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important; } + .ctr {text-align: center!important; text-indent: 0!important; } + .rt {text-align: right!important; } + .so {letter-spacing: 0.2em; } + .top6 {padding-top: 6em; } + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 85%;} +</style> +</head> +<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> </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> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </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 ‘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.’ 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 ‘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 +<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—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 <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> 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 +<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 ‘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.’</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 ‘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 +<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 ‘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.</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—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 +<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 ‘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.</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—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<!-- TN: original reads "Bruton" --> 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.</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 ‘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.</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’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.</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—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.</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 ‘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 +<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. +‘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.’</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’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—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.</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—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—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 +<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 ‘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?</p> + +<p>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 +<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—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 +<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—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, +<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,—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.’</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 +‘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.</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’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’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’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: ‘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.’</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 +‘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 <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’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’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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>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.</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’ 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’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 ‘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.</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’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—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.</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 ‘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.</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’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’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.</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. ‘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.’</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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>‘My friend,’ says one writer, ‘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—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.’</p> + +<p>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 +<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’s personality +is given by a writer in the Sydney +<cite>Bulletin</cite>: ‘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 <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’s correspondence and those +of the French memoir-writers…. 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, “He had no +enemy but himself.”’</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,—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’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—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’ 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.</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’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 ‘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.</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’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’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’s friends did write some +portion of the story, but whether in accordance +with the author’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>‘Only a few of the first chapters’ 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’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.’</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’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, +‘any attempt to paint the ordinary squatting +life of the colonies could not fail to challenge +unfavourable comparison with that admirable +story.’</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’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 +<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>‘I have often thought,’ says the writer, +referring to the hero of <cite>Geoffry Hamlyn</cite> +‘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.”’</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, ‘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.</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 ‘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<!-- 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’ 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 +<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’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.</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 ‘How would +Sam Buckley get on in England?’ 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 ‘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.</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 ‘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 +<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, ‘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.’</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 +‘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 +<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.’</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 ‘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.’</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’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. +‘We must treat brutes like brutes,’ says the +prime martinet of the story: ‘keep ’em +down, sir; make ’em <em>feel</em> 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.’</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’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—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.</p> + +<p>‘Need one who was not a hardened +criminal have suffered so much and so long?’ +<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’ 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.</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’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 +<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’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—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: ‘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.’</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: ‘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’t help it.’</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’s literary friends, supplies +the following account of how the novel came +to be so extensively curtailed:</p> + +<p>‘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>‘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’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>‘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 +<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’s silence, and he omitted +both the things I had objected to.’</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’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 +<a name="png.083" id="png.083"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">79</span><span class="ns">] + </span>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.</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’ 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 +‘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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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.’ 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.’</p> + +<p>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. +<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. ‘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.</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—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.</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. ‘The human +anguish of every page’ 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—‘gentleman, scholar, +and Christian priest’—might have been an +active opponent of cruelty like Eden, the +clergyman in <cite>It’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! ‘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.’</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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>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, +<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’s Land.</p> + +<p>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.</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’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’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—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—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—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’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—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 +<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. ‘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.</p> + +<p>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.</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’ +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’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.</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 ‘sundowners’ (<i>i.e.</i>, 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 <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>‘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 +<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’s.</p> + +<p>‘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 “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.</p> + +<p>‘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, +<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.’</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’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’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’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’-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.</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’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—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—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’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. ‘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 <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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’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’ 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 +<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’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 <em>not</em> ‘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 +<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—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.</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 ‘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 +<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—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 +<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’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.</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. ‘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 +<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.’ 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. ‘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.’</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: ‘My brother, let us +breakfast in Scotland, lunch in Australia, and +dine in France, till our lives end.’</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’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.</p> + +<p>In the conversation of Kingsley’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 ‘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, +<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 ‘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 <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’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 +<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’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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’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?</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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 +<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’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’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!’</p> + +<p>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….</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’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>‘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!’</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….</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’, 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….</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—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.</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>‘The bushrangers, Alice, my love!’ he said. ‘We +must fly this instant; they are close to us now.’</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’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….</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘There they are!’ said Alice. ‘Surely there is a large +party of horsemen on the plain, but they are seven or +eight miles off.’</p> + +<p>‘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!’</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’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, +<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: ‘Give me one of your pistols, +sir!’</p> + +<p>‘Leave that to me!’ he replied, in the same tone.</p> + +<p>‘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.’</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’s faces? Faces they thought that they had +never seen before—so each told the other afterwards—so +wild, so haggard, and so strange.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <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’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 ‘Jim Burton’s Story,’ was that which the +author saw during his boyhood round his +father’s old rectory on Chelsea Embankment.</p> + +<p>‘He seemed to me,’ says Mrs.<!-- TN: period invisible in scan --> 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 <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 ‘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.</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 ‘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.</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’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. ‘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.</p> + +<p>The superior position usually accorded +to <cite>Ravenshoe</cite> 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, +<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’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—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.</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’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’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—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’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—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 +<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—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’s slender use of extraneous aids to +interest.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’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.</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’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 +<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,’ he confesses.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘I am sure you would,’ said Hannah.</p> + +<p>‘But,’ he continued, with that unwonted fire blazing +in his eyes, ‘since dead she is, I <em>am</em> 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.’</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Probably it will still appear to many that +Delavel’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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, ‘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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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—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.</p> + +<p>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.’</p> + +<p>Sarah French, the girl in <cite>Fidelis</cite> 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 +<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…. 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.’</p> + +<p>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.’</p> + +<p>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!’</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. ‘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.’</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—‘the men out of +books that we meet every day.’ 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. +‘Because of this,’ says the pathetic Hilda +Donne in <cite>A Marriage Ceremony</cite>, touching +her cheek, which is terribly disfigured by a +birth-mark, ‘I have never had <em>love</em>. 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.’</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 ‘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.</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 ‘when a +woman <em>is</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’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’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’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’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—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.</p> + +<p>‘Kiss <em>her</em>,’ 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—a +kiss from Rutherford before all was wholly over.</p> + +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</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—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 +<a name="png.158" id="png.158"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">154</span><span class="ns">] + </span>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.</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—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.</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’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:</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’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 +<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—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.</p> + +<p>Still, she was very proud of the look of +‘blood’ 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. ‘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.’</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 ‘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.’</p> + +<p>His friend, Major Duff-Scott, ‘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.’</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’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 ‘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 +<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 ‘Sick +Stockrider,’ 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"> ‘The splendid bare sword</div> +<div>Flashing blue, rising red from the blow!’</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—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 +<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 ‘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.’</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’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.</p> + +<blockquote class="pl6"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘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—save Heaven alone.’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 +<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>‘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>‘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>‘I once had talents fit to win</div> +<div class="i2"> Success in life’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.’</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"> ‘If to error I incline,</div> +<div>Truth whispers comfort strong,</div> +<div>That never reckless act of mine</div> +<div>E’er worked a comrade wrong.’</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’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 ‘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!</p> + +<blockquote class="pl5"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride</div> +<div class="i2"> Long years of pleasure outvie!’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p class="noindent">he exclaims, and wishes that his own end +could be fair as that of one ‘who died in his +stirrups there.’</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 +‘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 +<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 ‘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.</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’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 ‘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?</p> + +<p>It appears that he considered himself to +have ‘irretrievably lost caste.’ 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’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. +‘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.”’</p> + +<p>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 +<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—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 +<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’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>‘Lands where bright blossoms are scentless,</div> +<div class="i2"> And songless bright birds,’</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 ‘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.</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 ‘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.</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. ‘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.</p> + +<blockquote class="pl5"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles</div> +<div class="i2"> ’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’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.’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <cite>Bush Ballads</cite> +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’; +<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 ‘Road to Avernus;’ +‘The Friends’ (a translation from the +French); and the psychological musings of +‘De Te’ and ‘Doubtful Dreams.’</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<blockquote class="pl4"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘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>‘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>‘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—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>‘A rise steeply sloping, a fence with stone coping,</div> +<div class="i2"> The last—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>‘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, “The Devil!”</div> +<div class="i2"> He muttered—lock’d level the hurdles we flew.’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>After a glance at the crowd where, as seen +by the rider, all ‘figures are blended and +features are blurred’—</p> + +<blockquote class="pl4"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘On still past the gateway she strains in the straight way,</div> +<div class="i2"> Still struggles, “The Clown by a short neck at most!”</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>‘Aye! so ends the tussle—I knew the tan muzzle</div> +<div class="i2"> Was first, though the ring men were yelling “Dead Heat!”</div> +<div>A nose I could swear by, but Clarke said “The mare by</div> +<div class="i2"> A short head.” And that’s how the favourite was beat.’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>It was by this piece, according to Marcus +Clarke, that the poet’s early reputation was +made. ‘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 “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 <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)—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>‘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.’</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>‘As a type of our chivalry.’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</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>‘’Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass</div> +<div class="i2"> To wander as we’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>’Twas merry ’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>‘Aye! we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang,</div> +<div class="i2"> When they bolted from Sylvester’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!’</div> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>‘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 +<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’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.’</p> + +<p>Gordon’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—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 +<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—too often—of the transiency<!-- TN: original reads "transciency" --> 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</p> + +<blockquote class="pl7"> +<div class="stanza"> +<div>‘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—</div> +<div><span class="smcap">Kindness</span> in another’s trouble,</div> +<div class="i2"> <span class="smcap">Courage</span> in your own.’</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’s +‘In Memoriam’ 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>‘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.’</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’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 ‘that freest of all free lives, that +pleasantest of all pleasant professions—the +calling of a squatter.’</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’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. +‘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.</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—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.</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—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 ‘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.</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’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’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 +‘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 +<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’s long-published +and resisted design.’</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’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—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’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’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’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’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’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’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. ‘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.</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. ‘She had an +imperial sort of way of manœuvring 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!</p> + +<p><cite>Robbery under Arms</cite> 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 +<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’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.</p> + +<p>The attempt to preserve absolute truth in +every detail of the life-story of John Redgrave, +the hero of <cite>The Squatter’s Dream</cite>, +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 +<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’s misfortunes, and a mild satisfaction at +his modified ultimate success—nothing more.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’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 <em>but</em> drink?’</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’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.’</p> + +<p>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.’</p> + +<p>The best argument against Boldrewood’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’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’s ubiquity, +Claude Duval’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 ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ 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—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 +<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 +‘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 +<a name="png.216" id="png.216"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">212</span><span class="ns">] + </span>Turon, when ‘in walked Inspector Goring,’ +the officer who had been so long and patiently +seeking him elsewhere, and his appearance +at Bella Barnes’<!-- 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. ‘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 +<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.’</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 ‘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.</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 +‘Captain Moonlight.’ 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: +‘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: “Keep back, if +you’re wise, Wallings. I don’t want your +blood on my head; but if you <span class="nw">must——</span>” +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<a name="png.220" id="png.220"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">216</span><span class="ns">] + </span>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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>‘I say, Morringer, do you remember the last pigeon-match +you and I shot in, at Hurlingham?’</p> + +<p>‘Why, good God!’ says Sir Ferdinand, bending down, +and looking into his face. ‘It can’t be! Yes; by Jove! +it <span class="nw">is——</span>’</p> + +<p>He spoke some name I couldn’t catch, but Starlight +put a finger on his lips, and whispered:</p> + +<p>‘You won’t tell, will you? Say you won’t.’</p> + +<p>The other nodded.</p> + +<p>He smiled just like his old self.</p> + +<p>‘Poor Aileen!’ he said, quite faint. His head fell +back. Starlight was dead!</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 +<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, +‘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.’</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’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.</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’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’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.</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 ‘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.’</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’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 ‘on the square,’ 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 ‘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.</p> + +<p>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 +<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’s Right</cite>, which ranks second +in popularity among Boldrewood’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’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’ +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.</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’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: ‘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.</p> + +<p>A passage from Dick Marston’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’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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>‘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?’</p> + +<p>‘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!’</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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 +<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’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.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, <span class="nw">d——n</span> 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.’</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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.</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’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—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—<cite>Policy and Passion</cite> and <cite>Miss Jacobsen’s +Chance</cite>, for example—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 ‘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.’</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 ‘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.</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’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—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.’</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. +‘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.</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>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘You said just now that you think too much.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes; it’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’t know it. You often think you +are ridiculous when you really are not.’</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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….’</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’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—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, ‘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, +<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 +‘atmosphere,’ 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—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’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’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 <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—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.</p> + +<p>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 +<a name="png.244" id="png.244"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">240</span><span class="ns">] + </span>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.</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’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 +‘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.</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—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 +<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’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’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’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 +<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>‘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.’</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.’</p> + +<p>A strong bias towards analysis is the chief +characteristic of Mrs. Praed’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’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—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 ‘severe +intellectual interests’ as a deficiency of +society at Sydney.</p> + +<p>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 +<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>‘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.’</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. ‘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?’</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, ‘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?’</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’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’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’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.</p> + +<p>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.</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’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—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, ‘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…. +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.’</p> + +<p>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 +<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.’</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’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’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 +<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—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’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 <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’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 <cite>Affinities</cite>: ‘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 <cite>North American Review</cite> in +1890. ‘Analysis, not action,’ 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, ‘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.’</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’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’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’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—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—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 ‘Australian George Eliot,’ +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’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.</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’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. 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’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’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.</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 ‘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 +<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’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’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 +<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—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.</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’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 ‘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.</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 ‘old masters’ 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—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 ‘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 <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’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’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’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.</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’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!’</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’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.’</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 ‘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.’</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—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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Meanwhile Mr. Piper is in a state of acute +excitement.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>‘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 +<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’s part. +‘I’ll have an end of this nonsense—a painted jade like +her!’</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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?’</p> + +<p>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….</p> + +<p>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 +<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,’ 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>‘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, +<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’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?’</p> + +<p>‘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 <span class="nw">with a——</span>’</p> + +<p>‘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?’</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….</p> + +<p>‘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—<em>sister</em>?’</p> + +<p>‘Eh?’ said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was +slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to +the monosyllable.</p> + +<p>‘Of a sister,’ repeated George slowly, ‘and a friend.’</p> + +<p>‘Your <em>sister</em>!’ 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!’</p> + +<p>‘You mistake the position of affairs,’ said George +calmly. ‘Laura wouldn’t have me if I wanted!’</p> + +<p>‘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?’</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 +<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 ‘seemed to be absorbing +his meaning into the soul of their possessor.’</p> + +<p>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.’</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’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.</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. ‘Chubby,’ +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’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!</p> + +<p>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 +<a name="png.285" id="png.285"></a><span class="ns">[p </span><span + class="pgmark">281</span><span class="ns">] + </span>‘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.’</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—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.</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’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’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’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 ‘heraldry office’ 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’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>‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘My what-do-you-call-it tree?’ 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. ‘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.’</p> + +<p>‘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….’</p> + +<p>‘You’d better leave ’em alone,’ interrupted Mr. Piper, +with the sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not +been altogether allayed. ‘<em>They</em> 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.’</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—‘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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>‘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….</p> + +<p>‘You’re welcome, sir,’ said Mr. Piper.</p> + +<p>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.’</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’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. & 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. 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