circumstances mentioned, and issued when
+the author was only twenty-three. In his haste to give it final shape
+immediately after the serial publication, he was probably ill advised.
+One can only regret that it was not set aside for a year or so, and
+written afresh, or, at least, largely revised. Perhaps this would have
+been expecting too much from so unmethodical a worker as Clarke. The far
+finer dramatic taste and literary form of his masterpiece, issued five
+years later, showed how little indicative of his talent was the earlier
+work.
+
+In view of the large extent to which the life of the Australian landed
+classes has been described in fiction during the last twenty years, it
+is curious to read the plea Clarke offered to his Antipodean critics for
+passing over the literary material close at hand and preferring the
+well-worn paths of the English novelist.
+
+During the serial publication of _Long Odds_ the colonial press raised
+some objection to the laying of the scene in England instead of in
+Australia. The author replied simply that Henry Kingsley's _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_ being the best Australian novel that had been, or probably
+would be, written, 'any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting life of
+the colonies could not fail to challenge unfavourable comparison with
+that admirable story.'
+
+The excuse is just a little too adventitious to have convinced even
+those to whom it was originally addressed. None the less, it may at the
+moment have accurately represented the opinion of a beginner who at that
+time could scarcely have known the extent of his own powers.
+
+Probably he had given the subject little thought. His colonial
+experience was certainly less varied than Kingsley's had been. Above
+all, his tastes, and in some degree his temperament, differed
+markedly from those of his predecessor in the field. The judgment or
+instinct that kept him from coming into direct competition with
+Kingsley--assuming his own questionable belief that any effort of his
+would have been competition--at least erred on the side of safety. That
+the immediate alternative should have been an imitative example of a
+hackneyed class of English novel, ineffective of purpose,
+book-inspired, and tainted with the deadness of cynicism, is something
+which admits of a more definite opinion.
+
+'I have often thought,' says the writer, referring to the hero of
+_Geoffry Hamlyn_ 'and I dare say other Australian readers have thought
+also, How would Sam Buckley get on in England? My excuse, therefore, in
+offering to the Australian public a novel in which the plot, the
+sympathies, the interest, and the moral, are all English, must be that
+I have endeavoured to depict with such skill as is permitted to me the
+fortunes of a young Australian in that country which young Australians
+still call "Home."'
+
+Without this prefatory sign-post, the reader could never have suspected
+such a purpose. Clarke may have had it definitely in his mind when he
+first sat down to the work; but if so, it was put aside, consciously or
+unconsciously, after the completion of the first few chapters, in favour
+of more complex characterisation. Bob Calverley, the young squatter,
+really holds a third or fourth place in relation to the main motive of
+the story, and is used rather as a foil than as an exemplar of anything
+typically Australian. He does not bear any active part in the drama of
+passion and intrigue; he is not even permitted to be a passive spectator
+of it.
+
+To say that he was good-natured, jovial, popular, 'the sort of man that
+one involuntarily addresses by his Christian name'; that although he was
+shy and awkward in the society of ladies, at ease with his own sex only
+when cattle and horses were the subject of conversation, ignorant of
+music, and unable to tell Millais from Tenniel, he 'could pick you out
+any bullock in a herd ... shear a hundred sheep a day ... and drive four
+horses down a sidling in a Gippsland range with any man in
+Australia,'--to say all this by way of preliminary, to add that
+Calverley was no fool, and yet to show him in scarcely any other guise
+than that of a trusting victim of rogues, is to go a very short distance
+in the portrayal of a typical Australian.
+
+In the slack-baked condition in which we find him, he merely repeats the
+ordinary spectacle of green youth in the process of seeing life and
+buying experience at the usual high figure. Compared with the real
+squatter (who, ordinarily, is college-trained, and does not shear sheep
+nor risk his neck unnecessarily), Bob, the son of rich 'Old Calverley,'
+and nephew of an English baronet, is as an exaggerated stock-figure of
+the stage to the commonplace blood and brain of everyday life. A
+childlike trust in one's fellows, a reputation for good-nature, an
+untamable taste for horseflesh and the pursuits of the Bush, belong to
+every young squatter in a certain class of Australian fiction; they are
+qualities which may be applied indiscriminately, with always some
+effect.
+
+The real squatter is a more civilised and reliable, if less picturesque,
+person. He likes both work and pleasure, provided they be suitably
+proportioned. His work is in the personal management of his properties;
+his pleasure is taken in the large cities. He entertains no fantastic
+prejudices against urban life, in proof of which he often spends his
+later years in some city hundreds of miles from the scene of his early
+toil and pastoral successes.
+
+As a young man in London, he can be found with rooms at the Langham, the
+Metropole, or some other of the half-dozen fashionable hotels known to
+colonial visitors. There he will entertain his friends, joining with
+them, in turn, the continuous movements of the society season. He
+frankly lacks much of the ease and polish of the young Englishman, but
+his natural amiability and good spirits largely compensate for these
+deficiencies, while they preclude any feeling of discomfort on his own
+part.
+
+During his three or six months' stay in London (the combination usually
+of a little business with a very full programme of pleasure) he spends
+freely, and in his tour of the clubs plays here and there a little at
+cards--perchance loses. Worldly beyond his reputation, and somewhat
+Chesterfieldian in his principles, he consents to be a Roman while at
+Rome. He has inherited the British hatred of fuss and personal
+peculiarity, and none shall call him mean. But, unlike many of his
+English friends at club and course, he has watched and taken some part
+in the hard process of making money, and knows the difference between a
+little gentlemanly extravagance and the reckless hazarding of a fortune.
+At least, it may be affirmed of him that in nine cases out of ten he is
+decidedly no fool.
+
+These are only a few of the prominent outlines of the type of young man
+who, his holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on his own or his
+father's estates. Those whose passion for a horse destroys all
+self-control, who spend thousands in gambling and betting, who
+innocently take every smooth gentleman at his own valuation, are merely
+individuals--persons who may as unfailingly be found in England or
+elsewhere as in Australia.
+
+Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of the British pioneer colonists, as
+every Australian knows. In attempting to give an answer to his own
+speculation of 'How would Sam Buckley get on in England?' Clarke
+presumably undertook to continue the portrayal of this type. The result,
+considered apart from the function Calverley fulfils in _Long Odds_,
+must be held as emphatically a failure.
+
+Never was a novel written with a franker or more deliberate purpose than
+that shown in _For the Term of his Natural Life_. The author had the
+twofold object of picturing the dreadful crudities and brutalities of
+the early system of convict 'reformation' in Australia, and of
+preventing their possible repetition elsewhere. The first of these aims
+was attained with a fuller employment, and perhaps more moderate
+statement of historical facts, than can be found in any other fiction of
+the same class; the second was ineffective, because, when it found
+expression, the abuses which had suggested it no longer continued at the
+Antipodes, and could not conceivably be repeated on the existing
+settlements at Port Blair and Noumea.
+
+The story was written a quarter of a century too late to assist the
+abolition of convict transportation to Australia. Had it appeared at the
+right time, it might have done much where formal inquiries and the
+testimonies of disinterested and humane observers had repeatedly failed.
+For sixty years the practice of deporting criminals had been carried on,
+upheld in England by official indifference and callousness, and in the
+colonies themselves by the greed of a small class of private persons who
+grew rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned convict labour, until
+the free emigrants by the authority of their numbers were able to insist
+upon its cessation. For so long as the colonies were willing to receive
+a population of criminals, so long was England only too anxious to
+supply them and make a virtue out of it. It mattered little to the
+official mind that the system was incurably bad and immoral; the main
+thing was to speedily and effectually transfer an awkward burden to
+other shoulders. The entire history of penal transportation from Great
+Britain throws a sinister light upon the national character. The
+practice originated with banishment of convicts to the American colonies
+under conditions which constituted a form of slavery.
+
+The criminal on being sentenced became a marketable chattel of the
+State. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiring
+the right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence to
+a builder, planter, manufacturer, or other employer beyond the Atlantic.
+The price paid to the British Government averaged five pounds per head,
+and some of the more useful prisoners were resold in America for
+twenty-five pounds each. One of these dealers in convict labour, in
+giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, made a
+matter-of-fact complaint that 'the trade' was not so remunerative as
+people supposed. Artisans sold well, but the profit realised upon them
+was often consumed by losses upon some of the others. One-seventh of his
+purchases died on his hands, and in the course of business he had been
+obliged to give the old, the halt and the lame in for nothing. When the
+War of Independence closed the United States against the traffic,
+Britain was given a fresh opportunity to reconsider and place its penal
+system upon a more humane basis; but the temptation to adopt sweeping
+measures was once more too strong to be resisted. The promoters of the
+Australian scheme were in so great a hurry to seize their chance that
+they despatched over seven hundred convicts before even the site for the
+first settlement was chosen. The hardships which this characteristic act
+afterwards entailed are too familiar in history to need repetition.
+After such recklessness, it is no wonder that, as Sir Roger Therry has
+observed, 'the first-fruits of the system exhibited a state of society
+in New South Wales which the world might be challenged to surpass in
+depravity.'
+
+A generation passed before the British Government reluctantly admitted
+transportation to be a failure. Lord John Russell, as late as 1847,
+discovered that it had been 'too much the custom to consult the
+convenience of Great Britain by getting rid of persons of evil habits,
+and to take that view alone.' In planting provinces which might become
+empires, they 'should endeavour to make them, not seats of malefactors
+and convicts, but communities which may set examples of virtue and
+happiness.'
+
+This mild, platitudinous rebuke came when all the damage was done. It
+remained for the free inhabitants of Australia to point to a plainer
+principle in declaring that 'the inundating of feeble and dependent
+colonies with the criminals of the parent State is opposed to that
+arrangement of Providence by which the virtue of each community is
+destined to combat its own vice.'
+
+To illustrate in a single story all the most prominent and pernicious
+features of the transportation system, Clarke had to invent a case of
+crime in which the criminal, unlike the majority of the worst offenders
+sent to the settlements, should always be worthy of the reader's
+sympathy. It was necessary that the felon be a victim as well as a
+felon; that he should not regain his liberty in any form, but continue
+by a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers to
+experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie
+Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be
+exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist
+between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who,
+for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We
+must treat brutes like brutes,' says the prime martinet of the story:
+'keep 'em down, sir; make 'em _feel_ what they are. They're here to
+work, sir. If they won't work, flog 'em until they will. If they
+work--why, a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'em in mind of what
+they may expect if they get lazy.'
+
+The author chose to represent the extreme case of a man who, innocent of
+a murder charged against him, allowed himself to be transported under an
+assumed name in order to prevent the exposure of a long-concealed act of
+unfaithfulness on the part of a beloved mother.
+
+Richard Devine is the bastard son of an aristocratic Englishwoman who in
+early youth was forced by her father into a loveless union with a rich
+plebeian. The single fault of the mother's life is confessed after
+twenty years, when the husband in a moment of anger strikes her
+high-spirited and obstinate son. The latter consents to leave his home
+for ever, and relinquish the name he has borne. On these terms the wife
+is spared. Richard Devine goes on the instant. Crossing Hampstead Heath,
+he comes upon a robbed and murdered man, and presently is arrested for
+the crime. The explanation that would save him would also cause the
+dreaded exposure of his mother, and so he withholds it, gives a false
+name, and, having put himself beyond the means of defence and the
+recognition of friends, is convicted and sentenced to transportation for
+life.
+
+In making all the subsequent career of Rufus Dawes abnormally
+painful--that of a dumb sufferer who in sixteen years' confinement,
+ending only in a tragic death, experiences by turns every form of
+punishment and oppression--the author often touches, though it cannot be
+said he ever exceeds, the limits of possibility.
+
+'Need one who was not a hardened criminal have suffered so much and so
+long?' is the question that continually recurs to the mind of the
+reader; but it is suggested by the prolonged and pitiful sense of
+unsatisfied justice rather than by any doubting that the extremes of
+penal discipline as practised in the name of the British Government
+between forty and sixty years ago could have been successively applied
+to a single human being. The writer adheres relentlessly to his central
+idea to the end. Dawes' unameliorated servitude and unavenged fate were
+intended to symbolise glaring anomalies of justice which never were
+remedied. The 'correction' he is subjected to was that which the laws of
+the time permitted, and which in many cases goaded its victims to draw
+lots to murder one another in order to escape from their misery.
+
+Some of the least creditable features of convict transportation, of
+which it was said by Earl Grey in 1857 that their existence had been a
+disgrace to the nation, came to an end only when the system itself was
+abolished. But novelist and statesman alike struck at the abuses without
+feeling it necessary to mention any of the good results of the system.
+Its inherent merits were strictly few, indeed; yet they ought to be
+sought in history by anyone who would get a fair idea of the prison
+policy of the period. It is, of course, inevitable that the criticism
+conveyed in a strong imaginative work should fail to give a full view of
+results so complex as those produced by the largely haphazard method of
+the Australian penal settlements.
+
+The practice of assigning prisoners to private employment, for example,
+produced notable effects upon society, of which Marcus Clarke's story
+gives but the faintest indication. If Rufus Dawes had been an ordinary
+first offender, he might have regained liberty soon after his arrival in
+Van Diemen's Land. But, as we have seen, it was the purpose of the
+author to make him exhibit all the rigours of convict discipline. His
+case must therefore be regarded as more exceptional than typical. As a
+rule, only men inveterate in crime were detained in constant punishment.
+Transportation for life meant servitude only for eight years if the
+convict conducted himself well, a condition which, of course, depended
+largely on the sort of master who secured his services. Major de Winton,
+an officer who served for some years on Norfolk Island, has mentioned
+that a prisoner by good conduct received a ticket-of-leave after he had
+been twice sentenced to death, thrice to transportation for life, and to
+cumulative periods of punishment amounting to over a hundred years!
+
+An interesting view of Marcus Clarke as a literary workman is obtained
+from the story of the conception and laborious writing of _For the Term
+of his Natural Life_. It affords the first, and unhappily the last,
+evidence of how far he recognised the claims of realism in fiction; and
+from the account of his suffering under the self-imposed drudgery of
+keeping to the strict line of history, we see the man as his friends
+knew him contrasted with the conscientious artist known to the general
+reader of his famous novel.
+
+The best of Clarke's minor writings display the results of much general
+culture, but give no proof of special preparation. They are short,
+concentrated, forcible--the natural expression of a brilliant,
+impetuous, and spasmodic worker. He overcame his natural repugnance to
+lengthened toil and minute thoroughness when he saw them to be essential
+conditions of his task. But the effort was a severe one.
+
+In 1871, when about twenty-five years of age, he was ordered to recruit
+his health by a trip to Tasmania. He had been for over three years
+writing extensively for the press, and joining in the gaieties of
+Melbourne life at a rate which a constitution much stronger than his
+could not have withstood. The idea of writing a story of prison life had
+suggested itself previously during his reading of Australian history.
+Finding himself now without sufficient money for the proposed holiday,
+he decided to put into active progress this literary project which had
+hitherto been only vaguely outlined.
+
+Printed records of the convict days there were in abundance at
+Melbourne, and from these alone such a writer could have made a
+sufficiently striking story. But he concluded that he could make his
+picture at once truer and more vivid when the surroundings of the old
+settlements had become a full reality to his mind. Messrs. Clarson,
+Massina and Co. readily contracted with the young novelist for the first
+publication of the story in their monthly, the _Australian Journal_, and
+made him an advance of money. Off he went with characteristic
+confidence, and some weeks later returned ready primed and eager for the
+new work. His enthusiasm soon cooled. The story commenced to appear
+after the first few chapters were written, and the unbroken industry
+necessary to maintain a regular supply of the parts was more than Clarke
+could give.
+
+Writing against time, he is said to have felt like a convict himself.
+The irregular dribbling out of the story so injured the reputation of
+the journal that for a time its circulation was reduced to one-half the
+ordinary issue.
+
+Mr. Hamilton Mackinnon, the writer of a sympathetic memoir of Clarke,
+has given an entertaining account of what followed: 'The author would
+be frequently interviewed by the publishers, and would as frequently
+promise the copy. When moral suasion was apparently powerless to effect
+the required object, payments in advance were made with somewhat better
+results; but as this could not go on _ad libitum_, copy would fall into
+arrears again. At last it was found that the only way to get the author
+to finish his tale was to induce him into a room in the
+publishing-house, where, under the benign influences of a pipe, etc.,
+and a lock on the door, the necessary work would be done by the facile
+pen; and in such manner was _His Natural Life_ produced.'
+
+In a note of apology to their readers in January, 1871, the publishers
+print a somewhat comical letter which they had received from the
+delinquent author. Forwarding a single chapter of the story, he tells
+them that they must make shift with it as best they can, and he will let
+them have a larger supply during the following month. The letter
+concludes nonchalantly as follows: 'This is awkward, I admit, and I
+suppose some good-natured friend or other will say that I have
+over-plum-puddinged or hot-whiskied myself in honour of the so-called
+festive season, but I can't help it.'
+
+The story as first published was much longer than the form in which it
+appears in the English edition. At the request of the present writer,
+Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who was one of Clarke's literary friends,
+supplies the following account of how the novel came to be so
+extensively curtailed:
+
+'As one of the trustees to the public library (Melbourne), I saw Clarke
+constantly, and had always a friendly, and sometimes a confidential,
+conversation with him. He visited me now and then at Sorrento, and on
+one of these occasions he spoke of a story he had running through a
+Melbourne periodical about which he was perplexed. He asked me to read
+it, and tell him unreservedly what I thought of it. I read the story
+carefully, making notes on the margin, and wrote him frankly the
+impression it had made on me.
+
+'After twenty years I can recall the substance of the letter, which is
+probably still in existence. A powerful story, I said, but painful as it
+is powerful. The incidents, instead of being depressing, would be tragic
+if they befell anyone we loved or honoured. But there was no one in the
+story whom he could have intended us to love or honour. The hero
+underwent a lifelong torture without any credible, or even intelligible,
+motive, and on the whole was a _mauvais sujet_ himself. To win the
+reader's sympathy, all this must be altered. I strongly advised that the
+latter part of the story, in which the Ballarat outbreak was described
+under a leader whom he named Peter Brawler, should be omitted; and I
+objected to the publication of a song in French _argot_ with a spirited
+translation, as the latter would naturally be attributed to the author
+of the novel, whereas I had read it in an early _Blackwood_ before he
+was born.
+
+'Marcus Clarke thanked me warmly, and said he would adopt all my
+suggestions. He wrote a new prologue, in which he made the protection of
+his mother's good name the motive of the hero's silence, and he omitted
+both the things I had objected to.'
+
+Ending, as it began, with a tragedy, the artistic unity of the novel is
+thus preserved, and the dominant aim of the author emphasised. Many of
+those who read it in the serial parts strongly disapproved of the
+excisions, but there can be little doubt that the story is the stronger
+for their having been made.
+
+It was as the work of a vivid historian, rather than of a social
+reformer, that Marcus Clarke's masterpiece won its popularity, and, for
+its dramatic and substantially accurate view of the worst (always the
+worst) aspect of convict life, it will continue to be read while anyone
+remains to take an interest in the unhappiest period of Australian
+history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the
+intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical
+method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and
+inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was
+fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far
+English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and
+invested with more power than single individuals should ever possess,
+may become despots, and even blackguards.
+
+It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the
+originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of
+1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with
+all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself
+even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact
+historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great
+privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first
+thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the
+officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with
+the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they
+held.
+
+Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made
+no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of
+Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin.
+
+In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary
+throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically
+put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good
+effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the
+colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often
+wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system.
+His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his
+term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system
+loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the
+other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to
+their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate.
+
+The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of
+punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest,
+consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the
+highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.' It was with the latter
+part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to
+represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk
+Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir
+George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the
+experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House
+of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and
+'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting
+those who undergo punishment.'
+
+The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke's plot was always seen clearly,
+but never obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme that of the impetuous
+reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment
+known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral
+with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid
+eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian
+novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained
+by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and
+by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson
+to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm and
+impersonal presentation.
+
+In the rapid progress of the plot the reader is kept keenly interested.
+If he have an eye for the moral he will detect it at once; if not, there
+is no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he will
+find the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness of
+truth,' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. He
+confessed that the book had a fascination for him. Not once or twice,
+but many times, had he read it, and during his visit to Australia he
+spent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements and
+examining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based.
+
+That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardly
+be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and
+outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify
+the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully
+depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _His
+Natural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most
+young writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good an
+artist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any misuse of the
+privileges of good fiction. To maintain a strong impression on the
+reader, his touch is occasionally strong and fearless, like that of
+Kipling. But this object attained, he uses his materials with an almost
+unnecessary reticence. The episode of the cannibalism of Gabbett and his
+fellow-convicts is exceptional. Yet it purposely falls short of the
+terrible original, which is happily hidden away from general view
+between the covers of an old Parliamentary report.
+
+It has been said of Clarke, by one of his friends, that in his estimate
+of motives he was invariably cynical. Though the assertion goes too far,
+it seems to suggest the best explanation of his notable preference for
+delineating the dark side of human nature. He appeared ever to see vice
+more clearly, or at any rate to find it more interesting for the
+purposes of fiction, than the good or the neutral in character. But his
+cynicism--if it really formed a settled feature of his character--was
+not of the kind that implies any indifference to injustice or
+dishonesty. In this particular, both his fiction and essays have no
+uncertain tone. It is indeed a fault of Clarke that his bad characters
+are in most cases wholly bad. He makes Frere abandon a life of
+debauchery under the influence of a pure woman's affection, but the
+effect is afterwards destroyed by evidences that the attachment on the
+man's side is sensual and based on vanity. Moreover, Frere the prison
+tyrant and base denier of Dawes' heroism remains unexcused.
+
+Bob Calverley and Miss Ffrench, the only important representatives of
+the ordinary virtues in _Long Odds_, are little more than dim shadows
+contrasted with the clearly-marked personalities of half a dozen others
+in the story who are rogues, or the associates and instruments of
+rogues. 'The human anguish of every page' of _His Natural Life_ which
+Lord Rosebery found so compelling to his attention, need not have been
+so continuous and unqualified.
+
+The author seems purposely to have ignored the opportunity afforded by
+the story for the introduction of a character who, while asserting the
+claims of Rufus Dawes and the broader interests of humanity, need not
+have defeated the main motive of the plot. It was a decided error not to
+gratify in this way the combative instinct of the reader. The Rev. James
+North--'gentleman, scholar, and Christian priest'--might have been an
+active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the clergyman in _It's Never Too
+Late to Mend_, instead of being made a pitiable example of a confirmed
+and self-accusing drunkard.
+
+The strength of _His Natural Life_ lies not so much in the ingenuity and
+dramatic quality of its plot, as in the number of striking personalities
+among its leading characters. That of Rufus Dawes, curiously, is
+distinct only at intervals. It represents, for the most part, a
+hopeless sufferer passing through a series of punishments which become
+almost monotonous in their unvaried severity.
+
+But what could be more luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the
+clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of
+an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or
+that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured
+convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of
+criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of all else?
+
+How naturally from such a person comes that savagely humorous
+dissertation upon the treatment of prisoners! 'There is a sort of
+satisfaction to me, by George! in keeping the scoundrels in order. I
+like to see the fellows' eyes glint at you as you walk past 'em. Gad!
+they'd tear me to pieces if they dared, some of 'em.'
+
+Frere is a triumph of consistent literary portraiture. He is generally
+understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose
+name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably
+more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus Dawes, it must
+be assumed that Clarke aimed only at the representation of a type.
+
+Brutes like Frere and his vindictive associates, Burgess and Troke,
+there undoubtedly were on the settlements, but the average official has
+probably a better representative in Major Vickers, the Commandant.
+Vickers is not an unkind man, but does not trust himself to do anything
+unprovided for in the 'regulations,' for which he has an abject respect.
+'It is not for me to find fault with the system,' he says; 'but I have
+sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the
+chain-gang and the cat.' But he never gives intelligence, much less
+kindness, a fair trial.
+
+Sylvia Vickers is the only complete picture of a good woman to be found
+in any of the author's stories. Taken in childhood by her parents to the
+penal settlements, and separated there for years from youthful society,
+familiarised with the constant aspects of crime and suffering, and
+habitually in the society of her elders, she early develops into a
+quaint, matter-of-fact little creature, such as might well disconcert a
+peacock like the Reverend Meekin.
+
+To Frere, whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, her
+innocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as a
+strong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruel
+fraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so
+tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a
+relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. Sylvia Vickers,
+despite the gloomy environment of her youth, is throughout an intensely
+womanly woman, the delicate conception of whose character surely places
+her creator far above the rank of the cynics in literature.
+
+Not the least of the elements which combine to make _His Natural Life_
+one of the most remarkable novels of the century is the occasional
+skilful varying of its painful realism with a colouring of romance, as
+in the relations between Dawes and Sylvia: his absorbing devotion when
+she is so strangely made dependent upon him at the deserted settlement;
+his long-continued confidence that she will effect his vindication and
+deliverance; and, finally, the dominant motive of securing her safety
+against North with which he escapes from the gaol at Norfolk Island, and
+joins her in the doomed schooner on its last voyage to Van Diemen's
+Land.
+
+What Oliver Wendell Holmes called 'the Robinson Crusoe touches' in the
+story--including the experiences of the marooned party at Macquarie
+Harbour, and those of Rex in his escape through the Devil's
+Blowhole--also help to leave with the reader of the novel an
+ineffaceable memory.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY KINGSLEY.
+
+
+What are the special qualities that constitute the permanent charm of
+Henry Kingsley's early novels? Some English critics, judging him by
+principles of literary art, have said that his best work is in many
+places of slovenly construction, deficient in dramatic power, and
+imitative in expression. A series of episodes, they observe, supply the
+place of a plot in _The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn_; the central
+motive of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ is an impossible story of a
+young woman's self-sacrifice; and the Thackerayan mannerisms in
+_Ravenshoe_ are an offensive blemish upon an otherwise fine novel.
+
+As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than
+may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely
+credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style
+far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers
+in his own country have even attempted to raise him to a position above
+that of his more celebrated brother.
+
+The task of comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with
+Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a
+hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as
+it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of
+them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in
+one particular does it seem quite safe to predict--namely, that whatever
+may be the future standing of one who is said to have never penned a
+story without a didactic purpose of some kind, Henry Kingsley is certain
+of a permanent place in the literature of the young country where he
+encountered both the best and the worst experiences of his life.
+
+The English estimate of his novels--mainly a technical one--having been
+recorded, it seems to the present writer that something of interest
+might be said of them from, as far as possible, the Australian point of
+view, the standpoint of the reader who knows the country of Sam Buckley
+and Alice Brentwood, and has lived some of their life. Two out of the
+three best novels are largely Australian in matter, and the reasons for
+their enduring popularity in the colonies are among the best grounds of
+the favour in which the author is held by the average English reader, to
+leave out of reckoning for the moment the literary expert. _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ have obvious faults, but in
+most respects they are the highest, because the least artificial,
+expression of Kingsley's powers. A consideration of some of their more
+noticeable qualities will perhaps afford the clearest answer to the
+question which opens this essay.
+
+Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of
+education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields
+of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with
+ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford
+without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, he hurried off
+to the Victorian gold-fields, which were then in the early sensational
+period of their development, and attracting people from all parts of the
+world. It was the time when the ordinary business of the colonies could
+scarcely be carried on at any sacrifice--when some of the more perplexed
+employers in the adjoining territory of New South Wales had urged
+Governor Fitzroy to proclaim martial law and peremptorily prohibit
+mining, 'in order that the inducement which seemed so irresistible to
+persons to quit their ordinary occupations might be removed.' In the
+country districts crops were left unreaped and sheep unshorn; in the
+towns masters did their own work or paid excessively to have it half
+done; while the harbours were filled with vessels whose crews had
+deserted to join in the general scramble for gold. No one was content to
+stand behind a counter all day and hear of nuggets being found
+up-country which sold for over four thousand pounds. 'As well attempt to
+stop the influx of the tide as stop the rush to the diggings,' was the
+reply given by Fitzroy to his petitioners.
+
+Ex-military and naval officers, professional men, convicts from Van
+Diemen's Land, picturesque cut-throats from the Californian and Mexican
+mines, Chinese, and many other varieties of the human species, rubbed
+shoulders and lived generally in remarkable order and amity in the
+crowded canvas cities of Turon, Mount Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo.
+In 1852, the year before Kingsley's arrival, seventy thousand of them
+were toiling in Victoria alone.
+
+Such were the times and the people which gave the future novelist his
+first practical experience of colonial life. The varied knowledge that
+he accumulated, first of the gold-fields and later of pastoral life and
+the towns, was the only reward of his five years' voluntary exile from
+England. During his absence he never wrote to his parents, and they
+thought him dead. His reticence as to his unsuccessful struggles was
+continued when he returned home, and not relaxed in later life even to
+his wife.
+
+An interesting memoir by Mr. Clement Shorter, prefixed to a new edition
+of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary
+career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent
+in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which
+succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less
+precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman
+in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he
+was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then,
+like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel the country
+in search of work on the sheep and cattle stations.
+
+A well-known pastoralist of the western district of Victoria, the late
+Hon. Philip Russell, was accustomed to describe to his friends the
+arrival at his station many years ago of a party of 'sundowners'
+(_i.e._, tramps), among whom was Kingsley, looking 'very much down on
+his luck.' Soon found to be no ordinary swagman, he was made a guest at
+the station, where he remained for several months. The most agreeable
+glimpse obtainable of his colonial life is given in _Old Melbourne
+Memories_, a little collection of sketches published by Rolf Boldrewood
+twelve years ago.
+
+At the period which they recall, Boldrewood was a young man, and making
+the experiment in squatting which, though disastrous in its ultimate
+commercial results, was afterwards turned to a rich literary account by
+him. A friend of his named Mitchell occupied a station in western
+Victoria named Langa-willi, and there on one occasion Boldrewood met
+Kingsley. The passage in which he gracefully records the event is worth
+quoting in full.
+
+'Why Langa-willi,' he says, 'will always be a point of interest in my
+memory, apart from other reasons, for I spent many a pleasant day there,
+was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest
+of Mitchell's.
+
+'It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffry Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the
+best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the
+well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can
+imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down
+comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden
+forth with his overseer to make-believe to inspect the flocks, but in
+reality to get an appetite for lunch.
+
+'I like to think of them both spending the evening sociably in their own
+way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing away till he had covered
+the regulation number of sheets or finished the chapter, perhaps when
+the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell reading steadily, or writing
+up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the
+glasses at ten o'clock; then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke on the
+verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, happy,
+unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not strong, and
+for his talented guest, who was not always so profitably employed. I
+suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often
+looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the
+restful evenings spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi.'
+
+At least one of them must often have recalled those days as being among
+the happiest of a none too happy life. The main features of Kingsley's
+career after he returned to England may be summarised here in a few
+words. The distinct success as a novelist which he won during the first
+four or five years was not maintained. His work lessened in interest as
+he lost the _verve_ of youth, increased his leaning towards romance, and
+became more conventional in his methods.
+
+He essayed journalism for a time, first as editor of the Edinburgh
+_Daily Review_, and later as a correspondent of the same journal at the
+Franco-German War. As an editor he was a failure, through being without
+the necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had
+much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The
+writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed
+always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he
+employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy.
+Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his
+life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of
+which he has left so worthy a memorial in his first novels.
+
+It is characteristic of Kingsley that he never wrote an ungenerous word
+of the country which sent him away empty-handed from the store of its
+riches. Not even a suggestion of the fruitless toil and the
+disillusionment which he shared with scores of other amateur diggers
+during the first two years of his colonial life finds expression in any
+of his novels. His choice of incident and adventure in _Geoffry Hamlyn_
+seems to imply a deliberate ignoring of what was by far the most
+striking development of Antipodean life in the decade of 1850-60.
+
+The gold-fields were then in a sense an epitome of the world, the centre
+at which all men's thoughts converged, an ever-changing spectacle, a
+daily source of novelty and suggestion. The life of the squatters was
+primitive, inferior in variety, and marked only by a rapid accumulation
+of wealth, which was in itself but a part of the general prosperity
+created by the discovery of gold. If Kingsley wished to repress memories
+which it would have been against his cheerful nature to perpetuate, he
+succeeded with singular completeness.
+
+Save the technical knowledge of geology shown by Trevittick in _The
+Hillyars and the Burtons_, and by the encyclopaedic Dr. Mulhaus in his
+lecture at the picnic in the grass-covered crater of Mirngish, there is
+nothing to suggest that the author had any personal acquaintance with
+mining in the colonies. The experience that was so fresh and abundant in
+his mind is put aside in favour of a set of facts and pictures not even
+incidentally connected with life on the gold-fields.
+
+As if to emphasise the motive of his choice, if motive there was, he
+selected the pre-auriferous period for the Australian parts of his
+stories. His squatters become wealthy by a comparatively slow process,
+extending over some sixteen years. The squatters of the gold period
+would certainly seem better adapted to the purposes of fiction. There
+is, indeed, more than a suggestion of romance in the sudden burst of
+fortune which within the first few years after 1851 raised so many of
+them from positions of struggling uncertainty to affluence, with incomes
+varying from ten to twenty thousand pounds, and in some few cases as
+high as thirty thousand pounds, a year.
+
+The first and last use Kingsley made of his gold-fields experience is
+seen in the sketch of mining of the successful sort in the third volume
+of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but this is so slight that it might
+have been imagined by a writer who had never handled a shovel or a
+washing-cradle in his life.
+
+The Australian people have so often been the subject of flippant and
+ill-natured criticisms, that they can readily appreciate any liberal
+estimate of themselves in whatever form it may be placed before their
+kindred in Great Britain. It is a fact, as natural as it is undeniable,
+that they are very sensitive to praise or blame. What wounds them more
+than adverse comment itself, is the circumstance of its often proceeding
+from persons who have accepted without warning their too prompt and
+trustful hospitality.
+
+To anyone but the incorrigibly confident and good-natured Antipodean,
+the lesson would be obvious, namely, that the distinguished visitor
+should be petted less, and left more dependent upon his own devices in
+the collection of materials for the inevitable book or magazine article.
+Though the result might be the same, there would be no ingratitude, and
+the critic would be less able to pose as an impartial inside observer of
+Australian society.
+
+Perhaps, indeed, though this implies a somewhat wild flight of
+imagination, he might altogether escape the fatal sense of compulsion
+towards printers'-ink, under which the traveller of a few weeks' or
+months' experience commonly labours when once he has extricated himself
+from the blandishments of Toorak or Darling Point.
+
+It is true that Australia has received many a compliment from casual
+writers, but to Australians themselves it is always a question whether
+these kindnesses are not outbalanced by the inaccuracies which surround
+them. For it may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do
+not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a
+complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well
+to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall
+say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy and pardonable?
+
+By contrast with the judgments of persons to whom candour concerning the
+colonies seems to be a stern duty, Henry Kingsley's pictures of the
+pioneer life of Australia fifty years ago, and his liberal estimate
+(since largely realised) of the future of the country, find more
+enduring appreciation than would, perhaps, be accorded such writing in
+ordinary circumstances.
+
+The good feeling that shines on every page of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ would
+earn gratitude from Australian readers were the story not in itself
+spirited and absorbing. If from the personal experiences with which this
+first novel is crowded Kingsley excluded everything that might be
+unfavourable to the reputation of Australia and its people, he at least
+told nothing that was untrue. His record of the country is a generous
+one, but there is no flattery--at least, none of the grosser sort.
+
+It is one of his supreme qualities, too, that while delighting to
+preserve unmodified the British spirit and traditions in his emigrant
+colonists, he surrounds their offspring with a subtle distinction. Some
+of the manly strength and courtly serenity, the truth, honour, and
+delicacy of the ideal Englishman and Englishwoman they reproduce; and
+then there is added a something caught from the warm air and the broader
+expanses of the South--a new impulse, a deeper tinge in the blood, a
+greater trust in human nature.
+
+As befitting the early period of which the novelist wrote, this
+difference is not strongly marked, and is more readily recognisable in
+the light of colonial experience than without it; but it clearly exists.
+Its continuation at the present day is far more apparent. Kingsley's
+young Australians are home-taught, and necessarily display most of the
+characteristics of their British parents. But, still, they show
+themselves types of a new race, which has now its hundreds of
+representatives in the homes of the Australian gentry.
+
+Of such was the young squatter who so attracted the attention of Mr.
+Froude at the first station he visited in Victoria. 'He had till within
+a month or two been herding cattle in Queensland, doing the work for
+four years of the roughest emigrant field hand, yet had retained the
+manners of the finest of fine gentlemen--tall, spare-loined, agile as a
+deer, and with a face that might have belonged to Sir Lancelot.' Of
+course, the genial author of _Oceana_ made no pretence of minute
+observation in the account of his travels. Had he not been content to
+fly through the country, viewing it mainly, as he admits, from 'softest
+sofas' of 'a superlative carriage lined with blue satin,' he might have
+seen not one, but many fine specimens of what Sir George Bowen has aptly
+called the working aristocracy of Australia.
+
+The little Arcadian kingdom--cheerful, self-contained, and
+picturesque--of the Buckleys, the Brentwoods, and their historian,
+Geoffry Hamlyn, of the Mayfords, Tom Troubridge, Mary Hawker, and the
+rest, far from illustrates all the intermittent successes and hardships
+which have commonly attended squatting in Australia. The toil,
+loneliness, and monotony of the occupation are scarcely mentioned. The
+aspect represented is almost entirely the agreeable one.
+
+There is, it must be admitted, some ground for the charge that he has
+made squatting life 'too much like a prolonged picnic.' Had Kingsley
+been himself a pastoralist, a hundred minute experiences might have
+obtained expression which he has avoided. In this respect the
+historical value of his work is less than it might have been. But the
+compensating gain in human interest more than justifies the author's
+choice of treatment. He never allowed himself to forget that he was
+telling a story, that he was writing the adventures of a small group of
+emigrant English families, not a history of colonial settlement and its
+difficulties. Nor does he ever take advantage of the fact that, with the
+exception of two or three others whose works are collections of sketches
+rather than novels, and whose names are now almost forgotten, he was the
+first to describe in fiction the rural life of the country, to recognise
+the beginning of an aristocracy of landholders, and to commemorate the
+pervading spirit of cheerful confidence to which so much of the rapid
+early development of Australia was due.
+
+It may well be regretted that one who had so keen an eye for all that
+was best in the social life of the country, at one of its most
+interesting periods, should not have written a volume or two of
+reminiscences, but no colonial reader would wish _Geoffry Hamlyn_ or
+_The Hillyars and the Burtons_ to have been made the vehicle of more
+descriptive matter than they contain. Kingsley was more sparing in the
+use of local colour and incident than Boldrewood and some of the younger
+writers are, though in his first novel a few passages occur which may be
+considered unnecessary, including the story told by the hut-keeper to
+Hamlyn in the presence of the disguised bushrangers, the whisking of
+Captain Blockstrop and his friends on and off the stage, and the story
+of the lost child. The latter, however, like Dr. Mulhaus' geological
+lecture, has the merit of being one of the best pieces of prose the
+author ever wrote, and gives Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford an
+opportunity for a dramatic settlement of the order of their suit for the
+hand of Alice Brentwood. In the main narrative the periods of 'dull
+prosperity' are expressly avoided. After that first beautiful picture of
+the pioneer settlement, 'the scene so venerable, so ancient, so seldom
+seen in the old world--the patriarchs moving into the desert with all
+their wealth to find a new pasture land'--the action of the story is
+rapidly advanced to the later days of their success. The estate which
+has been the home of Major Buckley's forefathers for generations no
+longer providing a competence, he has resolutely left it for the land
+where he is to find 'a new heaven and a new earth.' Unlike so many of
+the pioneers, he has bade a final good-bye to England, but that it is
+_not_ 'for ever' one can safely predict from the outset. He sees the old
+country in long years after, when, with some of the wealth garnered on
+the rolling prairies of Northern Australia, his son has proudly bought
+back the family domain of Clere in all the completeness of its original
+acres. Within a few brief chapters the colonists are discovered in the
+security of assured wealth. Sitting under their station verandahs, they
+can contemplate almost with calmness the death of their cattle by
+hundreds, and the devastation of their runs by Bush fires. They have
+arrived at the period when 'there was money in the bank, claret in the
+cellar, and race-horses in the paddock.' Meanwhile, the old Devonshire
+life is becoming a dim memory. They have kept their promise to create a
+new Drumston in the wilderness, and are well content with their homes
+among the southern fern-clad hills. The history of their intercourse
+approaches the character of an epic. Over his structure of realism--of
+life as he saw it and lived it himself--the writer has cast a softening
+glow of romance, through which are seen the beauties of ideal
+friendship, of youthful love, family affection, pride of nationality,
+and charity towards all mankind.
+
+Kingsley was a lover of his fellows, and wont to declare that the
+proportion of good to bad in human nature was as ten to one the world
+over. This tenet of his religion he infused in some measure into all his
+novels. It is this they teach if they teach anything. From it spring
+their most vital qualities. The best of the stories possess that
+'certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,' which Matthew Arnold
+assigned as the gift of literary genius. Their virility and right
+feeling are unmistakable, and insensibly teach the practice of a silent
+and kindly forbearance towards the foibles of our fellow-creatures. The
+names alone of the principal characters in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ recall scene
+after scene in their idyllic life to which it refreshes the mind to
+return. There is Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature,
+refined, calmly courageous--a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs.
+Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom
+Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and
+didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to
+politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend
+her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic,
+passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; Captain
+Brentwood, of Wellington's artillery, and his gallant son Jim, who is
+sighing for a red coat and a commission; Sam and Alice, the young lovers
+so nearly lost to each other 'in the year when the bushrangers came
+down'; and Dr. Mulhaus, the mysterious German, with his good-humoured
+roar, first heard at old Drumston, and with us to the end, who is
+everybody's friend and counsellor, and beloved by all--except George
+Hawker, of whose 'tom-cat' skull he has made that amusingly audacious
+examination at the beginning of their acquaintance. It is delightful to
+find all the faces familiar in the old land reappearing in the new, even
+though the coincidences which attend their coming seem too good to be
+true.
+
+But the reader forgets the occasional loose-jointedness of the story in
+contemplation of the swift succession of happy scenes created for him.
+In these there is nothing dubious or artificial. They are sketches
+straight from the life of the country, and it is their beauty that makes
+_Geoffry Hamlyn_ a classic in Australian literature.
+
+Among the characters, there are so many who inspire us with love rather
+than mere interest, that a multiplicity of similar scenes, of
+conversations, rides, pleasure-excursions, and other intercourse, which
+in another book might prove wearisome, becomes here the best enjoyment
+of the reader. With what vivacity and gusto the author describes the
+visits exchanged between the home stations, and the comforts and
+happiness which they reveal! Half the book is made up of them, and yet
+the majority remain sufficiently clear in the memory to be recalled
+separately. Brentwood, who is at first fifty miles away, buys a station
+near at hand, he and Buckley having become inseparable, and now Baroona,
+Garoopna, and Toonarbin are only a few miles apart. 'There was always a
+hostage from one staying as a guest at the other.' The visits were
+generally unannounced, and the visitors stayed as long as they felt
+inclined to. The effects of this custom are once amusingly illustrated
+at the home of Captain Brentwood. It is when the members of the little
+colony hear of the arrival of his beautiful daughter from Sydney, where
+she has been at school. 'That week one of those runs upon the Captain's
+hospitality took place which are common enough in the Bush, and,
+although causing a temporary inconvenience, are generally as much
+enjoyed by the entertainers as the entertained. Everybody during this
+next week came to see them, and nobody went back again. So by the end of
+the week there were a dozen or fourteen guests assembled, all uninvited,
+and apparently bent on making a long stay of it.' They help one another
+when there is work to be done, dine sumptuously, picnic luxuriously.
+Kingsley has properly made eating and drinking a noticeable part of the
+hearty full-bodied existence of his squatters and their friends.
+
+There is no class of people who have a better capacity for enjoying the
+material comforts of life than the country gentlemen of Australia. Major
+Buckley is just the sort of person one might have expected to hold
+decided views on the subject of dining as an art. To dine in the middle
+of the day was, in his opinion, a gross abuse of the gifts of
+Providence. 'I eat my dinner not so much for the sake of the dinner
+itself as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows--a feeling that
+you have nothing to do, and that, if you had, you'd be shot if you'd do
+it.'
+
+On another occasion the author himself preaches a similarly agreeable
+doctrine, concluding with the advice: 'My brother, let us breakfast in
+Scotland, lunch in Australia, and dine in France, till our lives end.'
+
+Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone in
+an armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything for
+himself, would, in the author's opinion, 'show himself a man of weak
+mind.' Niggers were all that a Southern gentleman wanted to complete his
+comfort when the sun was at baking-point. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's teachings
+undergo a playful deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for
+cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of
+perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of
+Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two
+lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The
+Southern gentleman undertakes to affirm that she didn't.
+
+In the conversation of Kingsley's colonists, the business of the
+squatter, his hopes, fears and struggles, find no place, and the idea of
+hard work is never obtruded for its own sake. The talk is the talk of a
+cultured class who live wholesome lives and have no cares. The twelve
+thousand miles that separate them from the centre of their intellectual
+life are obliterated. The men preserve their individual tastes, together
+with that comradeship and mutual considerateness which have their origin
+in the best traditions of college life. The same loyalty and chivalry
+are prominently reproduced in the characters of _Ravenshoe_ and _Silcote
+of Silcotes_. But in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ these qualities are perhaps more
+noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the later
+novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially
+competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached
+to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an
+Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only
+the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is
+intent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to provide
+for a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the new
+country an even better field than the old one for his researches as a
+naturalist and geologist. In telling his story, Kingsley seems, in
+short, to have treated pioneer squatting in Australia as the brighter
+aspects of English country life have been treated in fiction for
+generations past. He expends his best efforts in showing the picturesque
+surroundings and interior comfort of Australian homes. Neither their
+tables nor their bookshelves lack any of the best luxuries of the hour.
+The greyness and rawness of their environment are not touched upon.
+Marcus Clarke could never have shown the Australian people so much of
+the beauty of their strange fauna and flora as can be found in _Geoffry
+Hamlyn_. He would have allowed the budding civilisation of the country
+to be swallowed up in sombre desolate forests, or appear as lonely
+specks on bleached and thirsty plains. Though he might intend the
+contrary, that, substantially, would be the final impression left on
+the mind of the reader. Australian scenery awed and depressed him. With
+all his powers of graphic expression, he could seldom write of it
+without exaggeration. It was the fascination of the grotesque rather
+than the picturesque that he felt. Kingsley, though scarcely so graceful
+and vivid a describer, had a keener and more constant sense of natural
+beauty. His vision was unclouded by the peculiar susceptibility of
+temperament which narrowed the view of his brilliant contemporary. He
+could not have indulged in rhetorical flourishes at the expense of
+accuracy, as in the familiar passage professing to give the Australian
+view of 'our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds
+who cannot fly, our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all
+fours.' A comparison of Marcus Clarke's too often quoted description
+with the sketches of landscape given in, say, the twentieth,
+twenty-eighth and thirty-sixth chapters of _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and at the
+beginning of the third volume of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_
+curiously illustrates how far the appreciation of Australian scenery
+depends upon the point of view of the observer.
+
+Kingsley's descriptions, like all else that he wrote of the country,
+breathe an unmistakable personal enjoyment. They are the natural
+expression of a happy disposition, just as is the boyish fun with which
+he surrounds the love-making of his characters. 'Halbert kicked Jim's
+shins under the table, and whispered: "You've lost your money, old
+fellow!"' when Sam Buckley, flushed and happy, rejoined his friends in
+the sitting-room at Garoopna, after proposing to Alice in the garden.
+Jim Brentwood had peevishly bet his friend that the lovers would go on
+shilly-shallying half their lives; but Halbert, with keener vision, had
+foreseen the very hour of their betrothal, and made a bet of five pounds
+on the event. More comical still is the spectacle of Hamlyn ducking
+under the bedclothes to escape the boot that is about to be flung at
+him, for laughingly discrediting the story of which his bosom-friend
+Stockbridge has tragically unburdened himself concerning the
+evaporation of his love for Mary Hawker.
+
+Whether in recording the actions and dialogue of his characters, or in
+describing scenery and the habits of the birds and animals which figure
+so often in his first novel, Kingsley always reflected some of his own
+happiness. It is not wit nor subtle humour, but a combination of pure
+mirth with the enthusiasm of warm friendship, that maintains one's
+interest in the simple life of the new Drumston. There is an abundance
+of farcical fun and playfulness which force laughter, and never approach
+an unkindness. The men avoid being smart at each other's expense; and if
+they cannot claim to be clever or heroic, they are at least good
+fellows, any one of whom might serve as a model of manliness.
+
+Kingsley's knowledge of household pets was of the kind exhibited by
+persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with
+only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of
+their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical
+exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at
+Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice
+Brentwood is almost unique in Australian literature.
+
+Buckley's ride to rescue his sweetheart from the bushrangers is one of
+the most moving and dramatic incidents in the book, and a good specimen
+of Kingsley's graphic narrative style. A band of the outlaws who were
+the terror of pioneer colonists fifty years ago have risen in the
+district, and, after committing outrages at one station, are reported to
+be riding on to another twenty miles distant. At the latter, Captain
+Brentwood's home, Alice happens to be alone. When the terrible news
+comes to her young lover, he is at Baroona, which by the shortest road
+is ten miles from Brentwood's. What start have the bushrangers had, and
+will they arrive before him?
+
+    Sam's noble horse, Widderin, a horse with a pedigree a hundred years
+    old, stood in the stable. The buying of that horse had been Sam's
+    only extravagance, for which he had often reproached himself, and
+    now this day he would see whether he would get his money's-worth out
+    of that horse or no.
+
+    I followed him up to the stable, and found him putting the bridle on
+    Widderin's beautiful little head. Neither of us spoke; only when I
+    handed him the saddle, and helped him with the girths, he said, 'God
+    bless you!'
+
+    I ran out and got down the slip-rails for him. As he rode by, he
+    said, 'Good-bye, Uncle Jeff; perhaps you won't see me again'; and I
+    cried out, 'Remember your God and your mother, Sam, and don't do
+    anything foolish.' Then he was gone....
+
+    Looking across the plains the way he should go, I saw another
+    horseman toiling far away, and recognised Doctor Mulhaus. Good
+    Doctor! he had seen the danger in a moment, and by his ready wit had
+    got a start of everyone else by ten minutes. The Doctor, on his
+    handsome, long-bodied Arabian mare, was making good work of it
+    across the plains, when he heard the rush of a horse's feet behind
+    him, and turning, he saw tall Widderin bestridden by Sam, springing
+    over the turf, gaining on him stride after stride. In a few minutes
+    they were alongside of one another.
+
+    'Good lad!' cried the Doctor. 'On, forwards; catch her, and away to
+    the woods with her! Bloodhound Desborough will be on their trail in
+    half an hour. Save her, and we will have noble vengeance!'
+
+    Sam only waved his hand in good-bye, and sped on across the plain
+    like a solitary ship at sea. The good horse, with elastic and easy
+    motion, fled on his course like a bird, lifting his feet clearly and
+    rapidly through the grass. The brisk south wind filled his wide
+    nostrils as he turned his graceful neck from side to side, till,
+    finding that work was meant, and not play, he began to hold his head
+    straight before him, and rush steadily forward....
+
+    One stumble now, and it were better to lie down on the plain and
+    die. He was in the hands of God, and he felt it. He said one short
+    prayer, but that towards the end was interrupted by the wild current
+    of his thoughts. Was there any hope? They, the devils, would have
+    been drinking at the Mayfords', and perhaps would go slow; or would
+    they ride fast and wild? After thinking a short time, he feared the
+    latter. They had tasted blood, and knew that the country would be
+    roused on them shortly....
+
+    Here are a brace of good pistols, and they with care shall give
+    account, if need be, of two men. After that, nothing. It were
+    better--so much better--not to live if one were only ten minutes too
+    late.... Now he was in the forest again, and now as he rode quickly
+    down the steep sandy road among the bracken, he heard the hoarse
+    rush of the river in his ears, and knew the end was well-nigh
+    come.... Now the house was in sight, and now he cried aloud some
+    wild inarticulate sound of thankfulness and joy. All was as peaceful
+    as ever, and Alice, unconscious, stood white-robed in the verandah,
+    feeding her birds.
+
+    As he rode up he shouted to her and beckoned. She came running
+    through the house, and met him breathless at the doorway.
+
+    'The bushrangers, Alice, my love!' he said. 'We must fly this
+    instant; they are close to us now.'
+
+    She had been prepared for this. She knew her duty well, for her
+    father had often told her what to do. No tears! no hysterics! She
+    took Sam's hand without a word, and, placing her fairy foot upon his
+    boot, vaulted up into the saddle before him.... They crossed the
+    river, and dismounting, they led the tired horse up the steep slope
+    of turf that surrounded a little castellated tor of bluestone....
+
+    'I do not see them anywhere, Alice,' said Sam presently. 'I see no
+    one coming across the plains. They must be either very near us in
+    the hollow of the river-valley, or else a long way off.'
+
+    'There they are!' said Alice. 'Surely there is a large party of
+    horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or eight miles off.'
+
+    'Ay, ten,' said Sam. 'I am not sure that they are horsemen.' Then he
+    said suddenly in a whisper, 'Lie down, my love, in God's name! Here
+    they are, close to us!'
+
+    There burst on his ear a confused round of talking and laughing, and
+    out of one of the rocky gullies leading towards the river came the
+    men they had been flying from, in number about fourteen. They had
+    crossed the river, for some unknown reason, and to the fear-struck
+    hiders it seemed as though they were making straight towards their
+    lair.
+
+    He had got Widderin's head in his breast, blindfolding him with his
+    coat, for should he neigh now they were undone indeed! As the
+    bushrangers approached, the horse began to get uneasy and paw the
+    ground, putting Sam in such an agony of terror that the sweat rolled
+    down his face. In the midst of this he felt a hand on his arm, and
+    Alice's voice, which he scarcely recognised, said in a fierce
+    whisper: 'Give me one of your pistols, sir!'
+
+    'Leave that to me!' he replied, in the same tone.
+
+    'As you please,' she said; 'but I must not fall alive into their
+    hands. Never look your mother in the face again if I do.'
+
+    He gave one more glance around, and saw that the enemy would come
+    within a hundred yards of their hiding-place. Then he held the horse
+    faster than ever and shut his eyes.
+
+    Was it a minute only, or an hour, until they heard the sound of the
+    voices dying away in the roar of the river, and, opening their eyes
+    once more, looked into one another's faces? Faces they thought that
+    they had never seen before--so each told the other afterwards--so
+    wild, so haggard, and so strange.
+
+If, as Professor Masson says, 'it is by his characters that a novelist
+is chiefly judged,' Henry Kingsley's future reputation will be found to
+depend almost solely on what he accomplished in _Geoffry Hamlyn_, _The
+Hillyars and the Burtons_ and _Ravenshoe_. In the first two of these
+there is an abundance of original observation and little conscious study
+of character. The vivid Australian scenes of the one, and the Chelsea
+life of the other, are transcripts of the author's own memories. His
+knowledge of the squatters he got by working for them and living with
+them; what he knew of police and convicts and bushrangers he learned in
+doing police duty; the life of the Burtons, as told in 'Jim Burton's
+Story,' was that which the author saw during his boyhood round his
+father's old rectory on Chelsea Embankment.
+
+'He seemed to me,' says Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, 'to have lived his own
+books, battled them out and forced them into their living shapes, to
+have felt them and been them all.' Hardly all--one feels bound to say.
+The remark is entirely true of nearly everything in _Geoffry Hamlyn_ and
+of three-fourths of _The Hillyars and the Burtons_, but to _Ravenshoe_
+it applies in a more limited degree, and to some of the later novels
+scarcely ever. Either through carelessness (of which one often suspects
+him) or deficiency of judgment, Kingsley more than once allowed the
+exigencies of his plots to destroy all consistency in his characters.
+
+Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer, is made to retire from
+the world and brood for many years, and on quite insufficient grounds,
+in the belief that his first wife had been unfaithful, and had tried to
+poison him. Nothing short of a condition of semi-insanity could explain
+his conduct. In other respects the character is finely conceived. Emma
+Burton, too, is a perfectly natural and charming person until she is
+employed to revive the old problem of how far a sense of duty can
+triumph over the power of love. Her devotion to her deformed brother is
+wrong, because it is unnecessary. But even if this were not the case, it
+would be irrational in a woman so eminently sensible and unromantic as
+she is shown to be in the first half of the story. Almost at the
+beginning of her voluntary service she is represented as realising 'the
+hideous fate to which she has condemned herself in her fanaticism.' It
+is quite impossible to make the reader believe that, loving Erne Hillyar
+as she did, she could for years persist in rejecting him, and that her
+brother would permit so much sacrifice on his account.
+
+The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is another instance of perversion.
+Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust
+the _blase_ aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more
+inconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from the
+Bush' employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance of
+hers in Rotten Row.
+
+But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the
+caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in
+a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty,
+audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton
+and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson.
+
+Even in _Silcote of Silcotes_ there are intermittent glimpses of
+finely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities of
+the Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreign
+intrigue. Kingsley's skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men,
+especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his
+philosophic friend Marston (a study of the George Warrington type);
+Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless
+profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athletic
+curate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman.
+With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placid
+good-natured cynic of _Ravenshoe_, is, however, a clever exception. 'All
+old women are beautiful,' says Kingsley in one of his stories, and he
+never portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and Lady
+Ascot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers,
+are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinct
+personage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and
+Ada Cambridge.
+
+The superior position usually accorded to _Ravenshoe_ among Kingsley's
+novels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by the
+naturalness of its characters. It was the author's first essay in pure
+romance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imagination
+was always largely, sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved to
+people old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangled
+genealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportion
+property to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhuman
+generosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illness
+which terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends for
+Welter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so long
+before that had seduced Charles's sister and stole his _fiancee_.
+Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs,
+and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthful
+companion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the author
+proceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in many
+similar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constant
+anxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments and
+confidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only a
+small way to discount the sterling merits of the novel.
+
+
+
+
+ADA CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+Towards the close of 1890 the Australian booksellers--a cautious,
+conservative class in their attitude towards new fiction, especially
+that produced by the adventurous female writer of these latter
+days--began to display so marked an interest in the work of Ada
+Cambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the case
+might have credited them with a friendly--possibly a patriotic--desire
+to give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in the
+following year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularity
+of the author was firmly established.
+
+The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave
+them a place of honour in his show-window, and the leading critical
+review said that the second story possessed a charm which ought to
+induce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make an
+exception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition that
+the public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving young
+writer. Yet Ada Cambridge's literary work had extended over no less a
+period than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securing
+recognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could have
+won a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half the
+labour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, as
+the wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besides
+literature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when there
+happened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of the
+leading colonial newspapers.
+
+About half a dozen novels were issued in this way, besides occasional
+articles and poems. The publication of the longer stories in the
+_Australasian_, a high-class weekly journal, ought in itself to have
+made a name for the author, and possibly would have done so, were they
+not in most cases so obviously a local product, and therefore not to be
+seriously considered. It was a repetition of the experience of Rolf
+Boldrewood. In the end, as usual, it was the English public that first
+accepted her novels for what they were worth.
+
+Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint
+villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best
+stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband,
+the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England,
+to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other
+country towns of this colony, they settled in 1893 at Williamstown, a
+waterside suburb of Melbourne.
+
+A novel entitled _Up the Murray_, dealing with life in the colonies, was
+published by Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue her work under
+her maiden name) in the Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the same
+character followed at irregular intervals. Two were issued in book-form
+by a London firm of publishers, but did not attain to much more than a
+library circulation.
+
+When the author again came before the English public, it was with a
+novel in which the purely Australian interest was rigidly subordinated
+to dramatic quality and a richly sympathetic study of character. _A
+Marked Man_ is the story of a younger son of an old English county
+family who, while sharing the pride and indomitable spirit of his
+ancestry, develops a hatred for conventional prejudices and religious
+cant, and, after making a final assertion of independence by marrying a
+farmer's daughter, emigrates to New South Wales to establish a name and
+fortune on his own account.
+
+The first half of the action takes place in England, the remainder in
+the colonies. The natural beauties surrounding the home of the Delavels
+at Sydney are not less delicately and poetically described than the
+village life they have left behind in the mother country--the
+patriarchal rule of an old-fashioned, rather pompous house, over a
+people retaining the hereditary respect of vassals for their feudal
+lord; but the view given of Australian society is, in keeping with the
+relation to it of Richard Delavel and his household, of the slightest
+kind.
+
+Delavel and the only daughter whom he has trained to be his second self,
+whose comradeship makes him almost forget the long-drawn thraldom of his
+early _mesalliance_, live in a world so much and so necessarily their
+own, that one is grateful for the good taste which excluded from it the
+bustle and commoner interests of colonial life. The novel met with
+general, and in several instances cordial, favour in England, and since
+then the author has yearly increased her reputation.
+
+Three out of five of the later novels are, like _A Marked Man_, made
+comparatively independent of the distinctively local interest to which
+we have been accustomed in the works of most Australian authors. It is
+not possible, for example, to point out anything in the shape of an
+essentially local first cause for any of the principal incidents of
+_Not All in Vain_ and _A Marriage Ceremony_. The passionate half-brute,
+Neil Hammond, who pursues the heroine of the former story across the
+world, and terrorises her with his unwelcome attentions, would have met
+a violent death, or himself have murdered someone, in his own country or
+elsewhere as inevitably as in Australia; and the man who killed him
+would not have found Katherine Knowles less faithful during the long
+years of his imprisonment had her sacrifice been under the daily
+observation of Hammond's family and her own strait-laced aunts in their
+East Norfolk home.
+
+In _A Marriage Ceremony_, the only advantage secured by taking the story
+from London to Melbourne--instead of to New York, let us say--seems to
+lie in whatever added strength the sense of greater distance imparts to
+the temporary appearance of a final separation between Betty Ochiltree
+and her strangely-wedded husband. The marriage that was a condition of
+their inheritance having been performed, bride and bridegroom part in
+accordance with a previous agreement. The former reappears as a
+prominent figure in the society of modern Melbourne--the Melbourne of
+1893, when the failure of banks and land companies was a regular subject
+of morning news.
+
+Here, it might be supposed, was an opportunity for one or two vivid and
+instructive sketches of the sensational period that witnessed the proof
+of so much folly and its punishment, and wrought so many more effects on
+all classes of Australian society than could be noted in the common
+records of the time. But the great crisis is almost ignored in the
+novel. There are merely a few passing references to its progress, and a
+mention of the loss on the part of Mrs. Ochiltree of some of the wealth
+which she is beginning to regard as having been rather spuriously
+acquired.
+
+Even the very successful story of the _Three Miss Kings_ and _A Mere
+Chance_ tell little of the city life of Australia, though their action
+is placed in it almost exclusively. The latter is a tale of match-making
+intrigue and money-worship in Toorak, but the main interest of the plot
+apart, the account of fashionable Melbourne is a singularly colourless
+one. As for Mrs. Duff-Scott and her Major, the amiable pair who in the
+character of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to find husbands for
+Elizabeth King and her sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are so
+effectually forestalled, they are as conventionally English as though
+they belonged to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood.
+
+Again, though during half of _Fidelis_ we are given occasional
+impressive and delightful glimpses of Nature under southern skies, the
+principal characters are English, and in England is centred first and
+last the dominant pathos of the story. A complete absence of dialect
+from the novels helps to emphasise the author's slender use of
+extraneous aids to interest.
+
+The influence of Ada Cambridge's twenty-five years' Australian
+experience is shown in her general outlook upon life, rather than in the
+details of her work. The prevailing tone of her books is one of marked
+cheerfulness, sincerity, and simplicity; she has a hearty dislike for
+conventional stupidities, especially for the mock-modesty that stifles
+honest sentiment; and she gives emphatic endorsement to the pleasant
+dictum (which seems so much more feasible in sunny Australia than in
+colder northern lands) that the second half of life is not less fruitful
+and satisfying than the first.
+
+As the general effect of Ada Cambridge's teaching, so far as it can be
+gathered from her plots, and the few instances in which she has
+permitted herself anything in the shape of didactic expression, is to
+make us more patient with life's complexities and perceptive of its
+compensations, and more content with whatever happiness may be drawn in
+our way by the chain of accidents called Destiny, so do her principal
+characters, in their foibles and their strength--in the little acts and
+impulses which qualify alike their heroism and their baseness--tend to
+make us more discriminative and charitable.
+
+In almost every case they are strong studies from some point of view.
+Of deliberate analysis there is very little; but there are numerous
+realistic touches not commonly admitted in fiction, which, handled with
+skill and insight, keep the character within the pale of common
+experience and increase rather than alienate the reader's sympathy.
+Thus, Richard Delavel's outburst of relief upon the death of his first
+wife, so far from being vulgar and brutal, as it might have seemed in
+other circumstances, recalls and emphasises the high sense of duty and
+honour and the iron self-restraint which had enabled him to be in all
+essentials a good husband for twenty-five years to a cold-hearted
+creature, between whom and himself there had never been either common
+interest or feeling, and for whose sake he had relinquished the woman
+that would have been his real mate in intellect and sympathy. Delavel's
+housekeeper, who is also a privileged friend, takes him to task for his
+unseemly hurry to go in search of this old love before his wife had been
+a week in her grave. He makes no secret of his relief. 'The sense that
+I am free is turning my brain with joy,' he confesses.
+
+    'I say it because I feel it. I am aware that it is in very bad
+    taste, but that doesn't make it the less true. Do you suppose people
+    are never glad when their relations die? They are--very often; they
+    can't help it; only they pretend they are not, because it seems so
+    shocking. I don't pretend--at least, I need not pretend to you. The
+    fault is not always--not all--on the side of the survivors, Hannah.
+    I don't think I am any worse than those who pretend a grief that
+    they don't feel. I was never unkind to her--never in my life, that I
+    can remember. I did not kill her; I would have kept her alive as
+    long as I possibly could. I think--I hope--that if I could have
+    saved her by the sacrifice of my own life, I should have done it
+    without a single moment's hesitation.'
+
+    'I am sure you would,' said Hannah.
+
+    'But,' he continued, with that unwonted fire blazing in his eyes,
+    'since dead she is, I _am_ glad--I am, I am! I am glad as a man who
+    has been kept in prison is to be let out. It is not my fault; I
+    would be sorry if I could. Some day, Hannah--some day, when we have
+    been dust for a few hundred years--perhaps for a few score
+    only--people will wake up to see how stupid it is to drive a man to
+    be glad when his wife is dead. They are finding out so many things;
+    they will find that out too in time.'
+
+Probably it will still appear to many that Delavel's admission was at
+least indelicate and inconsistent with his chivalrous nature. It is not
+here possible to convey an adequate impression of his fiery spirit, his
+long heart-hunger, and the magnitude of the loss which a wholly
+uncongenial marriage must ever mean to such a man. When the full story
+of his life and that of his quietly 'implacable' wife is read, his
+conduct seems natural and excusable. It is as much a part of himself as
+the tremulous tenderness with which he ministers to the comfort of the
+frail Constance Bethune, after finding and bringing her home, or as his
+fierce grief when she dies.
+
+Another very human spectacle that illustrates the author's method is the
+reunion of Betty and Rutherford Ochiltree--the frank selfishness of
+their mutual joy while the poor woman who had been an unconscious
+barrier between them lies dead under their roof. It is a somewhat
+painful episode, and precludes anything like high esteem for Rutherford,
+but it has the quality of intense actuality.
+
+In like manner is Adam Drewe shorn of some of the merit of his devotion
+to the heroine of _Fidelis_ by being shown in successive attachments to
+other women during his long exile in Australia. The author recognises
+that, 'the laws of literary romance being so much at variance with the
+laws of Nature,' Adam is certain to suffer in the reader's good opinion
+for having 'continued to hunger for feminine sympathy as well as his
+daily dinner.' No doubt his stature as a hero lessens when it appears
+that though the absent Fidelia was ever in his thoughts, and a daily
+source of inspiration to him as a writer, he twice narrowly escaped
+marriage--first with a servant girl at his lodgings, and afterwards with
+the daughter of his landlady--and that at another period of his colonial
+life he became involved in a disreputable kind of Bohemianism. But he is
+not disgraced by these lapses to the extent that the author anticipates;
+at all events, they make him more human than he could otherwise have
+been.
+
+It is this power of infusing a robust humanity into her characters that
+makes the distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge's best novels. In each,
+whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or three
+personages who talk and act as real men and women do--now rationally or
+in obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which,
+as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent of
+other laws, the only one that persistently defies our calculations.'
+They are mostly big people with big appetites. The beauty of the women
+is the beauty of mind and of sound physical health.
+
+Susy Delavel was tall, well grown, straight and graceful, with an
+intelligent, eager face, though 'her mouth was large, her nose not all
+it should have been, and her complexion showed the want of parasols and
+veils.' She was 'not handsome at all, but decidedly attractive.'
+
+Sarah French, the girl in _Fidelis_ whose comeliness so nearly drew the
+hero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than a
+pretty, face,' with a 'large and substantial figure.' Adam Drewe
+concluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on he
+finds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, with her cheerful
+healthy face, her strong busy hands, her neat hair, her neat dress....
+She might have sat for a statue of Motherhood--of Charity with a babe at
+her ample breast, and others clinging to her supporting hand; Nature had
+so evidently intended her to play the part.'
+
+Katherine Knowles has fine physical symmetry and a strong, frank face.
+While lacking 'the airs and graces, the superficial brightness, of
+conventional girlhood,' she is 'singularly vivid in her more substantial
+way.'
+
+Betty Ochiltree's beauty, too, is of the kind that wears well. She has a
+face 'frank and spirited, firm of mouth and chin, kind and sweet, as
+honest as the day,' surmounting an ample body, and she carries herself
+with dignity, 'as few Australian girls can do.' And how impressive and
+consistent with her character is the noble, placid figure of Elizabeth
+King, 'perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignity
+and ease!'
+
+The author is fond of showing the attractiveness of such women at the
+age of thirty, or even more. 'In real life,' she once observes, 'the
+supremely interesting woman is not a girl of eighteen, as she is in
+fiction. Every man worth calling a man knows that. A girl of that age
+... knows as much about love as does a young animal in the spring, and
+not a bit more. And the human male of these days--so highly developed,
+so subtly compounded--has grown out of the stage when that much would
+satisfy him. I mean, of course, the human male who in real life answers
+to the hero in fiction--a man who must have left, not only his teens,
+but his twenties behind him.'
+
+When one comes to the heroes, it is easy to recall half a dozen
+commanding figures who blunder in the most natural and amiable manner in
+their affairs; who think a good deal more of their immediate personal
+comforts than of religious or ethical abstractions; who like their own
+way and try to get it; who, in short, are mostly what the author wishes
+them to appear--'the men out of books that we meet every day.' Of little
+men, in the physical sense, there are only two of any importance, but
+even these are virile and masterful. A general aim of the stories would
+seem to be to show the sexes what each chiefly admires in the other. It
+is first a sort of apotheosis of the _mens sana in corpore sano_, and
+after that an illustration of the independent attractions of sympathy,
+gentleness, culture, and high character.
+
+Though in most cases the strongest attachments are formed between men
+and women arrived at an age to discriminate beyond mere physical charm,
+nevertheless physical charm is the most powerful, though not always
+acknowledged, motive of their choice. 'Because of this,' says the
+pathetic Hilda Donne in _A Marriage Ceremony_, touching her cheek, which
+is terribly disfigured by a birth-mark, 'I have never had _love_. Can
+you think what that means? You can't. Once I thought I was not going to
+be quite shut out--once; but I was mistaken. I have found out that it is
+for one's body that one is loved, and not for one's soul.'
+
+Hilda unconsciously exaggerates, for it appears that Rutherford Hope,
+though at first affected with disgust by her disfigurement, and
+convinced that no healthy man could consort with 'so unnatural a woman,'
+had come at last to regard her as a possible wife--before he was
+confronted with the sudden temptation to secure a fortune by wedding
+Betty Ochiltree, in compliance with the conditions of her millionaire
+uncle's will. Yet Hilda's comment is substantially sound. Even
+Rutherford, with all the sense of his mature years, and all the culture
+that enabled him to appreciate her poetic gift, would have had to argue
+himself into a marriage with her.
+
+The ugliness of Adam Drewe, from which his mother turned in disgust at
+his birth, and which in youth drove him across the seas in an agony of
+sensitiveness from the woman he loved, was a less serious affliction
+than that of Hilda Donne; but we know that he continued to be keenly
+reminded of its disadvantages long after time had proved the sterling
+qualities of his manhood, lessened his deformity, and brought him fame
+and wealth.
+
+Compared with the previous illustration, however, his case is at fault
+in failing to give a sufficient description of his deformity. But that
+he himself long thought it an insuperable bar to his happiness is clear.
+When he fell in love with Fidelia Plunket, she was temporarily blind.
+His affection for her was returned, and he knew it, but dreading the
+disillusionment that would ensue when her sight was restored, he fled to
+Australia and determined to abandon all thought of her as a wife. Urged
+to return, because 'when a woman _is_ a woman,' and really in love with
+a man, 'there's no camel she won't swallow for him,' Drewe replied that
+his camel was just the one camel that no woman had been known to
+swallow, or, at any rate, to digest. And he remained--for twenty years.
+
+The plots of Ada Cambridge's novels are of the episodical order, and the
+author, despite her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness of the
+average conventional novel, has not disdained employment of some of its
+time-honoured methods. Occasionally she is at pains to explain the
+feasibility of coincidences employed to secure dramatic interest. They
+are certainly never of an impossible kind, and no one would deny the
+truism that real life abounds in them. But has not a distinguished
+writer aptly pointed out that there are matters in which fiction cannot
+compete with life? As a rule, however, where a few such weaknesses
+exist, they do not count for much with the average reader when the
+principal scenes are as finely drawn as those in _A Marked Man_ or
+_Fidelis_, or _The Three Miss Kings_. The latter story in some details
+puts a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels,
+yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of the
+three girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chief
+incidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plot
+become almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole are
+similar to those which obscure the artistic defects of _Geoffry Hamlyn_,
+and which for thirty-seven years have made it one of the most popular of
+Australian stories.
+
+In the presentation of tragic or pathetic incidents lies Ada Cambridge's
+chief power, as far as her plots are concerned. In _A Marked Man_ it is
+accompanied by her highest achievements in portraying a variety of
+well-contrasted character. _Fidelis_, which opens at the Norfolk village
+of the earlier novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains fewer
+developed characters, as may also be said of _A Marriage Ceremony_. But
+the three novels are equal in the high standard of their emotional
+quality. No quotation of moderate size could do justice to any of the
+principal scenes of _A Marked Man_: the chivalrous sacrifice of Richard
+Delavel's youthful marriage; the inward repentance of it for twenty-two
+years; the revival of his love for Constance Bethune; his painful
+anxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of her companionship, and
+anguish at her death; and his own death soon afterwards. In the more
+briefly detailed tragedy that brings into such striking relief the
+sprightly drama of _A Marriage Ceremony_, there is a scene giving a fair
+example of the author's style in touching passages. When Hilda, deeply
+in love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his union with another woman, she
+takes the readiest means of effacing herself by suddenly marrying a
+shallow coxcomb who seeks her for mercenary reasons, and going with him
+to Australia. Years afterwards she is so affected by the sudden
+reappearance of Rutherford, and by subsequent ill-treatment received
+from her jealous husband, that an exhausting illness follows, and to
+save herself from insanity she commits suicide. Meanwhile the long
+separation of Rutherford and Betty Ochiltree, which began on the day of
+their marriage, is coming to an end, and Hilda's death removes the final
+impediment. Together they pay a last visit to the dead woman:
+
+    Incapable of speech, he lifted a tress of hair--flowing free over
+    the rigid arms, because it was really pretty, and thus had to be
+    made the most of--and pressed it a moment to his bearded mouth. In
+    that gesture he seemed to ask her forgiveness for having been a man
+    like other men, as Nature made them.
+
+    'Kiss _her_,' Betty whispered, pushing him a little. She, too, felt
+    that it would be something, if not much, to put to the account that
+    was so frightfully ill-balanced--a kiss from Rutherford before all
+    was wholly over.
+
+    He stooped and laid his lips--scarcely laid them--on the waxen
+    forehead. And he thought how he had nearly kissed her once, in the
+    scented spring dusk, at her father's gate, and been repelled at the
+    last moment by the thought of something that he could not see.... He
+    turned back the sheet and straightened it, and nobody but hired
+    undertakers had anything more to do with Hilda Donne. He put out the
+    lamps, leaving her in the dark, which, as a living, nervous woman,
+    she had always been afraid of; and he took Betty in his arms to
+    comfort her a little, before he opened the door upon the light and
+    life of their own transfigured world.
+
+There is a characteristic vein of realism in the subsequent view of the
+lovers' self-absorption and short-lived sorrow, and the callousness of
+Donne.
+
+    No later than the same Saturday afternoon [Hilda was buried in the
+    morning], her Edward was cheering himself with his preparations for
+    New Zealand, whither he was easily persuaded to set off at once as a
+    means of distracting his mind from his domestic woes, and of
+    retiring gracefully from a Civil Service that was otherwise certain
+    to dismiss him; and there he shortly found a number of absorbing
+    interests, including--as Rutherford had predicted--a rosy-cheeked
+    second wife, who, as he wrote to Mrs. Ochiltree when announcing his
+    engagement, was all that heart could wish, and had apparently been
+    made on purpose for him.... No later than Saturday afternoon--and
+    early at that--Rutherford, having parted with the widower and seen
+    him off the premises, ran upstairs to his wife's door, with a spring
+    in his step and a light in his eyes that plainly showed his mourning
+    to be over. Hilda was dead and gone, but Betty was alive in her
+    splendid strength and beauty, and he was her husband and bridegroom,
+    and his hour had come! The grave had closed over that broken heart,
+    which had ached as long as it could feel, and ached most for him;
+    but the world was still glorious for him and his love, and never so
+    glorious as now. They began to bask in their happiness, as the house
+    in the sunshine that flooded it, now that the blinds were drawn up.
+    The shadow of death, close and terrible as it was, could not dim it
+    for them any more.
+
+In all the novels there are memorable scenes of tenderness, among the
+best of which are those between Fidelia and Adam Drewe, first in their
+brief meetings as girl and youth--she with her weak eyes bandaged, but
+reading him through his voice and bashful deprecation; he yearning to
+remain with her, but forcing himself away--and then in long years after,
+when he returns to find her in widowhood and poverty, and to all seeming
+hopelessly blind.
+
+The conception of the latter scene is quite the best to be found in the
+whole of Ada Cambridge's work, and has not been equalled in its kind by
+any other Australian writer. The simplicity and verbal reticence of this
+chapter of intense feeling gives also a good sample of the author's
+style of expression. Seldom ornate or much studied, it is ever a lucid
+and easy style. As a narrative specimen, the following, from the same
+novel, is conveniently quotable:
+
+    It was not much of an accident, but it was enough. The engine buried
+    its fore-paws in the soft earth of the embankment, where engines
+    were not meant to go, and then paused abruptly in the attitude of a
+    little dog hiding a bone in a flower-bed; the embankment sloped down
+    instead of up, and the monster hung upon the edge of it, nose to the
+    ground and hind-quarters in the air, looking as if a baby's touch
+    would send it over. Several carriages, violently running upon it and
+    being checked suddenly, stood on tip-toes, so to speak, and fell
+    into each other's arms with a vehemence that completely overset
+    them; one rolled right down the bank, head first, and the others
+    tumbled upon its kicking wheels. It was all over in a moment; and
+    the dazed passengers, realising in a second moment that the end of
+    the world was still an event in the future, picked themselves up as
+    best they could. No one was killed, but some were badly shaken, and
+    most of them screamed horribly. The sound of those screams, mingled
+    with the clanking and crashing of riven wood and metal, and the
+    hissing of escaping steam, conveyed the idea of such an appalling
+    catastrophe as would make history for the world.
+
+Though not a satirist--she does not hate well enough to be that--Ada
+Cambridge has occasionally a neat and forcible way of describing
+character. Richard Delavel's first wife was 'a gentle and complaisant
+being, soft and smooth, apparently yielding to the touch, but dense,
+square, and solid as a well-dumped wool-bale.' When opposed in will or
+contradicted in her opinion, she smiled resignedly, and, if it appeared
+due to her dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally she was 'the
+evenest-tempered woman that ever a well-meaning husband found it
+difficult to get on with.' A pattern of order and conscientiousness,
+'governed by principles that were as correct as her manners and costume,
+and as firmly established as the everlasting hills,' she might have made
+an admirable wife for a clergyman, but was totally unsuited to Delavel,
+as he to her.
+
+Still, she was very proud of the look of 'blood' in her Richard, and
+when he became wealthy, and she a fashionable hostess in Sydney
+society, nothing delighted her more than her opportunities of making the
+aristocratic connection known. Her own origin as the daughter of a
+farmer was quite forgotten. 'Annie might have been a Delavel from the
+beginning, in her own right, for all the recollection that remained to
+her of the real character of her bringing up.... Years and certain
+circumstances will often affect a woman's memory that way--a man somehow
+manages to keep a better grasp of facts.'
+
+Yelverton, the lover of Elizabeth King, an English aristocrat spending
+some of his wealth in lessening the misery and vice of London, was 'not
+the orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist
+with a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set the
+world right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of a
+sense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and the
+spirit which produced that was not limited in any direction.'
+
+His friend, Major Duff-Scott, 'an ex-officer of dragoons, and a late
+prominent public man of his colony (he was prominent still, but for his
+social and not his official qualifications), was a well-dressed and
+well-preserved old gentleman who, having sown a large and miscellaneous
+crop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded with
+great wealth, and all the privileges of the highest respectability.'
+
+
+
+
+ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.
+
+
+The strongest note of Adam Lindsay Gordon's poetry is a personal one.
+When he represents Australia best, he best represents his own striking
+character. Yet that character had clearly shown itself, as had also his
+lyric gift, before he saw Australia. He is the favourite poet of the
+country by a happy fortuity rather than by the merit of special native
+inspiration. Those tastes of the people which he has expressed in manner
+and degree so rare as to make a parallel difficult of conception were
+also his own dominant tastes. From early boyhood they had controlled his
+life, and in the end they wrecked it.
+
+That any man living an adventurous and precarious life, often in rude
+associations and without the stimulus of ambition or of intellectual
+society, should write poetry at all is a matter for some wonder. And
+when several of the compositions of such a writer are marked by rare
+vigour and melody, and some few are worthy to rank with the best of
+their kind produced in the century, it must be held that the gift of the
+author is genuine and spontaneous. It is impossible to believe that
+Gordon would have been less a poet had he never lived under the Southern
+Cross; that he would have cared less for horses and wild riding, for
+manliness and the exhilaration of danger. Had he become a country
+gentleman in England, or a soldier, like his father, should we not still
+have had 'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' 'The Romance of Britomarte,' 'By
+Flood and Field,' and 'How we beat the Favourite.' And do these not form
+the majority of his best poems? A man apt alike for the risks of the
+chase or the cavalry charge, with a delicate ear for the music of words,
+with natural promptings to write, would in any conditions have found
+time to celebrate the things which his daring and gallant spirit loved.
+Had he not ridden as well as written the rides related by his 'Sick
+Stockrider,' he might have been foremost in that more glorious one so
+often present to his fiery fancy, and have wielded
+
+            'The splendid bare sword
+  Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!'
+
+Gordon was a true soldier in sentiment all his life, as he was also a
+true Englishman, and it is the soldier and the Englishman in him far
+more than the Australian that the people of his adopted country,
+consciously or unconsciously, admire. It is yet difficult to consider
+his work as a writer apart from his personality. And it is natural that
+this should be so in the case of a man whose career was itself a
+romance, who led as strange a double life as ever poet lived, and who,
+through all, retained the marked essentials of a gentleman.
+
+In his character as a sportsman and a rider there is an element of the
+ideal which largely helps to commend him to the majority of Australians.
+Though his liking for horses and the turf became a destroying passion,
+there was never anything sordid in it. He was not a gambler, for long
+after he had won recognition as the first steeplechase rider in a
+country of accomplished riders, he declined payment for his services on
+the race-track, accepting it only when compelled at last by poverty to
+do so; and the distaste with which he had always viewed the meaner
+associations of the sport latterly became dislike and scorn. In the
+period of disappointment that preceded his death he refused a
+remunerative post on the sporting staff of a leading Melbourne journal
+because he wished to dissociate himself completely and finally from
+everything connected with the professionalism of sport.
+
+As a Bush rider he became noted for the performance of feats which no
+one else would think of attempting. The Australians often speak and
+write of it as courage absence of fear--but it surely had a large
+admixture of pure recklessness. It is at least evident that danger had a
+certain irresistible fascination for him. 'Name a jump, and he was on
+fire to ride at it,' is the description given of this curious
+predilection which made his company in a riding party a somewhat
+exciting pleasure. The day in 1868 when he won three steeplechases at
+Melbourne is still remembered; and at Mount Gambier, in South Australia,
+a granite obelisk marks where once he leaped his horse over a fence
+surmounting the headland of a lake, and then across a chasm 'more than
+forty feet wide.' A single false step would have cast horse and rider
+into the lake two hundred feet below. Of the same wild character was his
+riding during boyhood in the hunting-fields of Gloucestershire. It would
+be natural to suspect some measure of vanity or bravado in all this, but
+no hint of either is given by any of his acquaintances; and the few who
+knew him well are emphatic in placing him, as a man and a sportsman,
+apart from and above the majority of those with whom the conditions of
+his life brought him into contact. 'Gordon,' says one of his intimate
+friends, 'was always a quiet, modest, pure-minded gentleman.... I never
+knew such a noble-hearted man, especially where women were concerned.'
+
+The deep melancholy in many of Gordon's poems has been attributed to the
+influence of Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of the earlier
+years of his life in the colonies. This explanation, if not wholly
+erroneous, is at least much exaggerated. It ignores the most obvious
+elements of the poet's temperament. It takes no account of the history
+of wasted opportunities and regrets, of defeat and discontent, of
+self-wrought failure and remorse, that may plainly be read in 'To my
+Sister,' 'An Exile's Farewell,' 'Early Adieux,' 'Whispering in the
+Wattle Boughs,' 'Quare Fatigasti,' 'Wormwood and Nightshade,' and other
+poems. The writer, as he himself says, has no reserve in the criticism
+of his own career.
+
+  'Let those who will their failings mask,
+    To mine I frankly own;
+  But for their pardon I will ask
+    Of none--save Heaven alone.'
+
+Gordon's youth was wild and ungoverned. Before his twenty-first year his
+folly had lost him home, friends, love, and the one profession that
+might have steadied him, as well as afforded him distinction. He was
+the son of Captain Adam D. Gordon (an officer who had seen service in
+India) and the grandson of a wealthy Scotch merchant. Captain Gordon
+settled at Cheltenham in the later years of his life, and intended that
+his son should study for the army; but a mad wilfulness and passion for
+outdoor sport had taken possession of the youth, and nothing could be
+done with him. He rode to hounds with all the daring that marked his
+horsemanship in later life; he rode in steeplechases, he frequented the
+company of pugilists at country fairs and public-houses, and joined in
+their contests; he was removed from two schools for unruly conduct, and
+a more serious escapade, though innocent of any bad intention, nearly
+caused his arrest by the police. At last it was agreed that he should
+emigrate to Australia. He was glad to go, but bitter at the thought of
+what his going implied. The knowledge that he suffered solely through
+his own fault did not make less disagreeable to him the censure of
+others, even that of the gallant father whom, in his wildest moments of
+rebellion, he never ceased to love and admire. The unhappiness attending
+this severance from the home that he felt he would never see again is
+told in a poem to his sister, written (August, 1853) a few days before
+he sailed.
+
+  'Across the trackless seas I go,
+    No matter when or where;
+  And few my future lot will know,
+    And fewer still will care.
+  My hopes are gone, my time is spent,
+    I little heed their loss,
+  And if I cannot feel content,
+    I cannot feel remorse.
+
+  'My parents bid me cross the flood,
+    My kindred frowned at me;
+  They say I have belied my blood,
+    And stained my pedigree.
+  But I must turn from those who chide,
+    And laugh at those who frown;
+  I cannot quench my stubborn pride,
+    Or keep my spirits down.
+
+  'I once had talents fit to win
+    Success in life's career;
+  And if I chose a part of sin,
+    My choice has cost me dear.
+  But those who brand me with disgrace,
+    Will scarcely dare to say
+  They spoke the taunt before my face
+    And went unscathed away.'
+
+The stanzas (there are ten more in the poem) have all the bitterness of
+a youthful sorrow and all the vigour of a youthful defiance. But at the
+moment of his deepest depression it is upon himself that the writer
+casts the real blame. This is characteristic of his judgment of himself
+throughout life. He has ever too much honour and spirit to shirk the
+responsibility of his own acts. And the same qualities keep him from
+doing injury to others. He is consoled by remembering this in bidding
+good-bye to his native land.
+
+          'If to error I incline,
+  Truth whispers comfort strong,
+  That never reckless act of mine
+  E'er worked a comrade wrong.'
+
+As a colonist, Gordon might have justified his Scotch descent by making
+a fortune. Wealth was to be gained in other and surer ways than by
+groping for it in the goldfields. But he was indifferent, and allowed
+himself to drift. Australia was attractive to him only as a place of
+adventure, of freedom, of retirement, of oblivion. All but the latter he
+found it. He readily adapted himself to the rough conditions of the
+country, but could never overcome the thought that in those first false
+steps he had lost all worth striving for. Time softened the gloomy
+defiance of his farewell verses, but did not alter his determination to
+efface himself, to be forgotten even by his family. He held no
+communication with anyone in England, and heard nothing from his home
+until ten years later, when a lawyer's letter notified him that both his
+mother and father were dead, and that under the will of the latter he
+was to receive a legacy of seven thousand pounds. Meanwhile, Gordon
+appears to have made no attempt to win any of the prizes that were the
+common reward of pluck and industry in the Australia of the fifties. He
+joined the mounted police force of South Australia, but, impatient of
+its discipline, soon left it, and for long afterwards was content with
+the rough employment of a horse-breaker.
+
+A curious, pathetic figure he makes at this time. He broke in horses
+during the day, and read the classic poets at night. Think of the
+refined Englishman in blue blouse, fustian, and half-Wellington boots,
+seated among the boisterous company of a 'men's hut' on a Bush station,
+reading Horace by the aid of a rude lamp, 'consisting of a honeysuckle
+cone stuck in clay in a pannikin, and surrounded with mutton fat!' Or
+sitting at some Bush camp of his own, and imagining, as he so finely
+did, the famous Balaclava Charge, which set Europe ringing with pity and
+admiration a year after he arrived in Australia. How he would have liked
+to be among the actors in that scene!
+
+  'Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride
+    Long years of pleasure outvie!'
+
+he exclaims, and wishes that his own end could be fair as that of one
+'who died in his stirrups there.'
+
+Gordon seemed not only to be reconciled to his Bush life, but to have
+become attached to it. He once declared it to be better in many
+respects than any other. He was temperate, skilful in his work, and as
+popular as one of reserved manner can be. Most of the squatters of the
+period made it a practice to receive into their social circle any
+companionable and educated man, whether their equal in position or not.
+It was a generous custom, typical of the most hospitable country in the
+world, and worked well on the whole. But Gordon, unlike Henry Kingsley
+and others of the same class, took no advantage of it. That the
+squatters did not themselves recognise the worth of one so unassertive
+was not to be wondered at. He saw this, and never blamed them. They
+could not, as he remarked on one occasion, be expected to know that he
+was as well born as any of them, and perhaps better educated. One of
+them saw there was 'something above the common' in him; but that was
+all. At length he was discovered by a good-natured and scholarly Roman
+Catholic priest (the Rev. Julian E. Tenison Woods), who, though he does
+not say so, evidently took a pleasure during the five years of their
+acquaintance in making the merits of the solitary Englishman known in
+the colony. Their tastes accorded excellently. They talked 'horses or
+poetry' as they rode together, or smoked by their camp-fires. Gordon's
+reserve thawed for the first time. He had a well-trained memory, and
+occasionally would recite Latin or Greek verse, or a scene from
+Shakespeare, or passages from Byron and other modern poets. Greek he had
+taught himself in lonely hours after his arrival in Australia, having
+neglected it while at college.
+
+In the end his disposition left the good cleric, like many another, much
+puzzled. Was there anything of foolish pride or misanthropy in Gordon's
+avoidance of society that would have welcomed him? Both his recorded
+speech and his poems are without evidence of either. Those who remember
+his taciturnity and little eccentricities also speak of his kindness of
+heart, generosity and trustfulness of others. Did he ever complain that
+he was oppressed and saddened by his self-chosen life in the Bush? We
+have seen the high estimate he once gave of it; and Mr. Woods, who has
+recorded many proofs of close observation of his friend, testifies that
+the melancholy of his poems found little or no expression in his
+conversation. Gordon may have been shy (as Marcus Clarke noted), but he
+early formed a fairly accurate judgment of his literary powers. He said
+'he was sure he would rise to the top of the tree in poetry, and that
+the world should talk of him before he died.' Coming from one who was
+far from being vain or boastful, the remark suggests hope and ambition.
+But neither, it would seem from his colonial career, was ever more than
+a passing mood with him. Why did he remain in obscurity during several
+of the best years of his life, doing rough and dangerous work, when he
+might have obtained some remunerative post in one of the cities? Why did
+he marry a domestic servant--one who could never be an intellectual
+companion for him?
+
+It appears that he considered himself to have 'irretrievably lost
+caste.' It is a fantastic idea, and could not have any justification in
+a country where an Englishman of good manners and behaviour need never
+want congenial society. Gordon was abnormally proud, independent and
+sensitive: an unfortunate disposition for anyone who has his way to make
+in an imperfect world. Such a man constantly misunderstands himself and
+is misunderstood. He takes severe, unpractical views of his own
+character and of life generally. Not necessarily morose or ungenial, he
+is always apt to be thought so. Gordon's conclusion that he had lost
+caste is a proof of supersensitiveness, and the deep effect produced
+upon his temperament by the incidents of his youth.
+
+There is a touching and significant little story of an acquaintance
+which he formed with a young lady at Cape Northumberland, and how he
+ended it. We are delicately told that, having become a warm admirer of
+his dashing horsemanship, the lady used to walk in early morning to a
+neighbouring field to see him training a favourite mare over hurdles.
+Something more than a mutual liking for horses and racing is plainly
+hinted at as existing between them. But after they had met thus a few
+times, Gordon asked abruptly whether her mother knew that she came there
+every morning to see him ride. She replied in the negative, adding that
+her mother disapproved of racing. 'Well, don't come again,' said he; 'I
+know the world, and you don't. Good-bye. Don't come again.' Surprised
+and wounded, the lady silently gave him her hand in farewell. 'He looked
+at it as if it were some natural curiosity, and said, "It's the first
+time I have touched a lady's hand for many a day--my own fault, my own
+fault--good-bye."'
+
+For a brief period after the receipt of his father's legacy Gordon
+looked towards his future with some interest and confidence. He spoke of
+a proposal to undertake regular journalistic work at Melbourne, and to
+make an attempt at writing novels. It was at this time also that he
+foresaw that he would make a name as a poet. The people of Mount
+Gambier, finding him presently settled as the owner of a small estate in
+the district, made him their representative in the Legislative Assembly
+of South Australia. In this new character he seems to have achieved only
+a reputation for drawing humorous sketches. Having delivered a few
+speeches highly embellished with classical allusions which failed to
+make any impression upon the plain business men of the House, he
+subsided, and was afterwards seldom heard. And when his seat became
+vacant in due course, he did not seek re-election. He had been unable to
+take his Parliamentary experience seriously. He is said to have always
+looked back upon it as something of a joke.
+
+And now, with a revival of his former attachment to the excitements and
+uncertainties of the turf, begin a series of misfortunes which pursued
+him until his death. His property, mismanaged and neglected, had to be
+sold, and he set out a poor man once more for the adjoining colony of
+Victoria. Here, while suffering ill-health and poverty--starving in his
+own proud way--after failing in a small business which he had
+undertaken, Gordon learned that he would probably come into possession
+of the barony of Esselmont in Scotland, then producing an income of
+about two thousand pounds a year. But on further inquiry it was found
+that his title to the estate ceased with the abolition of the entail
+under the Entail Amendment Act of 1848. The excitement of his
+ill-fortune and the effects of a recent wound on the head combined to
+unhinge his mind, and in June, 1870, at the age of thirty-seven he ended
+his life by shooting himself at Brighton, near Melbourne. In comparing
+the impressions of Gordon's disposition given by his friends, it is
+curious to note that among the few things in which they agree is an
+absence of surprise at his suicide.
+
+It would not be difficult to imagine a more representative poet in the
+provincial sense than Gordon. His description of the colonies as
+
+  'Lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
+    And songless bright birds,'
+
+would be strangely misleading were it not contradicted by other lines
+from the same hand, showing a delicate appreciation of the rugged
+features of Australian scenery. But he sees them only in passing, or as
+a symbol of something he is pondering, or as a contrast to what he has
+left behind 'on far English ground.' No sight or sound of Australian
+Nature is a sole subject of any of his poems. His 'Whispering in the
+Wattle Boughs' does not express the voices of the forest, but the echoes
+of a sad youth, the yearnings of an exile; his 'Song of Autumn' is not a
+song of autumn, but a forecast of his own death--a forecast that was
+fulfilled. If he ever felt any enthusiasm for the future nationhood of
+Australia, he did not express it. And such few native legends as there
+were, he left to other pens.
+
+In all of his best poems, there is some central human interest,
+something that tells for courage, honour, manly resignation. When a
+story does not come readily to his hand in the new world, he seeks one
+in the old. He fondly turns to the spacious days of the old knighthood,
+when men drank and loved deeply, when they were ready to put happiness
+or life itself upon a single hazard. The subjects that Gordon best liked
+were short dramatic romances, which he found it easier to evolve from
+literature than from the life and history of his adopted country. Beyond
+the compositions upon the national sport of horse-racing, the only
+noteworthy Australian subjects in his three slender volumes are 'The
+Sick Stockrider's Review of the Excitements and Pleasures of a Careless
+Bush Life, and his Pathetic Self-satisfaction'; 'The Story of a
+Shipwreck'; 'Wolf and Hound,' which describes a duel between the
+hunted-down bushranger and a trooper; and some verses on the death of
+the explorer Burke. 'Ashtaroth,' an elaborate attempt at a sustained
+dramatic lyric in the manner of Goethe's 'Faust' and 'Manfred,' fills
+one of the three volumes, and among shorter pieces in the other two are
+more than a dozen suggested by the poet's reading, by his recollections
+of English life, and, in a notable instance, by one of the most
+memorable of modern European wars.
+
+In a dedication prefixed to the _Bush Ballads_, Gordon suggests some of
+the local sources of his inspiration. He obviously overstates his
+obligations to the country. Some of the best of the poems in this, the
+most characteristic collection of his work, have no association with it
+whatever. 'The Sick Stockrider,' 'From the Wreck,' and 'Wolf and Hound'
+are colonial experiences, finely described. But most of the remaining
+poems, while they owe something to Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne,
+are not in any sense Australian.
+
+  'In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles
+    'Twixt shadow and shine,
+  When each dew-laden air resembles
+    A long draught of wine,
+  When the skyline's blue burnished resistance
+  Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
+  Some songs in all hearts have existence:
+    Such songs have been mine.'
+
+But where, save in the retrospect of 'The Sick Stockrider' and a verse
+or two of 'From the Wreck,' shall we find any of the air of the lovely,
+transient Australian spring? It is rather absurd to place with _Bush
+Ballads_ the 'Rhyme of Joyous Garde,' a recital of the old tragedy of
+Arthur and Launcelot; the story of seventeenth-century siege and
+gallantry in the 'Romance of Britomarte'; the dramatic scenes from the
+'Road to Avernus;' 'The Friends' (a translation from the French); and
+the psychological musings of 'De Te' and 'Doubtful Dreams.'
+
+And the galloping rhymes? Yes, there is indeed one galloping rhyme--'How
+we beat the Favourite'--with a ring and a rush, a spirit and swiftness
+of colour, not approached by the best verse of Egerton Warburton or
+Whyte-Melville. Especially vivid and terse is the description of the
+latter part of the race, where the favourite (The Clown) overtakes
+Iseult, the mare leading in the run home.
+
+  'She rose when I hit her. I saw the stream glitter,
+    A wide scarlet nostril flashed close to my knee;
+  Between sky and water The Clown came and caught her;
+    The space that he cleared was a caution to see.
+
+  'And forcing the running, discarding all cunning,
+    A length to the front went the rider in green;
+  A long strip of stubble, and then the big double,
+    Two stiff flights of rails with a quickset between.
+
+  'She raced at the rasper, I felt my knees grasp her,
+    I found my hands give to the strain on the bit;
+  She rose when The Clown did--our silks as we bounded
+    Brushed lightly, our stirrups clashed loud as we lit.
+
+  'A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping,
+    The last--we diverged round the base of the hill;
+  His path was the nearer, his leap was the clearer,
+    I flogged up the straight, and he led sitting still.
+
+  'She came to his quarter, and on still I brought her,
+    And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew;
+  A short prayer from Neville just reached me, "The Devil!"
+    He muttered--lock'd level the hurdles we flew.'
+
+After a glance at the crowd where, as seen by the rider, all 'figures
+are blended and features are blurred'--
+
+  'On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way,
+    Still struggles, "The Clown by a short neck at most!"
+  He swerves, the green scourges, the stand rocks and surges,
+    And flashes, and verges, and flits the white post.
+
+  'Aye! so ends the tussle--I knew the tan muzzle
+    Was first, though the ring men were yelling "Dead Heat!"
+  A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said "The mare by
+    A short head." And that's how the favourite was beat.'
+
+It was by this piece, according to Marcus Clarke, that the poet's early
+reputation was made. 'Intensely nervous, and feeling much of that shame
+at the exercise of the higher intelligence which besets those who are
+known to be renowned in field sports, Gordon produced his poems shyly,
+scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them anonymously to
+magazines. It was not until he discovered one morning that everybody
+knew a couplet or two of "How we beat the Favourite" that he consented
+to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a
+verse-maker.' Even in this picture of the excitements of the turf, there
+is nothing that would not be as true of Epsom or Ascot as of Randwick or
+Flemington. Yet, it _is_ Australian in the sense that it expresses the
+one taste which, of all those inherited by the people from their British
+ancestors, seems never likely to be lost (as it was by the American
+colonists)--which, on the contrary, has gained in ardour in the new
+land. Gordon was a pronounced believer in the efficacy of field sports
+as a means of maintaining the nerve and hardihood of the race. In one of
+his minor pieces he vigorously affirms that
+
+  'If once we efface the joys of the chase
+    From the land, and out-root the Stud,
+  Good-bye to the Anglo-Saxon Race,
+    Farewell to the Norman Blood.'
+
+With him the fearless huntsman makes the fearless soldier. Both are to
+be cultivated and admired, and when the latter dies needlessly, as at
+Balaclava, we are to be none the less proud of him,
+
+  'As a type of our chivalry.'
+
+Of the longer poems, the two best in artistic quality are 'The Rhyme of
+Joyous Garde' and 'The Sick Stockrider.' They afford a complete contrast
+in subject, tone and treatment. The old Arthurian story is the finer and
+more finished. There is a nobility in its expression not elsewhere
+equalled by the author. But the other poem is more direct and simple in
+its pathos, more easily understood. It tells something of familiar
+experience in language irresistibly touching and musical. It would be
+interesting and a favourite if only through the obvious fact that it
+describes in part some of Gordon's own early life.
+
+  ''Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass
+    To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
+  And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass,
+    Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.
+  'Twas merry 'mid the backwoods, when we spied the station roofs,
+    To wheel the wild-scrub cattle at the yard,
+  With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs;
+    Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.
+
+  'Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,
+    When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;
+  How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang
+    To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat!
+  Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath,
+    Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed;
+  And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath!
+    And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!'
+
+'The Rhyme of Joyous Garde' loses in appreciation by assuming
+familiarity on the part of the reader with all the details of the story.
+It is too allusive. It is a description more of Launcelot's remorse
+than of the crime which occasions it. As to the other classic themes,
+they probably avail as little to the reputation of the author as did the
+elegant quotations which he inflicted upon the South Australian
+legislators. 'He talked of the Danai, whilst they were vastly more
+interested in the land valuators.'
+
+Gordon's work was introduced to the English public by an article in
+_Temple Bar_ in 1884, and in 1888 a short memoir of him, entitled _The
+Laureate of the Centaurs_ (now out of print), was published. Since then
+his poems have become known throughout the English-speaking world. Is
+this because he is called an Australian poet--because people wish to
+learn something of Australian life from his pages? Do English readers
+ever ask for the poems of Harpur, or Henry Kendall, or Brunton Stephens?
+No; Gordon's poems are admired for the human interest in them; for what
+they tell of tastes and personal qualities dear to the pleasure-loving
+and fighting Briton in whatever land he may be. It is the sort of
+admiration that finds fit expression when an English officer and artist
+makes a present to the publishers of a spirited and valuable set of
+drawings to illustrate the poem of the Balaclava Charge. No other
+Australian poet has yet found entrance to the great popular libraries of
+England. Kendall, who almost deserves to be called the Australian
+Shelley, tells more of Nature in one of his graceful pages than can be
+found in a volume of his contemporary. But his thoughts are too remote
+from the common interests of life; and of his own character he has
+recorded only what is sad and painful. For the rest, his brief history
+seems to prove that scarce any service may be less noticed or thanked in
+Australia than the describing of its natural beauties or the writing of
+its national odes.
+
+Gordon has more than once been misrepresented with respect to his
+religious views. He has been called an agnostic, an atheist, even a
+pagan. Passages in nearly a score of his poems must be read and compared
+before an opinion can properly be given on the point. That he was a
+doubter, and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain; but there is
+nothing to support the charge of atheism. He shows a very clear
+conception of the Christian ideas respecting right and wrong, and of the
+Divine mercy, but hesitates to accept any theories of punishment in a
+future state. His general attitude is one of hope, and of desire to
+believe. He often thinks--too often--of the transiency of life, and of
+the question to be solved 'beyond the dark beneath the dust.' But there
+is no despair. And meanwhile his practical creed is
+
+   'Question not, but live and labour
+      Till yon goal be won,
+    Helping every feeble neighbour,
+      Seeking help from none.
+    Life is mostly froth and bubble,
+      Two things stand like stone--
+    Kindness in another's trouble,
+      Courage in your own.'
+
+It conveys at once the highest and truest of the many views he has given
+of his own character. Generous to others, he was too seldom just to
+himself. It was well there remained among the friends he left behind a
+few who knew him for what he was, and who were unwilling that qualities
+often clouded during his life by an unhappy temperament should be
+undervalued or forgotten. Kendall's 'In Memoriam' is a worthy tribute,
+and finely summarizes the general impression of Gordon which one obtains
+from his verse:
+
+  'The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
+  That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
+  The splendid fire of English chivalry
+  From dying out; the one who never wronged
+  A fellow-man; the faithful friend who judged
+  The many anxious to be loved of him
+  By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
+  As lesser spirits do; the brave great soul
+  That never told a lie, or turned aside
+  To fly from danger; he, I say, was one
+  Of that bright company this sin-stained world
+  Can ill afford to lose.'
+
+
+
+
+ROLF BOLDREWOOD.
+
+
+English readers of Rolf Boldrewood's novels have often wondered why he
+has ignored in his writings the modern social life of Australia. He has
+a unique knowledge of the country extending over sixty years, but his
+literary materials have been drawn only from the first half of this
+period. No other purely Australian novelist has succeeded in making a
+considerable reputation without feeling the necessity of fleeing to the
+more congenial atmosphere of literary London.
+
+It is true that even he had to find acceptance at home through the
+circuitous route of the press and the libraries of Great Britain, but he
+was able to wait for his long-delayed popularity, and when it came and
+found him in advanced age, he had no inclination to leave the land of
+his adoption. Probably if literature had been to him more of a
+profession and less of a taste and pastime, he would long ago have felt
+inclined to turn his back upon the indifference with which the colonies
+usually treat their own products in authorship until English approval
+has imparted new virtues to them.
+
+Most of the other writers who have contributed to the portrayal of a
+certain few aspects of Antipodean life have gone to London or elsewhere.
+Many years absent from Australia, they know little of its later
+developments. Boldrewood has spent a long and eventful life there. Of
+the southern half of the continent he must possess a specially intimate
+knowledge. Melbourne he has known in all the stages of its growth from a
+canvas-built hamlet to the finest city in the Southern Hemisphere. When
+he saw it first, the great golden wealth of the country lay unsuspected,
+and Ballarat and Bendigo were not.
+
+Though English by birth, he is wholly Australian in training and
+experience. In 1830, being then four years old, he was taken by his
+parents to Sydney, and there educated. Early in youth he became one of
+the pioneer squatters of Western Victoria, sharing with a few others the
+danger of dispossessing the aboriginals, and soon acquiring considerable
+wealth. But some years later, going back to New South Wales, and
+venturing to establish himself there on a larger scale as a sheep-owner,
+he was involved in a disastrous drought and lost nearly everything.
+
+In _The Squatters Dream_, which is understood to be partly
+autobiographical, he has minutely recorded the varying fortunes of
+pastoral life in the colonies. But the bitterness of failure never
+caused him to forget the happiness of his young enthusiasm, or to speak
+ill of a pursuit so much identified with the prosperity of the country.
+He refers to it as 'that freest of all free lives, that pleasantest of
+all pleasant professions--the calling of a squatter.'
+
+Abandoning his ambition to rank with the wool-kings, he entered the
+Civil Service as a police magistrate and gold-fields commissioner. In
+these combined offices he spent twenty-five years, and, while continuing
+a good public servant, contrived, like Anthony Trollope, to find time
+for substantial work in literature. Though during a period of about
+twenty years he contributed several stories and other literary matter to
+the Sydney and Melbourne press, it was not until the publication of
+_Robbery under Arms_, at London in 1889, that his work obtained due
+recognition even in the colonies. Ten years earlier he had made an
+unsuccessful bid for an English reputation by the publication of _Ups
+and Downs_, the novel which, under the more attractive title of _The
+Squatter's Dream_, reappeared in 1890 as a successor to the famous
+bushranging story. That the spirited opening chapters of _Robbery under
+Arms_ should have been thought lightly of by Australian editors when the
+serial rights of the story were offered to them is somewhat astonishing.
+The author has related how these chapters were successively rejected by
+a number of the leading journals, including two of the best weeklies.
+
+At length the manuscript was read by Mr. Hugh George, manager of the
+_Sydney Morning Herald_ and the _Sydney Mail_, who promptly accepted it
+for publication in the latter newspaper.
+
+Boldrewood at this time (1880) was well known to the Australian press.
+It must, however, be pointed out in justice to the editors, whom his
+story failed to impress, that his previous work had revealed little of
+the dramatic sense that contributed so materially to his success in
+presenting the careers of his highwaymen. But it is less easy to see
+why, when the full possibilities of the story had been realised, there
+should have remained a second difficulty, that of securing a publisher
+to issue it in book form. 'An Australian house,' the author has said,
+'refused to undertake the risk;' and he adds, 'as a matter of fact I had
+to publish it partly on my own account in England.' This proof of his
+confidence in the attractions of the story has since been justified by
+its complete success throughout the English-speaking world.
+
+A writer with so much experience of Australia, and continuing to reside
+in it, cannot be surprised if he is expected to take a large share of
+responsibility for the fact that Australian fiction--the fiction
+produced by writers known to the British public--only in a slight degree
+reflects the most interesting features in the present-day life of the
+country. At the same time, no such considerations can detract from the
+sterling merits of Rolf Boldrewood's actual services to Australian
+literature. It is hardly possible to believe that the English people
+still prefer to look to Australia only for stories of adventure; but if
+they do--and as the first to welcome and appreciate colonial writers
+they are perhaps entitled to exercise a choice--it is well that such
+stories be written from complete local knowledge, and thus at least
+correctly describe the broader aspects of the country.
+
+If Boldrewood were asked to explain his silence respecting Antipodean
+life of the present day, he might reply that the novel of modern manners
+did not form any part of the work which he had chosen to do. At all
+events, he could claim to be as much a historian as a novelist. It has
+been his ambition to describe Australia chiefly as he saw it in his
+youth, about forty years ago--as it was immediately before and after the
+discovery of gold. That his record _per se_ is strikingly vivid and
+faithful is the first general impression which his novels make upon the
+reader, whether English or colonial. There is about them much of that
+air of 'rightness' which Hall Caine has noted to be one of the most
+enduring qualities of good fiction, whatever its literary style may be.
+They are cheerful, virile, soundly moral, and take far more account of
+the good than of the bad in human nature. There is no fondness of the
+sensational for its own sake. The conditions of probability are observed
+with a closeness which, in books dependent for their interest so largely
+upon plot and incident, amounts almost to a fault.
+
+An English historian is said to have declared that he would willingly
+exchange a library full of the poets for a single good novel of the
+period in which he was interested. One can readily imagine that if a
+generation or two hence there should be any Australian history left
+unwritten, any unsatisfied curiosity concerning the simple annals now so
+familiar to us, Rolf Boldrewood's novels might be found, within their
+limits, a more satisfying source of information than all the rest of
+contemporary Australian literature combined, the formal chroniclers
+included, as well as the poets: that is to say, the general view they
+would furnish of certain features of pioneer life would be fuller and
+clearer, and, minor details apart, more reliable than could be gathered
+from any other source.
+
+Where is there in the elaborate histories of Rusden, Lang, Blair, and
+Flanagan, or in any of the numerous books of sketches and reminiscences
+written by persons who have visited or temporarily resided in Australia,
+a view of the picturesque variety, colour, and splendid energy of the
+great first race for gold to compare with that given in the second
+volume of _The Miner's Right_, or with the memorable account of what
+Starlight and the Marstons saw at Turon during their temporary
+retirement from the highway?
+
+Boldrewood, in these descriptions, has done what Henry Kingsley, with
+his more eloquent pen, if slighter personal experience, unaccountably
+neglected, and what Charles Reade, though he never saw Australia,
+vividly imagined, and regretted his inability to fully employ. Reade saw
+a theme for a great epic 'in the sudden return of a society far more
+complex, artificial, and conventional than Pericles ever dreamed of, to
+elements more primitive than Homer had to deal with; in this, with its
+novelty and nature and strange contrasts; in the old barbaric force and
+native colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised around the
+gold; in the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning; in
+a desert peopled and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity; in a huge
+army collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man's
+constraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his own
+heart; in the "siege of gold" defended stoutly by rock and disease; in
+the world-wide effect of the discovery, the peopling of the earth at
+last according to Heaven's long-published and resisted design.'
+
+If Boldrewood had not himself realized the literary value of the
+stirring scenes in which his youth was passed, this summary of the
+English novelist, published in 1856, might well have suggested it to
+him. How far has he succeeded in commemorating those scenes, and in what
+directions chiefly?
+
+In the first place, it is the pictorial, the literal, not the
+philosophical, aspect of the subject which has most attracted him. There
+is a personal zest in his remembrance of the general animation of the
+scene, a keen sense of the pleasurable excitement, freedom and
+good-fellowship of the life. His books are essentially men's books. This
+is the universal report of the English libraries. Analytical subtleties
+there are none. Boldrewood is not given to weighing moonbeams. His
+nearest approach to psychology consists in noting the various effects of
+robust, unconventional colonial life upon fortune-seekers and visitors
+from the mother country. This has been a favourite theme with all
+Australian writers, and one of which the female novelists have so far
+made the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had made
+himself as far as possible an exception to the rule--that he had aimed
+at a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborate
+minuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies of
+Australian character.
+
+Maud Stangrove in _The Squatter's Dream_, and Antonia Frankston in _The
+Colonial Reformer_, who seem to offer the best opportunities to typify
+Australian womanhood, are gracefully described; but, save for an
+occasional longing to relieve the monotony of their lives by a taste of
+European travel and culture, they are indistinguishable from such purely
+English types as Ruth Allerton and Estelle Challoner. Very pathetic, and
+marked by some distinctively Antipodean traits, is the sister of the
+bushrangers in _Robbery under Arms_. Aileen Marston has the strong
+self-reliance and independence which are born of the exigencies, as well
+as of the free life, of the country. She and her brothers represent
+much of what is best in Boldrewood's portrayal of native character.
+Maddie and Bella Barnes and Miss Falkland in the same novel, Kate
+Lawless in _Nevermore_, and Possie Barker in _A Sydneyside Saxon_, are
+also Antipodeans, but are only lightly sketched.
+
+Boldrewood claims that in his writings he has always upheld the
+Australian character. It is a fact that he has incidentally done this to
+a considerable extent, but not by any notable portraiture. In the period
+with which the novels deal the population of the colonies was largely
+English; it was, therefore, perhaps only natural that the stranger and
+adventurer from the Old World, so often well born and cultured, should
+prove a more attractive study than the sons of the soil. Moreover, the
+latter, in their monotonous and circumscribed life, lacked much of the
+mystery and romance so vital to the novel of adventure. But when this
+has been admitted in Boldrewood's favour, there still remains a broader
+charge to which he is liable.
+
+He has been accused, and it must be confessed with a good deal of
+justice, of paying too little attention in later novels (taking the
+order of their publication in London) to the development of even those
+characters most concerned in his plots. The fault is purely one of
+judgment. It is hardly possible to suppose any lack of ability in a
+writer who has produced the bright and suggestive dialogue scattered
+through the pages of _Robbery under Arms_ and The _Miner's Right_.
+Giving rein to his passion for reminiscence and descriptive detail, he
+has paid the inevitable penalty of a loss in human interest. So obvious
+is this loss in the stories of pastoral life, that one is almost fain to
+assume it to be the result of deliberate choice. How far the author, in
+this section of his writing, has neglected the social and dramatic
+possibilities of country life, can be judged by noting Mrs. Campbell
+Praed's work in _The Head Station_, _Policy and Passion_, or _The
+Romance of a Station_. But the best contrast to Boldrewood's style is
+furnished by the author of _Geoffry Hamlyn_.
+
+Henry Kingsley decided the movement of his characters with a loving
+care. Their interests were paramount to him. They made their own story;
+the story did not make them. Their author cared little for the externals
+of Australian life except in so far as they helped to tell something,
+especially something good, of his leading personages. His interest in
+them was not semi-scientific, like that of Thackeray or Jane Austen,
+Howells or Henry James, in their studies of human nature; it was that
+mainly of a sympathiser and a partisan.
+
+His frequently expressed anxiety about the impression they were making
+upon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a real
+solicitude in the confidences concerning William Ravenshoe upon his
+sudden promotion from the stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor.
+'I hope you like this fellow, William,' he says in one place, and then
+there is a naive enumeration of some of the ex-groom's social
+deficiencies. This, at best, is a useless interruption of the story, but
+it helps, with other signs, to show Kingsley's constant interest in his
+characters.
+
+Nearly everything in his descriptions of Australian squatting pursuits
+is intended to have a definite and notable bearing upon them. Thus, the
+view we get of the drafting-yard at Garoopna, with Sam Buckley in torn
+shirt, dust-covered, and wielding a deft pole on the noses of the
+terrified cattle, is not presented as a piece of station-life so much as
+a picturesque means of leading Alice Brentwood into an involuntary
+display of her affection for Sam when he is struck down before her eyes.
+
+Again, the description of the kangaroo-hunt, given in the same novel, is
+remembered chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and Alice in the
+frank enjoyment of their first love as they loiter in the tracks of the
+sportsmen, and, relinquishing the chase with happy indifference, go home
+and sit together under the verandah.
+
+Kingsley avoided the fault, common to his successors, of exaggerating
+the interest which readers are supposed to take in the general aspects
+of life in a new country. He had a keen sense of the value of
+picturesque environment, but wisely contrived that nothing should
+withdraw attention from the progress of his drama. He was ever on the
+watch for opportunities to sketch in lightly and humorously small traits
+of character, and to emphasise salient ones. 'She had an imperial sort
+of way of manoeuvring a frying-pan,' he says, in allusion to the
+cheerful adaptability of the high-bred Agnes Buckley, that fine model of
+English womanhood, during her first rough experiences in Australia. When
+Hamlyn comes to Baroona from the neighbouring station to spend Christmas
+with his old friends, he finds the same lady 'picking raisins in the
+character of a duchess.' Considered apart from the story, these
+Dickensian touches might seem merely humorous exaggeration, but to those
+who have traced the development of Mrs. Buckley's character, how happy
+and pregnant they are!
+
+_Robbery under Arms_ not only contains Boldrewood's most dramatic plot,
+but his most skilful and sympathetic treatment of character. It is a
+distinct exception to the rest of his work. In the later stories the
+characters are brightly sketched, but with so casual a touch that they
+leave no permanent impression with the reader. The best excite no more
+than a passing admiration, whereas Kingsley's win lasting admiration and
+love. There can be no surer test of art and truth: it furnishes the one
+indubitable proof of clear vision, sympathy, and correct expression.
+Where the weakness of some of Boldrewood's characters is not due to
+deficiency of interest in them on the part of the author, it is the
+result of an attempt to copy life with an accuracy which sacrifices
+picturesqueness.
+
+The attempt to preserve absolute truth in every detail of the life-story
+of John Redgrave, the hero of _The Squatter's Dream_, seems distinctly a
+case in point. In no other novel is there so complete a description of
+Australian squatting life--its varying success and failure, its solid
+comforts and wholesome happiness in times of prosperity. Redgrave is one
+of the most elaborately drawn of all the author's characters; there is
+the fullest sense of probability in every incident; the entire story is
+plainly a direct transcript of life; nothing at first seems wanting. But
+when the book is laid aside, the reader realises that he has scarcely
+been once moved by it. He has felt a transient pity for the hero's
+misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at his modified ultimate
+success--nothing more.
+
+The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of
+Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim
+is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when
+he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is commonly given
+to the man who plays for a high stake and loses. His love for Maud
+Stangrove, which might have been made a controlling and ennobling
+influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression
+of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type;
+no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour
+with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay.
+There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even
+the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it
+impracticable to dispense.
+
+An illustration of how little Boldrewood was inclined to idealise either
+his characters or their surroundings is afforded by the account of
+Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on
+the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where
+drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the
+stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with
+corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy
+plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the
+back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle
+for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking
+pigs lay in the verandah or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate
+vicinity of the front-entrance. 'What, in the name of wonder,' inquired
+Jack of himself as he rode away, 'can a man do who lives in such a
+fragment of Hades _but_ drink?'
+
+The home of the Stangroves, though less depressing, bears painful
+evidence of its isolation. The settler's wife little resembles Agnes
+Buckley--she is too typically colonial for that. 'She was young, but a
+certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore
+silent witness to the toils of housekeeping with indifferent servants or
+none at all; to the want of average female society; to a little
+loneliness and a great deal of monotony.'
+
+The visitor meets another member of the household, Stangrove's unmarried
+sister, a beautiful and spirited young woman whose impatience with her
+colourless life is outwardly subdued to ironical resignation. 'Another
+eventful day for Mr. Redgrave,' she remarks on his return after a day's
+riding over the station with her brother; 'yesterday the sheep were
+lost--to-day the sheep are found; so passes our life on the Warroo.'
+
+The best argument against Boldrewood's usual treatment of character is
+furnished by the great bushranger chief who is the central figure in
+_Robbery under Arms_. The author here submits for the first and only
+time to that fundamental law of fiction which demands a certain
+judicious exaggeration in the characters of a story depending for its
+interest mainly on the charm of circumstance. Starlight is at once the
+most real and least possible personage to be found in any of
+Boldrewood's novels. He becomes real because his character and actions
+are conceived in harmony with the romance and pathos of the story.
+Though it is obvious enough that there never could have existed a
+bushranger with quite so much of the _bel air_, or with a private code
+of honour so admirable, the exaggeration is far from obtrusive. He is of
+a stature suited to the deeds he performs, and, both he and his exploits
+being often closely associated with historical facts, a strong sense of
+reality is maintained.
+
+Starlight seems to be a compound of several characters. He has Turpin's
+ubiquity, Claude Duval's _sang-froid_, the personal attractiveness of
+Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing
+gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the
+humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety
+in the same colony a few years later.
+
+Boldrewood seems to have shrewdly agreed with the dictum of Turpin, that
+it is necessary for a highwayman, at all events a captain of highwaymen,
+to be a gentleman. But Starlight, unlike Turpin, does not become vain
+with success, and is far from being enamoured with his profession.
+Indeed, he is quite with the orthodox view of it. He is a bushranger,
+apparently, because he no longer hopes or desires to resume his rank in
+certain aristocratic circles from which, by occasional hints, we are
+informed that he has fallen. He indulges in no lugubrious
+moralisings--he is far too agreeable a person for that--but exhibits
+just the required touch of romance by letting you know that in his past
+there is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessary
+to enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser and
+admirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashing
+outlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has
+carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness
+of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical
+bushranger, is guilty. Cattle-stealing and highway robbery as supervised
+by Starlight are allowable, and even meritorious, in so far as they
+afford him opportunities to practise some facetious deception on the
+police. Such raids are not crimes, but comedies.
+
+There is excellent fun in his posing as 'Charles Carisforth, Esq., of
+Sturton, Yorkshire, and Banda, Waroona and Ebor Downs, N.S.W.,' while
+awaiting the arrival at Adelaide of the 1,100 head of stolen cattle, or
+as the 'Hon. Frank Haughton,' one of 'the three honourables' on the
+Turon gold-field. The rash daring and cleverness of these disguises
+furnish a combination of amusement and dramatic interest not approached
+in anything else that Boldrewood has written. Starlight's presence at
+dinner with the gold-fields commissioner and police magistrate at
+Turon, when 'in walked Inspector Goring,' the officer who had been so
+long and patiently seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance at Bella
+Barnes' wedding, after a reward of a thousand pounds has been offered
+for his capture, are scenes which remain vivid in the memory long after
+the more commonplace adventures of the lords of Terrible Hollow have
+lost their distinctness or been forgotten.
+
+Next to his humour and courage, the qualities which most endear this
+picturesque marauder to the reader are the happy fierceness with which
+he commands the respect of his retainers, and his politeness and
+gallantry to women. When a robbery is to be effected, the plans are laid
+with sound generalship, but there is no unnecessary violence or loss of
+good manners. His conduct at the plundering of the gold-escort is fully
+equal to the traditional suavity of Claude Duval. 'Now, then, all
+aboard!' he calls out to the passengers when the contents of the coach
+have been removed. 'Get in, gentlemen; our business matters are
+concluded for the night. Better luck next time! William, you had better
+drive on. Send back from the next stage, and you will find the mail-bags
+under that tree. They shall not be injured more than can be helped.'
+
+The bushranger of real life, as known to the pioneer colonist, would
+have bagged his booty with much fewer words. That Starlight should have
+'treated all women as if they were duchesses,' and have made it a point
+of honour to keep his pledged word with them, in however slight a
+matter, seems only natural. Not even the women-folk of his enemy are
+allowed to want a protector. When Moran and his gang of ruffians take
+possession of Darjallook station during the absence of the male members
+of the household, Starlight and the Marstons ride twenty miles across
+country and rescue the ladies before the worst has been done. Starlight
+bows to them 'as if he was just coming into a ball-room,' and, retiring,
+raises Miss Falkland's hand to his lips like a knight of old.
+
+These passages are only a few of the many which might be cited to show
+how far the author, fired with the spirit and romance of the story,
+gave freedom to his imagination in shaping the proportions of his
+leading character. Starlight, though he is not, and cannot be, a
+portrait of any single colonial outlaw of real life, is sufficiently
+natural to consistently represent in both his conduct and adventures
+much that was typical of Australian bushranging forty years ago and
+later.
+
+Some of his characteristics, and at least one of the concluding episodes
+of the story, were suggested by the career of a New South Wales
+horse-stealer who became known as 'Captain Moonlight.' So much is
+certain. Boldrewood has himself narrated to a contributor of the
+Australian _Review of Reviews_ his recollections of Moonlight and his
+end: 'Among other horses he stole was a mare called Locket, with a white
+patch on her neck. We had all seen her. This was the horse that brought
+about his downfall, and he was actually killed on the Queensland border
+in the way I have described in _Robbery under Arms_. Before that,
+Moonlight had had some encounters with Sergeant Wallings (Goring); and
+this day, when Wallings rode straight at him, he said: "Keep back, if
+you're wise, Wallings. I don't want your blood on my head; but if you
+must----" But Wallings rode at him at a gallop. Two of the troopers
+fired point-blank at Moonlight, and both shots told. He never moved, but
+just lifted his rifle. Wallings threw up his arms, and fell off his
+horse a dying man. As Moonlight was sinking, the leader of the troopers
+said: "Now you may as well tell us what your name is." But he shook his
+head, and died with the secret.' He was 'a gentlemanly fellow,' probably
+one of that unhappy class of young Englishmen of good birth and no
+character who are exiled to the colonies for their sins, and there often
+acquire new vices or sink into obscurity.
+
+When Archibald Forbes was in New Zealand a few years ago, he met a
+peer's son who was earning his 'tucker' as a station-cook. A Chinaman,
+aspiring to better things, had vacated the billet in his favour! It is
+interesting to note the use Boldrewood makes in his novel of the
+suggestion afforded by the bushranger's concealment of his identity.
+When Starlight is overcome in his last attempt at escape, the curiosity
+long felt concerning his past life seems for the third time in the story
+about to be gratified. But the reader is once more and finally
+disappointed. The bushranger has given his last messages, and is dying
+with some of the indifference to existence which has characterised him
+throughout the story.
+
+    'I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match you and I
+    shot in, at Hurlingham?'
+
+    'Why, good God!' says Sir Ferdinand, bending down, and looking into
+    his face. 'It can't be! Yes; by Jove! it is----'
+
+    He spoke some name I couldn't catch, but Starlight put a finger on
+    his lips, and whispered:
+
+    'You won't tell, will you? Say you won't.'
+
+    The other nodded.
+
+    He smiled just like his old self.
+
+    'Poor Aileen!' he said, quite faint. His head fell back. Starlight
+    was dead!
+
+Boldrewood's characters, as he has said himself, are constructed from
+many models. And the Marstons are, it seems, the only personages he has
+drawn solely from life. Gardiner, with whom some readers have
+identified Starlight, was, it is recorded, 'a man of prepossessing
+appearance and plausible address, who had many friends even among the
+settlers never suspected of sympathy with criminals, while many of the
+fair sex regarded him as a veritable hero.'
+
+That the romantic life of this noted criminal furnished Boldrewood with
+some material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger
+is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. In
+Starlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing but
+what is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was the
+seduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced to
+elope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none of
+the sensational incidents connected with his capture--his escape under a
+legal technicality from the death-penalty suffered by some of his
+associates, his imprisonment for twelve years and subsequent exile--are
+made use of in the novel.
+
+The narrative method adopted in _Robbery under Arms_ has so much
+contributed to the success of the story as to be worthy of some
+comparison with the ordinary style of the author. The limitations
+imposed by the choice of a narrator with no pretensions to education or
+sentiment, and writing in the first person, proved in this case salutary
+rather than disadvantageous. They repressed Boldrewood's usual tendency
+to excessive detail, and kept his attention closely fixed on the drama
+of the story.
+
+The occasional deficiency of local colour and loss of effect in the
+grouping of the characters is more than compensated for by the racy
+piquancy of Dick Marston's vernacular, and the aspect, unrivalled in
+Australian literature, which his account affords of bushranging life
+from the bushranger's own point of view. In the truth with which this
+view is presented lies the strength and lasting merit of what might
+otherwise have been little better than a commonplace series of
+sensational episodes.
+
+Starlight and the Marstons, as we see them, are reckless and dangerous
+criminals, but they are not exactly the 'bloodthirsty cowards' and
+'murderers' known to the press and police of the period. The little they
+can plead in excuse for their lives is plainly stated, while no
+complaint is urged against their fate, or attempt made to obscure its
+obvious lesson. Grim old Ben Marston's career illustrates one of the
+results of the stupidly cruel system of transporting persons from
+England to the colonies for petty offences which in these days are
+punished by a slight fine, and his sons are types of a class who were
+far from being as irreclaimable as their offences made them appear. 'Men
+like us,' Dick Marston is once made to say, 'are only half-and-half bad,
+like a good many more in this world. They are partly tempted into doing
+wrong by opportunity, and kept back by circumstances from getting into
+the straight track afterwards.'
+
+The examples given in the story of the aptness of this remark are often
+very touching. The poor Marston boys are indeed only half bad. Their
+better natures, seconded by the influence of a good mother and sister,
+are continually urging them to reformation, but for this there is no
+opportunity. The decision of their fate by the turn of a coin when the
+first great temptation comes is symbolical of the trifling causes to
+which the ruin of so many young Bushmen in the early days of squatting
+was traceable.
+
+The personal observation strongly marked in all Boldrewood's novels has
+in _Robbery under Arms_ its fullest, as well as most skilful,
+expression. As a squatter, the author had seen the practices of the
+cattle-thief, and learned his language. He had observed the extent to
+which idleness and a love of horseflesh combined to fill the gaols of
+the country, and in later years this knowledge was confirmed in the
+course of his long experience as a magistrate. The judgment with which
+he presents the case of the young Marstons as types of a class is
+excelled only by the literary skill employed upon the character of their
+chief.
+
+But there was no need to make Dick Marston so often emphasise the
+comfort of living 'on the square,' and the folly of ever doing
+otherwise. The story bears a self-evident moral. Humour there is in
+plenty, but the pathos of tragedy is the dominant, as it is the
+appropriate, tone of the book. In no respect has greater accuracy been
+attained than in the reproduction of the Australian vernacular, that odd
+compound of English, Irish, Scotch, and American phrases and inflexions,
+with its slender admixture of original terms. Visitors to Australia have
+praised the purity of the English spoken there by the middle classes.
+Mr. Froude, as late as 1885, found that 'no provincialism had yet
+developed itself,' but he wrote chiefly of what he had heard in the
+towns. It is in the country that the colonial dialect--if speech so
+largely imitative can yet be called a dialect--is most heard.
+
+Among other interesting features in Dick Marston's narrative is the
+curious half-impersonal view which the outlaws take of the efforts made
+by the Government to capture them, and their strong dislike, on the
+other hand, to the private persons who competed with the police for the
+large rewards offered. This detail is as true to life as the example of
+the sympathy and assistance accorded the bushrangers by settlers in the
+neighbourhood of their mountain retreat.
+
+It was sympathy of this kind, combined with bribery, which so protected
+the Kelly gang as to involve the Government of Victoria in an outlay of
+about one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds before their destruction
+could be accomplished. Effective literary use will be made at some time
+in the future of the exploits of this last and most daring of all the
+bushranging gangs, but many years must elapse before the sordid aspects
+of their career shall have been forgotten, and only its romance be left.
+And nothing short of genius will be required to refine the rude
+proportions of Ned Kelly into something like the gentlemanly exterior of
+the dashing captain, the smooth gallant, the humorist, philosopher, and
+quick-change artist of _Robbery under Arms_.
+
+In _The Miner's Right_, which ranks second in popularity among
+Boldrewood's novels, the personal narrative style is again adopted, but
+with little effect of the kind produced by Dick Marston's vivid
+directness in the earlier novel. Hereward Pole, the hero, is a cultured
+Englishman, sensitive and sentimental, who keeps an eye upon humanity at
+large, as well as upon the business of making a fortune which has
+brought him to the colonies. Half of his record, though a striking
+picture of the gold-fields, is not an inherent part of the story of his
+own career. Confined to their strictly just limits, the events which
+combine to prolong his separation from the sweetheart whom he has left
+in England could have been told in fifty pages. But this would not have
+been all the author wished. He was satisfied with a slender plot and a
+_denouement_ which can be guessed almost from the outset as soon as he
+saw that they would carry the glowing scenes and episodes of diggings
+life with which his memory was so richly stocked. One cannot believe but
+that, in this case, his slender attention to the long-drawn thread of
+the story was the outcome of choice. Else where was the need for
+elaborateness in such details as the dispute over the Liberator claim
+at Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on Challerson, with their
+rendering of witnesses' depositions in the manner of a newspaper report,
+the riot at Green Valley and Oxley, and the scene at the funeral of the
+agitator Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are given at great length,
+and do not form any essential part of the story of Hereward Pole and
+Ruth Allerton--the vindication of a man's honour and the triumph of a
+woman's invincible devotion--they are told with so much intimate
+knowledge and strength of colouring as almost to supply the absence of a
+plot, and to make the story, apart from artistic considerations, a
+really fine piece of work.
+
+It has a popularity in the English libraries which is itself a proof of
+the service done by the author to those who would know something of the
+careers of varying success and bitter failure, of hardship and romantic
+adventure, upon which so many of their kinsmen set out forty years ago.
+_Nevermore_ and _The Sphinx of Eaglehawk_ give other views of the
+gold-digging days, chiefly of their seamy side, but these stories offer
+nothing that equals in interest the splendid panorama of pioneer life
+revealed in _The Miner's Right_.
+
+Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon the
+general good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been one
+of those all-seeing autocrats, the gold-fields commissioners, he is an
+authority to be believed on the subject. In _Robbery under Arms_ the
+names are given of thirty races represented on the Turon field, and
+Hereward Pole, recounting his early impressions of Yatala, says: 'I was
+never done wondering of what struck me as the chief characteristic of
+this great army of adventurers suddenly gathered together from all seas
+and lands, namely, its outward propriety and submission to the law.'
+Elsewhere he likens the sensible reticence which they observed
+respecting their own affairs and those of their neighbours to the
+demeanour and mode of thought which prevails in club life.
+
+A passage from Dick Marston's account of what he saw at Turon is worth
+reproducing here as characteristic of the author's representation of a
+gold-fields community and as a sample of his humour. The 'three
+honourables,' of whom the disguised bushranger captain is one, are
+together in a hotel.
+
+    'The last time I drank wine as good as this,' says Starlight, 'was
+    at the Caffy Troy, something or other, in Paris. I wouldn't mind
+    being there again, with the Variety Opera to follow--would you,
+    Clifford?'
+
+    'Well, I don't know,' says the other swell. 'I find this amazing
+    good fun for a bit. I never was in such grand condition since I left
+    Oxford. This eight hours' shift business is just the right thing for
+    training. I feel fit to go for a man's life. Just feel this,
+    Despard,' and he holds out his arm to the camp swell. 'There's
+    muscle for you!'
+
+    'Plenty of muscle,' says Mr. Despard, looking round. He was a swell
+    that didn't work, and wouldn't work, and thought it fine to treat
+    the diggers like dogs.... 'Plenty of muscle,' says he, 'but devilish
+    little society.'
+
+    'I don't agree with you,' says the other honourable. 'It's the most
+    amusing, and, in a way, instructive place for a man who wants to
+    know his fellow-creatures I was ever in. I never pass a day without
+    meeting some fresh variety of the human race, man or woman; and
+    their experiences are well worth knowing, I can tell you. Not that
+    they're in a hurry to impart them; for that there's more natural
+    unaffected good manners on a digging than in any society I ever
+    mingled in I shall never doubt. But when they see you don't want to
+    patronise, and are content to be as simple man among men, there's
+    nothing they won't do for you or tell you.'
+
+    'Oh, d----n one's fellow-creatures! present company excepted,' says
+    Mr. Despard, filling his glass, 'and the man that grew this
+    "tipple." They're useful to me now and then, and one has to put up
+    with this crowd; but I never could take much interest in them.'
+
+    'All the worse for you, Despard,' says Clifford: 'you're wasting
+    your chances--golden opportunities in every sense of the word.
+    You'll never see such a spectacle as this, perhaps, again as long as
+    you live. It's a fancy-dress ball with real characters.'
+
+    'Dashed bad characters, if we only knew,' says Despard, yawning.
+    'What do you say, Haughton?' looking at Starlight, who was playing
+    with his glass, and not listening much, by the look of him.
+
+In his latest novels Boldrewood reverts to his familiar themes. _The
+Sphinx of Eaglehawk_, the shortest of all his works, might have been an
+excerpt from The _Miner's Right_; and the scene of _The Crooked Stick_
+is an inland station in New South Wales in the days of bushranging and
+disastrous droughts.
+
+The materials employed in the latter story reproduce the principal
+features of almost a score of other Australian novels published within
+the last few years. The love-affairs of a beautiful, impulsive girl,
+sighing for knowledge of the great world beyond the limits of her narrow
+experience; the influence upon her of a fascinating and gentlemanly
+Englishman, with aristocratic connections and a dubious past; the manly
+young Australian, whose loyalty, undervalued for a time, is rewarded in
+the end--these are some of the items which go to the making of a class
+of story already somewhat too common. The fact that Boldrewood continues
+to make such subjects interesting is due largely to the pervading sense
+of scrupulous truth, the evident element of personal experience, and the
+general cheerfulness of tone, which are never absent from any product of
+his pen, and which constitute his highest claims to rank in Australian
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.
+
+
+To Mrs. Campbell Praed belongs the credit of being the first to attempt
+to give an extended and impartial view of the social and political life
+of the upper classes in Australia. While she has not ignored whatever
+seemed picturesque in the external aspects of the country, her chief
+concern has been with the people themselves. Some of the best of her
+works--_Policy and Passion_ and _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_, for
+example--might fairly be named as an answer to the somewhat common
+complaint of a deficiency of dramatic suggestion in colonial life.
+
+In a preface to the first-named novel, Mrs. Praed explains it to have
+been her wish to depict 'certain phases of Australian life, in which the
+main interests and dominant passions of the personages concerned are
+identical with those which might readily present themselves upon a
+European stage, but which directly and indirectly are influenced by
+striking natural surroundings and conditions of being inseparable from
+the youth of a vigorous and impulsive nation.'
+
+The point of view here taken by the author at almost the beginning of
+her literary career has been maintained in most cases throughout her
+later work. The same preface might almost, in fact, serve for all her
+Australian stories. They describe broadly, in an attitude of
+good-natured criticism, the leading facts in the intellectual life of
+the people; their proud self-reliance, tempered by an acute sense of
+isolation and its disadvantages; their susceptibility to foreign
+criticism and example; their frank, natural manners in social customs of
+native origin, contrasted with their quaintly-rigid observance of
+conventionalities which have long since been relaxed in the mother
+country whence they were copied.
+
+Mrs. Praed has turned to account more fully than any other writer the
+little affectations of that small upper crust of Antipodean society
+which is sufficiently cultured to have developed a taste for
+aristocratic European habits, along with an uncomfortable suspicion of
+'bad form' in anything of purely local growth. This is the class which
+maintains an air of portentous solemnity in public ceremonials, and is
+liable at any moment to be convulsed by a question of precedence at a
+Government House dinner.
+
+From a lively appreciation of comedy to caricature is an easy descent
+which the author has not always resisted, but her exaggeration is so
+obviously resorted to in the interests of fun that it is unlikely to
+mislead. There is certainly no need to repudiate as untypical of
+Australian political society the Pickwickian spectacle of a drunken
+Postmaster-General fearfully trying to walk a plank after a Vice-regal
+dinner, in order to win three dozen of champagne wagered by the leader
+of the Opposition, while the Premier looks on and holds his sides with
+merriment; or the case of the Premier's wife, who, on being told by a
+newly-arrived Governor--a musical enthusiast--that he hoped to be able
+to 'introduce Wagner' at the local philharmonic concerts, said: 'I'm
+sure we shall be very pleased to see the gentleman.'
+
+Considering, however, the opportunities which colonial life, and
+especially colonial politics, afford for ridicule, the author has been
+commendably careful to avoid, as far as possible, giving real offence.
+Yet her criticism is sufficiently free to be piquant, and, on the whole,
+as salutary as it is entertaining. 'Why need Australians always be on
+the defensive?' asks more than once an Englishman in one of her novels.
+The author seems to have put the same question to herself as an
+Australian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness is a worse vice
+than affectation, and that her compatriots, by giving way to it, do both
+themselves and their country an injustice. For it implies a too low
+estimate of what is fresh and strong and of real merit in the
+independent life of the nation.
+
+Colonists need a little more of the philosophic and common-sense spirit
+which can look upon deficiencies and crudities merely as phases in the
+natural evolution of society in a new land. This is what Mrs. Praed has
+endeavoured to teach in some of her stories. The lesson is often
+surrounded with a good deal of bantering discussion; it may not always
+be apparent to an English reader, but it can hardly be overlooked by an
+Australian. There is rarely anything so pointed as the conversation
+between Miss Jacobsen and her lover, Chepstowe. The former has been
+wondering what the cultivated Englishman thought of a recent noisy and
+rather vulgar reception tendered to a new Governor for whom he is acting
+as private secretary. Chepstowe is suspected of being secretly amused at
+his surroundings. But his view of them is purely rational and
+matter-of-fact.
+
+    'You know, I fancy you colonists think rather too little of
+    yourselves, and we in England rather too much. Or I'll put it in
+    another way. I fancy you colonists think too much about yourselves,
+    and we in England think too little.'
+
+    'You said just now that you think too much.'
+
+    'Yes; it's the same thing put in a different way. We think too much
+    of ourselves, and for that reason too little about ourselves. You
+    are always thinking somebody is laughing at you; we have made up our
+    minds that we are the admiration of everybody. We are often very
+    ridiculous, and don't know it. You often think you are ridiculous
+    when you really are not.'
+
+    'I think we must have seemed very ridiculous the day you landed....
+    I know you are astonished at some of our public men.... You will
+    write home and say how rude and rough and vulgar some of them are.'
+
+    'If one wants to see the ridiculous, one can see it everywhere. We
+    have some public men at home who are rude and rough, and vulgar and
+    ridiculous.... One has to make allowances, of course, for training
+    and habits, and all that.... When our fellows are rough, there is
+    less excuse for them. The more one goes about the world, the less
+    one sees to laugh at, I think....'
+
+English self-complacency is, of course, a growth of centuries, but
+perhaps a deliberate and intelligent effort to acquire some of it in
+Australia would be the best specific for that consciousness which,
+colonists should not forget, is the mark of insignificance. It has been
+said that Australians already have too much to say for themselves and
+their country. The assertion is only applicable to a small boisterous
+class who have never seen anything beyond their own shores.
+
+A much commoner element of Antipodean life, one which some of Mrs.
+Praed's characters notably illustrate, is the desire for wider
+experience and culture produced among educated people by their constant
+use of British and European literature. James Ferguson, the young
+squatter in _The Head Station_, represents those Australians who, though
+stout believers in their own country, feel its intellectual
+deficiencies--perhaps too much; who are more English than the English
+themselves in their veneration for the historic associations of the
+mother land; who, when they go to London, are curiously at home in
+streets and among sights that have been more or less definitely outlined
+in their imagination from early childhood.
+
+While three of his English-bred companions are exchanging reminiscences
+of London life, Ferguson listens with an eager interest, 'putting in a
+remark every now and then which had the savour, so readily detected, of
+acquaintance with the thing in question by means of books rather than
+personal experience.' In Mrs. Praed's stories, as in real life, a
+personal acquaintance with other countries gives the Australian a truer
+appreciation of the good in his own. The man who has taken part in the
+artificialities of a London season, or has been a spectator of its petty
+rivalries, returns joyfully to a simpler life; the woman who is prone to
+deify the smooth-spoken Englishman, learns through him to value the more
+homely virtues of colonial manhood.
+
+In the difficult task of rendering attractive the restricted life of the
+squatting class, who form the country aristocracy of Australia, Mrs.
+Praed has combined humour and a terse cultivated style of expression
+with a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely
+commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish
+materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some
+romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create
+'atmosphere,' or anything that a judicious reader would skip.
+
+The beautiful Honoria Longleat reclining in a hammock under the
+vine-trellised verandah at Kooralbyn, stray shafts of sunlight
+imparting a warm chestnut tint to her hair, a trailing withe of orange
+begonia touching her shoulder, a book in her lap and a bundle of guavas
+on the ground beside her; Elsie Valliant waiting for her lover on the
+rocky crossing of Luya Dell, framed between two giant cedars and
+outlined cameo-like against the blue sky; Gretta Reay, the proud, sturdy
+little belle of Doondi, with upturned sleeves at her churn, pretending
+unconcern when she is surprised by her English visitors--these are some
+of the pictures in which the author commemorates much that is noteworthy
+in the warmth and colour of tropical Australia and in the daily life of
+its inhabitants. This fondness for posing her heroines is one of the
+minor features of her work. Its results in some of her later novels are
+not, however, always agreeable: a few of the scenes in the history of
+the unhappy Judith Fountain in _Affinities_ are painful, and the
+portrait, in _The Brother of the Shadow_, of Mrs. Vascher as she lies in
+the mesmerist's blue-silk-lined room is an unnecessary ghastly
+elaboration.
+
+The hardships suggested by the beginnings of pastoral life amid the
+giant forests and intense loneliness of Australia are never allowed by
+Mrs. Praed to give a gloomy colour to her stories. It is one of their
+distinct merits that they present the humorous incongruities rather than
+the trials of pioneering, though the latter are by no means ignored. In
+the first three chapters of _The Romance of a Station_ some excellent
+humour is provided by the young bride's account of her home-coming to
+the rude mansion on her husbands mosquito-infested island station, and
+the ludicrous privations she encountered there. There is nothing of the
+kind more amusing in the whole of Australian fiction. The description of
+the household pets, and the vermin--including a lizard with an uncanny
+habit of 'unfastening its tail and making off on its stump when
+pursued'--rivals the famous verandah scene in _Geoffry Hamlyn_. An
+intimation in the preface that these experiences are a faithful record
+from the early life of the author herself sufficiently explains their
+graphic quality. Amusing also are the sketches of the aristocratic
+settlers in _Policy and Passion_ and _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ who try to
+apply the principles of aestheticism to the crude surroundings of their
+new-made homes in the backwoods--Dolph Bassett with his ornamental
+bridges and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord Horace Gage explaining
+with his maxim, 'If we can't be comfortable, let us at least be
+artistic,' a neglect to fill up the chinks in his slab hut.
+
+Queensland, the scene of Mrs. Praed's colonial experience and the
+'Leichardt's Land' of her stories, differs notably from the rest of
+Australia only in climate; its social and political conditions are
+essentially the same in character as those in the rest of the country.
+The Englishman acquiring colonial experience, the squatter living in
+various stages of comfort or discomfort, the gentleman spendthrift from
+whom his family has parted with the affectionate injunction, 'God bless
+you, dear boy; let us never see your face again!' and the political
+parties which go in and out of office 'like buckets in a well' (to use
+the author's own expression), are, or have been, common features of
+every colony. Like several of her heroines, Mrs. Praed alternated life
+in the country with the gaieties of the capital.
+
+The position of her father, the Hon. T. L. Murray-Prior, as a member of
+the Legislative Council, brought her into contact with those political
+and vice-regal circles of which she has given entertaining and
+occasionally derisive accounts in _Policy and Passion_, _Miss Jacobsen's
+Chance_, and elsewhere. Her description in the former story of the
+wealthy landowners, who adopt a passive and somewhat disdainful attitude
+towards party strife, applies to a class already large in the colonies.
+Whether such an attitude is consistent with 'the truest conservatism to
+be found in Australia,' which they are said to represent, may be
+questioned. It seems rather to indicate selfishness, petulance, and lack
+of patriotism.
+
+It is not, however, upon the business of politics or the humours and
+makeshifts of colonial life that Mrs. Praed has expended her best
+efforts as a writer. Some study of the human emotions is the primary
+interest in all her novels. There is nearly always love of the
+passionate and romantic kind, prompted on the one side by impulse,
+ignorance or glamour, and on the other by passing fancy or
+self-interest: the love of an innocent, unsophisticated woman for a man
+experienced in the pleasures and some of the darker vices of life; and,
+in contrast, the blunt respect and devotion of the typical Australian
+man for the same woman, and her light estimate of his worth. The
+tragedies of marriage--the union of the refined and imaginative with the
+coarse and commonplace, the high-souled with the worldly and cynical,
+the pure with the impure--are correlative themes of some of the
+strongest of the novels. In these, pathos is the prevailing tone. We
+have the spectacle of the woman's blind, illogical trust abused, her
+helplessness in self-inflicted misery, or the tenacity with which, in
+temptation, she clings to the safeguards of conventional morality. In
+most cases this tenacity, which the author accounts an instinct rather
+than a virtue, is either allowed to triumph, or is placed by death
+beyond the possibility of a supreme test. In the loves of Hester
+Murgatroyd and Durnford in _The Head Station_, of Mrs. Lomax and Leopold
+D'Acosta in _The Bond of Wedlock_, and of Mrs. Borlase and Esme
+Colquhoun in _Affinities_, it is the woman who directly, or by
+implication, insists upon respect of the marriage tie so long as it
+remains a legal obligation.
+
+But it should be made clear that Mrs. Praed is not in any sense a
+propagandist on the subject of marriage. She illustrates, often
+impressively, its difficulties and anomalies, but leaves the rest to the
+judgment of the reader. The romantic, ignorant girl who marries on
+trust, or is ready to do so, has numerous representatives in these
+novels. Though it is a woman's view of her trials and unhappiness that
+is given, there is nothing in the shape of a crusade against male vices.
+It is not the faults of men that are dwelt upon so much as the
+inevitably lenient, the pitifully inadequate estimate which women make
+of men themselves.
+
+The most striking illustration of this feature is probably contained in
+the last scenes of _The Bond of Wedlock_, where the heroine learns at
+once the hypocrisy of her father and the dishonour of her lover. The
+father, in a fit of resentment, has revealed the mean plot by which she
+has been enabled to divorce her husband and marry Sir Leopold D'Acosta.
+The latter, seeing that Mrs. Lomax would never consent to an elopement,
+has paid another woman--a former mistress of his--to incriminate Harvey
+Lomax, while the audacious old humbug, his father-in-law, does the
+business of a detective. Ariana's dream of happiness is dissipated. She
+hardens into indifference. The revelation completes the disillusionment
+which had already begun. 'I had set you up as my hero, and my ideal, and
+I have found you--a man.' This is the summary of her life's experience,
+which in effect is also that of Esther Hagart, Ginevra Rolt, Christina
+Chard, Ina Gage, and others in the list of Mrs. Praed's unhappy
+heroines. Married life, as they illustrate it, is usually a compromise.
+Even that of Mrs. Lomax is not quite a failure. Her husband does not
+attempt to conceal the fact that she no longer interests him, but with
+that commonly-accepted philosophy which recognises a wife as at least an
+adjunct to conventional respectability, he reminds her that, after all,
+their union has some advantages:
+
+    'I would much rather have you for a wife than any other woman I ever
+    knew; and if I sometimes think a man is better who hasn't a wife, it
+    is only when you are in one of those reproachful moods, and seem as
+    if you were anxious to make me out a heartless sort of miscreant. In
+    Heaven's name, why not make the best of things? Why need we be
+    melodramatic? We are man and woman of the world. We must take the
+    world as we find it, and ourselves for what it has made us.'
+
+Ariana's answer was given later on when she realized the full extent to
+which she had been self-deluded: 'I am not going to be melodramatic. We
+can be very good friends on the outside. We need never be anything
+more.'
+
+A strong bias towards analysis is the chief characteristic of Mrs.
+Praed's studies in character. As in her illustrations of the perplexing
+uncertainties of married life it is the woman's point of view that is
+most impressively presented, so in each story there is at least one
+woman whose personality stands out in pathetic relief and claims
+paramount attention. She is usually a cultivated woman of romantic
+tendency, living in a restricted social environment, and displaying the
+craving of that class of her sex for change, pleasurable excitement, and
+sympathy. In the satisfaction of her yearnings or ambitions are seen,
+perhaps more often than is typical, the gloomy aspects of marriage, and
+the incompetence of women to manage their own lives.
+
+The average Australian girl of real life is neither very romantic nor
+fastidious. She is cheerful, adaptable, too fond of pleasure to be
+thoughtful, and has a decided inclination towards married life. Its
+material advantages and status attract her--and, for the rest, she has a
+vague confidence that everything will come right. Nowhere is the horror
+of elderly spinsterhood more potent. The influence of independent
+professional life fostered by the large public schools is still
+infinitesimal.
+
+The type upon which Mrs. Praed has bestowed her most elaborate work
+belongs to a class both higher and far fewer in numbers. It is the class
+that Mr. Froude had chiefly in view when he noted the absence of 'severe
+intellectual interests' as a deficiency of society at Sydney.
+
+Honoria Longleat, the principal study of Mrs. Praed's second novel, may,
+with a few obvious deductions, be taken as a fair example of the
+colonial woman educated beyond sympathy with her native surroundings,
+and unprovided with any employment for her mental energies. With the
+distractions and interests of her narrow circle exhausted, and the
+knowledge that her future--her only possible future--must soon be
+decided by marriage, she is consumed with an intense and reckless desire
+for new emotional experience. Her unrest is like that of the large class
+of American women who are educated above the purely commercial standard
+of their fathers and brothers, and are impelled to satisfy their
+intellectual cravings by frequent European travel.
+
+'This is only a state of half-existence,' said Honoria in reference to
+her country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read them
+greedily at first, then throw them aside in disgust. They never take one
+below the surface.... I want to grow and live.... What is the use of
+living unless one can gauge one's capacity for sensation?' Gretta Reay,
+in whom the same discontent is reproduced, exclaims: 'Ah, we Australians
+are like birds shut up in a large cage--our lives are little and narrow,
+for all that our home is so big.'
+
+By these and other characters of the same type, the cultivated
+Englishman, who offers them the prospect of change and emancipation from
+monotony, is distinctly preferred in marriage to the man of colonial
+birth and experience. 'Don't you know,' says Gretta to one of the
+latter, 'that an Australian girl's first aim is to captivate an
+Englishman of rank and be translated to a higher sphere--failing that,
+to make the best of a rich squatter?'
+
+The heroine of _Outlaw and Lawmaker_ differs from Gretta only in being
+more emphatic in her preference for the doubtful stranger, and
+irrational in her objections to her tried Australian lover, Frank
+Hallett. Once, in a riding-party, 'she had moodily watched his
+(Hallett's) square, determined bushman's back as he jogged along in
+front of her, and compared it with Blake's easy, graceful, rather
+rakish, bearing. Why was Frank so stolid, so good, so commonplace?'
+
+A trifling superficial defect of the same sort turns the tables against
+the gallant young explorer, Dyson Maddox, in his first suit for the hand
+of Miss Longleat. The half-dozen analytical studies of female character
+in the principal novels of Mrs. Praed are far from flattering to her
+countrywomen, and might be somewhat misleading if we permitted ourselves
+to forget that in every case it is only one phase of a colonial girl's
+life that is being given.
+
+The whims, the countless flirtations, the greed for new sensations, the
+inconsistencies and the apparent mercenary attitude towards marriage,
+are not more permanently characteristic of the women of Australia than
+of Englishwomen with equal opportunities. The impulses of the former are
+under few conventional restraints; they have a greater control of their
+lives: that is the only material difference. The matrimonial creed of
+Gretta Reay expresses rather the exaggerated cynicism of a coquette than
+a fact generally true of the class to which she belongs. The experiences
+of herself and of other leading characters in these stories correctly
+show that, although Australian women have an undoubted preference for
+the gentlemanly product of an older civilisation, it is a preference of
+sentiment in which self-interest and prudence are scarcely considered.
+
+Even Weeta Wilson, the professional beauty so strikingly portrayed in
+_The Romance of a Station_, has a soul above her own avowed commercial
+view of marriage. It had been systematically planned that she should
+contract an aristocratic alliance; for years she had co-operated with
+her parents in elaborate preparations, half pathetic, half ludicrous;
+she had been guarded and nurtured like a hothouse-plant. At last, when
+her opportunity came, she relinquished her lover on finding that there
+was another who had a prior right to him.
+
+The subtle skill with which some of the nobler qualities of her women
+are brought out, especially their capacity for self-sacrifice and
+devotion, marks Mrs. Praed's highest point of achievement in the
+portrayal of character. Her knowledge of the mental complexities of her
+own sex is both deeper and better expressed than her observation of men.
+In the most inconsistent, the most cynical, or the shallowest of her
+women, there is a latent tenderness, a soft womanliness, which conquers
+dislike. Thus, it is impossible to lack sympathy for Christina Chard, or
+accept her own estimate of her selfishness, after reading the
+finely-written scene in which she is found kneeling by the bedside of
+her dying child, from whom she has been so cruelly separated, while her
+recreant husband stands apart in awe and humiliation; or, again, in the
+interview with Frederica Barnadine, when the claims of both women to
+the love of Rolf Luard are discussed.
+
+The absence of similar redeeming qualities in several of the principal
+male characters leaves them almost wholly without definite claim on our
+regard, and also lessens the effect of the author's frequent endeavours
+to impartially contrast the unconsciously low moral standard of the
+average worldly man--the standard which society accepts--with the high,
+impracticable ideals of inexperienced womanhood.
+
+The heroines in nearly all of Mrs. Praed's stories have the life of
+sentiment and passion revealed to them by men older in years, and
+skilled in those small arts and graces of refined society which are ever
+attractive to women. But, in fulfilling this design, the men themselves
+are often placed in a strained and artificial pose. The presentation of
+the purely emotional side of their nature inevitably tends to produce an
+appearance of weakness and effeminacy.
+
+There is hardly a single admirable quality in Barrington, the base lover
+of Honoria Longleat; or in George Brand, who deserts Esther Hagart in
+her poverty and loneliness, and years afterwards, on finding her
+recognised as the niece of an English baronet, persuades her into an
+unhappy marriage; or in Brian Gilmore, the profligate in _Moloch_, who
+seeks to rejuvenate his jaded passions with the love of an innocent
+girl, after abandoning another woman whose life he has spoiled. Sir
+Bruce Carr-Gambier forsakes Christina Chard and her child for cowardly
+reasons similar to those pleaded by Brand. When they meet, long-after,
+he offers his devotion again, but only because her developed beauty,
+position, and reputed wealth attract him.
+
+It is true that these characters fairly fulfil the author's intention,
+so far as they bring into vivid juxtaposition the polished life of the
+old world with the simplicity of the new, and help to give the necessary
+dramatic point to the several stories; but there is so much of the cad
+in their nature and conduct, that it is difficult to accept them as
+representatives of any conceivable type of the Englishman of birth and
+refinement. This result, however, does not imply any actual inability on
+the part of the author to realise the standard of true manhood in all
+its varying strength and foibles, its tenderness and honour. Where there
+has not seemed any necessity to bend the character to the requirements
+of the story, admirably life-like sketches of men have been
+produced--such as Rolf Luard in _Christina Chard_ and Bernard Comyn in
+_An Australian Heroine_ among Englishmen; and Dyson Maddox, Frank
+Hallett, and James Ferguson among Australians.
+
+Though it is plain that Mrs. Praed has generally found colonial men
+wanting in interest in proportion as they themselves lack the polish
+that travel and extended experience of social life impart, she has not
+overlooked the rugged dignity, the truth and virility, which are their
+highest characteristics. Alluding to Ferguson as one type of his
+country, she observes that, 'underlying the rough-and-ready manners and
+the prosaic routine of bush-life, there is an old-world chivalry, a
+reverence for women, a purity of thought, a delicacy of sentiment....
+This is partly due to the breezy moral atmosphere, and partly to the
+influence of books, which become living realities in the solitude and
+monotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an
+odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who
+learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its
+pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society
+slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits;
+but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the
+soul, he has made his own.'
+
+Ferguson himself echoes the same estimate in pleading his suit with Miss
+Reay. 'It seems to me,' he says, 'that there's a kind of chivalry which
+can be practised in the bush here better than in great cities--the
+chivalry Tennyson writes about--the knighthood that isn't earned by
+sauntering through life in a graceful, smiling sort of way, with your
+heart in your hand, but in simplicity and faith; by love of one woman,
+and reverence of all women for her sake.'
+
+Compared with the fascinating aristocrats and adventurers, the
+Australian man seems crudely provincial. Yet he is never shown in an
+incorrect or merely satirical light. There are, to be sure, occasions
+when he appears too tame and Dobbin-like in acceptance of his lady's
+caprices; but this is partly an evidence of that mixture of stiff native
+pride and independence which forbids servile appeal even to one he
+loves.
+
+The deficiency of which the reader is most often conscious in
+endeavouring to make a general estimate of Mrs. Praed's work is a want
+of breadth in her scope--a presentation too constant and too tense of
+certain phases of the passionate life of men and women, to the
+comparative exclusion of those softer and higher attributes which even
+Charlotte Bronte (whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally resembles)
+did not neglect. In other words, we are not given enough to admire.
+There are few pictures--and none that can be called memorable--of happy
+married life to contrast with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions.
+An inclination towards humorous disdain characterizes the references in
+the stories to conjugal relations of the ordinarily satisfactory kind.
+And when those of a filial nature are brought into prominence, they,
+too, often have only a pathetic or painful aspect--love on the one side
+repelled by indifference; an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy that
+irritates instead of soothes; a sensitive girl writhing under the
+brutalities or _gaucheries_ of a drunken father.
+
+A survey of the author's female characters will recall over a score of
+names of discontented girls experimenting in life--flirts, minxes,
+unhappy wives, and shallow society women; while after passing over half
+a dozen of the _ingenue_, the amusing and the neutral types, there
+remain only about four to represent the highest and most lovable
+qualities of womanhood. A similar division might be made between the
+male characters, though here the preponderance of the bad would not be
+so great as in the first case.
+
+The descriptions of English society which are amongst Mrs. Praed's best
+work are marked by the same clear vision of the darker side of human
+nature that is displayed in the treatment of English character in her
+Australian novels. Her view of the 'smart' section of English society is
+somewhat severe. After reading several of her novels, one could almost
+imagine her defending her literary preference in the words of Esme
+Colquhoun, in _Affinities_: 'What is our mission--we writers--but to
+distil the essence of the age? The critics tell us that we are complex,
+that we are corrupt, that we are anatomists of diseased minds. We reply:
+The age is complex; the age is corrupt, and the society we depict is the
+outcome of influences which have been gathering through centuries of
+advancing civilization ... the reign of healthy melodrama is over; the
+reign of analysis has commenced. We make dramas of our sensations, not
+of our actions.' The same view is expressed in an article contributed by
+Mrs. Praed to the _North American Review_ in 1890. 'Analysis, not
+action,' she notes as the prevailing characteristic of the fiction
+produced by female writers, 'as it is also of our modern social life.'
+But, 'to dissect human nature under its society swathings needs,' she
+adds, 'the skill of a Balzac or a Thackeray, while the feminine
+counterpart of a Balzac or a Thackeray is difficult to find.'
+
+That indefinable power which includes sympathetic insight and does not
+overlook whatever is good even in the most repulsive character is,
+perhaps, what the describers in fiction of modern society need even more
+than skill in dissection. To observe and dissect what is corrupt is
+easier than to make the record of corruption presentable. Mrs. Praed's
+own tale _The Bond of Wedlock_, with all its undoubted cleverness, its
+realism and dramatic strength, fails in its due impression as a picture
+of latter-day English morals because it is too sordid, too completely
+devoid of any of the better qualities of humanity.
+
+To see Mrs. Praed in her most agreeable and natural moods one must
+revert to the novels in which the scenery and people of her own country
+are described. In _Miss Jacobsen's Chance_ we have her liveliest
+example of humour and caricature, in _The Head Station_ her most
+cheerful pictures of country life, and in _Christina Chard_ some account
+of the society with which colonists of wealth surround themselves in
+London. The latter story has several finely dramatic scenes and is a
+sample of the author's mature work. Hers is the most comprehensive view
+that we have of the social and political life of the Antipodes, and for
+this and for her minutely recorded knowledge of her own sex she will
+long continue to hold and deserve a foremost place in Australian
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+TASMA.
+
+
+Between the writers who profess not to see anything individual in the
+life of Australia and those others who confine themselves to describing
+a few of its principal scenes and types of character, Tasma holds a
+middle and independent place. She is absolutely without predilections
+and hobbies. Her materials are chosen for some quality of
+picturesqueness rather than for the purpose of illustrating any phase of
+life at the Antipodes or elsewhere. So little are some of her novels
+concerned with the external appearances of the country that the scene of
+their action might easily be transferred to almost any part of Great
+Britain or America.
+
+Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched views of places--of
+Melbourne in midsummer, with its buildings of sombre bluestone and
+stucco, and streets swept by dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid and
+drought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty of rural Tasmania, the home
+of her own youth--but these and other descriptions from the same pen are
+slight compared with similar work in the stories of Kingsley,
+Boldrewood, and Mrs. Campbell Praed.
+
+Tasma, as one of the younger writers, has rightly seen that, for the
+present at all events, more than sufficient use has been made in fiction
+of the natural peculiarities of Australia. Her novels are, moreover, all
+character studies, and little dependent upon local colour for their
+interest. Her quiet, satirical humour and power of rapidly and mordantly
+sketching a portrait, do much to justify a comparison which her friends
+sometimes make of her writings with those of George Eliot and Jane
+Austen. Rolf Boldrewood, after the publication of her first three books,
+hailed her as the 'Australian George Eliot,' and the title is certainly
+more fitting than the praise implied by the other comparison. She has
+much of George Eliot's conscientious literary expression, direct
+masculine way of looking at life, and unsparing criticism of her own
+sex. While reminding one, as she often does, of Jane Austen's humour,
+Tasma does not approach any nearer to that writer's supreme gift of
+describing character in dialogue than scores of others who have followed
+the same model during the last seventy years.
+
+Like most of the chief contributors to Australian literature, Tasma is a
+colonist in experience only. She was born at Highgate, near London, and
+taken during childhood by her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a Dutch
+merchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania, about forty years ago. She displayed
+literary talent at an early age, read extensively, and published
+criticisms in the _Melbourne Review_, and short stories and sketches in
+the lighter colonial periodicals.
+
+In 1879 Tasma went to live in Europe, and has since known Australia only
+as an occasional visitor. Becoming interested in social questions during
+a residence in France, she wrote in the _Nouvelle Revue_, suggesting
+emigration to the colonies and engagement in the fruit-growing industry
+there as a means of relieving some of the poverty of the Old World. She
+afterwards lectured on the subject in French at the invitation of the
+Geographical Society of Paris. So successful were the lectures that she
+was induced to repeat them in various provincial centres, as well as in
+Holland and Belgium. This work occupied from 1880 to 1882, and Tasma was
+presented by the French Government with the decoration of Officier
+d'Academie. The King of the Belgians also honoured the lecturer by
+receiving her in special audience to discuss means of improving
+communication between Belgium and Tasmania.
+
+In 1885, after revisiting Australia, Tasma was married to M. Auguste
+Couvreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he has
+since died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by the
+publication at London of _Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill_, which proved to
+be one of the most notable books of its season.
+
+This novel remains the best example of the author's humour and power of
+describing character that she has produced. It has none of the marks of
+a first effort. Written when Tasma was about thirty-two, it embodied
+some of the best fruits of many years' keenly critical study of life, in
+addition to the culture gained by travel and a wide course of reading.
+Of plot there is little--there is still less in some of the later
+novels--but sufficient variety of incident is given to afford scope for
+unusually rich faculties of sympathy and philosophic observation.
+
+In her desire to present only real persons moving in a familiar world
+she merits, in _Uncle Piper_, praise almost equal to that accorded by
+Nathaniel Hawthorne to the novels of Anthony Trollope when he spoke of
+them as being 'as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the
+earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going
+about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made
+a show of.' It is, however, less of Trollope than of Howells that Tasma
+reminds the reader in this first story. The character of the wealthy
+_parvenu_ uncle, sensitive, boastful, resentful, and obstinate, yet
+tender-hearted as a child, irresistibly recalls _Silas Lapham_, that
+wonderfully natural and sympathetic presentment of a commonplace man.
+There are numerous points of resemblance between the two, especially
+when they are shown contrasted with their aristocratic friends. The
+delightful comradeship of Lapham and his wife, with its curiously dry
+New England expression, has its counterpart in Piper's affection for his
+sister and their pride in each other.
+
+The half-acknowledged social ambitions of both men, qualified by their
+secret contempt for the pretensions of the upper classes, is shown in
+various similar ways, as is also their love of display. They differ only
+as their nationalities differ. Puritanism survives in the American
+merchant and his wife, and unconsciously sways their lives. Uncle
+Piper's conception of the Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a
+religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can
+repress--which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic
+coldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and
+step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind--the tractable
+section of them--there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and
+reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness
+which is irresistible.
+
+The superiority of Silas Lapham as a realistic portrait is not difficult
+to affirm; still, it is a fact complimentary to Tasma that the
+characters thus far approximate. Uncle Piper is under all the
+disadvantage that a figure in fiction suffers in being described largely
+in plain statement by the author instead of being gradually revealed in
+piquant dialogue.
+
+Readers of _Silas Lapham_ will remember the rapid series of witty
+touches with which the burly Bostonian is sketched as he sits in the
+office of his warehouse, surrounded by samples of the mineral paint that
+he is so pathetically proud of, striving to maintain a dignified
+indifference as he answers the rather flippant curiosity of the local
+press interviewer. Uncle Piper, on the other hand, is introduced, as
+all of Tasma's characters are, in sundry solid-looking pages of direct
+narrative. It is true that their humour and epigram make bright reading,
+but they are necessarily without the power of pithy dialogue to create a
+vivid impression of character.
+
+Whether Uncle Piper is a type of Australian plutocracy need hardly be
+discussed. Of plebeian tradesmen grown wealthy every community has its
+proportion. It may, however, be said that the owners of luxurious villas
+in the suburbs of Melbourne have individually a good deal more grammar
+and less generosity than he who was described by one of his fashionable
+English guests as possessing 'the home of a West-End magnate and the
+intonation of a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any
+intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the
+existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she
+certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them.
+
+A passage in her third novel, _The Penance of Portia James_, gives her
+views on this subject, and incidentally upon Australian character. A
+description is furnished of a breakfast-party in the London home of an
+Australian who has made his fortune in a silver-mine, and from being a
+_habitue_ of colonial racecourses has lately developed into a patron of
+art and a purchaser of dubious 'old masters' at exorbitant prices.
+
+    To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English readers as
+    thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as
+    was that of Dumas _pere_ when he declared that all the inhabitants
+    of Antwerp were _roux_ because he had encountered two red-headed
+    girls on his way to the hotel. No one is thoroughly typical unless
+    he be a savage or a peasant. Portia and her relatives retained their
+    own underlying individualities none the less that they had been
+    influenced in their outward bearing and modes of expressing
+    themselves by a long sojourn in the backwoods of Victoria, in daily
+    contact with all sorts and conditions of men--broken-down gentlemen,
+    English yokels, bush-hands, and the like. After all, the moulding of
+    character by outward influences alone is not a work to be achieved
+    in one generation, or what would become of the theory of heredity,
+    upon which everything is supposed to depend, more or less, in our
+    present scientific age? If these people strike the English reader,
+    therefore, as differing in certain respects from those he is
+    accustomed to meet in his daily walk through life, let him remember
+    that the differences which will strike him most are the merely
+    superficial ones resulting from an occasional departure from the
+    conventional rules of speech and behaviour that guide his own
+    outward conduct, and that in all the main essentials they are, _au
+    fond_, neither more like him or more unlike him than though chance
+    had willed that they should be born and brought up on the selfsame
+    patch of earth as himself. A difference in the vocabulary of the
+    native-born Australian, or long resident in Australia, of the not
+    too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of
+    voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a
+    corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however,
+    which 'nobody can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection
+    upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs.
+    James would have called 'hoefisch' English, and the English that has
+    been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and
+    backwoodsmen. Suffice it to say there _is_ a difference, and Portia
+    was never more sensible of it than when she returned, as on the
+    present occasion, from moving among a London society crowd into the
+    Anglo-Australian social atmosphere of the Kensington house.
+
+Tasma's efforts to give variety to her work, and keep as far as possible
+out of the beaten paths of the Australian writer, have not, however,
+quite excluded from her novels characters which will be recognised as
+typical. There is, for instance, the young pleasure-loving colonial man
+who keeps racehorses, gets deeply into debt and love, and has sometimes
+to encounter awkward parental alternatives.
+
+At least three excellent portraits of such men are given. The best is
+that of George Drafton, in _In Her Earliest Youth_. In no other novel
+are the rough good-nature and loose, slangy talk of the young Australian
+sportsman of the upper-middle class more naturally expressed. The
+author's knowledge of the cant terms and short cuts in the vocabulary of
+the not necessarily ill-educated but supremely careless colonial young
+man is almost equal to that of Rolf Boldrewood, who has been listening
+to the talk of such men all his life.
+
+Uncle Piper's exasperating 'gentleman' son George is also a noticeably
+clever creation in a book full of good portraits; and it is a tribute to
+the author's skill that as the story progresses our sympathy for him
+increases rather than diminishes, notwithstanding the needless agonies
+of rage he occasions his father.
+
+The most vivid chapter to be found in any of Tasma's novels is that in
+which Uncle Piper, after witnessing a love-scene between Laura Lydiat
+and George, sends for the latter and threatens to cast him off if a
+marriage of the pair should take place. Laura is an agnostic and a sort
+of 'new woman' who maintains a constant attitude of disdain towards her
+stepfather. She and George have spent much of their youth together,
+discussed pessimistic theories in Piper's hearing, and generally ignored
+him, and made him feel his ignorance in ways very trying to the temper
+of a man who, 'now that his money-making days were over, had a passion
+for dictating absolutely to everyone about him.' 'He'd talk' and 'she'd
+talk,' as Mr. Piper would complain; 'and they'd spout their scraps of
+poetry that hadn't an ounce of the sense any good, honest old rhyme
+could show; and you'd think, to hear them, they were doing their Maker a
+favour by condescending to go on living at all!'
+
+An alliance of this kind between the two people for whom he had done
+most with his wealth was bad enough, but Uncle Piper was determined
+that it should not become a closer one. Was this not one reason for his
+importation of an entire family of impoverished relatives, that they and
+his little pet daughter, the angelic Louey, should readjust the balance
+of household power in his favour?
+
+It was on the eve of the arrival of his aristocratic connections, the
+Cavendishes, that he determined to put a stop to his son's courtship.
+George, at the outset of the momentous interview with his father,
+speculated inwardly on his chances of being able to soften the old man
+to a favourable view of 'the only wish that he had ever framed with a
+feeling that savoured of intensity.'
+
+Before entering the ornamental tower where his father awaited him,
+George had composed his face to its usual expression of laziest
+indifference. His imperturbability always 'had the effect of a goad upon
+his father's temper. His face never changed colour when the old man's
+was purple. His voice never lost its measured drawl.'
+
+    As Mr. Piper turned and faced him you would never have traced the
+    sonship in George. There was nothing in common between the sallow,
+    indolent face of the younger man, and the spreading, heated face of
+    the elder. George looked like any club-lounger--not unwilling to let
+    it be seen that he is slightly bored, yet ready, with perfect
+    acquiescence, to go through with an hour or a forenoon of the
+    infliction of boredom, as conveyed by a father's presence.... Mr.
+    Piper watched him as he continued tranquilly to pare his nails, the
+    baffled sense of helplessness that exasperated him at the outset of
+    an interview with his son creeping over him as he watched. If George
+    could only once have lost his head and sworn, or only once implored
+    or threatened! But he never did. The apathy and unconcern of his
+    attitude--the veiled disrespect it implied--spoke of an indifference
+    that was worse than the most open revolt. But surely he would be
+    made to feel now! Mr. Piper had never tried to reach 'my gentleman'
+    through his 'young woman' yet.... A slight elevation of an unruffled
+    brow just gave evidence that though his eyes were looking critically
+    at his almond-shaped finger-nails, his ear took in the sense of his
+    fathers words. Otherwise he might have served as a perfect model of
+    intentness upon his hands, as the statue of the boy who to all
+    eternity will be absorbed in the task of extracting a thorn from his
+    foot.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute excitement.
+
+    'I'll see and put a stop to it!' he threatened. 'I'll take and pack
+    her off, and you at the back of her, "my gentleman"!' George knew
+    that the use of this expression signified especial bitterness on
+    his father's part. 'I'll have an end of this nonsense--a painted
+    jade like her!'
+
+    'Wait a minute, please,' said George, shutting the knife with a
+    little snap, and settling himself back upon the window-sill; 'you
+    are a little hard to follow, or I am slow at catching your meaning,
+    perhaps. I understand that you had some object in sending for me.
+    Are you explaining it to me now? I am quite prepared to listen, as
+    you see.'
+
+    'You're very condescending, I'm sure,' said Mr. Piper, with such
+    withering sarcasm that George stroked his moustache and smiled. 'You
+    put yourself about for your father a deal too much, "my gentleman,"
+    there's no doubt of it.' Then, with a sudden break in his voice:
+    'No, George; it's not much of a son you've been to me, and no one
+    can say I've stood in your light. I'd like you to show me another
+    young man who could carry on top ropes like you. There's not many
+    fathers 'ud have stood it. Most fathers 'ud made you turn to long
+    ago.'
+
+    'Do you want anything done for you?' interrupted George, with the
+    air of a man who is laying himself out to oblige--'another tour of
+    inspection in the north?'
+
+    Whenever Mr. Piper made allusion to George's want of occupation, it
+    was the young man's policy to refer to this tour of inspection--a
+    memorable tour, seeing that it had given him employment for at least
+    three months....
+
+    If there was anything humiliating in being rated as an 'able-bodied
+    young man who wasn't worth his salt,' as a loafer who was hardly fit
+    to 'jackaroo' on a station, as a 'lazy lubber' who would 'go to the
+    dogs if it weren't for his father,' George never betrayed that he
+    felt humiliated by so much as the twitching of an eyelid.
+    Persistently stroking the ends of his moustache with an air of
+    profound abstraction, he made it apparent, as soon as Mr. Piper
+    stopped to take breath, that he was suppressing an inclination to
+    yawn.
+
+    'I dare say it's all very true, governor,' was all he said in reply.
+    'It's very nice and complimentary, I'm sure, and I ought to be very
+    much obliged to you. But, _a propos_ of your compliments, may I ask
+    if it was only to treat me to them in full that you brought me up
+    those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I
+    wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man,
+    is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the
+    morning?'
+
+    'If you were like other young men,' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up
+    and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh
+    no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----'
+
+    'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent
+    through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his
+    voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to
+    me?'
+
+    He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the
+    ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he
+    had been over-hasty. For the glass through which Mr. Piper had made
+    a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips
+    worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth; the blood
+    rushing away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready,
+    sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed
+    back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his
+    temples to bursting....
+
+    'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of
+    Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously.
+    'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of
+    a--_sister_?'
+
+    'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly
+    returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable.
+
+    'Of a sister,' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend.'
+
+    'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak
+    distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine,
+    thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see
+    how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn
+    it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got
+    a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill
+    again!'
+
+    'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura
+    wouldn't have me if I wanted!'
+
+    'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful.
+    'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?'
+
+The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not have
+Laura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price,' and that if George choose to
+marry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden of
+turf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his craving
+for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His
+personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara
+Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation
+of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle
+Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her
+other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her Earliest
+Youth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same class, in the short
+story _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsive
+light, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal.
+
+As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara
+Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness
+concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly
+excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat,
+are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger by
+the ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave
+his weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present,
+and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemed
+to be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor.'
+
+But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy for
+imagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe in
+the air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though it
+could be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becoming
+background for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with the
+essentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirable
+qualifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her,
+filled a reasonable space.' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams
+such as it would have seemed to him almost a sacrilege to disturb,
+'though it is probable that the only notion he would have been guilty of
+upsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train.'
+
+The insight and completeness with which Sara's character is depicted in
+the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should
+entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She
+is one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity for
+affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't
+be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful
+suit of her clerical lover; 'I never intended to be a poor man's wife.'
+As a contrast to the cold personality of the beautiful Sara, the author
+gives a charming picture of the elder sister's affection and
+thoughtfulness for others.
+
+Margaret Cavendish and Eila Frost, in _Not Counting the Cost_, are good
+women of a perfectly possible and natural kind, and it is surprising to
+think that the same hand which drew them also found patience to draw the
+unhappy, metaphysical heroines of _In Her Earliest Youth_ and _The
+Knight of the White Feather_. Tasma is seldom so pleasing as when
+describing the characters of children, of whom several figure
+prominently in her novels. There is a delightful picture of romping
+childhood at the opening of _Not Counting the Cost_. The scene is a farm
+in the shadow of Mount Wellington, near Hobart, the city where the
+author spent many of her own early years. 'Chubby,' the eight-year-old
+uncle of the heroine of _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Louey Piper are
+lovable creations, though, it must be said, more quaint than natural.
+One remembers the expansive dignity of the former on his first meeting
+with Pauline's lover, George Drafton. 'How do you do, little man?' says
+the latter condescendingly. 'How do you do, sir?' replies the little man
+stiffly, raising his garden hat. 'You are an acquaintance of Paul--of
+Miss Vyner's, I believe. I have the honour to be her maternal uncle.' No
+wonder George bursts into a loud guffaw, notwithstanding the tragic
+intensity of his love protestations of five minutes before!
+
+Louey Piper's relations with her father are idyllic. She is more
+necessary to him than Eppie to Silas Marner; she is a continual
+negotiator of peace in his divided house, and 'in this she could not
+have displayed more courtier-like sagacity had she been an old-world
+changeling with centuries of experience respecting rich fathers of
+uncertain testamentary inclinations.' In her limited knowledge of things
+outside Piper's Hill, 'street-crossings and railway-platforms presented
+themselves to her in the light of shocking and mysterious man-traps....
+The wistful, yearning look that gave her eyes so touching an expression
+in the setting of her small freckled face never gave place to such a
+fulness of satisfaction as when her father, her brother, and her sister
+were all, as it were, under her eye, and safe to remain indoors for the
+night.'
+
+The general praise won by _Uncle Piper_ for its author as a delineator
+of character appears to have decided her to give increased attention to
+her ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happy
+one. The analytical bias disclosed in the first story was largely
+extended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease in
+action and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central figure of _In Her
+Earliest Youth_, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without love
+a man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. In
+tastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything in
+common. The story--an unusually long three-volume one--is mainly a
+minute study of Pauline's disillusionment during the early period of her
+wifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man who
+had formerly attracted her; and how, with the birth of her first child,
+she experienced the dawn of affection for its father.
+
+The story is excessively expanded for the small amount of dramatic
+movement it contains. Only three characters are prominently described,
+and these too seldom through the medium of dialogue. The central motive,
+moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult to appreciate the
+tragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline's, especially
+as George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from the
+ordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to her, and would
+readily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any.
+Tasma's more recent work is better both in spirit and literary
+construction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in
+_Not Counting the Cost_, of the adventures of the Clare family in their
+quixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them a
+long-lost heritage. In this story and _The Penance of Portia James_ the
+author gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the best
+samples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesque
+of Piper's pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendish
+affects to be revolted by the necessity of being indebted to the
+_ci-devant_ butcher, while secretly luxuriating in his munificence.
+Finally, as a means of discharging some of his obligations, he conceives
+the project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, after
+the manner of the enterprising person who opened a 'heraldry office' in
+Sydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provide
+clients with reliable information of their ancestors, together with
+suitable coats of arms.
+
+    True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there _had_ been a
+    Count Piper somewhere or other some centuries ago, and the very
+    rarity of the name proved that every Piper must come from one common
+    stock. Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself up to
+    its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend whole hours in the
+    Melbourne Library poring over books of heraldry. Every chronological
+    or biographical document bearing upon the age in which Count Piper
+    was supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and minute
+    examination. When the monthly mail day came round there would sure
+    to be a budget of letters in Mr. Cavendish's handwriting, addressed
+    to the different colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were
+    to help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the oblivion
+    in which they had hitherto been suffered to remain.
+
+Mr. Piper is at length informed of the progress of the inquiries, but
+shows a provoking obtuseness and indifference concerning them.
+
+    'I am--hem!--I am pursuing a task of the utmost consequence to your
+    family interests,' Mr. Cavendish had told him one day. 'In fact, my
+    dear sir, I am engaged in a work of no less moment than that of
+    reconstructing your family tree.'
+
+    'My what-do-you-call-it tree?' exclaimed Mr. Piper, with a hazy
+    idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable
+    experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. 'Don't you take and
+    put any rubbish in the garden. I've got a new lot of guano, and I
+    don't want it meddled with.'
+
+    'Guano!' echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the most withering
+    compassion. 'I'm afraid you don't quite apprehend my meaning. I am
+    not alluding to coarse material facts at all. I am speaking of a
+    genealogical tree--a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am
+    trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion. I am....'
+
+    'You'd better leave 'em alone,' interrupted Mr. Piper, with the
+    sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not been altogether
+    allayed. '_They_ won't do you any good--no more than they've done
+    for me. You've got some of your own, I expect; that's enough for any
+    man, I should think.'
+
+    Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. If the
+    matter had not become a hobby by this time, he would have abandoned
+    it then and there. As it was, he contented himself by deploring the
+    sad effects of low association upon the undoubted descendant of a
+    count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing a hog in
+    armour instead of a stag at gaze into the coat-of-arms that he
+    foresaw would be the result of his researches.
+
+Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs. Cavendish, on the eve of the
+first meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she could soften the
+heart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother--'how lead
+him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefit
+him,' and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only was
+wealth an acknowledged power, 'even though pork-sausages should have
+been its alleged first cause,' but that, after all, 'politic members of
+the great ruling houses in the old world had been known to make
+concessions to trade,' and he 'was prepared to make concessions too!'
+Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bear
+the semblance of cordiality.
+
+    'This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,' he said, with ten white
+    fingers--the fingers of thoroughbred hands--closing round Mr.
+    Piper's plebeian knuckles. No onlooker could have supposed for an
+    instant that he had come, with the whole of his family, in an
+    entirely destitute condition, to live upon his wife's brother.
+    Besides, we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour is
+    virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities from people
+    you esteem....
+
+    'You're welcome, sir,' said Mr. Piper.
+
+    Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish wiped her eyes,
+    and Mr. Piper said very heartily, 'You're welcome, the lot of you.'
+
+Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a
+consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in
+_Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties
+of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception,
+little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards
+broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her
+somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not
+less pungent, is of a quieter kind.
+
+Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the most
+noteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language.
+The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualities
+and culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than the
+novelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, and
+by the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of her
+chapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large class
+of thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack in
+dramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usually
+faithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate and
+sympathetic view of our common life.
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
+
+_G., C. & CO._
+
+
+
+
+  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                               |
+  | Transcriber's note:                                           |
+  |                                                               |
+  | Inconsistent hyphenation (book-form/book form, gold-fields/   |
+  | goldfields, horse-racing/horseracing, race-horses/racehorses) |
+  | has been retained.                                            |
+  |                                                               |
+  | Minor typographical corrections are documented in the source  |
+  | code of the html version of this e-book. Instructions for     |
+  | viewing those corrections will be found in the transcriber's  |
+  | note at the end of the html file.                             |
+  |                                                               |
+  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
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